Mind and Body Problems

The central question in its classic form, the philosophy of mind is the relationship or the relationship, between body and mind, between the brain and thought. The issue is far from resolved - and the debate is fierce. Theories abound as much as original. These debates are conducted rigorously, guided by a scrupulous concern for clarity, as is characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon philosophy as a whole. It uses the philosophy of language, logic, and various cognitive and neurobiological sciences. The vocabulary is precise and wants a theory is refuted or confirmed on the basis of its arguments. The argument is its main feature.

The conventional solution, proposed by Rene Descartes (1596-1650), is to design the body as a machine purely physical and the soul as an immaterial entity, therefore, radically different from the machine body, but acting on it. This design has been called the "dualism". But this conception of mind-body connection is a sensitive issue and for some, it is inevitable: how to design so that different entities coexist in the physical world and interact with each other? How radically different entities - the soul or spirit, on the one hand, and the body of another - they can interact causally with each other?

Traditionally, there are two schools of thought in philosophy of mind: The current dualistic and the current tier. The dualistic, with Descartes at their head, defending the idea that there are two ultimate substances in the world in which all phenomena are reducible: matter and spirit. Inside the dualism, there are actually two types of dualism: of the substance dualism - that we just described - and the dualism of attributes or properties. This type of dualism says that besides the physical properties or assets that have the human body, there are others of a different species and original belonging to the brain and central nervous system, and found perhaps in other animal species evolved (Stanton, 1983, pp.72-9).

The other current monism for its part says that all phenomena consist of a single substance the same everywhere (tier of Greek monos, one). The monist can be divided into three positions. First, there are those who believe that the only thing or substance which exists is spirit, for them everything is ultimately mental or spiritual in nature. This is the current philosophy known under the name of "idealism." The English philosopher George Berkeley (1685-1753) and ...