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What is the Mind-Body Problem?
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Mind-Body Dualism
In this course, Dr Cressida Gaukroger (University College, London) explores the philosophical theory of mind-body dualism—the theory that mind and body are distinct kinds of substances. The course begins by considering how dualism differs from materialism and idealism, before delving deeper in the philosophical writings of René Descartes, who offered several arguments for the dualist position. In the third module, we think about the causal connection between mind and body, before considering two more recent arguments for the dualist position. In the final module, we consider the problems with dualism that remain unresolved today.
What is the Mind-Body Problem?
In this module, we introduce the concept of dualism, comparing it to physicalism (or materialism) on the one hand, and idealism on the other.
Hello. My name is Chris Adegoke. Roger.
00:00:03I'm a teaching fellow in philosophy at the University College, London.
00:00:05In this module, we're going to be talking about the mind body problem,
00:00:09and in particular, we're going to be talking about the topic of dualism.
00:00:14Most people understand the world to be made up of physical particles that float
00:00:18around that have forces exerted upon them that exert forces on other particles.
00:00:23And we can imagine, for example,
00:00:29table as being purely or reducible to a bunch
00:00:32of atoms that are arranged in a particular way.
00:00:37Similarly, we can imagine humans and animals also being reducible to atoms.
00:00:40My body is actually nothing more than a
00:00:47series of atoms that are joined together because of
00:00:49particular forces or a series of molecules that
00:00:51are joined together because of particular natural forces.
00:00:54And yet, when we think about the mind, we seem to think of it in different terms.
00:00:57We think about ourselves as thinking beings or mental beings.
00:01:03We think about our emotions. We think about rational thoughts.
00:01:08We think about our desires and our experiences.
00:01:12We think about the what it's like to feel pain or to see the colour red.
00:01:16The mind body problem
00:01:21focuses on how to reconcile
00:01:22these two ways of understanding the world and our nature,
00:01:25our relationship with the world.
00:01:29The first is a purely physical and
00:01:31mechanistic mechanistic understanding of the world.
00:01:33But the second is a kind of rich, mental, complicated life.
00:01:36There are seemingly obvious differences between the mind and the body.
00:01:41The body, for example, has arms and toes and can wear shoes.
00:01:47The mind has consciousness and emotions and feelings.
00:01:51The 17th century French philosopher Rene Day cart described
00:01:56three differences between the mind and the body,
00:02:01three differences that he saw in the properties of the mind and the body.
00:02:05The mind doesn't have parts according to day card.
00:02:08It's just one unified thing. You can't chop it up or break bits off it.
00:02:11The body has parts, it has arms. It has fingers,
00:02:17the mind thinks.
00:02:21But the body doesn't think the body can move and have reflexes.
00:02:23But the body doesn't engage in thoughts or emotions or feelings,
00:02:26and the third is that the body is extended
00:02:31according to discard. The body takes up space.
00:02:34The body has size and weight and shape and colour,
00:02:37but the mind does not have any of these things.
00:02:40There are, of course,
00:02:44several different ways of understanding the relationship
00:02:45between the mind and the body.
00:02:48There are essentially three different ways of understanding the nature
00:02:50or the relationship between mental stuff and physical stuff.
00:02:55The first two are physical ism and idealism.
00:03:00The third is journalism,
00:03:04and the course is going to focus on journalism and the dualist position.
00:03:06But first, I'm going to describe physical ism and idealism.
00:03:10Physical and the physical is, um, and idealism.
00:03:14Both assume that the mind and the body are essentially the same.
00:03:17They're made out of the same stuff.
00:03:22What makes the physical list and the idealist different is that
00:03:24the physical ist believes that that stuff is physical stuff.
00:03:27Physical stuff that makes up rocks and books and hats, for example,
00:03:32is also the physical stuff that makes up our minds ourselves, our personalities,
00:03:37our consciousness,
00:03:42the physical.
00:03:43The physical list, also known as materialist,
00:03:44argues that those properties that have shape size take up space,
00:03:47the only properties that exist in the world.
00:03:53The physical list might, for example,
00:03:56argue that there is nothing more to the mind
00:03:58than patterns of neurons firing in the brain,
00:04:01or that the brain is the mind.
00:04:03On the other hand,
00:04:05the idealist says, there's no such thing as physical stuff.
00:04:07There's no external world.
00:04:11Just as a physical ist rejects the idea of different mental substance,
00:04:13the idealist rejects the idea of there being physical substance at all.
00:04:17The idealist argues
00:04:23that there are only images in the mind, Uh,
00:04:24and those images are not caused by anything outside of the mind.
00:04:27There's nothing that exists outside of the mind.
00:04:3118th century Irish philosopher George Barkley famously held this position,
00:04:33and we can think about it potentially in relation to the idea of hallucination.
00:04:39If I hallucinate a banana in front of me,
00:04:43I have all this experiences as if I was really seeing a banana.
00:04:47But there's no real banana there.
00:04:52There's nothing that has caused that idea in my head.
00:04:53Similarly, Barkley says, it could be that I'm hallucinating
00:04:57the entire world. It could make complete sense
00:05:00that everything that I'm experiencing or understanding in the
00:05:05world is actually just created in my head.
00:05:07It's not created by something external to it.
00:05:10If you're an idealist, then
00:05:13there's no mind body problem because everything is mental, everything is the mind.
00:05:15So there's no distinction that we need to make between the
00:05:20mind and the external world or the mental and physical stuff.
00:05:23Physical is, um, is the dominant position in philosophy today.
00:05:27Most philosophers are physical ists. Idealism is a position that is
00:05:32mostly not held today and was never widely held by
00:05:37too many people that there were some followers of idealism.
00:05:42We can see that this is potentially for obvious reasons.
00:05:46It's hard to get very far if you deny the existence of the external world.
00:05:49But its jewel is, um,
00:05:54that combines the idea of there being mental stuff
00:05:55and the idea of there being physical stuff.
00:05:58So the duelists argues that there are two fundamental things in the world.
00:06:01They're physical things such as bricks, hats, dogs and they're also mental things.
00:06:04Their minds.
00:06:10These two things are clearly connected
00:06:11in some way, but they're not the same. So I am not my body.
00:06:13I might be either my mind or a combination of mind and body,
00:06:18but I'm something more than just a bunch of atoms or physical states.
00:06:21There are different types of dualism, but for the sake of this course,
00:06:26I'm only going to focus on mind body dualism the view that there are two substances,
00:06:31physical and mental, and I'm only going to focus on substance dualism to focus on,
00:06:35uh, there being two substances as opposed to, say,
00:06:41two different types of properties.
00:06:43If you are trying to answer the mind body problem,
00:06:46the kind of answer that you give is going to have
00:06:51a big effect on your answers to several other questions.
00:06:53Does the soul live on after death? How does my mind cause my body to move?
00:06:56Am I my mind or am I my body? How can I know
00:07:02that other people have minds?
00:07:07And how can I have free will or explain free will if my
00:07:09mind just reduces to physical states that are atoms pushed around by other forces
00:07:14in the next, uh, lecture,
00:07:21I'm going to be talking about historical reasons for dualism
00:07:23and some of the fundamental arguments for the jeweler's position
00:07:27
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Gaukroger, C. (2018, August 15). Mind-Body Dualism - What is the Mind-Body Problem? [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/mind-body-dualism/the-connection-between-mind-and-body
MLA style
Gaukroger, C. "Mind-Body Dualism – What is the Mind-Body Problem?." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 15 Aug 2018, https://massolit.io/courses/mind-body-dualism/the-connection-between-mind-and-body
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