Cartesian Dualism
Descartes believed that the mind was separate from the body. He believed that the mind was non-physical, as opposed to the body, which was indeed physical. He also believed that the connection between the mind and the body was through the pineal gland. To quickly summarize, Descartes couldn’t have been further from the truth.
The mind does indeed reside in the body. The mind is inside the brain. Descartes would not doubt say that, oh if the mind is in the brain, and you think about a tree, why is it if you were to open up a person’s skull and look at their brain, there would be no tree? While this claim is completely moronic, I cannot entirely fault Descartes here because during his time in the 17th century, they knew very little about neurology. Nevertheless, it is still an absurd statement to make.
The evidence supports that the mind does in fact reside within the brain. Diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer’s that have an effect upon the brains’ functioning. This also effects a persons ability to think, remember, reason, and many other things we associate with the mind. Another example is if a person is involved in an accident and suffers brain damage and either becomes a vegetable, brain dead, or some other medical term that describes brain functioning or lack of it. By Descartes argument, because the mind is separate from the brain, this should have no effect on a person, aside from their intelligence. This person should still be conscious and aware of their surroundings, react to stimuli, etc. However, they don’t. One final example is when you are sick. Say you have a cold. Your congested, sneeze, coughing, all that fun stuff. You ever notice you feel like absolute shit and have trouble concentrating on things and focusing on the topic at hand? Yes well if the mind was indeed separate from the body, being sick would have no effect on the mind. A persons thinking would be clear, they would have no trouble concentrating, etc.
If I have yet to prove Descartes didn’t know where the mind was any better than Bush knows where Osama is, let me leave you with these few thoughts. The first of which is, Descartes believed that the Pineal gland is what connected the physical body with the non-physical mind. We know today that pineal glad is apart of the endocrine system and creates a hormone called melatonin, which affects a person’s circadian rhythm. The last thing I would like to talk about is LSD. We known (some have only learned, others experienced) that LSD is a hallucinogen that effects serotonin and dopamine receptors in the brain, along with many other things I don’t quite understand. My point is again that if the mind were separate from the brain, none of the hallucinations would occur from ingesting LSD. Maybe if Descartes had experimented with a recreational drug like LSD, he would have realized that the mind and body are indeed not separate.
23 Responses to 'Cartesian Dualism'
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Why should we assign the mind to just the brain? Why is it that humans have assigned love and those feelings to the heart? It seems like those feelings come from somewhere inside, not in the brain. I know that I’m not the first one to think that, because there are common sayings or beliefs that parts of the mind (like love) come from inside your heart. Also, another saying we have is “go with your gut” or something to that affect. This saying also implies that parts of the mind don’t reside in the brain.
Brad Thompson
6 Oct 08 at 2:52 pm
The brain is a physical object for processing stimuli from the sensory organs. That doesn’t mean that’s where the mind is. The mind is an abstract entity. If someone is in a coma we don’t really have concrete proof that their mind is not functioning. Their brain might appear to be “dead”, but they might still be having thoughts. So if the brain is really destroyed and the mind is in the brain then how would this work? There obviously has to be a connection between the mind and body, but I don’t understand how this proves that the mind is in the brain. Why do we have to make the mind into something concrete?
Dan Pierson
6 Oct 08 at 11:02 pm
Maybe I should have said the mind is in the central nervous system. Afterall, incases in which you touch something buring hot and when the sensory impulse reaches the spine, the hand is retracted before it even gets to the brain. However, I wont budge more than that. Assigning feelings to the heart has no scientific basis to it. It either has something to do with society or literature or who knows. And no feelings come from interactions from stimuli and the nervous system. Yes there are sayings like love comes from inside the heart, but it is just a saying. Love doesn’t actually come from the heart. The only thing that enters and leaves the heart is blood. And going with your gut tends to imply not thinking something through, however there is still thinking involved.
Jason Blumstein
7 Oct 08 at 2:40 am
Ok Dan, so are you saying if someones brain was removed, that person would still pocess a mind? Someone in a coma, no there is no proof of that. Well it actually depends. People can be in comas and not be in a vegetative state. Even if someone is in a vegetative state, there is some level of brain function. Though when they reach brain death, there is no going back. They are gone. No ifs ands or buts. They no longer have conscious activity.
I meant to include this in my post but forgot all about it. In the movie form of Once Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, after the character McMurphy underwent a lobotomy operation, he isn’t the same. The once reckless quick talking character is reduced to a vegetitive like state. That is why the character Chief decides to kill him. He knew that he wasn’t McMurphy anymore. While his mind wasn’t completely gone persay, his personality, the thing that made him who he really was, was gone. All because he had a piece of his brain removed. Are their any other objections to the mind being in the brain?
