The Mind-Body Problem: A Non-Materistic Identity Thesis (original) (raw)

Abstract

At least two quite distinct problems appear to have been confused under the label "mind-body problem." The first is posed by the alleged fact of mind-body interaction, while the second arises from the purported fact of mind-body parallelism. And the issues are as different as are the senses of "mind" and "body" which they involve. Interaction. Historically, the mind-body puzzle is part of our Cartesian legacy. It seems not to have arisen in the form we know it during the previous history of Western thought. It is probably because the Greeks had no prevailing conception of a de-spiritualized material world. Although the origins of this conception can be traced at least to Democritus, the view was not "enculturated" until the rise of the "new physics." In the prevailing Aristotelian view, the material world was not exclusively material, since it was animated by final causes. But when this world came to be viewed as nothing but matter in motion, reflective persons were faced with an apparent difficulty. For if, as morality, theology, and common sense all seemed to agree, a person is not merely a physiological machine in the material world of natural science, that is, if a man has a mind as well as a body, and if, through volition, this mind sometimes acts on his body (and vice versa), the question then arises: how is such interaction possible? As Descartes formulated it, the mind-body problem became, above all, the problem of interaction.

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References (8)

  1. Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. H. Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), Part III, Ch. II. 2 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Collin Smith (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962), Part I. 3 Wolfgang Kohler, Gestalt Psychology (New York: Liveright, 1947), Chapter I. 4 Herbert Feigl, The Mental and the Physical (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota, 1967), p. 14. 5 See, for example, John Hospers, An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1967), pp. 391-404.
  2. 6 Internal relations may be defined both ontologically and epistemologically. Ontologically, two things are internally related if, in order for one of them to be, it is "essentially necessary" for the other to be. It is "essentially necessary" in the sense that a "real definition" of one thing includes an affirmation of the other thing's existence. Epistemologically, two things are internally related if, in order adequately to conceive one, it is essentially necessary to conceive the other. Something is "adequately" conceived only when it is conceived "completely"; that is, only when all of its essential properties are conceived. 7 W. James calls this the "law of relativity." See Psychology: Briefer Course, Ch. II. 8 See, for example, Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne Univ., 1964). Parts II and V. 9 Aristotle, Categories, 2 a 11.
  3. Ibid., 8 b 15. 11
  4. Leibniz, Monadology, 1. 12 Russell discusses Leibniz's ambivalent rejection of the reality of time in his Philosophy of Leibniz (London: George Allen and Unwin, New Ed. 1937), pp. 50-53. Another passage in the same book anticipates the Russell-Whitehead move to an event ontology, to a pluralism of successive as well as simultaneous entities: "There is … in all monadisms, an asymmetry in regard to the relations of things to space and time, for which there is, so far as I know, nothing to urge except the apparent persistence of the Ego. It is held that substances persist through time, but do not pervade space. Difference of spatial position at the same time shows difference of substance, but difference of temporal position does not show this …. For this important assumption there is, in Leibniz, no sort of argument." Ibid., p. 128. 13
  5. See G. H. Mead, Mind, Self and Society (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago, 1934). 14 On the distinction between physical and phenomenal space, see Russell's Outline of Philosophy (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1927), Ch. VIII. 15
  6. Alfred C. Ewing, "The Causal Argument for Physical Objects," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Vol. XIX (1945), p. 35. 16 J. J. C. Smart, Philosophy and Scientific Realism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963), p. 39.
  7. Morris Schlick, "Psycho-Physical Identity," trans. from, Allgemeine Kenntnislehre in Perspectives in Philosophy, 2nd ed., ed. R. N. Beck (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968), pp. 316-18. 18 Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. A. C. Fraser (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1894), Vol. II, pp. 57 ff. 19 As Leibniz saw, to act is to be a substance. A collection would seem to act only derivatively, through the actions of its indivisible units. Moreover, since the parts of such a unit are inseparable, it seems that each unit can be considered to act only as a whole. 20 Feigl, op. cit., p. 141. 21 U. T. Place, "Is Consciousness a Brain Process?" reprinted in The Philosophy of Mind, ed. V. C. Chappell (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1962), pp. 105-06. 22 Feigl, op. cit., pp. 141-42. 23 Whitehead borrows the "drop" metaphor from James. See A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York: Macmillan, 1929), p. 105. Also, Whitehead acknowledges the influence of F. H. Bradley's notion of a "felt whole." See Adventures of Ideas (New York: Macmillan, 1933), Part II, Ch. XV, Section XI. 24 An argument similar to the one which follows is found in Durant Drake, Mind and its Place in Nature (New York: Macmillan, 1925), Ch. VII and Ch. XIII. 25 Feigl, op. cit., p. 84. 26 Charles Hartshorne, Beyond Humanism: Essays in the Philosophy of Nature (Chicago: Willett, Clark, 1937), p. 122. 27 Hartshorne uses the term "compound individual." See Charles Hartshorne, "The Compound Individual," in Philosophical Essays for Alfred North Whitehead (London: Longmans, Green, 1937). See also A. N. Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, Part III, Ch. XIII, Section III.
  8. Clark Butler, "The Mind-Body Problem: A Nonmaterialistic Identity Thesis," Idealistic Studies 2:3 (September 1972): 229-248.