Mind & Body Different Views

Positions on Mind & Body Descartes isn’t the only contributor Sources: – Psychological studies – Medical & physical observations But, there is still a lot about the mind & body we don’t know or understand!

Materialist View No real difference between mind & body Thomas Hobbes (& 20 th C. Behavioural scientists) – Mental events, like physical actions, are combinations of matter Technology is helping us to understand how the brain functions If the brain is primarily / completely physical, then it seems possible to create a machine that thinks

BUT When we examine our thoughts, have a new idea, materialism isn’t satisfactory Are ideas & emotions really chemical & electrical processes?

Modified Materialist View Thoughts: – caused by physical processes – Are themselves something other than physical processes EPIPHENOMALISTS say thoughts are by- products of physical processes (e.g., smoke a by-product of fire) We still don’t know: – What thoughts are! – How they come from a physical process

Idealist View Thoughts (actually all things) are not physical at all Thoughts are basically mental We think of things & create them in our mind They do not exist in any way beyond or external to the mind Thoughts are products of the mind alone

Idealist view continued Modern psychology agrees in some degree We all construct our own view of the world Attitudes / emotions  types of images The actual external world may not correspond to the images we have in our minds

Where is the mind? Physicists, psychologists, medical researchers are beginning to question the idea that the mind is localized in the brain, and separate from the body Observing something actually changes the physical system observed

Mind-Matter Interaction Page 315, read and make notes Idea that mind > matter deeply rooted in E. Phil. – Rejected by W. Sci. Idea of mind-body connection now widely accepted – Placebo effect, psychosomatic illness, psychoneuroimmunology, spontaneous remission of serious disease

Mind can affect physical body More & more acceptable the mechanisms still a mystery We don’t know the biochemical & neural correlates of “mental intention”

Gilbert Ryle: The “Ghost in the Machine” Ryle a strong critic of Descartes There is no split between world of matter & private inner mind When in a mental state: description of how one behaves in certain circumstances – Not discussing private inaccessible occurrences taking place in a subjective theatre of mind

Ryle similar to behaviourists (behaviourists: useless to discuss mental events, since we can’t know what is happening in the mind; they observe only behaviour) Materialists: lets talk about brain states, not mental states Materialism still doesn’t explain our subjective sense of consciousness

The Concept of the Mind Lets read & discuss the excerpt of Ryle’s work pages