Dualism And The Mind-Body Problem Analysis

The mind and body are entities whose characteristics are strictly exclusive, yet together, they form a relationship that is the basis of the existence of humankind – and, by consequence, is one of the most classic and debated dualisms in philosophy. This dualism is described as the mind-body problem. The mind indicates one’s mental faculties such as thoughts, emotions and sensations, while the body indicates the physical processes and entities that allow one to function physically. While both are essential to human existence, the nature of this relationship is heavily debated. The Philosopher René Descartes proposed thoughts on the mind-body concept that support physicalism, the belief that everything can be reduced to physical states: the concepts with which Gilbert Ryle famously refuted and disproved with his “category-mistake” theory. In his paper what is it like to be a bat? Thomas Nagel introduces the element of subjectivity to this age-old debate and stresses its importance in the true understanding of the mind-body relationship, thereby effectively changing its nature. In considering the relationship between each of Descartes, Ryle and Nagel’s concepts, and the bearing that …show more content…
However, the oversight in Ryle’s work lies in the importance and ambiguity of subjectivity in the relationship between the mind and body. Nagel refutes reductionist theories because they are based on a foundation that does not take into account the subjective character of experience. Furthermore, he believes that the mind-body relation is “not analyzable in terms of any explanatory system of functional states, or intentional states, (Nagel, 436) as they could be used to describe non-life forms. Physicalism thereby gives an objective theory that abandons the phenomenological features of human life, and is inevitably flawed because it prohibits subjective