The Mind/Body Problem - Essay Example

One research line states that some mind-body problems come from artificial intelligence research. One such problem can be solved by the clear knowledge hardware and software interaction and relationship. The other line of research shows that mind-body relation might be illuminated by the study of emergence in the biological systems. Mind-body dualism or dualism is a theory that holds that minds and brains both exist, and neither the mind nor the brain is part of each other. Both Hinduism and non-Advaitic Vedanta agree with mind-body dualism as when the soul moves through different incarnations, this then is something that can independently exist of the body.

If Atman’s individuality is preserved by atman and Brahman fusion, then atman might exist independently without the being of human body. Pre-Socratic Pythagoras was the first western philosopher to agree with dualism. Ancient Egyptian doctrines (religious) that he inherited held that a nonphysical part of a human being survives death. He too believed that the soul reincarnates. Plato too was a mind-body dualist as in his dialogue The Phaedo, he concludes the soul survives after the death of the body.

Aristotle was also a mind-body dualist. He supported the idea that the intellectual part of the soul lives forever. 1 Mind-body dualism is not subscribed to by Orthodox Christianity as they believe that human immortality is in the hope of bodily resurrection. They too believe in the life after death by the mercies of God. Augustine of Hippo introduced the soul as a strong metaphysical sense into Christianity in the fourth and fifth centuries. He believed that Platonism and Christianity were both mutually consistent and true, and therefore sought to merge them into one philosophical system.

Rene Descartes a mathematician and a French philosopher of the seventeenth century argue in his mediation that he can be certain because of the fact that he exists. He argues that he cannot doubt his existence because if he does, he exists, but the truths of mathematics, evidence of the senses and physical world are absolutely dubitable. Basing on the above premises Descartes summarizes that he is a thing that thinks independent of the physical world including his own body. On the other hand Cartesian dualism views that each person a substantial soul that is different from the body.

Thus the two basic dualism types include Descartes and Cartesian dualism.2 This is the theory that that asserts that the mind is the brain and nothing exists apart from the brain. The Greek atomist Democritus holds that there exist atoms and the void only. Atoms are material particles that are indivisible while the void is an empty space in which atoms move. Therefore if minds or mental states exist, it then means they can be reduced to atoms and incase atoms are physical automatically the minds are physical.

This can be so only if atomism is true. Thomas Hobbes, an English political theorist cum philosopher and a founder of geometry asserts that unless geometry statements are true, no statement can be regarded true. Hobbes does not believe in dualism or in nonphysical realities. He argues that the mind is not straightforwardly a physical object therefore many people take it for a nonphysical object. Such criticisms by Hobbes about putative nonphysical realities were then adopted by the Vienna Circle in the 1930s whose intention was to replace the religion by science. U.T.

Place a British philosopher in his paper of 1956, ‘