mind-body problem

brain in a vat

identity

trolley problem

Rene Descartes

cartesian dualism

Daniel Dennett

body

nervous system

is a false problem because if the external world were the work of our organs, then our body, as a part of this external world, would be the work of our organs. That would then mean that our organs themselves would be the work of our organs!.

15. To study physiology with a clear conscience, one must insist on the fact that the sense-organs are not phenomena in the sense of the idealistic philosophy... as such they certainly could not be causes! Sensualism, therefore, at least as regulative hypothesis, if not as heuristic principle. What' And others say even that the external world is the work of our organs' But then our body, as a part of this external world, would be the work of our organs! But then our organs themselves would be the work of our organs! It seems to me that this is a complete REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM, if the conception CAUSA SUI is something fundamentally absurd. Consequently, the external world is NOT the work of our organs ' (nietzsche 'beyond good and evil' 21)

is a false problem because mind and body are two different reflections of one and the same thing. As such, mind (the mental, thought) and body (the physical, extension) have absolutely nothing in common and cannot interact with each other causally.

Argues against the two ideas that (1) mind and body as distinct in kind and (2) in interaction with each other. He suggests that they are. . ..'The two attributes of God of which we have cognizance are (1) extension and (2) thought. . . ..extension and thought are two distinct essences that have absolutely nothing in common.'. . 'The human mind and the human body are two different expressions -under Thought and under Extension -of one and the same thing: the person. And because there is no causal interaction between the mind and the body, the so-called mind-body problem does not, technically speaking, arise.' (Stanford Encyclopedia)

is a problem similar to that of the liquidity of water whereby molecules themselves are not wet, and wetness belongs to a higher-order organization. Similarly all of our conscious states are caused by lower level neuro-biological processes in the brain which are realized in the brain as higher level or system features.

is the claim that mind and body are dualistic such that the body is mechanistic and mental phenomena are completely non-physical.

mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physical,[1] or that the mind and body are not identical

is poorly understood when expressed as a conflict, for, the perspectival, bodily character of our opening onto the world is not a limitation of our access but rather the very condition of the world's disclosure in its inexhaustibility.

In the natural attitude of our pre-reflective lives, we are committed to the view that our perceptual experience of things is always situated and perspectival (i.e., that physical objects are presented through “profiles", Husserl's Abschattungen), but also that we thereby experience things “in themselves", as they really are in the mind-independent world; the perspectival character of our opening onto the world is not a limitation of our access but rather the very condition of the world's disclosure in its inexhaustibility. At the level of this prereflective faith in the world, there is no dilemma of the soul's separation from the body; “the soul remains coextensive with nature" (SC: 203/189).

is a category error — emotion manifests in changes in the circulatory and respiratory and digestive systems. Even the infinitesimal subtleties of mathematical reflection have their correlate in the body.

Just as the emotion as felt is part of a whole, of which changes in the circulatory and respiratory and digestive systems are the basis; so an idea is a part, along with "bodily" changes, of one complex organic process; even the infinitesimal subtleties of mathematical reflection have their correlate in the body.

is a category error because mind and body are a single process, viewed inwardly as thought, and outwardly was motion.

Neither is mind material, answers Spinoza, nor is matter mental; neither is the brain-process the cause, nor is it the effect, of thought; nor are the two processes independent and parallel. For there are not two processes, and there are not two entities; there is but one process, seen now inwardly as thought, and now outwardly as motion; there is but one entity, seen now inwardly as mind, now outwardly as matter, but in reality an inextricable mixture and unity of both. Mind and body do not act upon each other, because they are not other, they are one. "The body cannot determine the mind to think; nor the mind determine the body to remain in motion or at rest, or in any other state," for the simple reason that "the decision of the mind, and the desire and determination of the body . . . are one and the same thing." *

mind body problem, n.Definitions

mind body problem