Week 5

Mind and Matter

"What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind"

George Berkeley (Anglo-Irish philosopher, 1685-1753)

   Of all the mysteries of the universe, perhaps the most intriguing resides in the center of our being: the mind. Throughout history, dualism has been defended by philosophers like Plato, who believed that an immortal soul survived the body, Aristotle, who believed that the soul was the shape of the body but the two were inseparable and when one disappeared, the other also did, or Descartes, who believed that man consisted of two substances, res extensa (material) and res cogitans (thinking) joined by a gland called the pineal.

   Currently, the dualism of mind and body is defended primarily by religion to explain the immortality of the soul through life after death. Many philosophers and scientists defend the dualism of body and mind, such as cognitive psychology or mentalism, they believe that the mind rules the brain and there is no physical theory to explain consciousness, the mind is like software on the hardware. The physical explanation of the mind and human consciousness is probably the largest and most important scientific challenge of humanity, and maybe quantum biophysics can find the physical basis of consciousness. On the contrary, the evidence for the existence of the mind would allow other intangible realities such as the soul and the spiritual realm.

   However, dualism is unable to explain the interaction that occurs between the body and mind: how the mind, if not physical, can produce a change in a physical domain (violating the principle of conservation of energy). Also, if the mind is immaterial it would be impossible to influence it by physical means.

   Physicalist theories try to answer the mind-body problem by denying the dualism and arguing the lack of mental entities, or the ability to identify entities, attributes and material processes (ontological dimension), or the need to translate our mentalist language into a physical language (semantic dimension) or the possibility of reducing the psychological explanations about mental states into physical and organic explanations (epistemological dimension).

   The root of these physicalist theories are at the same time, in Cartesian philosophy: if the body- according to Descartes- functions as a complex machine, could the mind also be explained by similar mechanical principles? Scientists claim to be able to map the brain and to know where are centered the processes of thinking. The stimulation of a certain point of the brain can cause a sensation or particular reaction. Scientists are working hard to prove this in an effort to show that the life of the immaterial mind can be physically located within the physical object we call the brain. They say there is really no difference between what we call the brain and what we call the mind, and therefore there is no difference between what we call body and what we call soul. In essence, the immaterial world is simply a figment of our imagination. In this universe there are only two things: matter and energy, and both are physical, there is nothing spiritual. The body is subject to physical laws, and memories are recorded in neurons such as the information of a PC is on the hard drive, thus memories are also matter.