A report on Consciousness and Mind–body dualism

Representation of consciousness from the seventeenth century by Robert Fludd, an English Paracelsian physician
René Descartes's illustration of dualism. Inputs are passed on by the sensory organs to the epiphysis in the brain and from there to the immaterial spirit.
John Locke, British Enlightenment philosopher from the 17th century
Four varieties of dualist causal interaction. The arrows indicate the direction of causations. Mental and physical states are shown in red and blue, respectively.
Illustration of dualism by René Descartes. Inputs are passed by the sensory organs to the pineal gland and from there to the immaterial spirit.
Another one of Descartes' illustrations. The fire displaces the skin, which pulls a tiny thread, which opens a pore in the ventricle (F) allowing the "animal spirit" to flow through a hollow tube, which inflates the muscle of the leg, causing the foot to withdraw.
Thomas Nagel argues that while a human might be able to imagine what it is like to be a bat by taking "the bat's point of view", it would still be impossible "to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat." (Townsend's big-eared bat pictured).
Cartesian dualism compared to three forms of monism.
John Searle in December 2005
The Necker cube, an ambiguous image
A Buddhist monk meditating
Neon color spreading effect. The apparent bluish tinge of the white areas inside the circle is an illusion.
Square version of the neon spread illusion

Descartes clearly identified the mind with consciousness and self-awareness and distinguished this from the brain as the seat of intelligence.

- Mind–body dualism

Gilbert Ryle, for example, argued that traditional understanding of consciousness depends on a Cartesian dualist outlook that improperly distinguishes between mind and body, or between mind and world.

- Consciousness
Representation of consciousness from the seventeenth century by Robert Fludd, an English Paracelsian physician

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A phrenological mapping of the brain – phrenology was among the first attempts to correlate mental functions with specific parts of the brain although it is now widely discredited.

Philosophy of mind

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Branch of philosophy that studies the ontology and nature of the mind and its relationship with the body.

Branch of philosophy that studies the ontology and nature of the mind and its relationship with the body.

A phrenological mapping of the brain – phrenology was among the first attempts to correlate mental functions with specific parts of the brain although it is now widely discredited.
René Descartes' illustration of mind/body dualism.
Portrait of René Descartes by Frans Hals (1648)
Four varieties of dualism. The arrows indicate the direction of the causal interactions. Occasionalism is not shown.
The classic Identity theory and Anomalous Monism in contrast. For the Identity theory, every token instantiation of a single mental type corresponds (as indicated by the arrows) to a physical token of a single physical type. For anomalous monism, the token–token correspondences can fall outside of the type–type correspondences. The result is token identity.
John Searle—one of the most influential philosophers of mind, proponent of biological naturalism (Berkeley 2002)
Since the 1980s, sophisticated neuroimaging procedures, such as fMRI (above), have furnished increasing knowledge about the workings of the human brain, shedding light on ancient philosophical problems.

Aspects of the mind that are studied include mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and its neural correlates, the ontology of the mind, the nature of cognition and of thought, and the relationship of the mind to the body.

Dualism and monism are the two central schools of thought on the mind–body problem, although nuanced views have arisen that do not fit one or the other category neatly.

A phrenological mapping of the brain. Phrenology was among the first attempts to correlate mental functions with specific parts of the brain

Mind

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Set of faculties responsible for mental phenomena.

Set of faculties responsible for mental phenomena.

A phrenological mapping of the brain. Phrenology was among the first attempts to correlate mental functions with specific parts of the brain
René Descartes' illustration of mind–body dualism. Descartes believed inputs are passed on by the Sensory organs to the epiphysis in the brain and from there to the immaterial spirit.
Simplified diagram of Spaun, a 2.5-million-neuron computational model of the brain. (A) The corresponding physical regions and connections of the human brain. (B) The mental architecture of Spaun.
Computer simulation of the branching architecture of the dendrites of pyramidal neurons.

Traditional viewpoints included dualism and idealism, which consider the mind to be non-physical.

One problem for all epistemic approaches to the mark of the mental is that they focus mainly on conscious states but exclude unconscious states.

The "redness" of red is a commonly used example of a quale.

Qualia

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The "redness" of red is a commonly used example of a quale.
Inverted qualia
Daniel Dennett
Marvin Minsky
Michael Tye
David Chalmers
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

In philosophy of mind, qualia ( or ; singular form: quale) are defined as individual instances of subjective, conscious experience.

Jackson does not give a positive justification for this claim – rather, he seems to assert it simply because it defends qualia against the classic problem of dualism.

