Philosophy - Essay Example

According to him, when bodies are swapped or exchanged, the memory remains intact and therefore, though it remembers the earlier conversations and conditions, it still exhibits physical well being or pain and regret with reference to its new bodies! In fact, the experiments show that the two persons exercise options with reference to the event that would take place after their bodies are swapped. The persons anticipate and try to choose the options that would best reflect their well being in a new personality.

In the mind swapping case, the two persons are just confronted with the idea of physical pain but assured that they would not be able to remember the pain or may still have entirely new memories and experiences. This idea is difficult to grasp mainly because the concept of physical pain goes beyond the mental causality and becomes universal in its physical well being. Indeed, even if the person knows that he might remember the gory details of the torture but the physical impact of the pain is a powerful factor that superimposes over all other considerations.

Hence it would not be incorrect to say that the physical representation of the person is dominated by the mental criteria or ‘mind’ and thereby, role of mind and consciousness relating directly with the action and reactions of the physical being, become the most important criteria for one’s personal identity. The rest of the attributes, including its physical representation complement and give character to its overall persona. Descartes treated body and mind of a man separately. He believed that body is inanimate object that acts only at the behest of the mind.

It is also known as Cartesian dualism. He says that one cannot find out the nature of physical things without the participation of ‘intelligence’ which instead of ‘seeing’ judges them do