The Mind Body Problem | EssayIvy.com

Running head: THE MIND/BODY PROBLEM 1

The Mind/Body Problem

Name

Institution

THE MIND/BODY PROBLEM 2

The Mind/Body Problem

So am seated here, typing away on my computer: or am I? Could I be dreaming, only to

wake up confused and wondering, or could I have heard a psychotic breakdown and am

imagining myself writing while my hands are tied to my bed in a psychiatric ward, perhaps I

somehow inhaled a hallucinogen and even the assignment itself is merely a figment of my

imagination. These are some of the extreme doubts that I could have about what I am doing right

now and doubt is the fundamental principle in Cartesian rationalism.

In the study of knowledge, rationalism is the view that the chief source and basic test of

knowledge is reason. Almost everything that we know comes through our senses, we hear, we

touch, we see, we taste, we smell. Through this processes we collect volumes and volumes of

raw data. According to rationalism, we sift through this raw data through the process of reason in

order to achieve knowledge. Albeit rationalism had been expounded by Pythagoras, the very first

person to call himself a philosopher, Plato and Aristotle, it was René Descartes, known as the

father of modern philosophy through his forma of rationalism that came to be referred to as

Cartesian rationalism that really informed rationalism as known, understood and accepted today.

Descartes was a 17

Century French soldier, philosopher, mathematician, and scientist (Frogel,

2016).

Descartes first dealt with these irrefutable truths that he termed as internal truths

including mathematics, epistemological and metaphysical foundations of sciences, declaring that

only this could emanate from reason alone: any other form of knowledge will have to first be

obtained through experience and research (Megaslides, 2016). This will create raw data to be

processed by reason thus becoming knowledge. He reduced his thought into works such as

Discourse on Method, Meditations on First Philosophy, and Principles of Philosophy where he

expounded on this form of rationalism including what has popularly come to be referred to as

Cartesian Doubt.

THE MIND/BODY PROBLEM 3

Cartesian doubt, also called methodological skepticisms, universal doubt, methodic

doubt, Cartesian skepticism or hyperbolic doubts is the methodology of seeking truth by

doubting everything including fundamental issues revolving self. It has risen to become a

characteristic method in philosophy and involves even the doubt of one’s belief and being

skeptical about everything to ascertain what is true and what is not.

It is, however, important to create a clear distinction between Cartesian skepticism and

philosophical skepticism in that philosophical skepticism is premised on the belief that there is

no such thing as pure knowledge whereas Cartesian skepticism only seeks to find pure

knowledge by sorting out the true and false beliefs through application of doubt (Frogel, 2016).

Most beliefs are doubtable; Cartesian doubt, therefore, eliminates most of them and only

leaves the basic or fundamental beliefs. It is upon these fundamental beliefs that further belief

ought to be derived. This doubt is carried out in a four-pronged approach, the first being only

accepting information you know to be true. This may seem simple until one realizes that we

judge truths and falsehoods based on information we have regarding this two categories: truth

and false, if you start be first doubting the criterion itself by doubting what makes you consider a

truth to be true and a falsehood to be false, this takes one back to very core principles and

doubting the very paramount of our foundations (Snowdon, 2015). For example, the basic

prerequisite of learning is the belief that the tutor or tutorial material is true, what if one started

doubting elementary education, and these would lead one to doubt the entire education process

and education itself. This is not doubt; it is over doubt, the form of doubts that causes one who

be skeptical about everything and build from scratch.

The second step is to take this now established truths and synthesizing them into small

parts and starting from the simple issues, doubt your way into establishing all un-doubtable truth

then finally make a list of outstanding issues which are now termed as “other problems” (Frogel,

2016). In this entire process the level of doubt should always be extreme and exaggerated to a

THE MIND/BODY PROBLEM 4

level beyond the normal reasonable and to the level of beyond any doubt reasonable or

otherwise. Indeed, it is on this notion that I based my preamble of am I writing, dreaming that am

writing, hallucinating that am writing or is it a demon that is controlling me. This is not

reasonable doubt; it is exaggerated unreasonable doubt and the very extent to which the doubt in

Cartesian rationalism ought to go.

However, Descartes believed that even after this level of doubt, some truth will abide and

the basic foundation of the mind: the most desperate of this truths is that the mind definitely

exists since if one does not exist there would be no one to do the doubting, this is the

fundamental presumes for the statement, “I think, so I am”. If only the mind is confirmed to exist

after this extreme doubts, what happens to the brain which is part of the body, does it mean that

the existence of the brain is not a fundamental truth and the mind exists independently, doesn’t

the mind require a brain to function, how can there be a mid without a body. This dispute with

regard to the Cartesian rationalism has come to be referred to as the mind/body problem (Riekki,

Lindeman & Lipsanen, 2013).

Cartesian rationalism therefore defines the mind as a substance and the body including

the brain another substances yet substances can exist and operate independently, how they will

then rhyme and functions as one system contributes further to the mind/body problem. This

problem can also be termed as the problem emanating from the philosophical consideration of

separating the mind from any aspect of the body, including the brain which is a part of the body.

If the mind is limited to mental states, events, processes and thought patterns and this are the

only fundamental truths, how about the physical states, events and processes of the body

(Snowdon, 2015). This question has been the subject of debate and discourse by philosophers for

centuries without an end in sight.