The circled dot was used by the Pythagoreans and later Greeks to represent the first metaphysical being, the Monad or The Absolute

Monism

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Distinct from them; e.g., in Neoplatonism everything is derived from The One. In this view only the One is ontologically basic or prior to everything else.

Distinct from them; e.g., in Neoplatonism everything is derived from The One. In this view only the One is ontologically basic or prior to everything else.

The circled dot was used by the Pythagoreans and later Greeks to represent the first metaphysical being, the Monad or The Absolute
A diagram with neutral monism compared to Cartesian dualism, physicalism and idealism.
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The mind–body problem in philosophy examines the relationship between mind and matter, and in particular the relationship between consciousness and the brain.

The problem was addressed by René Descartes in the 17th century, resulting in Cartesian dualism, and by pre-Aristotelian philosophers, in Avicennian philosophy, and in earlier Asian and more specifically Indian traditions.

Property dualism: the exemplification of two kinds of property by one kind of substance

Property dualism

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Composed of just one kind of substance—the physical kind—there exist two distinct kinds of properties: physical properties and mental properties.

Composed of just one kind of substance—the physical kind—there exist two distinct kinds of properties: physical properties and mental properties.

Property dualism: the exemplification of two kinds of property by one kind of substance
Biological Naturalism states that consciousness is a higher level function of the human brain's physical capabilities.
Huxley explained mental properties as like the steam on a locomotive

Substance dualism, on the other hand, is the view that there exist in the universe two fundamentally different kinds of substance: physical (matter) and non-physical (mind or consciousness), and subsequently also two kinds of properties which inhere in those respective substances.

Philosophical zombie

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A philosophical zombie or p-zombie argument is a thought experiment in philosophy of mind that imagines a hypothetical being that is physically identical to and indistinguishable from a normal person but does not have conscious experience, qualia, or sentience.

Philosophical zombie arguments are used in support of mind-body dualism against forms of physicalism such as materialism, behaviorism and functionalism.

Nagel in 1978

Thomas Nagel

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American philosopher.

American philosopher.

Nagel in 1978
Nagel in 2008, teaching ethics

He continued the critique of reductionism in Mind and Cosmos (2012), in which he argues against the neo-Darwinian view of the emergence of consciousness.

On that understanding, Nagel is a conventional dualist about the physical and the mental.

Mental event

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A mental event is any event that happens within the mind of a conscious individual.

An opposing view is substance dualism, which claims that the mental and physical are fundamentally different and can exist independently.

The souls of Pe and Nekhen towing the royal barge on a relief of Ramesses II's temple in Abydos.

Soul

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Belief that a soul is "the immaterial aspect or essence of a human being".

Belief that a soul is "the immaterial aspect or essence of a human being".

The souls of Pe and Nekhen towing the royal barge on a relief of Ramesses II's temple in Abydos.
Depiction of a soul being carried to heaven by two angels by William Bouguereau
The Damned Soul. Drawing by Michelangelo Buonarroti c. 1525
Depiction of the soul on a 17th century tombstone at the cemetery of the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow
The Neolithic Manunggul burial jar from the Tabon Caves, Palawan, Philippines, depicts a soul and a psychopomp journeying to the spirit world in a boat (c. 890–710 BCE)
Charon (Greek) who guides dead souls to the Underworld. 4th century BCE.
Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), a detail of The School of Athens, a fresco by Raphael.
The structure of the souls of plants, animals, and humans, according to Aristotle, with Bios, Zoê, and Psūchê

There have been differing thoughts regarding whether human embryos have souls from conception, or whether there is a point between conception and birth where the fetus acquires a soul, consciousness, and/or personhood.

Gilbert Ryle's ghost in the machine argument, which is a rejection of Descartes's mind–body dualism, can provide a contemporary understanding of the soul/mind, and the problem concerning its connection to the brain/body.

Portrait after Frans Hals

René Descartes

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French philosopher, mathematician, scientist and lay Catholic who invented analytic geometry, linking the previously separate fields of geometry and algebra.

French philosopher, mathematician, scientist and lay Catholic who invented analytic geometry, linking the previously separate fields of geometry and algebra.

Portrait after Frans Hals
The house where Descartes was born in La Haye en Touraine
Graduation registry for Descartes at the University of Poitiers, 1616
In Amsterdam, Descartes lived at Westermarkt 6 (Maison Descartes, left).
René Descartes at work
L'homme (1664)
Cover of Meditations
A Cartesian coordinates graph, using his invented x and y axes
Handwritten letter by Descartes, December 1638
Principia philosophiae, 1644

Thinking is thus every activity of a person of which the person is immediately conscious.

His main influences for dualism were theology and physics.