THE MIND – BODY RELATIONSHIP

Introduction

That there are two distinct kinds of events, the mental and the physical, is something
which has been generally accepted in the whole literature on the mind-body problem. We
can show that there is such a thing as the mental as opposed to the physical with the help
of an argument. John Hospers in his “An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis” has put
forward the following argument.

What happens when you hear a noise? (Unless you are just “hearing things”, in which
case the auditory sensation is generated from within the brain itself) Something first
happens outside your body. Sound waves, alternate condensations, and rarefactions of the
air cause air particles to strike repeatedly on your eardrum, so that it vibrates. The
eardrum is connected by three small bones to a membrane that covers one end of a spiral
tube in the inner ear. The vibration of your eardrum is transmitted through the chain of
three bones to the membrane at the end of the tube. The tube is filled with the liquid,
perilymph, so that the vibration in the membrane attached to these bones causes a
corresponding vibration to pass through this liquid. Inside the first tube is another one,
filled with the liquid called endolymph, vibrations in the perilymph causes vibrations in
the membranous wall of the inner tube and waves in the endolymph. The auditory nerve
is joined to the roots of these hairs. The vibration of the hairs causes impulses to pass up
the auditory nerve to a part of the brain called the auditory centre. Not until the auditory
centre is stimulated do you hear the sound.

So far all the events described have been physical; they have been minute changes going
on inside your head. They are extremely difficult to observe, even with cleverly devised
instruments, since people’s heads are not transparent and it is difficult to open a person’s
head while the person remains alive with his functioning as usual. Nevertheless many
such minute changes have been measured and observed. (Even if this were not so, it
would still be logically possible to observe them: the impossibility would be merely
technical).

The entire process just describes takes only a fraction of a second, but now, when the
auditory nerve has carried the stimulus to the appropriate portion of the brain, something
new and different occurs. You hear a sound, you have an auditory sensation. This is
“something new under the sun”. It is something quite different from anything that went
on earlier in this brief but complex process. The auditory sensation is a mental event, not
a physical event like the preceding ones. It is an awareness, a state of consciousness. The
same holds for visual sensation: kinesthetic sensations, smell sensations, taste, touch,
heat, cold, pain, and so on; and also for states of consciousness not directly associated
with the senses, such as thoughts, memories, images, emotions”.*
*(Hospers, John ‘An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis’ pp 378-79)

It is precisely because my sensation is exclusively my sensation and nobody else’s; a

purely physicalistic description of me experiencing a sensation is bound to be incomplete.
Hence it makes sense to postulate another kind of event, which is called mental event,
which is neither locatable in space nor extended in space.

Issues on the philosophy of mind have acquired a focus in terms of this problem of the
relationship between the mental and the physical. Traditionally various theories about the
relationship between mind and body have been proposed. What I intend to do in this short
dissertation is to expound the traditional views regarding mind-body relationship and also
try and critically assess them in a modest fashion; I shall conclude with what I consider a
plausible characterization of the mind-body relationship.

CHAPTER II

The Relationship between Mental and Physical

We had seen earlier that the existence of two distinct kinds of events, namely the mental
and the physical is beyond doubt (By way of the interpretation of the illustration provided
in the introduction). What sort of a relationship hold between the two realms has been
conceived in different ways, depending upon the kinds of substances, or the ontological
schema a thinker has put forward. For example, the Cartesian philosopher who postulated
two distinct kinds of substances viz. ‘mind’ and ‘body’ would argue for some kind of an
interactionist theory while explaining the relationship between the mental and physical.
Therefore, any proposal as to the relationship between the mental and the physical
depends on the kind of ontological entities postulated by the thinker. Without going into
deeper issues of ontology I shall in this chapter merely sketch the various traditional
theories regarding the relationship between the mental and the physical.

Interactionism:

The dictionary of philosophy defines ‘Interactionism’ as “a dualistic theory of the relation

between mind and body, according to which physical events can cause mental events and
vice versa”.*
*A Dictionary of Philosophy, - Edited by Flew, Antony. Published by Pan Books Ltd.

