I’ve always had a deep interest in the nature of the human mind, but I have never been able to comfortably assert a philosophical stance on the subject, i.e. am I a dualist, monist, or something else entirely. This winter break I read The Mysterious Flame by McGinn and found myself less certain than ever. Rather than turn this post into a discussion of McGinn’s work, I would like it to become a sort of informal poll of our readers and commentators: which view do you assert? Feel free to add more discourse to the post as well as asserting your position, or reasons for not having one!
I myself am undecided on the issue, but find as I gain more information and am afforded more time for reflection that I lean towards monism as a way of understanding the nature of the human mind and its relationship with the body.
I think it is a safe claim to say that dualism is the prevailing system for understanding the human mind, insofar as it relates to the body, but I find that dualism encounters far too many problems when viewed through the lens of modern physics and medical study. Aside from the commonly made arguments focused on immaterial and material substances interacting, there are also many questions that arise from studies on brain damage, impairment and aging. The common line of questioning might be this: if the mind and body are truly separable, then why is there such a profound effect on the mind when certain physical issues arise with the brain?
In some ways monism escapes these questions unscathed. In my reflection the biggest hitch for dualism is the interaction of the mind with the body. Perhaps it is my current understanding of causation that leaves me perplexed. I think that most accounts of dualism leave us to rely on miracles or otherwise mysterious methods of communication. It isn’t that monism necessarily excludes these mystery explanations, but I find that it needs them in less critical areas. If the mind and body are two expressions of the same thing then there is no need for a complex means of communication. I somehow come to a model much like the system of matter and energy that we observe in the universe. If the mind is like energy, and the body matter, then the system functions in relatively analogous ways. My limited understanding of modern physics and relativity might mean this is a crude and ineffective construction.
I often times think, like McGinn, that the answers may be unavailable to our understanding. It may simply be the case that our minds are not wired to understand the apparently complex relationship between mind and body. Obviously this is not the most satisfactory place to leave the conversation and so various theories are available and attempt to make the relationship a matter of human understanding. I look forward to hearing your opinions and welcome any added discourse!
- Quincy Faircloth
Well, from my knowledge of both dualism and monism it appears as though the topics are not directly opposites as many tend to argue them. Dualism seems to mainly look at the difference between a physical existence and a spiritual existence while, if looked at in an opposing manner, monism would argue there is only a spiritual existence. And certainly there are many different kinds of both monism and dualism not to mention the category of pluralism, but your article appears to focus on the mind and body and their relations specifically if I am not mistaken.
I personally find that in the discussion of the mind or body monism is the better choice over dualism, but I would also like to introduce my own “ism,” existencism (I’m working on the title,) not be confused with existentialism though closely related. First I’ll argue for monism and then discuss existencism.
Monism says that the mind and body are inseparable or of one substance. First I would argue the mind is not spiritual but merely a misunderstood function of the brain and through physical evidence I feel I can argue that mind and body are inseparable in their existence simply for the sake of purpose.
Most philosophers use senses when arguing for or against dualism or monism which I think is a mistake because it includes the senses in the thought which scientifically speaking are variables that make the argument muddled. To argue for or against either “ism” you must take away the ability to see, smell, hear, touch, and taste and then ask, is the mind capable of thinking? The answer, yes, the mind can think, though it would probably not be anything very coherent or intelligent. The point of this is that a person can exist without their senses and many do without many of their senses. The ultimate experiment would be to take a person who can not feel anything and then take away their other senses from birth and see how they develop, but that would be highly unethical. Now all of this seems off topic but my point is that without the senses we would exist only we would be rather useless or at least confusing to watch (imagine a body randomly rolling around or leaping and making incoherent screeches or grunts) and we would quickly die. So basically take out the sense variable and the mind still exists. Yes, but is the mind separable from the body, and what about PVS patients?
Well the mind is physically able to be separated from the body but it would be useless without a body. All the mind needs to survive is nutrients, oxygen from blood, and electrical signals to continue to function, but would it still have thoughts? Yes, but without a body, whether one attached to the brain or one delivering the electrical impulse, a mind would be useless and unable to survive. After all what are thoughts other than electrical signals that are interpreted in relation to what we have experienced through our senses? This is a radical idea which I would call existencism (told you it would come up) but I think it makes more sense and through understanding it one can see that the brain, not mind, is all that really matters i.e. monism. If we can track thoughts as electrical signals then it seems possible that thoughts are only electrical signals and our brain is not only the source but also the communication device. I’ve read that love can be tracked by an explosion of electrical activity in the brain, though it feels as though it is coming from the heart or chest region, another trick of the brains extensive nervous system. So ultimately ‘a’ body is inseparable from the mind because without it the mind would either die or be useless, which brings me to PVS patients.
