The Mind-Body Problem

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With the number of brain injury cases observed and the continuous advances in neuroscience, this has proven to be strong evidence in supporting materialism. By defining what Cartesian dualists and materialists mean by the ‘brain’, ‘mind’, ‘body’ and ‘soul’, an argument on behalf of Cartesians dualists will be reached, that responds to evidence concerning brain injuries with the claims that the brain is only ‘an instrument of the soul’. This will lead to the conclusion that there is stronger contemporary support for materialism due to neuroscience and that the Cartesian dualism argument as it is, may be wrong. However future neuroscience discoveries could continue to claim significant parts of both theories as wrong, meaning materialism as it is may not be correct either.

The Mind-Body problem forms the basis of the philosophy of the mind argument. Descartes, the rationalist philosopher and scientist, was the first to propose a coherent, in depth theory, known as Cartesian dualism which supposes that “the mental and the physical – or mind and body or mind and brain... are radically different kinds of thing” or in other words, humans have a “non-physical soul existing independently from our bodies”. Descartes believed that the soul (or spirit) contains all our mental states. In this way he used the words ‘soul’ and ‘mind’ as synonyms. This might latter cause confusion with the idea of materialism so in order to avoid contradiction, the soul will be defined as “the non-physical aspect of a person” while the mind will be defined as “a collection of your mental states”. Whereas the brain, will be defined “as the organ that controls mental states and the nervous system” in accordance with the definition of the body (that material...

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... even admits:

“...neither dualism nor materialism, can yet explain all of the phenomena to be explained”.

Future neuroscience could perhaps claim even more significant parts of both theories wrong.

Works Cited

Andrade, Gabriel, “Immortality”, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.iep.utm.edu/immortal

Beauregard, Mario – The Spiritual Brain

Campbell, Keith – Dualisms

Churchland, Paul - Matter and Consciousness

Descartes, Rene – Selections, from Meditations on First Philosophy

Eccles, John; Popper, Karl – The Self and its Brain

Robertson, M.D. – Dualism vs. Materialism

Robinson, Howard, “Dualism”, The Standford Encylopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.standford.edu/archives/win2011/entries/dualism

Stolijar, Daniel “Physicalism” The Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2009/entries/physicalism

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