It is a simple common sense view, For example, one receives a blow on the head and
feels pain. The former is a physical event and has been the cause for the latter which is a
mental event. Every time a physical event or a physical stimulus causes something to
register in consciousness, it can be said that physical events cause mental events. An
example for the case of mental event causing a physical event is clear in a case where one
feels frightened and subsequently the heart beats faster: or when a decision is made
(mental event) and the decision is carried out (physical event). Every time an act of will
results in your doing what you willed to do, it is proof positive that mental events cause
physical events.

These above examples should suffice to show that mind and body interact. The most
systematic dualistic theory was presented by the French philosopher Rene Descartes.
Being confronted with the problem of interaction between mind and body, which are
completely different entities, mind which is extended ad spaceless and body which takes
up space and therefore extended, Descartes placed the nexus of these two substances in
the pineal gland, which is an appendage of the brain. Knowing that the brain had so much
to do with one’s mental life, he allowed for these two unrelated substances to overlap in
the pineal gland, which he identified as the principle seat of the soul.

Interactionism may be stated in the following four propositions:

i. The mind and body are two things, like a cooking stove and a kettle.
ii. Each is capable of existing without the other.
iii. But throughout life they interact on one another. In other words, certain states
of the one act on the other, so as to form the occasion of certain other states in
the other. This situation in the body occasions the boiling of the kettle and the
over boiling of the kettle occasions the rusting of the stove. A condition in
each case is the previous proximity of kettle and the stove.
iv. “Mind M owns Body B” means : between M and B there hold the particular
sort of intimate causal connexions indicated by certain correlations” *
*Wisdom, John. “Problems of Mind and Matter.” pp103-04. Cambridge University Press.

Psycho-Physical Parallelism:

“The view that mental (psychical) and bodily (physical) events occur in separate but
parallel sequences. Psychical events exist in a causal relationship with other psychical
events, and similarly physical events with other physical events, but the physical and the
mental do not interact one with the other.”*
*A Dictionary of Philosophy, Ed. Flew, Antony. Published by Pan Books Ltd. Pg. 273.

The main contention of the parallelists is that there is no causal relationship between
mind and matter. The physical events and mental events are two distinct sets of events
running along two parallel tracks. For every mental event there is also a corresponding
physical event in the brain. But the reverses need not be true, for physical events such as
digestion have no mental correlate at all. (Medical scientists have shown that stress and
depression can interfere with one’s natural digestion and cause ulcers) Even though the
proponents of parallelism refuse to allow any causal connection between events which
differ so radically in type, accept the concept of causality with regard to events of one
single type. For example, they allow that there is a causal connection between bodily
events where a cut in one’s hand produces the stimulation of nerves leading from the
hand to the brain. In this case the connection is entirely between two bodily events.
Similarly one mental event cause another mental event, where feeling a sharp pain
prompts one to decide to do something about it.

The parallelists’ account of the process of a sensation would be something like this.

When light waves impinge upon the retina (in the case of vision); an impulse is carried
along the optic nerve to the brain, which is a physical event. This physical event gives
rise to other physical events which are termed as brain events. They never lead to a
mental event according to the parallelists. But along with these brain events, related
events invariably occur in the consciousness, which are classified as mental events, but
they never are caused by those brain events. They just occur as parallel events.

For the parallelists, even the notion that mental events can be the cause of physical events
does not exist. They do not see any act of volition in physical actions. For the parallelists,
if the visual sensation caused by the light waves that impinge is one of seeing the words
in a recipe book which you read as ‘add a pinch of cinnamon’. (You know that the
cinnamon is kept in the spice cabinet but you DON”T WILL yourself to walk to the spice
cabinet.) The sentence you read stimulates certain nerves (efferent nerves) going all the
way from the brain, to the feet, these in turn affect the muscles and you walk. In effect
your legs move in that direction as a result of a series of brain events and not because you
will yourself to do so by any act of volition which is a mental act. The entire series of
causes and effects can be traced within the physical realm. The accompanying thoughts,
sensations, emotions, ideas, feelings etc, are just parallel events which belong to a
different realm which may be defined as mental and not either causes or effects.