PVS patients are people who are lacking in higher order brain functions or are “brain dead.” This is an easy one. A PVS person has a brain that is working, at least partially, but the senses no longer have any effect and they lack the higher order functions. I use the popular case or Terri Schiavo because so much research was done on her. The debate often involved the argument of whether there was a soul or if it was merely brain functions, was Terri still Terri? I think she is the perfect example for my case. When autopsied, information taken from Wikipedia, the doctors say her brain was only about half of the size of a normal brain due to lose of neurons. To stay alive she had to have a feeding tube giving her nutrients though her brain still kept her heart pumping she was unable to communicate, through blinking or any other type of movement. She had almost no brain activity that was ever measured and was therefore considered not conscious. Though her body was kept alive by machines she was unable to interact with her environment and because her brain was not working she was not considered cognant and therefore allowed to be put to death. Without the electrical impulse of the brain a person does not exist as anything other than a body because they cannot communicate, think, or interact with their physical surroundings. The only real argument against this is idea that the soul is separate from the brain. In my personal opinion the soul is merely a metaphor created by people who did not scientifically know better that the only reason they can think is because of a complex series of electrical signals.
In further medical evidence I bring up Alzheimer’s as it deals with memory, a confusing human experience. People with Alzheimer’s forget tings about themselves and loved ones and in brain scans of such patients there are buildups of protein between neurons that hinder electrical signals. There have been experiments that removed such material from portions of the brain and resulted in a slight increase in memory.
Finally I would just like to sum up my potentially confusing thoughts. Dualism seems to be false because the mind does not work without the body. Monism seems implausible because physically the body can be separated from the brain and still function, though uselessly. I feel existencism is a better explanation which explains the feeling of emotions and thoughts such as love normally thought to be connected with the mind, once again not brain, and also the need of the body for the brain, a fair compromise between monism and dualism.
I think the question as to whether the mind and body are one single thing or two separate things has implications for most religions. Anyone who believes that upon death humans have a spirit which departs its body and ascends to heaven is, regardless of whether they realize it or not, proposing dualism. I think the question becomes politically significant. Unfortunately, people try to arrive at a proof for god a posteriori. People start off with a belief such as “There is a god,” and try to build proof for their claim starting from the conclusion. I feel this approach is valid for certain circumstances, for example, if you see two cars being towed down the road on wreckers and one is smashed in the front and the other in the back, you might reasonably assume that the two were in a wreck in which someone was hit from behind. But that would only be a good assumption. It is possible that those two cars were never even in the same wreck. But in the case of the car we have some pretty good facts from which to attempt a logical reason. In the case of god, however, we merely have the fact that some people believe there is a god. In this circumstance, an a priori approach becomes more suitable. Many of the empiricists from the Modern school seem to say something like this: The world is so complex that it could not have been created by anything else but by some omnipotent god. Therefore, since the world is here, it can be concluded that god necessarily exists.
Spinoza seems to have tried to offer a way out by making everything in existence the same substance; however, this seems difficult to swallow. The proposition hat the air, my body, water, fire, space, other planets, etc, are all part of the same substance goes against my intuition.
I’m a monist. That the mind is rendered incapable without access to the brain seems to me support for monism. Based only on my own ability to reason, I do not see a logical way to assert that anything exists beyond the physical body. I think that the reason why people believe in dualism is because of the hidden way in which the mind works. You can’t feel a thought. When we use any other part of the body, that usage is confirmed by the fact that it can be felt. For example, when I scratch my head, the transaction is confirmed by the physical feelings I get by raising my arm up to my head and wiggling my fingers to scratch my scalp. My scalp also confirms that it is being scratched. This is even true of internal organs. I once contorted my body in such a way that my insides were moved around, and I could actually feel it internally. It hurt. Contrarily, the mind does not give such a confirmation of its activities. Therefore, thoughts almost seem like magic coming out of nowhere. Since we can’t feel our mind working, I believe there is a tendency to think that it doesn’t exist as part of our bodies.
Dispite the fact that it can’t be felt, I believe a physical transaction is taking place every time a person thinks. Like Sean Thompson described in his reply, you can monitor certain actions of the brain. Scientists have been able to pin-point even which areas of the brain are responsible for the activities of certain thoughts and actions. And their conclusions have been supported by observing the lack of those abilities in people who are missing parts of their brain.
The very thought that my mind is separate from my body is disturbing to me. Given my tendencies for misplacing things, I could almost image a “lost and found” for people’s minds. Could you image the reward that someone would expect for having found your mind? But on the other hand, if my mind could be detached, I suppose it might be something like a commodity. In that case, I can imagine pulling into the local dealership and asking “You got any good deals on a late model mind?” I’ll be appearing through then end of Spring term. Thank you and goodnight!
Oh and thanks for the post. It is a good one.
