Mind-Body Problem
The question of how mental states relate to physical states — and whether they are the same kind of thing, two kinds of thing, or something else entirely.
The mind-body problem is the question of how mental states — thoughts, sensations, intentions, beliefs — relate to physical states of the brain and body. The problem received its modern formulation in Descartes's Meditations, where the real distinction between thinking substance and extended substance left him with the difficult task of explaining their interaction.
The principal twentieth- and twenty-first-century positions are physicalism (mental states are identical to or reducible to physical states), property dualism (mental and physical properties are distinct but the substances bearing them may not be), functionalism (mental states are defined by their functional roles regardless of their physical realizers), and various non-reductive views including biological naturalism. The hard problem of consciousness, articulated by David Chalmers, focuses the contemporary debate on whether the qualitative character of experience can be explained in physical or functional terms.
Descartes's interactionist dualism produced the most acute version of the problem in early modern philosophy. The Cartesian mind is a thinking substance with no spatial extension; the body is an extended substance with no thought. How can two such radically different substances causally interact? Descartes's appeal to the pineal gland was unsatisfactory even to his contemporaries. Spinoza's response was to identify mind and body as two attributes of one substance; Leibniz's was to deny causal interaction altogether and rely on pre-established harmony; Malebranche's was occasionalism.
The contemporary debate has largely moved past substance dualism, but the underlying problem persists in property-dualist forms. Frank Jackson's knowledge argument (1982) and David Chalmers's hard problem of consciousness (1995) have given renewed force to the worry that physical description leaves something out. Daniel Dennett's eliminativist program treats the appearance otherwise as a cognitive illusion that careful philosophical and scientific work can dissolve. Recent work in neuroscience, predictive processing, and integrated information theory continues to refine the empirical and conceptual landscape.
How philosophers have framed mind-body problem
| Philosopher | Position |
|---|---|
| Rene Descartes | Substance dualism: mind and body are really distinct, interacting through divine concurrence. |
| Baruch Spinoza | Two attributes of one substance: mind and body are the same reality under different descriptions. |
| Gottfried Leibniz | No real interaction; pre-established harmony coordinates the windowless monads. |
| David Chalmers | Property dualism: phenomenal consciousness is irreducible to physical or functional properties. |
| Daniel Dennett | Eliminativist: the appearance of a hard problem is a cognitive illusion. |
Representative quotes
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Rene Descartes
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“I think, therefore I am.”
Je pense, donc je suis.
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Baruch Spinoza
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“Letter 56 (60), to Hugo Boxel (1674)”
When you say that if I deny, that the operations of seeing, hearing, attending, wishing, &c., can be ascribed to God , or that they exist in him in any eminent fashion, you do not know what sort of God mine is ; I suspect that you believe there is no greater perfection than such as can be explained by the aforesaid attributes. I am not astonished ; for I believe that, if a triangle could speak, it
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Gottfried Leibniz
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“There are two kinds of truths: those of reasoning and those of fact. Truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible; truths of fact are contingent and their opposite is possible.”
Il y a aussi deux sortes de vérités, celles de Raisonnement et celle de Fait. Les vérités de Raisonnement sont nécessaires et leur opposé est impossible, et celles de Fait sont contingentes et leur opposé est possible.
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David Chalmers
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“Why doesn't all this information-processing go on "in the dark", free of any inner feel? ...We know that conscious experience does arise when these functions are performed, but the very fact that it arises is the central mystery. There is an explanatory gap [a term due to J. Levine, "Materialism and qualia: The explanatory gap" Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 64:354-61, 1983] between the functions and experience, and we need an explanatory bridge to cross it.”
Wikiquote
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Daniel Dennett
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“Daniel Dennett in a panel under the title "Can Rationality Be Taught?" at TAM 2014.”
We really have to think of reasoning the way we think of romance, it takes two to tango. There has to be a communication.
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