It’s All in the Mind

It’s All in the Mind

What is a mind? How is it related to a body? Descartes answer was substance dualism. A person consists of an immaterial substance (mind/soul) attached to a material substance (a body). But this thesis fails a crucial test. An immaterial substance cannot move a body; therefore a mind cannot move a body. I shall assume that to have a mind one must first have a brain. This is a materialist perspective. Some weaknesses in this perspective will be described. I shall argue that minds do not necessarily exist as entities, that we nevertheless are aware of our own mental events and that we are aware that other people have similar events.

The mind cannot exist like a body or a collection of cells in a body. If it did somebody would have found it or at least given a rough description of its location. Also, things do not exist just because we can name them. We speak of unicorns but this does not make them exist. Just because we refer to something as a mind does not make it exist. Nevertheless, we are each aware of internal experiences in the most intimate way. Doubts and fears, the blue sky, the scent of flowers, all have an immediacy that is undeniable.

Now if mental events and brain events (i.e., physical events) are one and the same thing, then research into the mental events would be reduced to research into the brain. Even if mental events are taken to be properties of brain events then ultimately we are forced back to look to the physical for the explanation of the mental. This will get us nowhere for two reasons.

Firstly, a close inspection of a brain is doomed to be carried out at the third person perspective. If I could look at the bits of my own brain involved in any mental act I would register ...

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...a set of processes or mental events.

Subjective experience is just that – subjective. The feelings that go with it are personal. They can be expressed in public language in the full knowledge that my beetle may be a dung beetle and yours a stag beetle. The third person perspective may eventually reveal all there is to know about the workings of the brain and it may well unearth aspects of consciousness. No such research can reveal the personal quality of subjective experience or the exact location of a mind.

Bibliography

METZINGER, T. (ed.) (1995) Conscious Experience, Paderborn, Ferdinand Schonigh.

RYLE, G. (1949) The Concept of Mind London, Penguin (Peregrine) Books.

WITTGENSTEIN, L. (Trans ANSCOMBE, G. E.M.) (1958), Philosophical Investigations London, Blackwell.

WITTGENSTEIN, L (1922), Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, London , RKP