Ethics Finder

Mind-Body Problem

Human beings are material entities but they are also persons, that is subjects of consciousness, experience, perception and agency. As physical beings they are causally responsible for effects in the world, as rational agents they are morally responsible for what they do and fail to do. What, then, is the relationship between their physical and their personal natures? This is an ancient question and a difficult one to resolve, hence the ‘mind / body problem’. Broadly there are three kinds of answer: 1) material identity: the mind is part of the body, the best candidate being the brain and central nervous system; 2) dualist non-identity: mind and body are distinct entities forming some sort of temporary union, so in reality a human person is a body + a mind or soul; 3) dependency: the mind stands in some other relation to the body, not the same as part of it nor altogether distinct but a non-material aspect of it. There are arguments for and against these three positions. Contra 1) persons are a) subjects but their bodies and body parts are all b) objects, so they cannot be the same kind of thing. Against 2) what sense can be made of immaterial minds? and how do they inhabit and interact with ‘their’ bodies? Contra 3) what other relation is there than identity or non-identity? and how can there be ‘aspects’ of bodies other than physical ones? The problem goes back to the beginnings of Western philosophy and is also to be found in Eastern and other ancient traditions. Most of the great premodern, and modern philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke etc. have had views on it, and it remains a major topic in contemporary philosophy. Early Christians inherited Jewish views which tended to identify the person with the living human body, but through the incorporation of Greek philosophical ideas the early Church Fathers of East and West tended towards dualism. With Aquinas’s appropriation in the 13th century of Aristotelianism, versions of 3) were developed which had influence in Catholic teachings on the person. Today, however, most Christians tend to some version of 2) i.e. dualism, linking this with belief in continuing personal life after the death of the body.

Related Topics