Parallelism as a theory may be stated as follows:

i. The mind and body are two things.

ii. Each is capable of existing without the other.
iii. Throughout life the states of the one run parallel with the states of the other.
That is, for each kind of mental state there is just one kind of bodily event
which accompanies it and vice versa. Bodily states do not influence mental
events and mental events do not influence bodily events. The hands of your
clock moves in tune with the movement of the sun. But the movement of the
sun does not cause the movement of the clock and they are not joint effects of
a common cause.
iv. “M owns B” means between M and B there hold the double parallelism
mentioned in (iii) – Every bodily event in B has a mental companion in M and
vice versa”.*
*Wisdom, John. “Problems of Mind and Matter” pp104-05. Cambridge University Press
published in 1934

Epiphenomenalism

Epiphenomenalism is a materialistic analysis of the mind-body relationship. It is a

doctrine concerned with the relationship between mind and body, and considers
consciousness as an epiphenomenon or a secondary or added accompaniment to
molecular change in the brain. An Epiphenomenalist would say that mind is just
incidental to the body and therefore all mental events are just effects of physical events
and never the causes of physical or mental events.

Epiphenomenalism is dualistic in nature because it allows for one way interaction. They
allow for interaction from the physical to the mental, and also agree with the dualists that
mental states are distinct from physical states. According to them the mental events are
just by products of physical events and mind is considered to be an inactive concomitant.
Thomas Henry Huxley who was the one to introduce the concept of epiphenomenalism
conceives the mind “to be as completely without any power of modifying as in the
working of the steam whistle which accompanies the work of a locomotive engine and is
without any influence upon its machinery.”

Professor John Wisdom sums up Epiphenomenalism in the following manner, in his

“Problems of Mind and Matter.”

i. The body is a thing but the mind is not. The mind is not a thing but a string of
events which do not form a thing. Each of these events is produced and
completely explained by some bodily event. We may say that the mental
events are like shadows a body casts or the smells a factory makes; but neither
analogy is satisfactory.
ii. The body can exist without the mind but not the mind without the body.
iii. Bodily events have effects. Mental events have none.
iv. “M” owns “B” means ‘M is a string of events produced by events in B’. These
events which make up M are not events in the life history of a thing M, caused
by the action of B on M. There is no second thing M. M is a series of by
products of the activity of B”.*
*Wisdom, John. Problems of Mind and Matter.” Pg. 105. Cambridge University Press.
Published in 1934.

The Double Aspect Theory

This theory is of the view that mental and physical are merely two aspects of the same
underlying substance. Though the substance is unknowable to human beings, their
attributes or aspects - the mental and the physical can be known.

The historical ancestor of this theory is the Dutch philosopher, Spinoza of the 17th
century. For him mind and body are essentially the same. He says, “Mind and body are
one and the same thing, conceived first under the attribute of thought, secondly under the
attribute of extension.” *
*“Body, Mind and Death” Edited by Flew, Antony. Pg.146. Published 1964 by
Macmillan Company.

John Hospers illustrates it with the following example.

“It is as if one is passing down a corridor with a mirror both on the right and the left, and
one’s body is reflected on both the mirrors. One mirror is the physical and the other
mental, and they both simultaneously reflect different aspects of the same substance”.*
* Hospers, John. “An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis.” Pg. 393. Published by
Routledge and Keagan Paul 1956.

A recent attempt to find a compromise between dualism and materialism is the person
theory offered by P.F.Strawson. It is the view that mental events happen neither to purely
immaterial substances nor to purely material substances, but to something which is
neither purely material nor purely immaterial.

John Wisdom sums up “The Double-Aspect Theory” in the following manner.

i. The mind and the body are not two things. They are aspects of something
which is neither the body nor the mind. I do not know at all clearly what is
meant by this. The best I can do is to suggest the following analogy. “Suppose
you walk between two rows of mirrors. There will then be a series of
reflection of you; one series will appear on the left hand row of mirrors and
the other series in the right hand row. Neither of these series forms the history
of a thing”. The only things concerned are you and the mirrors.
ii. The mind could not exist without the body.
iii. The states of mind parallel the states of the body. But they do not act on one
another. On the other hand, parallelism is not an ultimate fact. It occurs
because bodily events and mental events are joint effects of a common cause.
iv. “M” owns “B” means “M” and “B” are a series of events which are aspects of
the same thing in the sense explained in (i) and (iii)*
*Wisdom, John. “Problems of Mind and Matter”. pp105-06. Published by Cambridge
University Press.

