The Mind Body Problem

How can the mind, a non-physical entity, cause a physical entity such as the body to act? How otoh can the body cause the mind to perceive? Here's a more detailed summary of this famous problem:


"What philosophers call the mind body problem originated with Descartes. In Descartes' philosophy the mind is essentially a thinking thing, while the body is essentially an extended thing - something which occupies space. Descartes held that there is two way causal interaction between these two quite different kinds of substances. So, the body effects the mind in perception, and the mind effects the body in action. But how is this possible? How can an unextended thing effect something in space. How can something in space effect and unextended thing?"


The Mind Body Problem
Address:http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/writing/mind-top.html

 

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Show the mind is non-physical.

 

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Prove that the mind is physical.

 

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Loss of abilities, memories, persona with brain damage. Ability to affect thoughts and actions with drugs and other stimuli on the brain. Mapping of thoughts by monitoring electrochemical reactions in the brain.

Your turn.

 

Are electrochemical reactions really physical? For intended purposes, we can consider them to be. Do you have any objective evidence that the brain and mind are the same thing?

 

I take non-physical to be something outside the influence of the physical. Since electrochemical and electromagnetic do affect the physical world, then they are of physical presence.

For the mind to not be physical, it would not be affected by physical things, nor would it cease to exist when the physical habitat it seems to reside in goes away.

Why is what I've presented not objective? I could spend the day googling examples, but so can anyone else. I assumed that was common knowledge that there are many examples of how trauma or other things can affect how the brain operates, and in doing so the persona is as well.

 

Think of the mind as the driver and your brain the automobile. You can crash. The car and driver both dies. Are they both the same thing (human, car) ?

Besides
Consider what is done when a "original thought" is conjured. Where is your brain getting this information from if the mind is material?

Whatretains all experiences whether its consciously accessed or not? The brain, but who chooses the focal point from what your brain is viewing?

Similarly it is the mind which is operational when a person’s brain is unconscious and the person has vivid memories of an out of body experience or a near death experience.

Obviously we cannot emperically test if there is a mind or not as it ends when the physical body is done (our subjective experience) thus we can only speculate.

At any rate everything is transfered via neurochemical activity so couldent it be said that this universe or reality is a huge brain?? Arent we simply the mind interacting with this reality deprived from the brain? Or is literally everything just "in our heads" and there is nothing outside it?

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Can the driver leave the car? Can the mind leave the brain? I know you'll say out of body experiences, but I'll get to that.

A better analogy would be the software/hardware one. Think of the mind as software that can modify itself. Obviously it can't run without the hardware, neither is the hardware useful without software.

Good questions. I'm hardly an expert in brain functions, nor do I think we fully understand how it works yet. Memory and such as I understand it is essentially connections and associations within the brain. Ones that are used often reinforce their connections, while older ones that aren't used so much tend to fade with time, but not necessarily disappear. But we're not discussing the how, but more if it resides there or not.

Both of these can be duplicated with various stimuli, drugs and whatnot. They also never provide new information that only a true out of body journey could.

I disagree. I've provided many examples of how we can test the theory of the mind being a physical thing within the brain.

There's such speculation about superorganisms. The Gaia theory or super AI explore this realm, where we as humans can't fully comprehend the larger "being". Cant say myself if there's something to that idea.

 

Consciousness has to do with the way the neurons membranes are set up. The resting state of the neuron represents high energy and low entropy. Both of these potentials are contained within the segregation of sodium and potassium ions. Highest entropy and lowest energy would imply a uniform solution and not segregation. The neuron will use up to 90% of its metabolic energy maintaining the low entropy and high energy state of the membrane.

What is useful about this is, it violates basic laws of physics which says the universe moves in the direction of lowest energy and highest entropy. As such, the universal potential will move neurons the other way; cause them to fire.

Our sensory systems will input signals into the brain causing neuron firing. The sensory systems are part of the universal potentials, since they will move neurons in the direction of lower energy and higher energy; fire.

