Mind or Body
Tobi Malik
PHIL 1301 MIND OR BODY One of the most debated problems ever is the Mind and Body problem: is the mind part of the body, or the body part of the mind? If they are distinct, then how do they interact? And which of the two is in charge? The mind is the organized conscious and unconscious adaptive mental activity of an organism, and the body is an organized physical substance of an organism. There have been so many theories put forward to explain this. The first is Monism, which says that both the mind and the body are one, based on a few things like, Materialism- nothing exists apart from the material world. The second is Dualism, the belief that the mind and body exist, that they are separated. Descartes believed that the mind and body function separately, without interchange. Gilbert Ryle opposed this, he believed that they were on, according to him “Minds are not bits of clockwork; they are just bits of not-clockwork. As thus represented, minds are not merely ghosts harnessed to machines; they are themselves just spectral machines. . . . Now the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine does just this. It maintains that there exist both bodies and minds; that there occur physical processes and mental processes; that there are mechanical causes of corporeal movements and mental causes of corporeal movements. I shall argue that these and other analogous conjunctions are absurd.” The mind and the body are different, but work together, and one cannot exist on earth without the other. The mind, however, could be believed to still exist outside our own reality, especially after death. But for a living organism to exist they have to be together. The mind is like “a ghost in a machine”. The body is useless without it. A mind also needs the body to achieve the final cause of a living thing, which is to
PHIL 1301 MIND OR BODY One of the most debated problems ever is the Mind and Body problem: is the mind part of the body, or the body part of the mind? If they are distinct, then how do they interact? And which of the two is in charge? The mind is the organized conscious and unconscious adaptive mental activity of an organism, and the body is an organized physical substance of an organism. There have been so many theories put forward to explain this. The first is Monism, which says that both the mind and the body are one, based on a few things like, Materialism- nothing exists apart from the material world. The second is Dualism, the belief that the mind and body exist, that they are separated. Descartes believed that the mind and body function separately, without interchange. Gilbert Ryle opposed this, he believed that they were on, according to him “Minds are not bits of clockwork; they are just bits of not-clockwork. As thus represented, minds are not merely ghosts harnessed to machines; they are themselves just spectral machines. . . . Now the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine does just this. It maintains that there exist both bodies and minds; that there occur physical processes and mental processes; that there are mechanical causes of corporeal movements and mental causes of corporeal movements. I shall argue that these and other analogous conjunctions are absurd.” The mind and the body are different, but work together, and one cannot exist on earth without the other. The mind, however, could be believed to still exist outside our own reality, especially after death. But for a living organism to exist they have to be together. The mind is like “a ghost in a machine”. The body is useless without it. A mind also needs the body to achieve the final cause of a living thing, which is to