Assignment

Mind-Body Problem: Dualism & Monism

Submitted to:
Rashida A. Khanum
Lecturer in Philosophy
North South University
Submitted by:
Mostofa Ferdous
ID- 111 0970 030
PHI 101 Sec- 4

Mind-Body Problem: Dualism & Monism

Philosophy is very interesting, because whenever you try to answer one question, several new questions
occur concerning the same issue. We usually view the mind as the brain and body as something physical,
but in philosophy this issue isnt as simple as it sounds. The Mind-body problem arises from the concept
of mind being different than matter. However, from this concept arise a few questions. If mind is different
than matter, then what is the nature of it, and how do mind and matter affect each other? Another
important question is that is mind part of the reality? If mind is a part of reality and its different than
matter, then what is reality? These are the questions which intrigued philosophers such as Plato and Ren
Descartes to think about them, and although they have their own beliefs and reasons to defend them, there
are still arguments over them. The discussion over the relationship between mind and body is divided into
two extensive categories: dualism and monism.
Dualism is the view that there are, indeed, at least two kinds of realities: the physicalcharacterized by
measurable properties such as weight, location, size, and color; and the mentalcharacterized by
nonphysical and immeasurable qualities such as immateriality. Dualism is a very old tradition, having
many proponents. Some scholars claim that Plato (428348 B.C.E.) was the first to make a sharp
distinction between the mind and body. For Plato, the relationship between the mind and body is not an
ideal onein fact, the body can be seen as the "prisoner" of the mind or soul, which is the true person. In
death, the mind and soul are separated. The body decomposes into its original elements, but the mind or
soul cannot decompose because it is not a composed material substance. Therefore, the mind or soul
cannot die. In Plato's works one sees the direct result of dualism with regard to the question of death: It
provides hope for survival of the person after the death of the body.
The first philosopher to discuss this matter was Pythagoras (6th century B.C.E.). Pythagoras believed in
the transmigration of the soulthe view that the soul is immortal and is bound up with the divine soul, to
which it may return when "purified" after its separation from its temporary physical house (the body).

Presumably there are any number of transmigrations of the same soul, as taught in the doctrine of
reincarnation in religions like Hinduism.
Although Plato defended the issue. The Platonic dualism had great influence on Christian thinking,
though it could not be made perfectly consistent with scriptural views since Plato shared the Pythagorean
belief in transmigration of the soul. The greatest of the early Medieval thinkers was Augustine (354430)
who held,
Man is not a body alone, nor a soul alone, but a being composed of both . . . the soul is not the whole man
but the better part of man; the body is not ethe whole but the inferior part of man . . . and when both are
joined they received the name of man. (Dods 1872, p. 24)
In modern philosophy it is Ren Descartes (15961650) who is most associated with dualism. Descartes's
philosophy radically separates the mental and the physical, by claiming that they are, indeed, two very
different kinds of substances. In his Meditations, he writes:
There is a great difference between the mind and the body, inasmuch as the body is by its very nature
always divisible, while the mind is utterly indivisible. For when I consider the mind, or myself in so far as
I am a thinking thing, I am unable to distinguish any parts within myself. . . . By contrast, there is no
corporeal or extended thing that I cannot think of which in my thought I cannot easily divide into parts;
and this very fact makes me understand that it is divisible. This one argument would be enough to show
me that the mind is completely different from the body, even if I did not already know as much from other
considerations (Cottingham 1966, p. 9)
Those who deny that mind and body are two different and distinct realities, are called monists. Monism
holds that there is only one ultimate reality, and that mind and body are essentially reducible to it. The
oldest tradition within this view is known as materialism, which states that the ultimate reality is physical
matter, and all that is or ever was arises out of and is ultimately reducible to matter. According to
Leucippus (c. fifth century B.C.E.) and Democritus (c. 460360 B.C.E.), all things are composed of
indivisible particles of matter (atomoi). The human soul, too, is composed of "soul-atoms" which may be

different from others in being smooth and spherical, but they are atoms nonetheless. The most important
materialist in the modern period is the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (15881679), who was
greatly impressed by the progress during his day within science and mathematics. Galileo and Johannes
Kepler, in particular, had shown the importance of using mathematics with careful observation of moving
bodies in space. True knowledge, Hobbes felt, seeks to observe and understand true reality, which for
him, is made up simply of "bodies in motion." For Hobbes, all reality and substance is corporeal or
material. He firmly believed that someday science would be able to offer a full account of all reality based
on a materialistic model, without recourse to a transcendent, incorporeal God. Nearly two centuries after
Hobbes's death, Charles Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) and Thomas Henry Huxley's Man's Place in
Nature (1863) provided scientific support for just such a materialistic explanation for the origins and
development of life, without resort to any outside immaterial agency or deity.
The mind-body issue has crucial impact on questions concerning death. In the end, the materialist's
position is that a person is identical with his or her body; or that the "mind" is identical with the brain and
its functioning. When the body/brain dies, therefore, there is no continuation of the person; there is no
hope for an afterlife. The dualist position does not identify the person with his or her body/brain.
Therefore dualism leaves open the door for belief in an afterlife. For most, this is primarily a religious
question that cannot be resolved by philosophy or science.
According to death researchers like R. S. Morison, the human being does not die as a unit. According to
this view, life in any organism has no real sharp beginning and end points. Defining death is all the more
difficult with a complex organism such as a human being. The dualist would seem supportive of this
recognition that mental death (or the death of the person) may occur before and apart from physical death,
because it does not identify the person with brain functioning. The mind-body debate, therefore, has
relevance for a number of issues concerning death, such as religious concerns about an afterlife and moral
issues such as euthanasia.
When It Comes To The Mind, There Is No Simple Answer! There's no easy way to say that any one
viewpoint on the mind-body problem is "correct" or "incorrect," and everyone has to make their

own judgment after analysing and weighing all the arguments for and against each theory.
Hopefully, this discussion has been helpful in giving you and introduction to the mind-body
problem and some of the key viewpoints held by modern and classical philosophers.

Bibliography
Augustine. The City of God, translated by M. Dods. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1872
Descartes, Ren. Meditations on First Philosophy, revised, edited, and translated by John Cottingham.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966.
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. New York: Dutton Press, 1950.
Morison, R. S. "Death: Process or Event?" In P. Steinfels and R. M. Veatch eds., Death Inside Out: The
Hastings Center Report. New York: Harper and Row, 1974.
Plato. Phaedo. In Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns eds., The Collected Dialogues of Plato.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961.
Plagiarism. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved March 14, 2015, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MInd-Body_problem