Identity Theory

Identity theory is a form of reductive materialism, and would consider that matter alone is
real. What is taken to be mental is not distinct from and is only a physical reality, and
that, in principle one can explain away mental processes in terms of physiochemistry.

The theory states explicitly that someone’s mental events or experiences are identical
with certain events or processes in the brain. That is, to say that you are in a certain
mental state is to say that a certain event is going on in the cerebral cortex of your brain.
Even if you do not know what exactly the process going on in your brain is, the mental
state and the brain state are identical. According to this theory, therefore, someone having
an experience is identical with his being in a certain brain state or undergoing a ‘certain
brain process.’

The main contention of the identity theorist is that there are no two things as a mental
state or brain state but only one. They do not contend that there is a one to one co-relation
between a brain process and a mental state, for a co-relation exists only where there are
two things, and moreover it makes no sense something to itself.

The identity theory states that the experience or state of consciousness and the brain state
or brain processes are the same thing in the sense that the substantive expression used to
designate the expression or state of consciousness and the substantive expression used to
designate the brain state or brain process have the same extension.
The Dictionary of Philosophy explains the identity theory of mind in the following
manner, “A materialistic theory of consciousness which identifies being in such and such
a state of consciousness with being in some corresponding neurophysiological state. It
maintains that the modes of consciousness involved in the occurrence of thoughts,
feelings, or wishes cannot be considered as constituting a separate class of entities or
happenings, nor are mental and physical events merely correlated in any particular way.
Materialistic or physicalistic terms in fact describe one and the same events. The identity
claimed is empirical or contingent, not logical. Statements about mental events are
neither synonymous with nor analyzable into statements about neurophysiological
states.*
*Flew, Antony “A Dictionary of Philosophy” pg.150. Published by Pan Books Ltd.

Let us see “what meaning of” ‘identical’ is involved here. (1) When you say that this
marble is identical with that marble, you mean that the two marbles have exactly the
same characteristics. There may not be two identical marbles in the world, but if there
were they would have exactly the same characteristics: ‘Identical’ here means “exactly
the same”. Of course, if occupying the same portion of space and the same segment of
time is to count as characteristic, then it would be logically impossible for tow marbles to
be identical, for if they were at the same place at the same time they would be one marble
and not two. When we say that two things are identical, we usually mean that they have
exactly the same properties except for their spatio-temporal properties.
There is another meaning of ‘identical’ as well. (2) When you say that A is identical with
B, You may mean numerical identity – that they are, quite literally one and the same
thing. The ancients thought that the morning star and the evening star were two stars, but
we now know that they are one – the planet Venus. The morning star and the evening star
is identical. They are one and the same object. Similarly, two explorers may be mapping
unknown territory, and each one, approaching a mountain from the opposite direction,
may give a different name to what turns out (after they have compared maps) to be the
same mountain. The supposedly two mountains are numerically identical: they are one
and the same mountain. The identity theory of mind-body says that mental states and
physical brain-states are numerically identical: they are literally the same thing.”*
*Hospers, John: An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis. Pg.339

As J.J.C. Smart writes in his “Sensations and Brain Process”, Philosophical Review 1959,
on page 145 writes, I quote,
“When I say that sensation is a brain process or that lightning is an electrical discharge I
am using ‘IS’ in the same strict identity (just as in the – in this case necessary –
proposition “7 is identical with the smallest prime number greater than 5”.) When I say
that a sensation is a brain process or that lightning is an electric discharge I do not mean
just that sensation is somehow spatially or temporally continuous with the or that the
lightning is spatially or temporally continuous with the electric discharge”.*
*It should be noted however, that “lightning” and “electric discharge” is not strictly
identical: Lightning is only one kind of electric discharge.

The relevant identity is not one of meaning but a factual one. A statement reporting that I
am having an experience is not being said to have the same meaning or the logical
grammar as one reporting that I am in a certain brain state or undergoing a certain brain
process. But insofar as each statement refers to something, a brain state or a brain
process.

Chapter III

A Critical Assessment of The Various Theories.

