Mind-Body Problem

What is the mind-body problem?

Concerns the relationship between mental phenomena (thoughts, emotions) and physical phenomena (brain, body). The immaterial mind and physical body

Why had the mind-body problem become so important and when?

During the Scientific Revolution, when increasingly diverse physical phenomena were explained through observation based mathematical laws

Why the scientific revolution raise questions of the mind and body?

Raised the question of whether the mind could be explained scientifically as part of the physical world

What’d Descartes argue to defend substance dualism?

He argued that mind and body are qualitatively distinct substances—the physical are extended in spaced and governed mechanically, minds are thinking and non-extended

What’d the distinction between body and mind allow Descartes to do?

Allowed him to maintain a mechanistic science of the physical world while preserving an immaterial mind

Substance generated the interaction problem, what and who challenged Descartes?

Princess Elisabeth argued that if the physical causation requires contact and extension, it is unclear how an immaterial mind could casually influence a physical body

Simpler put, what was the interaction problem?

How something nonphysical can interact with something physical

The core attraction of Substance Dualism?

Persisting in mind even after loss of our physical body, compatible with the idea of an afterlife

What is Descartes' Conceivability-Possibility Principle?

What is conceivable is possible, he believes whatever is clearly conceivable is metaphyscially possible

What Descartes use the Conceivability-Possibility Principle to argue?

If it's possible to conceive mind existing with body, then they cannot be identical

Conceivability of Disembodied Existence, how does the application work?

If I can imagine existing without my body or after death, clearly conceive then it's possible, possible so cannot be the same thing

What were Descartes' solutions to Elisabeth?

Humans can't fully understand the relationship and the pineal gland

What is the pineal gland, why is it important?

Small structure near centre of brain, singular, thought where the soul interacts with the body

Why was it pineal gland?

He argued we experience one unified thought, so there must be a central place where everything comes together

Why does Descartes’ answer ultimately fail?

The gland is still physical, doesn't explain how an immaterial mind interacts with matter

What is Physicalism?

Everything that exists, including minds and mental phenomena, is ultimately