On September 13, 1848, in an accident, an iron rod penetrated the skull of a man named Fenius Gage. Phoenix's life did not end, but there was a big difference between his personality before and after the accident. After this injury, he turned into a hardworking and cheerful person, a tough temper and a workaholic. The change of mind changed the personality.
The accident provided significant material for researchers in psychology and neurology, as well as for philosophers. It gives us clear evidence that our personality has a direct physical basis. And that raises a question. Where does our mind live?
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It is no surprise to any scientist today that Phoenix's injury changed his personality so much. The dominant view in current philosophy of science is reductive physicalism. According to this view, everything, including us, is made up of only physical objects. According to this logic, everything found in you and me can be explained by our body. Through the brain, hormones, neurotransmitters. So if Phenius's personality can be described as a brain, then obviously a big change in mind would mean a big change in personality.
And this is a very important insight. For this reason, medications prescribed by psychologists relieve patients from problems such as depression or anxiety. Changing the chemistry of the brain also changes the patient's mood.
Physicalism is the default position of science because it has been a very useful assumption.
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Descartes said he could suspect the presence of anything, including his own body. But not in the presence of your mind. The fact that one can be suspected but not the other tells them that they are definitely made up of two different things. This view is called substance dualism. According to this, the world is made up of physical objects and mental objects. According to this school of thought, the mind is non-physical and separate which cannot be reduced. And it can't be explained in terms of matter like the brain.
In Descartes' view, some things (like God) are completely mind and some things (like stone) are completely matter. But in the same being, man has both mind and body. And they have an interaction with each other. This is called interactionism. According to this theory, mind and body are not independent of each other and they affect each other.
When you are making up your mind to do something, you have the power to force your body to move for it. Get out of bed, change clothes and take a shower and have breakfast.
And your mental state has the potential to affect your physical state (without your consent). For example, people get sick in grief or stress.
And so, on the other hand, the body has an effect on the mind. I am so hungry that I can't concentrate in class. Or seeing a cute little cat makes the mood pleasant.
Interactionists say that what is happening at the moment is that two separate objects, the mind and the body, are interacting with each other. But this view raises a mystery. How a mental object can affect a physical object. This mystery is called Mind Body Problem.
After all, how can there be a different thing in my body, which is the mind and can control it or can be controlled by it. And how my mind is finally connected to my body. And why doesn't my mind run away? Or why don't you dive into other bodies out of curiosity to see what's out there?
Descartes' response was unsatisfactory. He said that the mind is connected with the body by the pineal gland (which is found in the lower part of the brain). But it does not answer the riddle and only pushes the question further back because the pineal gland is a part of the physical body.
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The modern philosophers of mind do not see any solution to the mind body problem. Many reject dualism and are satisfied with physicalism, while many are convinced that there are many parts of human experience that cannot be answered by the brain. An experiment in thinking that Frank Jackson suggests.
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I have a woman who has spent her whole life in a room that is only white and black. It has only black and white TV. After training in this room, I have become a neurophysiologist and her specialty is the science of colors. She knows everything about light, optics and the physics of colors. Also how they affect our sensory organs but they themselves have never seen color.
Now the question is, when she comes out of my room and sees color for the first time in her life, is there anything she learned for the first time in her life?
Jackson's argument is against reductive physicalism. According to him, the experience of seeing red is a completely different matter and knowing every detail about red is a completely different matter. If everything could be physically explained, if Marie had seen the new color, it would not have added to their understanding. This experience did not tell them anything new that they did not already know.
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What is not found in the interpretation of physicalism is koalaya. It is a thematic experience of something that one can do on one's own. For example, how did you feel when your foot hurt or when you chewed the first bite of pratha? Or what it was like to be hurt when it became clear that someone close to you was cheating.
It was such an experience when Marie stepped out of the room and saw the color for the first time.
If you are a physicist, the answer is that Jackson's thought experiment is a hoax. She has already assumed that she will learn something new when she goes out. If physicalism is correct and it really knows every physical thing about color, then seeing color for the first time will not increase its understanding in any way.
Physical East will also say that their case is moving forward. And the more we get to know the physical processes, the more we get answers, but any such answer is unsatisfactory. "The day will come when my answer will be right." We are careful not to give such an answer and accept it. In the absence of an answer, the promise of the future may be speculative, but it cannot be accepted as an answer.
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It's not that there are only two camps about it. Marie has a lot of good arguments, including this experience, which is why many thinkers are associated with dualism, although they do not have a solution to the riddle. One of them is epiphenomenalism. From this point of view, the mental state emerges from the physical state, but the mental state cannot affect the physical state. That is, your beliefs, desires and moods exist but they cannot affect your physical condition. This approach also has many problems.
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Then Colin McGunn offers another point of view, which is mysteriousism. According to him, the question of human consciousness is unsolvable for human consciousness. Not because we are less intelligent. If we are given a problem, we have the ability to solve it, but this is a special problem of a different nature. This is because we have separate parts of the brain. We understand our mental issues by looking inside ourselves. (Why am I upset? How can I regain my courage?). It is personal and thematic. While we understand our body and mind objectively. (What is my blood pressure? What is my hormone level?) And these two different ways of understanding cannot be reconciled.
No matter how deeply we think, we cannot claim to understand anything new about the firing of neurons. This requires empirical research. And no matter how deeply imperial research we do, we can't figure out what this color would look like in someone else's eyes.
Our brains do not have the ability to combine these two different types of evidence.
The mind body problem is centuries old and has not been solved. Nor has physicalism been proven. Because for both of these things the brain needs to do what it can't.
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Where does our mind live? In practice, this question does not bother us because we see it from two different perspectives. And we answer it according to this context. (Frank Wilchak calls it the principle of complementarity).
For example, when we talk about neuroscience, the mind is the result of the physical processes of our brain and the firing of neurons. But when we are talking about personal responsibility, it is a separate entity from itself. Both of these points of view are correct, but we cannot look at them both ways at the same time.
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