Descartes and Nagel are philosophers who examined this problem with the intent to learn the true relationship between the mind and body. Although they share this in common, their philosophies differ greatly. Through the examination of each philosopher=s position, this paper will attempt to show how Descartes and Nagel used two different theories, dualism and the dual aspect theory, to satisfy the mind-body problem and which argument is the stronger of the two. Descartes argued in his AMeditations on First Philosophy@ that the mind is a thinking, non-divisible, non-extended thing and that the body is a non-thinking, divisible, extended thing. In his sixth Meditation, Descartes states A...I have a body with which I am very closely united, nevert... ... middle of paper ... ...ing the relationship between the mind and the mental states than Descartes.
As well as how the mind interacts with the body. Gathering information, drawing conclusions and finding valid theories; as well as understanding biological and social problems, constitute psychology's philosophical background. The concept of the self is a large factor in the study of personality as well as philosophy. The self, generally speaking, includes subjective experience and conscious awareness. In the book Philosophy of Mind the author speaks about self-consciousness, "...the possession of the concept of the self and the ability to use this concept in thinking about oneself" (Guttenplan, 213).
Aristotle agreed with Plato that knowledge is something that’s true and it must be justified. Their metaphysics caused us to think way beyond our nature and explore distinctive ways of viewing everything that exists and not exist in our presence. What defines philosophy? The Greek words “wisdom” and “love”, which seeks the quest for knowledge. Now, all these questions that we ask ourselves about life and the meaning of our existence is found in the minds of our most famous philosophers.
The debate over free will and determinism has laid the foundation for many basic laws of modern science. The dilemma between determinism and free will traces back to a group of ancient Greek philosophers, better known as the Athenian Triad, composed of greats like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Plato, a pupil of Socrates, had perhaps the most influential impact on the debate over determinism and free will because of his ideas on epistemology and ethics. He felt that cases of inner, psychological compulsion define freedom of will in contrast to the phenomenon of determinism. For such thinkers, true freedom of the will involves liberation from the tyranny of base desires and acquisition of desires for “the Good” in his book The Republic.
When thinking critically and analyzing each of the philosophers we must consider both a strength and a weakness about each of the differing ideas of metaphysics. First let us consider Plato, Plato believes in the Forms of things and how we always know them, but we know them from a previous life, which is a type of innatism, which is inborn. Such that, dualism is the material body and the immaterial soul, and that the soul is trapped in the body waiting to ...
However, since his metaphysics are essentially a response to the theories of his teacher, it is central to our examinations to familiarize ourselves with Plato’s understanding of the universe. Plato believed that in our reality all existing objects are mere imitations (mimesis) of perfect objects that exist in some nonphysical abstract realm. This ideology, which can be felt in all of Plato’s opus, reveals several important problems with the nature of art. In opposition to Plato, Aristotle’s metaphysics were much more grounded in the physical world. For him, the notion of ‘form’ was present in all of matter and the dissimilarity between it and the actual material that constituted an object was merely an intellectual one.
Throughout time, many cognitive scientists have developed arguments supporting the common assumption that psychology needs to appeal to internal cognitive processes to understand intelligent behavior. For example, Tolman first said that the mind is a system made up of representational systems (Flanagan, 1991, p.178). Think about an object such as a water bottle. You have beliefs and ideas about water bottles in general that are specific to the meaning of this object. Because our mind creates representations for things in the world it can be concluded that the mind is also an intentional system (Flanagan, 1991, p. 178).
Personality is how we interact with the people and world around us. All major perspectives of psychology have formed theories for the origin of personality. Two of the most famous theories are that of the psychoanalytic and humanistic perspectives. They psychoanalytic theory is based on the concept of a subconscious, a multilayered mind. In which a majority of our mind is beyond our access, but controls all of our behaviors and personality traits.
A duplicate of himself is recreated elsewhere using the data scanned from the teleporter, creating a situation where two individuals exist simultaneously that seemingly share the same identity (Parfit, 1984). One of the theories that Parfit suggests to define identity in these thought experiments is the Physical Criterion, where a person is considered to be numerically identical if and only if enough of their living brain from a prior point in time continues to exist to be the brain of the person now (Parfit, 1984) (numerical id... ... middle of paper ... ...sed on their behavior tell us the contrary, and leans towards the Wide Psychological Criterion. Because of this, we would regard and identify them differently. Thus, our prior belief favors the Wide Psychological Criterion over the Physical Criterion. The Wide Psychological Criterion is clearly the favored theory in describing and defining personal identity.
This lead me to think that there is an immaterial self governing the human body to explain why humans can come up with different solutions to give the same answer to the same mathematical problem. The cause affects the immaterial self. The immaterial self governs the brain by shaping its mental state with immaterial thoughts and makes the decision to adopt a certain behavioural method. Various behavioural methods can arise from the same mental state and lead to the same effect to the cause. Thus, I believe in the presence of an immaterial self that governs the brain and the body.