Mind-body Relationship.. Dr Owoeye

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    CONCEPTS OF BODY-MINDRELATIONSHIP

    Owoeye Olugbenga A.MBChB, MSc, FMCPsych

    Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital, Yaba

    Lagos

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    OutlinesIntroduction

    TheoriesMonisticDualistic

    Schools of Thought

    Conclusion

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    Introduction The body-mind relationship: This is the

    relationship between a human body and itsunique mind.

    Theories of the body-mind relationship canbe divided into two broad categories:

    Monistic and, Dualistic theories.

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    Monistic theories:

    These suggest that mind and body are notseparate substances.

    Thinkers like Aristotle, Hobbs, Hegel, and the

    Behaviorists, collectively thought of as thematerialists, postulated that the mind wasnothing more than a bodily function.

    A mind is generally thought to be of a substanceother than a physical substance.

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    Berkely, Leibniz, and Schopenhauer,collectively known as the idealists,were monists of a different sort;they theorized that the body was

    simply a mental representation.Spinoza proposed that mind and bodywere the manifestations of some

    third property-- what he consideredGod. This is the theory of double aspectism , another monist view.

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    Dualistic theories: According to theirview, mind is thougth to be of a substanceother than a physical substance.

    Popular dualists were Descartes, Locke,and James, who collectively belong to theschool of thought known as interactionism.

    Other dualistic views include parallelism,epiphenomenalism, and occasionlism.

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    Schools of Thought

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    Double Aspectism

    Mind and body are distinguishable, butinseparable.

    Cognitive and experiential aspecs can bedistinguished from physical aspects, so

    there is a separate mind and body..........sort of.

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    The separate mind and body are twoaspects of the state of being human.

    Spinoza explained it this way: thinkingsubstance (the mind) and extendedsubstance (the body) are one and thesame thing.

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    For Spinoza, the single substance was God.This explanation of the Mind/Body

    connection may be the most difficult tounderstand, because it is perhaps the leastclear.

    Epiphenomenalism : The mind is really justa byproduct of the physical brain.

    Only physical events in the brain (e.g.

    neurons firing) have causal power. Lets getclear about definitions before we go intothis one.

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    When we talk about the brain we arespeaking of a physical thing, so the brainis part of the body. This is very importantto epiphenomenalism. If a human bodywere a TV set, the mind would simply be

    the picture you see when it is switched on.

    In this view the physical body affects

    (and even causes) the mind. However,because the mind is merely a byproduct,the mind does not affect the body.

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    Huxley (1874) said that mental events

    are like a stream whistle thatcontributes nothing to the work of alocomotive.

    According to James (1874), mentalevents do not affects the brain activity

    that produces them any more than ashadow reacts upon the steps of thetraveller whom it accompanies.

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    Idealism:

    According to idealism, what one knows to

    be real is in some way confined to thecontents of ones own mind.

    Anything we experience through our senses

    is coloured by how our mind perceives it.We therefore cannot have access toexternal reality.

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    Only thoughts and ideas that originate in

    the mind can be immediately experienced.

    Idealism stands in stark contrast to the

    theory of materialism, which endorses thephysical, spatial, factual domain as theultimate reality.

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    Platos theory of form/ideas has beencompared to idealism, although the form

    were not confined to the mind but existedindependntly of it. It has also been arguedthat Descartes contribution, in whichaccess to the mind is prioritized,influenced idealism. Idealism has beenpervasive since the eighteen century, buthas been less popular in recent times.

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    Interactionism:

    Sometimes the mind affect the body, andsometimes the body affects the mind. Thebody and the mind are separate, and they

    affect one another. Descartes laid the groundwork here. Weare physical being because we areextended in space. We are mental beingsbecause we think.

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    In Descartes words I think therefore I

    am (Cogito Ergo Sum). Heres the problemwe run into: The mind is not physical in anyway, and it exists separatly from the body.

    So, how does the non-physical mind affectbody, and visa versa? Descartes assumedthat this interaction occured in the pinealgland.

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    Materialism: This is the view that onlyphysical matter is real. The body is

    governed by strictly material, non-mentalcauses. Inasmuch as mental propertiesexist, they have no causal effect on thephysical body. Strict materialists mayhard-headed deny that anyting mentalexists at all.

    Others may concede that the mind exists,

    but characterize it as being identical tothe brain. The earliest exponents ofsomething resembling materialism were

    the Greeks, Democritus and Aristotle.

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    A specific type of materialism isepiphenomenalism, the view that the mindis a byproduct of physical processes.

    Another type of materialism is

    naturalism, the notion that nothingsupernatural exists.

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    Occasionalism:

    It seems that God is following us around

    all day, and when the mind gives the bodysome instruction, or visa versa, Godmakes it happen.

    Rememeber the probelm we had withInteractionism?

    We could not explain how the mind and

    body affected one another. Well, wehave that all solved here. When yourmind decides it would like your body to

    be on the other side of the room it getssome Almi ht intervention.

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    Occasionalism was popularized by 17th

    Century French Philosopher, NicolasMalbranche. The problem withoccasionalism is that it not only supposesthat there is a God, but that he also has

    time to follow each and every one of usaround.

    Parallelism:Mind and body are separate,but they are perfectly synchronized. How

    do they affect one another? They dont,they only appear to.

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    When your mind decides that it would

    like your body to be on the other sideof the room it is just a coincidence thatyour body walk over there. Althoughthe origin of this view can be traced

    back to G.W. Leibniz, he is alsoimplicated in Preestablished Harmony, aview that implicates God in the

    correlation between mind and body.

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    Preestablished Harmony:

    Mind and body, at the time of theircreation, were perfectly synchronizedby God, like two clocks set for

    exactly the same time.

    Although they appear to correspondand interact, there is no casualrelationship between mind and body.

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    Preestablished Harmony was a theoryexpoundded by G.W. Leibniz, tooppose the theories of parallelism,

    occasionalism, and interactionalism.The Preestablished Harmony is thatpresupposes that there is God.