What is the relationship between our mind and our body? Is there an alliance between the biological processes of the body and voluntary action, which gives rise to the notion of free will, or is the mind simply an ontology of the brain and are fundamentally the same? Such questions have led to the mind-body problem and the long-standing conflict between the ideology of the ancient Greeks (in particular the Aristotelian view): the human mind and body are not separate, and the theorizing that the two are separate but influence each other. The latter being pioneered in the 17th century by philosopher Rene Descartes, which has led to the understanding of the ‘mind-body problem’ as it exists today.
Throughout history, there have been a myriad of approaches to the ‘mind-body problem’, which extends itself as far back as 429 BCE with Plato. He considered the body and mind (soul) as “two distinct and radically different kinds of entity” (Brysbaert & Rastle, 2013, p.16). In many civilizations today, there are depictions of the body and a separate spiritual mind, with the belief that the soul is the entity that defines a person. A notion held largely by Christianity at the time, this had a powerful influence on the idea of the soul being the article which drives all living things. Widely adopted, this aligned itself with the ideal of the soul being immortal, as it was responsible for morality, thereby possessed innate knowledge. Consequently, like his predecessor Socrates, Plato perceived the soul as the entity responsible for thinking and the entity which controlled the body. In this ideal form of understanding, the capitalization of knowledge rested with looking at the inward path of the soul (the eternal world) and not the outward path of perception (the material world).
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However, this divorce of the body and soul was a theory that Aristotle (384 - 322 BCE) did not agree with. Nyvlt (2012) argues that “Aristotle concerns himself with the natural, physical world and its causes, while Plato deals with the divine world”. In Platonism, divinity, represented by the soul is perfection as it ‘survives the body’ (Brysbaert & Rastle, 2013, p. 268). But is there such a thing? Aristotle believed in nature’s in-built patterns and considered this to be improbable. While he believed in souls, he theorized that the soul was a form of the body and supposed that the soul was the thing that made the living organism capable of carrying out its function. He argues that “for Aristotle, the body and soul are not two separate elements, …as Plato would have it…but are two different parts or aspects of the same thing”. For this reason, the soul could not exist without the body and therefore was not immortal. Hence why Aristotle surmised that there was no such thing as innate knowledge, but that behavior was learnt. If behavior was learnt, then the careful observation of the purpose of behavior was the vacuum in which consciousness thrived, thus the mind and body must be studied in relation to each other.
Conversely, the underlying concept brought by the wave of the Scientific Revolution in the 17th century, saw an increase in rationalism, which in turn birthed the concept of dualism. While critics may argue that dualism is implausible as there is no peculiarity between the mind and the brain (Brysbaert & Rastle, 2013), Descartes paid little attention to the conclusion drawn by Aristotle and his successors. He reasoned that the immaterial mind and material body were separate entities but interacted with each other. Chambliss (2018) draws on the ideal that generating a mind–body problem requires appreciating features of both mental and physical states and realizing that each is unsuited to explaining the other. Descartes felt that this collaboration was achieved through the pineal gland in the brain. This led to a closer inspection of the two-way system of interactivity, which concluded that no matter the organism, the brain was the central organ. This was perhaps the beginning of the ‘development of the Western tradition in philosophy’ (Ludwig, 2003, p.14), as it placed the brain at the center of human functioning.
Insights drawn from the radical stance of the Cartesian method also fueled stern attacks in its reasoning. How can an immaterial substance determine the actions of a physical body, and what transpired when we slept? The inability of dualists to answer such questions led to the rise of monism. In its assertion that the body and mind cannot be distinct, and that substances are all of one kind, monism concerns itself with attributes or properties of the physical, or mental form (Crane, 2000). Anatomically, monism believes in one reality which allows for the denial of free will and propels the understanding that “humans… are mere survival machines for the genes they contain” (Brysbaert & Rastle, 2013, p.277). Typically, many researchers today align themselves to this theory, especially with advancements in neuroscience. But monism, like its predecessors, has its problems, and it seems that as the world develops, and new spheres of science are discovered, there needs to be coordination between philosophers and scientists on what the mind–body problem is, and what kinds of explanations are needed to solve it (Chambliss, 2018).
It is evident that although there has been a plethora of approaches throughout history in attempting to solve the ‘mind-body problem’, this paradigm issue is still alive. Therefore, evolving an understanding of the problem involves building upon the diverse approaches. As a Christian, the dualistic approach is more aligned with my faith, however, there has to be an appreciation for the approaches formed after as I believe we are experiencing the limitations of our current models. In a societal landscape which is constantly changing politically, scientifically, culturally, etc., where one doesn’t have to subscribe to one particular approach, can the mind-body problem ever be solved?
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