impersonal
Banned
[Subtitle: Hugo's metaphysical thread, the return of the sequel]
What is the relation between our mind and our body?
I'm going to review and criticize a three of the solutions to this famous problem. I'm going to use "mind", "spirit" and even "soul" interchangeably in this post, please don't be mad at me because of that. I'll also use the term "intelligence", which is understood to be a part of the mind (as such, if an objection applies to the smaller "intelligence/body" problem, then it is a sufficient objection against the "mind/body" problem). Okay, there we go.
Theory:
We've got a soul. While the brain has a classifier function up to some point, it's the soul that really feels everything, that really understands stuff, sees colours...
Objection:
We've created two completely different worlds - one for matter, one for the spirit. That's pretty useful when it comes to explain phenomenons which apparantly have nothing in common. But the problem with dualism is obvious: how exactly is the soul linked to the body? Now that we've created two worlds, how do we put them back together? That first solution (Descarte's) seems to reveal the nature of the problem very well - but it's very far from solving it.
Theory:
"Mind" and "Body" are invented, vague terms, which really don't refer to anything. The mind/body problem is just a consequence of the incoherence of our own representations, which comes from a tradition of retarded thinking.
Objection:
Which representations are not retarded? There's no guarantee that going for something more simple is going to make us more likely to find something right, or even coherent. We can still try, but I'm pessimist - I don't see any reason to think that deconsctructing (that'd be Derrida, but I haven't read him
) stuff is going to reveal their true nature; we might end up destroying all our toys and not even learning how they worked in the first place. Look at quantum mechanics: sure, they're efficient. However, when it comes to understanding, it's a huge step backwards. Everybody understood Newton's theories, even Fresnel's or Maxwell's equations made some sense. But 17-dimensions universes cannot be understood, even by the specialists. The further we go, the more precise the words become; but they also have less and less meaning, because along the way we're dropping the core elements of our intuitive knowledge of the world. It'll all end with "the answer is 42". And then, someone will suddenly realize: "okay, but what the hell is that supposed to mean?". Back to ground zero. I think that our concepts as they naturally come have an inherent value - deconstructing them might not allow for a proper reconstruction.
Theory:
Everybody was waiting for this one.
Our mind is "produced" by our brain, which is made of neurons, which are made of atoms... This is the mechanistic approach, favored by science in general - in fact, the mechanistic view of the world is an axiom in physics and to a lesser degree in medecine. In the support of this theory, there's our experience that damaging the brain damages the spirit (although the first theory can also account for that, in a more complicated way), and that ingesting chemicals make you feel weird.
Objections:
1) If the atoms of our brain produce intelligence, why would intelligence be equipped to understand how our brain work? If intelligence is really a production of matter (and of evolution), then it's going to be suited for our everyday needs, not to discover what it is made of itself. It would naturally analyse itself using the concepts which exist to analyse the objects we are supposed to interact with - namely, physical objects such as tools, and other beings such as our family.
In this particular case, we've got trouble not simply because our tools are not suited to the work to do, but also because we're trying to use both tools at once. Indeed, "the spirit" is neither a strictly physical issue (to which we can apply spatialisation, determinism...), nor a strictly social one (to which we can apply free will...) . Two modes of intelligence are thus conflicting (criticism inspired by Bergson). That could mean that there are two different correct answers to the mind/body problem - one goes through a physical explanation of the brain, the other goes through a psychological explanation of the body. One of the two is apparantly having much more success, but it could be because we're more advanced in managing nature than in managing ourselves.
2) If intelligence is a manifestation of matter, then what is matter? Indeed, the only interaction we've got with matter goes through... feelings, sensations, and reasonning. IE, we only know matter through the spirit. Isn't there a confusion in the order?
Atoms for example are a funky concept, evolving continuously, never meaning the same thing through history; and we have yet to find out what atoms are made from; we're saying it could be strings, but what are strings made from? This shows very well in which sense matter is a production of the mind as much as the mind is supposedly a production of matter.