The neurons recover from the firing, moving in the opposite, trying to diffuse the cascade. The result is that sensory familiarity will lower its internal firing. Less neurons will fire causing routine input to become less conscious.

New sensory data will have a different route for firing neurons. This gives the universal potential more levage (cascade) allowing us to perceieve the new data with higher impact.

The ego consciousness of humans can internally fire neurons; remember data at will. This implies the ego is part of the universal potential. This is why in traditions the ego and matter are connected.

Because the brain and neurons move in a direction, opposite the universal potentials, and the universal potentials never go away, the result is a continuous give and take that animates consciousness.

 

I doubt it.
Link please.

WTF is the "universal potential"?

 

I think that the mind-body problem (at least this variety of it) might be kind of a pseudo-problem that arises because we aren't conceptualizing the situation correctly.

Descartes seems to have imagined two fundamentally different kinds of substance, mind substance and material substance. Then difficulties arose accounting for their interaction.

I'm more inclined to think that there's only one kind of substance, material substance broadly conceived.

Mind, on this view, isn't a substance at all. It's an activity, a function, something that certain kinds of material systems are doing. The locus of that activity is almost certainly neural functioning, though neuro- and cognitive-science are unable to explain what's occurring in precise detail at this point. It's more of an ongoing research program, I guess.

 

I agree.

Descartes shouldn't be taken seriously; he composed much of his philosophy for the purpose of the Catholic Church having arguments ready to debate with atheists and people of other religions.

 

The mind is by definition non-physical. It is mental in nature and thus not physical. Example: I can perform mental acts (think, remember, imagine) and I can perform physical acts (belch, wink, do a somersault). Being INFLUENCED by the physical does not axiomatically make it physical anymore than being INFLUENCED by the mental makes the body mental. That in fact is the thesis of the M/B problem: how can a mental entity and physical entity influence on another. How do they interface?

 

But aren't you just sort of re-dichotomizing the split into different terms--this time between activity and object? Let's say mind is just what the brain is doing, much like washing is what a dishwasher is doing. Would a dishwasher therefore experience itself washing it's own dishes? Could the activity of washing itself suddenly decide to wash them in a different order or at a quicker pace. You seem to either be investing activity or function with the mystical ability of subjective experience and decision OR you are denying that mind is a subjective experience. Which is it?

 

We are sentient beings connected to a body. Our sentience- our brain- is dependant on our body to function properly. Our body in turn, relies on the brain to sustain itself as the body.

Dust in the wind, man. (heavily tokes)

We are the sum of our intelligence and over time only our words and direct actions have relevant consequences- the rest- like this place- is lost to time.

We can transfer your brain and spinal column into an alien being. Are you still you? Of course!

All that remains is our thought.

 

In philosophy there are different theories of dualism. Plato and Descartes held to an extreme dualism. Thomas Aquinas taught a moderate dualism in which the spiritual soul is the form and principle of life of the body. In general, the Church and Catholic philosophers hold to the Thomistic explanation as the best answer to the mind-body problem.

 

The mind is not a non-physical entity in any way shape or form. Such things would be non-existent. Not too bright are you?

 

You are appearing more the fool ever so often. Mind is just a name we give to the brain's actions.

 

True. Dualism occurs whereever two phenomena are used to explain a system.
In Descartes' dualism these are the "material" and the "mental" which he held to be very different things, rather than just two aspects of the same basic substance.

My leanings are very much that all is material / physical, although until such time as science can bridge the gap between the basic interactions and such things as consciousness, I would still consider myself a dualist: the basic operations on one hand, and emergent properties of those operations on the other. And "mind" I see as an emergent property, but firmly rooted in the physical.

I think dualism can be very useful to understanding, although a monist approach should (per Occam) always be preferred IF it can explain the same things to the same satisfaction.

But mind and body dualism along the lines of material / non-material is not for me, and the first step of such a philosophy should surely be to explain how the non-material interacts with the material.

 

Truer words were never spoken Sensei. Where can I get downloaded into an alien body? This one's wearing out fast..