Philosophy - The Mind/Body Problem

First of, what is the ‘Mind/Body problem’?The mind/body problem, in one of its aspects, concerns the relation between the two. Some people have thought that the mind and body are one and the same, the mind being just one aspect of the body and located in or identical to the brain. On the other hand, some consider that they must be separate, either wholly or significantly, with the mind not being equivalent to the brain.
Descartes is, perhaps, the philosopher that most people reference when discussing the mind-body problem. For Descartes, there are two substances: Mind and Matter. Each substance has a defining attribute. In the case of Mind, the defining attribute is Thought. In the case of Matter, the defining attribute is spatial Extension. It is important to note that for Descartes, substances can have nothing in common, otherwise they would not be fundamentally different things. The mind-body problem arises out of this view of substances, because if mind and body have nothing in common, then in what way can they be said to interact? This is known as the problem of interaction.

v Interactionism holds that the mind can influence the body and the body can influence the mind and it is in this way that they are united. Descartes was an interactionist.
v Epiphenomenalism is the view that mental activities are by-products of the physical. They therefore avoid the difficulty of how a non-physical thing could influence a physical one.
v The double aspect theory derives from the philosopher Spinoza and holds that there is only one substance and that the mind and the body are both aspects of it. It explains how the causes of our actions can be simultaneously mental and physical thus avoiding analysing the mental in terms of the physical or the physical in terms of the mental.
v Parallelism contends that the mind and body never influence one another, but nevertheless progress along parallel paths as though they interact. Leibniz maintained that God arranged things in advance so that our minds and bodies would be in harmony: the notion of “pre-established harmony”.
v Occasionalism is part of a wider theory of causation which holds that causes are joined to effects only in the sense that when a cause occurs God wills the effect to occur. So God causes our mental life and wills that it is in close correspondence with what is going on in the body.
Definitions taken from DECV Philosophy unit.


The mind/body problem to me reminds me of execution by guillotine, where the head is brutally but swiftly removed from the body. Can the mind live without the body and can the body function without the mind?
Descartes noted that if he cut off his foot, his mind did not seem to be affected. If we lopped off our heads instead, would we still have a mind?
Psychologically speaking… decapitation is obviously fatal, for brain-death occurs within seconds to minutes after disconnection, but is there still activity inside the mind? Research and investigation was done on this and turned up no solid conclusion to either support or refute the question. However, one report concluded that a dispatched head was able to respond by opening his eyes whenever the doctor mentioned his name; blinking and mouthing words. Now, since no solid evidence can support consciousness, it could simply be a reaction… but one thing is for sure, the brain may not actually expire for at least several seconds.
But conscious or not, a clean dispatch can trap air and blood, keeping the brain alive for a few seconds.
So, in conclusion, air and blood are needed to keep the brain/mind alive, therefore the brain needs the body as a life-support and the body needs the brain to master it movements and enable proper function.

Philosophically speaking… this would mean that ‘both’ the mind and the body are in fact dependant of each other and not separate entities of a subject. This is where I was able to refute Parallelism.

Epiphenomenalism in my opinion, is absurd; it is just plain obvious that our pains, our thoughts, and our feelings make a difference to our (evidently physical) behavior; it is impossible to believe that all our behavior could be just as it is even if there were no pains, thoughts, or feelings.

Even though the Double aspect theory does back up the theory that mind and body correspond, it does seem to leave the nature of this common substance undefined. Another problem I have with this theory, is that it implies that mind and body correspond entirely… even though Mind and Body are dependant, I do not believe that they are two attributes of the same substance. … for things seem to happen in the body that the mind is not aware of.
Can we really say whether there is always a corresponding mental process for every physical one?

Interactionism is my preferred theory, why? If mind and body are separate, how is it that they interact? Thinking in a negative way apparently influences the way we behave, while an experience in the world can change the way we think.
A pin-prick causes pain, and pain causes emotional response. You have physical pain… and you have emotional response to the pain. The pain and the emotional response interact with one another to create the same experience both physically and
mentally.


In short, the theory of Interactionism is probably the most solid, but followed closely by the Double Aspect theory