Conclusion: please tell me where you think I'm wrong, and what you think yourself. Thanks for reading. (In before tl;dr)
What is the relation between our mind and our body?
I'm going to review and criticize a three of the solutions to this famous problem. I'm going to use "mind", "spirit" and even "soul" interchangeably in this post, please don't be mad at me because of that. I'll also use the term "intelligence", which is understood to be a part of the mind (as such, if an objection applies to the smaller "intelligence/body" problem, then it is a sufficient objection against the "mind/body" problem). Okay, there we go.
Theory:
We've got a soul. While the brain has a classifier function up to some point, it's the soul that really feels everything, that really understands stuff, sees colours...
Objection:
We've created two completely different worlds - one for matter, one for the spirit. That's pretty useful when it comes to explain phenomenons which apparantly have nothing in common. But the problem with dualism is obvious: how exactly is the soul linked to the body? Now that we've created two worlds, how do we put them back together? That first solution (Descarte's) seems to reveal the nature of the problem very well - but it's very far from solving it.
Theory:
"Mind" and "Body" are invented, vague terms, which really don't refer to anything. The mind/body problem is just a consequence of the incoherence of our own representations, which comes from a tradition of retarded thinking.
Objection:
Which representations are not retarded? There's no guarantee that going for something more simple is going to make us more likely to find something right, or even coherent. We can still try, but I'm pessimist - I don't see any reason to think that deconsctructing (that'd be Derrida, but I haven't read him
) stuff is going to reveal their true nature; we might end up destroying all our toys and not even learning how they worked in the first place. Look at quantum mechanics: sure, they're efficient. However, when it comes to understanding, it's a huge step backwards. Everybody understood Newton's theories, even Fresnel's or Maxwell's equations made some sense. But 17-dimensions universes cannot be understood, even by the specialists. The further we go, the more precise the words become; but they also have less and less meaning, because along the way we're dropping the core elements of our intuitive knowledge of the world. It'll all end with "the answer is 42". And then, someone will suddenly realize: "okay, but what the hell is that supposed to mean?". Back to ground zero. I think that our concepts as they naturally come have an inherent value - deconstructing them might not allow for a proper reconstruction.Theory:
Everybody was waiting for this one.
Our mind is "produced" by our brain, which is made of neurons, which are made of atoms... This is the mechanistic approach, favored by science in general - in fact, the mechanistic view of the world is an axiom in physics and to a lesser degree in medecine. In the support of this theory, there's our experience that damaging the brain damages the spirit (although the first theory can also account for that, in a more complicated way), and that ingesting chemicals make you feel weird.
Objections:
1) If the atoms of our brain produce intelligence, why would intelligence be equipped to understand how our brain work? If intelligence is really a production of matter (and of evolution), then it's going to be suited for our everyday needs, not to discover what it is made of itself. It would naturally analyse itself using the concepts which exist to analyse the objects we are supposed to interact with - namely, physical objects such as tools, and other beings such as our family.
In this particular case, we've got trouble not simply because our tools are not suited to the work to do, but also because we're trying to use both tools at once. Indeed, "the spirit" is neither a strictly physical issue (to which we can apply spatialisation, determinism...), nor a strictly social one (to which we can apply free will...) . Two modes of intelligence are thus conflicting (criticism inspired by Bergson). That could mean that there are two different correct answers to the mind/body problem - one goes through a physical explanation of the brain, the other goes through a psychological explanation of the body. One of the two is apparantly having much more success, but it could be because we're more advanced in managing nature than in managing ourselves.
2) If intelligence is a manifestation of matter, then what is matter? Indeed, the only interaction we've got with matter goes through... feelings, sensations, and reasonning. IE, we only know matter through the spirit. Isn't there a confusion in the order?
Atoms for example are a funky concept, evolving continuously, never meaning the same thing through history; and we have yet to find out what atoms are made from; we're saying it could be strings, but what are strings made from? This shows very well in which sense matter is a production of the mind as much as the mind is supposedly a production of matter.
Conclusion: please tell me where you think I'm wrong, and what you think yourself. Thanks for reading. (In before tl;dr)
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