What I propose to do in this chapter is offer a few relevant criticisms against the various
theories mentioned in the previous chapter. My main contention would be that there are
such things as mental events as opposed to physical as I had pointed out with the help of
the argument offered by John Hospers, in the Introductory Chapter. But since the
Interactionists’ theory faces some difficulties through our philosophical tradition, let us
see if we can meet the difficulties after examining them in a simple way.

The traditional problem that Interactionism faced, without the exclusion of even
Descartes himself who is responsible for its prominence in Modern Philosophy, could be
best understood in the words of one of his most penetrating critics. In a letter dated May
1643, Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia wrote:
“ I beg of you to tell me how the human soul can determine the movement of the body…
being as it merely a conscious substance, for the determination of the movement seems
always propelled – to depend on the kind of impulse it gets from what sets it in motion or
again on the nature of this later things surface. Now the first two things involve contact,
and the third involves that the impelling thing has extension, but you utterly exclude
extension from your notion of the soul and contact seems to me incompatible with a thing
being immaterial.” *
*Descartes: Philosophical Writings: Translated and edited by G.E.M. Anscombe and P.T.
Geech, Nelson,1954.

The whole point expressed here is on how these entities which are so totally opposed in
their characteristic features interact. From the outset Descartes has maintained that the
interaction occurs in the pineal gland but the verification of such a speculation is quite
impossible because according to his own theory it cannot be located in space and the
pineal gland happens to be extended in space. As Sir A. J. Ayer points out in his “An
Honest Ghost”.

“The reason he had the problem – the reason why we have it still – is that matter and
mind were conceived by him right from the outset as distinct orders of being; it is as if
there were two separate worlds such that every event had to belong to one or the other of
them, but no event could belong to both. But from these premises it follows necessarily
that there can be no bridge or junction; for what would the bridge consist of? Any event
that you discover would have to fall on one or the other side of it. So, if there is difficulty
here, it is not because our logic is defective. Perhaps the whole manner of conceiving the
distinction between the mind and matter is at fault. In short our problem is not scientific
but philosophical”. *
*A. J. Ayer: “But this is to Misconceive the Problem”. in Body, Mind and Death. Edited
by Flew, Antony, 1964.
Scientifically much of the difficulty arises from a narrow concept of causality. If we
assume that C cannot cause E without C acting on it, we will be in difficulty. But there
are many cases where action occurs at a distance in spite of not being physical things.
The action of gravitation, magnetism, cosmic rays etc. fall into such categories where
there seems to be “action at a distance” or causality without one body acting upon
another. Though we know that the first causes the second, we cannot point to any kind of
contact between the physical and the mental, unless, of course, we invent some kind of
hypothesis where “even if C and E are spatially separate, there is a continuous series of
contiguous events that can be traced between them”.

Gilbert Ryle in his “The Concept of Mind” rejects Cartesian metaphysics, particularly its
dualism of mind and matter as a category mistake which created false issues and
philosophical perplexities – for example by confusing the logic of discourse pertaining to
minds with the logic of discourse pertaining to bodies. In referring to the human mind
according to Ryle, we should only talk about it as a term involving a person’s abilities,
liabilities, and inclinations to do and undergo certain sorts of things, and of the doing and
undergoing of these things in the ordinary world. In short, his analysis of mind turns out
to be the behaviourists’ assertion that it is merely a function of bodily activities. Gilbert
Ryle thus exposed Cartesian dualism as a myth and a mere “dogma of the ghost in the
machine” and held that it is improper to ask any question about the relations between the
person and his mind or the person’s body and his mind. Their claim is that all our talk
about mental states and processes can be reformulated in such a way as to eliminate any
reference to an inner life. What would remain would be a set of dispositional statements
about people’s overt behaviour. Though this notion offers some relief from having to
explain dualistic theory, it denies the very existence of minds. However commonsensical
our approach be reduced to, the proposition that there is no mind is quite hard to digest
(imagine a world inhabited by mindless beings).

Even though dualism has its advantages over materialism by way of accepting the
existence of mental events that are distinct from physical events, the concept of mind as
unextended and spaceless and of some kind of a totally different entity neither visible to
the eye nor tangible to the touch brings out the problem of individuation and
identification.