Jason Blumstein
7 Oct 08 at 2:57 am
@Brad:
Those are just idioms, and the people that still assign love to the heart need to pull their head out of their ass as to sever the cycle of thought diarrhea and enter the world of modern science. Some associate love with the heart because of the effect the feeling has on your heart, which causes it to beat rather abnormally. This effect is derived from the brain… along with just about everything else.
P.S. I would define the mind as the byproduct of neuron firings, which in turn create images, effect certain parts of the brain, which in turn effect certain parts of our body, etc.
P.P.S. Sorry if I came off ass a douche.
Roy Bell
7 Oct 08 at 9:26 pm
“This effect is derived from the brain… along with just about everything else.” that is irregular; not suggesting complete control. (involuntary systems>brain)
Roy Bell
7 Oct 08 at 9:30 pm
Dan, if you’re not assuming a brain-dead person is a mind-dead person, you might as well assume a dead person is still mentally alive. It’s not falsifiable, but there is also no evidence supporting it.
I’m going to agree with just about everyone that the feelings “from your heart” are actually from your hormones, which are still in your brain.
And Roy, at first glace, it looked to me like you wrote “Sorry if I came off as an ass douche.” Ass douche. bahahaha. Sorry for getting off topic, but that gave me a good laugh.
Katherine Anderson
8 Oct 08 at 2:17 am
haha, ass douche… maybe I should have incorporated that into my first comment.
Roy Bell
8 Oct 08 at 10:02 am
If we can’t be sure of other’s thoughts then how can we say that’s someone’s mind ceases to function when their body is damaged. We have no proof. The only way to really know is to be brain dead ourselves. At that point we will not be able to express if we still have clear thoughts as if nothing happened to the body. This is another intangible argument about souls and minds. If the mind doesn’t exist in the physical body then maybe our minds can exist after the body is dead. For all we know our mind might be hovering a few feet above our head all the time.
Dan Pierson
8 Oct 08 at 6:36 pm
I completely agree that we can’t be certain about the relationship between the mind and body right now, particularly after death, but we can look at brain damage patients. If you have damage to Broca’s area of your prefrontal cortex, you’re not going to be able to come up with certain words and you’ll generally have trouble with language. If you have damage to the left side of your parietal lobe, you’ll probably have difficulty with math. Damage to the right can cause a lack of attention to the left half of your body (some patients shave only half of their faces and don’t understand what they did wrong). Phineas Gage was described as a “different person” after his brain damage. All of these things suggest to us that it really is your brain that makes you yourself.
Katherine Anderson
8 Oct 08 at 8:42 pm
I’m not completely sold on the once brain dead, the mind is gone kind of thing. There have been cases where people have technically died no pulse, brainwaves gone, d-e-a-d dead. The doctors then revive them with defibrillators. When this happens, its been recorded tons of times that people have “seen the light” or felt warmth, or have seen their dead relatives, or angels or whatever. I think this puts some damper on the argument that once you go brain dead your mind is gone forever as well. Who knows, maybe that is the “soul” it’s your mind, it’s what has been you all along. Just because we can’t see it doesn’t make it any less real. Perhaps thats why we’re scared to allow the idea, because we have no way of testing the mind, or the soul.
Austin Maske
9 Oct 08 at 9:03 am
Isn’t an ass douche just called an enema?
Also, if your heart is actually not moving, a defibrillator won’t bring you back. A defbrillator will only make your heart start twitching in the proper rhythm to pump blood after the brain sends it wacky signals that make the natural pacemaker go haywire.
It’s true that this argument about a mind or a soul or whatever is intangible, but what if we start counting for more dimensions? I know that mathematicians and physicists deal in as many as 9 dimensions with theory and calculations. Perhaps one of the higher dimensions actually contains an observable or somehow tangible mind that is linked to our corporeal bodies in these lowly three dimensions!
Joel Ferm
9 Oct 08 at 11:39 am
@Austin
Near death experiences don’t tell us much. For one, there isn’t consistency in the reports. In Western culture, lots of people see the light, see God, etc. But taking into account the rest of the world, you get just as many reports of seeing Buddha, Yamatoot,and many (especially non-western cultures) report more of an emphasis on landscapes rather than meeting a higher power or family. Expectations play a huge role (if not the ONLY role) in the composition of a near death experience.
Near death experiences are, most likely, the result of a dying brain going bananas. Endorphins released can explain the feelings of peace people get, and experts attribute the ringing/noise to the brain starving for oxygen. Death is permanent, so you can’t return from it. Not to mention, near death experiences can be triggered in situations where there is no actual risk of death (drugs, electrical stimulation, even fighter pilot training).
