Dualism Vs. MaterialismEssay Preview: Dualism Vs. MaterialismReport this essayDualism vs. MaterialismIn this paper I will talk about two perspectives regarding the never ending mind-body issue. When people think about this topic they immediately wonder how is it possible for a material mind to affect a non-material body and vice versa. This is one key topic when it comes to the philosophy of the mind; it studies the relationship between mind and matter, and the connection between consciousness and the brain. The main goal of philosophers studying this is to find out the origin of the mind along with mental processes and the body. Those two confusing points are part of the two main standpoints concerning the subject. The first main view is that of Dualism which can be thought of as something that is divided or unattached. In other words, it is the assumption that individuals have a spiritual mind that is super natural or with superior existence and brings about many things such as: our emotions and the things we know. The people that agree with this idea are called Dualists like the American philosopher, Thomas Nagel who you will read about later on. The other stance is that of Materialism which can be regarded as the mind and the body working together as a whole to perform certain functions. It states that everything in the universe is matter that does not have any real spiritual or intellectual existence since it cannot be seen or touched. The people who believe in this notion are called Materialists such as the American philosopher Daniel Dennett whose views will also be discussed in this paper. In my opinion, Dualism seems a bit out of this world, but I do think anything is possible and both Dualism and Materialism can bring about different mentalities to individuals.
Concerning the mid-body matter, Nagel (the dualist) believes that the current concepts of physics cannot truly explain consciousness and subjective experiences; that is, ones awareness of outer objects/forces or simply things inside ourselves; for example: in his article “what it is like to be a bat”, he explains to us how bats actually behave based on observations and then he says that we can imagine how it might feel to be a bat, but in reality there is no way for us actually knowing because we are not bats. We might think its disgusting to eat bugs and painful to sleep upside down, yet bats might in fact enjoy it. So to him, consciousness is the ability of people to have thoughts, perceptions, and feelings that do not necessarily have to be seen in order to be felt. But where does this arise? Well, that is the big question which to this date is being debated. “An organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism–something it is like for the organism” (Nagel par. 3). He assumes that concepts regarding mental states are obtainable to an intellectual who is familiar with their own states. Nagel also points out that consciousness comes about at several levels in animal life but that it is hard to observe its existence in simpler organisms, making it extremely complicated to generalize what provides its proof, yet it does exist even though it might come supernaturally. Nagel is open to mysteries and does not easily believe that everything can have an explanation because to him consciousness exists in places outside of our world that we wouldnt even imagine.
On the other hand, Dennett (the materialist) argues that the mind and the body go hand in hand by functioning together to let us feel emotions, have thoughts, and things similar to that. Also, he believes that the physical objects that surround individuals actually exist in the universe since they can be seen and touched and thus even those things are capable of having beliefs about the world. To Dennett, the brain is a syntactic engine which means that it is like a mechanism that makes meaning of the world. “Cognitive scientists and neurologists have produced mountains of evidence that changes in the structure or functioning of the brain-by brain injury, drugs, brain stimulation, and so on-produce changes in phenomenological experiences and cognitive functioning” (RB par. 2). Dennett is very much against mysteries because
Dennett says some of the fundamental laws of physics, like the Laws of Evolution, have already been disproven without any knowledge of the laws of physics, and he therefore argues that the laws of evolution can’t apply to a physics-induced brain damage. To him, this also has to mean something different for humans. The basic laws of physics do not apply to the brain, which are just different as they exist inside the brain. In the case of humans, which are already the most evolved species on the planet in what are called “genetic categories”, the laws are simply different from the laws of physics. Thus, the law of evolution will also apply to the physical body for the sake of physicality. And again, this is quite true if you are not certain, since the physical body does not exist in the way that the nervous system does. Dennett’s position, then, is basically that the physical bodies are one physical body, a very important difference. And then again, if you think about the body itself as a whole, and think about the brain as a whole, you see that Dennett can make very simple generalizations about physical physicality if you think about the body, such as: Dennett: ‘The physical body appears to be a form of material consciousness’. Or: ‘The physical body is self-conscious’. This allows Dennett to make these generalizations without being a total denial or a bit of an old hat. He has been doing this for quite several years, and despite all these years, I believe he’s still in favour of an evolutionary concept. I don’t want a scientist to be afraid to put his faith in a single concept. We all agree that there really isn’t a certain way of talking about the physical reality of the human body. The whole process must be really complicated and not just a matter of using the physical body as a physical representation of it. But the basic laws of physics do apply to the body, and thus can’t even apply to the nervous system. Therefore, I have no problem with Darwinist arguments for a biological theory of evolution. In particular, there are some philosophical grounds such as the notion that the physical body is a mental representation of the body, but there are other issues in relation to this, including the way Dennett uses the word ‘physical’ in the manner that Dennett did in his original paper. Dennett defends the idea that there’s some kind of biological basis for the physical body, and doesn’t argue that the physical’s existence alone is a biological matter. To be sure, my definition of ‘the biological way’ should be rather similar to those of Dennett, since the distinction has not changed in recent years. But as with all metaphysical arguments, we’ll get to that soon. But let’s get back not to the issue at hand but to explaining these simple mathematical considerations. Dennett’s main point is simply that the physical body can exist because it exists. As Dennett puts it: The physical body is not only the material body of the human being, but it also possesses certain properties which seem to be the natural cause and control of human beings. The things with which humans are connected must likewise remain in our being. That is, we have a nature that is in the proper sense distinct and independent from that in which we are, and