The problem of identification concerns one’s knowledge of other minds. If, according to
the dualists’ account, no observation could render the possibility of locating the mind,
how do we account for their existence? Regarding one’s own self there is some kind of
‘privileged access’. But with regard to other minds the dualistic analysis has no solution.

The problem of individuation concerns what makes tow minds distinct, assuming there
are different minds. One answer might be the possession of different mental histories,
that is two different sets of mental events. But, due to being brought up in the same way,
we can suppose two distinct minds to have the same mental history, and with regard to
such a case the dualist does not have a plausible answer. Having seen some of the
difficulties regarding the dualistic concept of Interactionism, let us pass on to assess the
other dualistic theory namely Parallelism
Parallelism is the theory that the mental and physical are two distinct entities and occur in
parallel areas. This view does not allow for any kind of interaction between the physical
and the mental but allows for interaction among entities of the same kind. They would
say that bodily events can cause other bodily events, and mental events, other mental
events. But, according to this school of thought no physical events can be the cause for
mental events or vice versa, for they are of the view that can be no causal connection
between entities that differ so radically in type.

If according to the parallelists, corresponding to the series of physical events a series of

mental events also occurs, we can say that there is a one to one correlation between them.
That is if P-1, P-2, P-3 and so on are a set of physical events occurring as a series M-1,
M-2, M-3 and so on would be the corresponding set of mental events occurring parallel
to the physical events in a series. The relation between these physical events and mental
events is invariable, that is if a certain brain event state B-12 were to occur a second time
a mental state M-12 would occur. But again that such an outright repetition would occur
is questionable because memory traces in the brain would make this second brain state
different, in addition to the memory – the consciousness of the previous occurrence of the
same kind of event – would make the second mental state different.
Let us assume that P-25 is the event of ‘the legs moving’ or more precisely an event in
the process and M-15 is the act of will (to move the legs) or one’s volition which is a
mental act. Corresponding to M-15 would be P-15, the brain event which in the causal
chain of events initiates P-25. Without P-15, it is clear that P-25 would not have occurred.
But P-25 would not have occurred if the corresponding brain state P-15 of the mental
state M-15 had not occurred. So M-15 is essential to the process: P-25 would no more
have occurred without M-15 than it would have occurred without P-15. In other words
M-15 is just as a necessary condition (and part of the sufficient condition) of P-25 as P-15
is.

If M-15 always occurs before P-25, and is a necessary condition for the occurrence of P-
25, there is an implicit admittance by the parallelists that M-15 is as much a cause as P-15
is for the occurrence of P-25. The only difference between the interactionists and the
parallelists seems to be in the language they choose to use. The parallelists simply refuse
to use the word “cause” because of their narrow concept of causality – as necessarily
involving action of one physical entity upon another – and since it cannot be applied in
the physical-mental case.
But we have already seen that there are many events and processes, like the action of
gravitation – magnetism – cosmic rays etc. where causality can be traced without one
body acting upon another. And moreover, since the kind of relation that holds between
the mental and physical would be called causal in any other context, there appears to be
no good reason for refusing to call it so here.
Among the various traditional theories I had mentioned in the previous chapter,
Epiphenomenalism also falls into the dualistic category along with Interactionism and
parallelism. But curiously enough Epiphenomenalism allows for only one way
interaction.
 The Epiphenomenalists accept only one-way causality. Their contention is that the
bodily events but never the other way round. For them, whatever happens in the mind is
merely a by product of bodily activities. The mind and its events are merely effects of
physical changes and never the causes of physical changes. Mind, according to them can
be compared to a shadow which changes with the movement of the object whose shadow
it is, though the movement of the shadow is no way responsible for the movement of the
object. The example, no doubt, is quite strong, but whether it is appropriate, in relation to
the problem, is questionable.

As Jerome Shaffer says in his “Philosophy of Mind”, “If it is only an illusion that mental
events have effects, then human affairs must be conceived quite differently from the way
they are ordinarily conceived. Historians like to attribute events to human emotions,
decisions, thoughts and sensations. All that would be in error on this theory. And our
ordinary, every day explanations of human behaviour in these terms would also be in
error”.*
*Shaffer, Jerome, “Philosophy of Mind” pg.69. Published by Prentice Hall of India,
1968.

