Materialism In Peter Carruthers's The Mind Is The Brain

Peter Carruthers discusses and comments on an argument for and one against the mind being the same as the brain or physical body in his essay entitled “The Mind is The Brain”. He starts off by saying that mental states are identical and explicitly connected to body defined as the central nervous system. The thesis of mind/brain identity is one that involves thinking about the thoughts as physical actions. To further explain this theory states the mind and brain as the same entity. Carruthers goes on to argue that a physical thing such as pain is identical to a thought. They are one and the same caused by a nervous system reaction. Something inside of your brain connects to make you understand what the feeling you have is pain. He explains …show more content…
This is the theory of physicalism, also known as materialism. To better explain, physicalist support the idea that psychology and biology are the same thing. Believers of this theory advocate for thoughts and feelings to be examined and discussed as biological mechanisms. This thesis is where cause and effect come in. He uses the example of a foot pain causing someone to go into the doctor. It was a something in the brain, a thought, which caused us to feel the pain and made us go to the doctor. The debate question is as follows: “Some mental states and events are causally necessary for the occurrence of some physical ones”(Carruthers.328). He argues that a thought or desire causes us to act to achieve that desire making our thoughts physical actions. He has sort of contradicted himself. He first states all and then he states some. He summarizes the argument into two premises and a …show more content…
The mind is thinking but is in no way physical, whereas the body is the opposite. A name for the argument against the identity theory is eliminative materialism also known as Dualism. This states that there is no such thing as mental states or thoughts, the exact opposite of physicalism. Rene Descartes is the most famous supporter of this ideology. Descartes states in his Sixth Meditation, his mind is a thinking, non-extended thing while his body is an extended, non-thinking thing therefore they cannot be the same thing. Carruthers disagrees with this theory very adamantly. One can see in the first section of the article where he discusses the argument for the states and restates the validity of the argument, with the only issue being it uses some instead of all thought and physical states being identical. In the opposition section, he points out several flaws in the argument. Carruthers arguments against the oppositions are that no one else can feel in the same way about the things that he feels. Therefore you cannot say when my conscious and brain are or aren 't identical. In conclusion, Carruthers restates the fact that he conscious, which he uses synonymously to mind, is identical with brain-state. He then makes his position very clear. “..there is good reason to believe the identity thesis to be true, and no good reason to believe it false…”(Carruthers.335). Carruthers states that