The Mind / Body Problem

Thinking of some Modern Philosophers
The Mind / Body Problem

The relationship between mind and body and explaining its behavior had been engaged by philosophers and psychologists alike. The neurologists of course try to map the brain to fit the observations but we have not yet understood fully the working of the mind. Mind / body dualism was in philosophical discussion from time immemorial. There was a belief that mind and body were two separate entities. The concept of dualism was born with it. The physicalists believe that there cannot be any mind substance outside the physical brain and is called the monism. Arguments for and against gone for ever but there is no consensus on this issue.

Somewhere down the line the word conscious and subconscious were born and they have been in use in the present century liberally. Nobody dares to define these two entities with distinction in a scientific sense. But the words are used in different connotations blurring their meaning and in what context it is being used. When it comes to subconscious it is even more difficult to discern. Only a very few philosophists have ventured into describe the mind and its beahviour.

Followings are a few of their descriptions for one who is interested in delving deeper without any religious bias.

William James 1842 -1910
American Psychologist

William was physician who in his final years devoted life for philosophical investigations. His large and famous work Principles of Psychology published in 1890 amply exhibit his conviction it is the inward experience rather than theory, abstractions and traditional philosophy that is the key to understanding ourselves and the world. He refused to subscribe to traditional dualism of physical and mental but at the same time would not be allowed it to be reduced to the physical. He was a believer of stream of thought not individual thought moments. He says, every mental state belong to a personal consciousness, that thought is continuous in the sense that even though one may sleep or lose consciousness of one’s waking consciousness it links back to the one’s pre-sleep consciousness; that thought is always changing in the sense there are no identical recurring states and that the consciousness is able to be selective of it objects.

Consciousness does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as chain or train do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A ‘river’ and a ‘stream’ are the metaphors by which it most naturally should be described.

Metaphysics and theology may prove the existence of souls but for psychology the hypothesis of such substantial principle of unity is superfluous.

He also spells out the contrast between empiricists, rationalists and monistic. The empiricists who are pessimistic, irreligious, skeptical and pluralistic and the rationalist who are optimistic and idealists and the monistic who is dogmatical. in his essays on pragmatism.

Gerald Maurice Edelman 1929-
American immunologist and neurobiologist

There is no end to the hypothesis about consciousness, particularly by the philosophers. But most of these are not what we might call principled scientific theories based on observables and related functions of the brain and body. Several theories of consciousness based on functionalism and on the machine model of the mind have recently been proposed.

Daniel C Dennett 1942-
American Philosopher

Human consciousness is just about the last surviving mystery. A mystery is a phenomenon that people don’t know how to think about-yet.

With consciousness, however, we are in a terrible muddle. Consciousness stands alone as a topic that often leave even most sophisticated tongue-tied and confused. As with all the mysteries, there are many who insist and hope that there will never be demystification of consciousness.

Conclusions
Mind boggling question
Mind is

Fluid

Frequently

Flying

To reach

A distant goal

Flitting

And Fleeing

Why not call

It a mystery?

Which it is

Instead of the

Ill conceived

Ill understood

All abiding

All encompassing

Term called consciousness

Which truly

Is a misnomer par excellence

Freeman
Let my mind

Toy and joy with

With compassion, kindness and equanimity

Let it be that nobody

Believe in something

Since it is

The tradition to do so

Or it is in the scriptures

Or it is hearsay

Heresy

And my teacher said so

Let there be no bias

Towards a notion

Specious reasoning

Faith

Liking

Soothing to the ear

For repeated hearing

Do not go upon

By rumour

Nor upon surmise

Nor upon a loverly axiom

Or just by pondering over

But by ones own realization

Greed, hate and ignorance

Are not the root causes?

The birth, decay and death

Are the miseries

And until one knows

By oneself

That what must be done?

Has been done

There is no more to be done

No more to come

The life has been exhausted.

Truly

The freedom is achieved