The mind-body problem today – notes:
Part 1 – the mind body spectrum
o No obvious solution to the mind body problem
o Descartes argued there were two different things that made up the brain and
mind – the physical stuff and the mental stuff (substance dualism)
o Parallelism – mind and brain have relatively separated relationships –
whatever happens in the mind stay in the mind whatever happens in the
body stays in the body
o Monism – mind and body all same sort of stuff
o Dualism – mind and body are separate from eachother
o Substance dualism comes before parallelism as seen in diagram on slides
o Property dualism – cant reduce the mind to just the brain
o Physicalism – everything is physical meaning the brain are relatively similar
o Emergent materialism – cant explain mental phenomena using
predominantly physical things
Part 2 – modern dualisms
o Mental states have no causal role in changing physical states or other mental
states
o But epiphenomenalism mean the physical brain causes mental states
o Arguments for Epi-phenomenalism – neuropsychology - brain doesn’t always
correctly reflect what is going on in the brain
o Analogy with a brain between water, e.g. behaviour of tsunami cannot be
easily explained to behaviour of h2o, so higher level properties emerge from
lower level properties but it is difficult to understand how these have
emerged
o Physical states don’t cause mental states and so have no causal role but
mental sates cause physical states
Part 3 – modern monisms
o Many different ways to get into the same mental state or different mental
states and beat the animal theory that you have to be in the same state to
function the same
o Talk about mind and brain with the things were familiar with – love, desire,
pain etc
Part 4 – conclusions
o Future physics, biology, chemistry may explain mind body theory in a way
that we cant yet
o Progress is also being made with psychology in the mind body theory
Part 1 – the mind body spectrum
o No obvious solution to the mind body problem
o Descartes argued there were two different things that made up the brain and
mind – the physical stuff and the mental stuff (substance dualism)
o Parallelism – mind and brain have relatively separated relationships –
whatever happens in the mind stay in the mind whatever happens in the
body stays in the body
o Monism – mind and body all same sort of stuff
o Dualism – mind and body are separate from eachother
o Substance dualism comes before parallelism as seen in diagram on slides
o Property dualism – cant reduce the mind to just the brain
o Physicalism – everything is physical meaning the brain are relatively similar
o Emergent materialism – cant explain mental phenomena using
predominantly physical things
Part 2 – modern dualisms
o Mental states have no causal role in changing physical states or other mental
states
o But epiphenomenalism mean the physical brain causes mental states
o Arguments for Epi-phenomenalism – neuropsychology - brain doesn’t always
correctly reflect what is going on in the brain
o Analogy with a brain between water, e.g. behaviour of tsunami cannot be
easily explained to behaviour of h2o, so higher level properties emerge from
lower level properties but it is difficult to understand how these have
emerged
o Physical states don’t cause mental states and so have no causal role but
mental sates cause physical states
Part 3 – modern monisms
o Many different ways to get into the same mental state or different mental
states and beat the animal theory that you have to be in the same state to
function the same
o Talk about mind and brain with the things were familiar with – love, desire,
pain etc
Part 4 – conclusions
o Future physics, biology, chemistry may explain mind body theory in a way
that we cant yet
o Progress is also being made with psychology in the mind body theory