I think starting a discussion like this with a comparison of “isms” is like starting a race at the halfway point. The question “by what means are we to arrive at a conclusion?” should also be addressed. What “tool” are we using to discover whether the mind and body are separate? We are using thought are we not? Thought is a function of the brain and is an extension of memory.
In the early years of human development, memory served as a tool to protect the human from physical harm or assist in physical sustainment (i.e. “I touch the fire and it’s hot…don’t touch it again” or “I hunted in this area before and was successful, so I’ll continue hunting there). Other tools like language developed as an extension of the natural inclination toward physical protection. But with language came the ability to share “intangible” ideas – to discuss in terms of images without there necessarily having to be a direct “tangible” correlation. (I’ve never seen a pig fly, but I’ve seen pigs and I’ve seen flying – my brain can combine the two.)
With the evolution of language came the use of images and analogies to describe the physical world. In like fashion, humans began to create images of themselves – a self separate from the self that is observing – a “thinker” that is separate from the thought. This evolution continued until what began as protection of the physical being morphed into a protection of the self-image.
Thought – use of the brain – is the only tool we have to discover whether there is a mind separate from the body. But the brain – this repository of memory – is not separate from the body. If we remove thought….if we have no thought….then what remains?
I’ve always had a problem with this kind of question. Not because the answers to it might be troubling, but I wonder if answers can ever really be found. And if not, why bother?
So we can find the spot on the brain to which, if you induced an electrical current, a response would be attained. Poke here, leg kicks. And we can find all these different spots where specific actions take place, and even where the paths of these processes intersect, but we’ve failed to find where it all comes together.
There are two possible reasons for such failure: 1) we’ve just not yet found it, and 2) it’s not there to find. If explanation one holds true and one day it is found, monism, case closed. The second option is where things get a little hairy, I think.
One thought experiment describes the “mind’s theater,” where all the functions and senses come together and are observed by this imaginary audience member. This is no regular theater either with just sight and sound, this is like 3-D muppet babies theater at Disney or wherever where they got the bubbles and the smell and all sorts of sensory experiences.
My question is, though: Who’s watching?. would not the viewer also have to have a theater in his mind by which to centrally process the stimuli within the theater? This would seem to describe some physical spot within the mind where it all comes together and is all processed. If that were the case, if we found it we could cut that part out and then be able to hold someone’s soul in our hand, which I think would be awesome.
But I don’t know that a spot has been found that does just that. Maybe I reveal an ignorance of neuroscience, but it seems much more a mob mentality of the brain than a general and a bunch of soldiers, the general being that chunk of brain called the soul and the soldiers being the parts which light up with various activity.
Maybe it’s closer to the mob scene thing going on in there where everything is working independently and there somehow emerges the ability to process it in unity. If it is such an emergent feature, then where do we draw the line?
Someone with a whole mind certainly has this emergent feature of unified processing and coherency. If we take someone and take away their sense of smell, they still have it. Or if the part that controls motor functions is destroyed, we still say they have it. We can start chipping away at individual pieces and the emergent property of unified thought, AKA “soul”, is gradually diminished because the elements from which it emerges are being eliminated.
But where do we draw the line between where that emergent property constitutes “soul” and where it is so diminished that the person really just acts as a body, even animalistically. We have that same indistinguishability when looking at whether a baby is alive at birth, viability, heart beating, brain activity, blood, zygote or conception. We could respond in the same way Peter Singer does to the abortion problem of drawing the line and dismiss the argument on grounds of saying nothing more than that we don’t like it.
But should it be the case, I know that is sort of a side issue, that one loses their soul by taking bit by bit chunks of brain away, then we’ve settled that the soul is inextricably attached to the body, unless you consider emergent properties as separate from the elements from which they emerge. I raise it because, if dualism is true, then we have to ask the question, as we steadily scoop away spoonfuls of gray matter, at which scoop is the soul released from the body? 37? 42? 58?
I think precisely because we run into the problem of this emergent feature and it’s strange relation with its elements that we lose, not focus on which is true, but what those things are by which we wish to define that relationship. Do not monism and dualism become the same thing here, that here the emergent feature which exists outside of a physical part of the body so intimately depends on the body out of which to emerge?
Again, I ask, “Why Bother?”.
This is such a great topic it is a shame that not many commented on it. It is also a shame that I am a year too late in finding this blog entry. I have been contemplating a dualist perspective lately. Granted I have not chosen a side, but in light if brain diseases and brain damage, I thought, if the soul existed how could it exist if everything seems tied to the structure of the brain. It seems like when a dualist presents this perspective it often begs too many questions. Consider a driver of a car. The engine is essentially the brain, the car – the body, and the driver is the soul. The soul can only manifest itself through the car, as the driver. The wheels move, fan belts run, etc etc all because the driver turns it on and the engine gets everything moving. The driver does not physically move the car, it tells it to move. If the car is damaged, the driver can not manifest itself fully. I can drive on 3 tires but it won’t drive the same as if it had 4, if I am brain damaged, my soul can not manifest itself to full capacity if it is using the body as it’s vessel. Electricity could still flow through a vacuum even if portions of the vacuum are malfunctioning, but nevertheless the electricity still exists and exists separately once the plug is pulled. Granted I am sure this logic does beg a ton of questions, and this is the short version of that logic, but I can see it as a plausible defense for dualism once fully thought out. If you care to engage me on this feel free to email me at Emerus00@aol.com. Personally I am not convinced of the dualist perspective, but I don’t think it can be ruled out entirely as of yet.
