Monday, November 3, 2008

A Mind Walks Into A Bar...










Are the mind and the body the same thing?

Over the weekend, I was talking to someone about the concept of moderation. In the course of the discussion, my conversational partner declared that the body and mind are not separate entities. This led me to think about mind-body dualism.

Since I attended a Jesuit college in my youth and was forced to take a number of philosophy courses, I have had some exposure to this topic, and the phrase "Cartesian dualism" wandered into my consciousness (where it was immediately jumped by several other superficial, thuggish thoughts because of its nerdy nature, and relieved of its lunch money). This thought persisted, however, and to make it happy after its mugging, I decided to give it some attention.

This is a heavy subject for a four or five hundred word essay, so I will not attempt to present the entire history of philosophical thought concerning the mind's relation to the body. I will, however, share some of my research, and no doubt revisit this topic again, since it is so fascinating, and much research is being done in this area.

The concept that the mind and body are separate entities can be traced back (in a sense) to Plato, and his idea of Forms being separate from substances (that is, the idea or Form of a body being separate from the actual physical body or substance, which is perishable, especially if it is over 50). The intellect is a Form, and therefore has no substance.

Aristotle posited that forms are the nature and property of things, not separate entities, and that the soul is the form of the body. The intellect, although part of the soul, is intangible, however, and does not correspond directly to the mind, because having a physical component would limit the intellect.

Philosophers are still trying to figure out what, exactly, Aristotle was saying.

It was Rene Descartes who really put mind-body dualism on the map, so to speak, with his famous dictum "I think, therefore I am" which gave rise to many silly joke variations told by snotty pseudo-intellectuals (i.e., 'Descartes walked into a bar; when asked if he wanted a drink, he said "I think not" and vanished.' Rimshot.)

Descartes' Meditations put forth the concept that there are two kinds of substance: matter, and mind. This idea is called substance dualism. The body is matter, is a machine, and the mind is pushing the buttons that work the machine. The area of the body wherein they were joined was the pineal gland, which Descartes called "the seat of the soul." Really.

This idea of Cartesian duality was seized upon by other contemporary French philosophers such as Nicolas Malebranche, who was so excited by reading Descartes that he had to go lie down.

Of course, even though Descartes had his disciples, as soon as he came up with his idea, you know that lots of the other philosophers jumped on his concept of dualism and hastened to explain how incorrect it was (i.e., beat it up for its lunch money). Thus, we have predicate dualism, property dualism, interactionism, epiphenomenonism (different from epipenism, the need to constantly have one's allergy medication handy), paralellism, and many other interesting and informative isms that I will go into at another time.


I have at this point exhausted myself. Being a person of limited physical energy, and believing as I do in the mind-body connection, my mental exertions have caused me physical enervation.


I think, therefore I must go lie down.

1 comment:

Sondra said...

My boyfriend Luis once asked me how we can reconcile the platonic ideal with public education in a democracy. I was cranky because I had told him not to show up until 6:00 and it was only 5:00, but I knew it was probably the smartest question that a boyfriend had ever asked, or at least the most sophisticated, so I answered. "You don't". I had decided by 16 years old that even though a lot of Plato was going over my head, he was a privelege-boy who's ideal was chronyism. Luis was not happy. He was a Catholic and I think he trusted dualism.
Whereas I believe in public education.
And now you know why I married Flitey, who failed at Catholicism, thinks philosophy is stupid, and only interrupts dinner preparations with question about why the phone bill is so high.