Spark notes version: I don’t believe in near death experiences. (I don’t think)
@Joel
Thinking about other dimensions gets me excited. We can’t KNOW anything from considering the possibility, though.
Katherine Anderson
9 Oct 08 at 4:01 pm
I don’t think it’s right to say that the mind is literally within the brain. I suppose we would have to definte ‘mind’ though, wouldn’t we? I see it (as I think most do) as your thoughts, the images and abstracts things that are in your “mind’s eye.” I would sort of agree on the Cartesian Dualism thing in that I believe the brain is just the processor of sensory input and electrical impulses which can effect our thoughts. In your LSD example, the LSD is causing sensory input to be muddled because it is a hallucinogen, causing your mind to work differently. I see it as a sort of sequence in which your brain processes first, then your mind does. I suppose that doesn’t prove anything about the mind being apart from the brain though…
Regardless, I don’t think that One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest proves anything about a literally physical connection between mind and brain. It could just as well be the case that removing a piece of his brain has caused certain sensory input difference, amongst other things that would, in turn, cause a change in mind/personality, because that abstract mind no longer has the same resources presented to it by the brain.
Gautam Srikishan
9 Oct 08 at 4:06 pm
Gautam, when people had pieces of their brain removed, they just didn’t have minor character differences, they became completely different people. However, for the hell of it, I will go along with this idea that the brain only interprets sensory information. Although, I should point out that there of course there isn’t a physical connection to the mind and the brain. The mind, whether it is the brain or seperate, is not physical. That’s another thing, how exactly would the mind and brain be connected then? Nevertheless, the point I was going to make was, what about diseases like Alzheimer’s that effects the brain, as well as memory and higher order mental functioning? If it effects only the brain, why is the mind then effected? Maybe because they are the same?
Jason Blumstein
9 Oct 08 at 9:20 pm
It affects the brain and hence the mind because they are the same! Jason, in your last comment, you just seem to be agreeing with yourself a lot, which I fully support, I was just thrown off at first because of the questioning manner. I fully support “going along with the idea of” the brain only interpreting sensory information. That’s what it does! Your mind is just the resultant processing of sensory data! Alter the brain, you alter the fundamental way your hardware works, and therefore your mind is changed too.
Joel Ferm
9 Oct 08 at 9:31 pm
So your saying the mind and brain are one then?
Jason Blumstein
9 Oct 08 at 9:36 pm
If the mind and brain are one, whats the point of anything? The ability to imagine and remove ones self from the here and now is one ability that humans are able to do. What about out of body experiences when people see themselves on the surgery table, or see the doctor bring them back to life in the ER. I don’t see how somone could begin to think that once the brain is gone the mind ceases to exist.
Austin Maske
9 Oct 08 at 11:34 pm
What’s the point of anything? You make it sound like you have lost the point to live. So the mind and brain are one. What does it matter? This mean we can’t do crazy things that might damage out brains, which would then effect our minds? People see themselves on the surgery table huh? Forgive my cynical skepticism. I think the mind can make a person believe what they wish. And I don’t see how one could begin to think that once the brain is gone the mind could still exist. I mean seriously, take out a piece of the brain, mind is effected. Brain has a disease, mind is effected. When someone has a tumor on their brain, they do happen to report problems related to their thinking and what not. I mean seriously, if the mind were indeed separate from the brain, nothing that effects the body should effect the mind! I mean, why would it!?
Jason Blumstein
9 Oct 08 at 11:44 pm
The evidence for people accurately seeing themselves on surgery tables is very very very flimsy, so it would be a mistake to take that as an existence proof for astral projection, or mind body dualism, or anything at all.
I think we’ve all pretty much agreed that the mind and the brain have to be connected somehow, because damage to the brain undeniably influences the mind. Jason poses a great question, though, by saying, “how exactly would the mind and the brain be connected?”
I DON’T KNOW.
Somebody answer this. I mean, I don’t think you can, but I’d really like to know…
Katherine Anderson
10 Oct 08 at 12:02 am
Kat, I’ll make my answer to your question a bit clearer and more succinct. I’m sure not many people will agree with me on this, but the mind and the brain are connected by the fact that the mind is just the brain doing it’s thing. It isn’t really something in and of itself.
“Falling” is what happens when gravity works. “Mind” is what happens when the brain works.
Joel Ferm
10 Oct 08 at 12:51 am
I just put an apostrophe into a possessive “its.” I’m sorry. I’m usually good about things like that.
Joel Ferm
10 Oct 08 at 12:51 am
Ah. I get what you’re saying. I don’t know if I agree, but that makes sense.
Katherine Anderson
13 Oct 08 at 10:07 am