00 The Traditional Mind-Body Problem

The Traditional Mind-Body Problem
 The “mind-body problem”. This problem is one of the most well-known problems in Western
philosophy since Descartes, and has its origin in the philosophy of Descartes.
 René Descartes (1596-1650). Known as the “father of modern philosophy”.
 Bertrand Russell says, “The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem
worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.”
 This is true of the mind-body problem, which is our present topic. It is commonsense and obvious
that we have minds and bodies. If anyone were to say that we had only minds, but no bodies, or only
bodies, but no minds, hardly anyone will believe him. But many philosophers have held either of these
positions.
 Descartes held that we have bodies and minds. But it is Descartes’ definitions of “body” and
“mind” which is interesting, and which lies at the root of the traditional mind-body problem.
According to Descartes:
Mind =df. that which thinks, or a thinking substance.

(“a thinking, non-extended thing”)
Body =df. that which takes up space, an extended substance.
(“an extended, non-thinking thing”)
 “What is mind?” —“No matter.” “What is matter?” —“Never mind.” This joke captures
Descartes’s two definitions well. According to Descrates, mind and body are two mutually exclusive
kinds of substances, mind by definition cannot be matter, and vice versa. This view is called substance
dualism.
 “Thinking” includes believing, doubting, reasoning, having visual sensations, sensations of touch,
hearing, smell and taste, feeling pain, willing, wishing, desiring, etc. These are what we would call
mental events.
 By “extension” is meant having length, width, height. This table is several inches long, several
inches wide, and several inches high, that is, it is extended in three-dimensional space. In other words,
bodies occupy positions in space, and they can also move from one position to another. So with
bodies, we have physical events, involving the movements of physical objects.
 Now let us see where the problem arises. Descartes says that there is mutual interaction between
body and mind. The body acts on the mind, causing it to have sensations of touch, pain, etc., and to
perceive objects such as tables and chairs. And the mind also acts on the body: by an act of will I can
raise my hand, take hold of this marker and start writing on the board.
 This position is known as Cartesian interactionism. According to this position, physical events
cause mental events, and mental events cause physical events. A ray of light striking the eye at a
certain wavelength, and activating some impulses in the optic nerves which travel up to the brain, is a
physical event. This causes the sensation of seeing red, which is a mental event. I wish to eat an apple,
which is a mental event. This causes my hand to reach out and hold the apple, which is a physical
event.
 There are some good reasons for holding this position. First, if the body does not act on the mind,
it is very difficult to explain how we have new sensations. Suppose that I wish to open the window, so
my legs move towards the window. But I trip on a chair and fall down, and this causes me to feel pain.
So here we have two mental events, my wishing and my feeling pain, and two physical events, my legs
moving towards the window and tripping on a chair. Now it is clear that the feeling of pain was not
caused by my wish (people hardly trip on purpose, and if anything, I wouldn’t wish for an
embarrassing fall!), but rather by tripping on the chair. Second, if the mind does not act on the body, it
is difficult to explain how new motion is produced. Now bodies do not have the power of self-motion.
That chair cannot start moving all by itself. A body communicates motion which it receives from
another body. For instance, a billiard ball moves because it is hit by another ball, which is transferring
motion from the cue stick. So motion in one body is caused by another body, and the motion in that
body by another body, and so it seems as if bodies can transfer motion but not produce motion. So
philosophers like Descartes or Locke claims that only minds are capable of producing motion, by an
act of will. For instance, it is my wish to play billiards which sets the cue stick into motion.
 But there are problems with this account of interaction. According to Descartes’ definition, since
mind does not occupy a position in space, we cannot say that the mind has motion, or that it can travel
at a certain speed. This is because having motion is to travel from one position to another position in
space. We can see how one billiard ball can cause another to move. It travels from one part of the
table to another part, hits another ball and displaces that ball from the position which it occupies, and
motion is communicated to the other ball. But mind, by definition, cannot occupy a position in space,
and hence it cannot move or displace any physical thing from its position in space, for instance my arm
from here to there or the neuron cells in my brain.
 In short, the problem is, how can something which cannot itself move, move something else? Even
if we feel no doubt that there is mutual interaction between mind and body, it would be puzzling to
think exactly how it is possible.
 Therefore philosophers soon came up with other positions to avoid this problem. These positions
insisted that there was no interaction between body and mind, that body did not act on mind nor mind
on body. There is the position called occasionalism, which holds that my wishing to lift my arm is an
occasion for God to move my arm, and my tripping on that chair provides an occasion for God to make
me feel pain. Leibniz held another interesting position, which is that there is no interaction, but a pre-
established harmony between the life-history of a mind and the life-history of the body to which the
mind is united. For instance, consider two clocks which keep accurate time and are set to ring at the
same time. So they might ring together at 3 o’clock, and at 9:30, and again at midnight, and it might
seem as if the clocks are wired together so that when one starts ringing the other rings also at the same
time. But they are not wired, and it is simply that the alarms have been preset to ring at the same time.
 Now all these positions (interactionism, occasionalism, and pre-established harmony) are dualist, in
the sense that all of them accept that there are two different kinds of things in the world, namely bodies
and minds. There are also monist positions which have been proposed to solve the mind-body
problem. On the one hand we have Idealism (Berkeley), which holds that minds are the only kinds of
things which exist in the world. Physical events only seem like physical events, but are in fact mental
events. On the other hand we have Materialism, which holds that there are only bodies in the world
and no minds, or that mental events are somehow a property of matter, more specifically of the brain,
or that mental events can be equated with physical processes (e.g. identity theory: for every mental
event there is a brain process).

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The Traditional Mind-Body Problem

 René Descartes (1596-1650). Known as the “father of modern philosophy”.

Mind =df. that which thinks, or a thinking substance.

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