The Mind-Body Problem is the argument surrounding questions such as: “How does the mind relate to the body (brain)? Are they—the mind and the brain—separate? Does the mind even exist, or is there really just the brain? If both exist, how do they interact? If not, how does one explain certain mental states without the mind?”. For this argument, the mind is defined as a non-physical state where consciousness—awareness and thought—take place, and the brain is a physical construction of neurons, which interact to produce thinking and control the body. Mind-Body Dualism responds that there is a mind (nonphysical) separate from the body, meaning the brain (physical), with the mind in charge of mental states and consciousness, evident in love, belief in god, and personality, and the brain in charge of regulating the body, sense perception, physical motion, etc. They are two dual substances.
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Materialism states that nothing exists aside from matter, defined as something that occupies physical space and has mass. Materialism argues that the mind cannot exist as an immaterial object, because nothing immaterial exists, thus the “mind” is really the physical brain, and the apparent “consciousness” is just the brain undergoing physical reactions to produce mental states such as processing emotions, problem solving, and visualization, things a Dualist would categorize as the “mind”. A counterargument to materialism is this:
1. Based off of experience, it is known that one can produce a mental image in their head—for this example, a box. Whether or not the image comes from neurons firing in the brain or consciousness in the mind is irrelevant, because either way, there is a product, the mental box.
2. By definition, matter occupies physical space and has
Materialism states that nothing exists aside from matter, defined as something that occupies physical space and has mass. Materialism argues that the mind cannot exist as an immaterial object, because nothing immaterial exists, thus the “mind” is really the physical brain, and the apparent “consciousness” is just the brain undergoing physical reactions to produce mental states such as processing emotions, problem solving, and visualization, things a Dualist would categorize as the “mind”. A counterargument to materialism is this:
1. Based off of experience, it is known that one can produce a mental image in their head—for this example, a box. Whether or not the image comes from neurons firing in the brain or consciousness in the mind is irrelevant, because either way, there is a product, the mental box.
2. By definition, matter occupies physical space and has