Problem of the Mind & Body

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non-physical? Descartes, a dualist, assumed that this interaction happened in the pineal gland of the brain, this hypothesis was proved to be false. However, his idea of the “immaterial mind linked casually to material bodies proved durable.” (Bratman 240) Descartes believes that a response to the mind-body problem will help further explain the relationship between the mind and the body. Descartes’ position has problems. Gilbert Ryle introduced one called the problem of other minds. The problem suggests that if minds are immaterial, then we cannot know that any other mind exists except for our own. It brings up the question that how would we know if there are other minds in other people? A solution is introduced by Bertrand Russell who claims that “our knowledge of other minds is based on a general principle used in scientific reasoning: analogy”. (Bratman 240) Since everyone else’s bodies behave like our own, we can assume that other have minds like out own.

With this problem, the solutions presented are those of dualists and monists. I think that the dualist’s solution that the mind and body are distinct is unsatisfying. If the mind and body are separate then how do they interact? This question brings up another problem that further complicates the matter. I think the correct solution is to remove the idea of the mind separate from the body. Our thoughts are illusions that come from our brain. They are both connected and to answer the mind-body problem, we need to realize that both objects go hand-in-hand. They are closely related. For example, extensive damage to the brain would force a change in someone’s personality since they are connected. The materialists’ claim of the mind and body being identical is, in my opinion, the correct solution to this problem. Since the materialists believe that there is only matter existing, then the relationship between the two must not be separate.

Conclusively, the mind is immaterial, how can it interact with the material body? That is the problem in the mind-body problem. This problem address Rene Descartes’ theory that the mind, the mental, is a substance other than a physical substance. Descartes firmly believed that the mind and body were two separate entities and that the world contained by physical and mental things. I think the solution to the problem is position of the materialists, people who believe that the world only contains one type of thing that is matter.