On the other hand, empiricism of the theory that knowledge only comes from sensory

experience. Is can be said to be an almost exact opposite of Cartesian rationalism or in the very

THE MIND/BODY PROBLEM 5

least they counter each other. Empiricism stresses more on experience and evidence more so

sensory based experience and evidence whereas Cartesian rationalism stresses more on reason

based on doubt. It is through this experience and evidence that customs or traditions are formed,

according to empiricisms. In the Philosophy of science, empiricism insists on evidence derived

from experiments. All theories and hypothesis cannot stand unless they are specifically tested by

use of experiments. These experiments involve though sensory observation as opposed to

reasoning, intuition or revelation. This creates knowledge that has its basis on experience and is

therefore not fundamental in nature but tentative and probabilistic and subject to either

confirmation or falsification based on future experimentation. This therefore makes empiricism

the form philosophy best preferred by scientists.

One of the most radical versions of empiricism is Phenomenalism being the view that

objects are simply bundles of sense data and cannot justifiably be said to exist in themselves.

Further, objects are how they seem from a sensory perspective is something appears black to the

eye, then it is black, is something appears to be moving, the it is actually moving, if something is

sweet to the taste, then it is sweet (Riekki, Lindeman & Lipsanen, 2013). Therefore an object is

defined by how are perceived by the senses: their color, shape, texture or taste. An object will

therefore be defined by its greenness, softness, hardness, sweetness and other sensory stimuli.

Therefore, an object that does not create any stimuli doesn’t exist. However, Kant’s

epistemological phenomenalism does not align itself with this extremist position but argues

however that even when an object no longer creates stimuli it does not cease to exist.

Phenomenalism is the exact opposite of Cartesian rationalism. Indeed, as far as

phenomenalism is concerned, safe for Kant’s epistemological phenomenalism; the fundamental

principles of Cartesian rationalism do not even exist as it is based on reason; and reason being

neither an object nor anything that can cause any excitement to stimuli doesn’t even exist thus

making Cartesian rationalism a fallacy. The other side of that coin is that the fact that

THE MIND/BODY PROBLEM 6

phenomenalism is based on senses, a subject that is unreliable at best if inexistence in Cartesian

rationalism parlance means that Phenomenalism is premised on a false reality and is a fallacy in

itself.

The difference within the phenomenalism and Cartesian rationalism can further be seen

with regard to the mind/body problem: this problem is based on the Cartesian rationalism

concept that the existence of the mind is a fundamental truth whereas the existence of brain is

doubtable (Snowdon, 2015. From a phenomenalism perspective however, the body/mind

problem does not even exist in the first place: the brain is an actual object which has been proven

through careful experiments to be a ball of neurons found within the head. It has a color, a

texture and a taste and therefore qualifies to be an object. This can however not be said about the

mind which is as far as phenomenalism is concerned is an inexistent figment. Therefore, only the

body exists and the body/mind problem can therefore not be an issue.

The humanist will however look at the body/mind problem from a different perspective

and indeed not a problem at all. Without agreeing with either phenomenalism or Cartesian

rationalism, the humanist takes the cognitive psychology path that considers the body aspect of

the brain, being the ball of neurons as the hardware of a computer and the thought patterns

referred to as the mind to be the software thereof (Snowdon, 2015). Both cannot exist in the

absence of each other as the software is useless without hardware to operate from and hardware

is essentially obsolete without drivers (the software). There two are therefore interdependent and

not mutually exclusive; they do not amount to a problem but rather supplement each other.

My personal about the body/mind problem and their interrelationship, functionality and

growth is informed partially informed by a rational applied in the Film Terminator 2 Judgment

day the main protagonist is the Terminator, a robot with a human flesh over metal endoskeleton

and a chip instead of a brain. The chip comes with a lot of data including extensive files on

anatomy to make the terminator a better killer but it also comes with a special feature, the ability

THE MIND/BODY PROBLEM 7

to learn. This is my hypothesis with regard to the mind/body problem. The body, including the

brain is born biologically but comes with a mind that is already programmed and carries with it

some fundamental information. Most importantly, the mind comes with a high learning capacity.

Just as in cognitive psychology as interpreted by humanist philosophy, the mind with its limited

data is the software that is installed in the brain prior to birth.

Upon birth, the mind through the brain operates the sensory organs and learns about the

environment it has come into. In line with empiricism, as the mind grows in data and the brain

grows alongside the body, it reaches a point at which it ought to rationalize the data it has

collected through it senses as well as the initial data it came with in order to come up with

fundamental truths and an understanding of basic issues such as survival and morality (Riekki,

Lindeman & Lipsanen, 2013). This closely relates with the methodology of Cistercian

rationalization but without the extremities of unreasonable doubt. This process of creation of

knowledge is continuous for a lifetime.

THE MIND/BODY PROBLEM 8

References

Frogel, S. (2016). Descartes: Truth and Self-deception. Philosophy, 91(1), 93-108.

Megaslides (2016). Descartes René. Retrieved from

<http://megaslides.com/doc/2687410/ren%C3%A9-descartes/>

Riekki, T., Lindeman, M., & Lipsanen, J. (2013). Conceptions about the mind-body problem

and their relations to afterlife beliefs, paranormal beliefs, religiosity, and ontological

confusions. Advances in cognitive psychology, 9(3), 112-120.

Snowdon, P. F. (2015). Philosophy and the Mind/Body Problem. Royal institute of philosophy

supplement, 7621-37.

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