Brandon-
There seems to be some confusion (in general) on just what substance dualism is. I’ve not studied the issue to any degree of satisfaction, but I can tell you that some substance dualists think the mind needs a brain to think. They are primarily led to espouse substance dualism because they are convinced personal identity is irreduceable (see, for example, the brain surgery thought experiments in Swinburne’s “The Evolution of the Soul”). This seems to avoid many of the more common criticisms people throw at substance dualism.
Andrew,
I’ve yet to hear a dualist adequately explain what a “mind” could be if not the brain itself. In positing that the “mind needs a brain to think,” one, at best, merely confuses matters; at worst, it’s utter nonsense. But, of course, you may repost that, because of my commitment to a naturalistic world view, I myself beg-the-question.
Nevertheless, since dualists (which I should think includes you) seek to complicate matters (that is, monists say A, dualists say A & B), the onus is upon them to justify the extra-supposition.
Ok here it is. The great debate; Monism or Dualism. i myself am yet to choose a side. I see good points of both monism and dualism but can not decide which explains things best. I am leaning toward monism as then i can think of the mind in a physical sense. But I have been bought up in a religious family and am the only one who is not positive of a separate soul existing outside of the body. I would like to believe in such a thing but as with many other things in life I need proof. Evidence or something that shows our lives aren’t just a waste of time.
So for now i think I wil remain unsure, but then again there is another stance I can take: Interactionalsim.
I have been researching a rehabilitation of Cartesian dualism based on the Stone duality in mathematics. See Vaughan Pratt’s paper that started this off here: http://boole.stanford.edu/pub/ratmech.pdf
I well come any comments on this.
One of the most effective studies of monism, dualism, philosophy and religion, and the main thrusts of the humanities and mathematics and physics from the Enlightenment to the present, is Peter J. Stanlis’s 2007 landmark book, Robert Frost – The Poet As Philosopher. The author’s style is learned and detailed yet clear and readable, and the result is both stimulating and enlightening.
When I was in seventh grade I had an out of body experience while undergoing anesthesia for an operation. I drifted up above the light fixture on the operating table and vividly recall wondering how I could even be looking at the back of this chrome reflector 12 ft in the air, or my body below, and listening to the chatter of the doctors and nurses. It was not a religious experience. Recently (I’m 67 now) a neurosurgeon and I were discussing this and he said he’s had many patients experience this phenomenon, and he believes it’s a projection of the frontal cortex of the brain and a figment of our imagination. I tend to agree since mine was short-lived and a solitary event, but up until recently I must admit I was a dualist. My stroke five yrs ago and some other research has dropped me firmly in the monists’ camp today.
The main premise for my prior belief is the voice in my head, which I inherently took to be independent of my body. We all have one, and whether we want to or not, we have to listen to it. We have no choice. It manifests in the Broca’s areas of the brain and among other functions it performs, it takes text we read and changes it into sound, which our brain can then process. Effectively, we don’t really read books, we hear books. Check it out. Right now you are hearing this text.
A series of lectures by Dr of Philosophy John Searles UCal Berkeley was quite interesting. He discussed the pros and cons of monism and dualism and causality. I’ll try to run down some of the points Searles and others in psychology and biology have made. Searle’s a monist with a sophisticated medical knowledge of the brain.
The major differences between our brain and a computer is causality and consciousness. Watson, the IBM computer who trounced Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter badly on Jeopardy, requires someone to turn it on and ask it questions. Conversely, we on the other hand wake up unassisted and are on; we are thinking, sentient beings the instant we regain consciousness.
In spite of Watson’s ability to come up with the best possible answers heuristically (by past experience), Watson doesn’t know anything at all. Zip, zilch, nada. The answers themselves are meaningless to it. They are simply stored data points. Watson can’t think or rationalize. As its capacity for storage and retrieval grows it could possibly become sentient. Vger?
My stroke, a hemorrhagic infarction, has left me with diminished brain functionality, mostly in motor control and some partial memory loss, as far as I know. What else I know is I was a babbling idiot for two weeks afterwards until I started to regain my faculties. i was told this by loved ones; I remember none of it. I think this is all there is. Take heart and enjoy your time alive while you can.