According to the Epiphenomenalist, the greatest works of art, architecture, and literary
contributions amount to having been created without the aid of any mental faculties. The
Epiphenomenalists’ position amounts to disregarding the achievements made by so many
great minds which have been responsible for changing the whole course of the world, so
much that the “whole of human history would have developed in just the way that it did
even if there had never been a single thought, feeling, sensation, decision, or other mental
event. Everything would have gone on just the same, even if ‘everyone had always been
completely unconscious’ for according to that theory mental events have no
consequences and produce no effects.

If we were to accept Epiphenomenalism as true, we would have to do away with such

phrases as “The pain made him scream” or “He screamed from the pain”, because they
are clear examples of mental events being the cause for physical events. Such phrases say
clearly and explicitly that feelings cause behaviour. Since we cannot do away with our
ordinary expressions of language, we might as well reject Epiphenomenalism as false.

Having seen some of the difficulties regarding the dualistic theories of Interactionism;
Parallelism and Epiphenomenalism, we shall pass on to critically assess the materialistic
theories offered by the Behaviourists and Identity theorists. In my final chapter I intend to
expound in detail what I regard as a plausible solution to the problem of the Mind-Body
relationship.

Behaviourism

Behaviourism is the doctrine that talk of ‘inner states’ is simply an abbreviated and
perhaps misleading way of talking of dispositions to behave in certain ways. According
to Gilbert Ryle, there is a necessary connection between the truth of a report of a certain
raw feeling and a disposition to behave in such and such a manner. Such a doctrine
manages to discard “ghosts in machines”, the Cartesian picture of people and also prevent
the skeptic about other minds from raising such questions as whether the person writhing
on the floor have feelings of the sort which the skeptic himself would have when he
writhes. In the logical behaviourists’ view, such reports are to be taken not to refer to
nonphysical entities or any entity at all but just dispositions to behave.

This doctrine has been attacked on the ground that we would need to first of all have and
subsequently provide a long list of possible physical movements and noises in order to
fill in a description of the necessary dispositions to behave. And the ‘necessity’ expressed
in this area is not a matter of ‘meaning’. It is simply an expression of the fact that we
customarily explain certain behaviour by reference to certain inner states – so that the
necessity is no more ‘linguistic’ or ‘conceptual’ than that which connects the realness of
the stove to the fire within. Finally, the version is attacked as the sort of philosophical
paradox which only occurs to a mind obsessed with the verificationist dogma, - eager to
reduce all unobservables to observables in order to avoid any risk of believing in
something unreal.

The central thesis of Ryle’s “The Concept of Mind” becomes so radical that it denies the
very existence of minds, insofar as their existence is understood to imply that there are
‘inner’ states or processes or objects or events. According to him, “the statement, ‘the
mind is its own place’ as theorists might construct it, is not true, for the mind is not even
a metaphorical ‘place’. On the contrary, the chessboard, the platform, the scholar’s desk,
the judge’s bench, the lorry driver’s seat, the studio and the football field are among its
places. These are where people work and play stupidly or intelligently. ‘Mind’ is not the
name of another person working or flocking behind an impenetrable screen; it is not the
name of another place where work is done or games are played; and it is not the name of
another tool with which work is done, or another appliance with which games are
played”*
*Gilbert Ryle, “The Concept of Mind”, pg 51.

And again, under the heading “Understanding and Misunderstanding”, there is evidence
of his intention to deny the existence of mind as an inner state when he says that when we
apply mental predicates to people, we are not making any untestable references to any
ghostly processes in the streams of consciousness which we are banned from visiting, but
that we are describing the ways in which these people conduct parts of their
predominantly public behaviour.

According to the logical behaviourists it is not proper to ask any questions about the
relations that hold between a person and his mind or his body and mind. Therefore, for
the logical behaviourist to succeed he has to show that all our talk about mental states and
processes can be rephrased in such a way that references to any inner life is completely
eliminated from our language use. According to Ryle’s version what would remain would
be a set of dispositional statements about people’s external behaviour. This kind of
approach does offer a way of escape from philosophical perplexities. It saves us from
having to explain dualistic theories and knowledge of other minds.
“Ryle does take it quite a long distance” as A. J. Ayer says, “He has arguments to show
that displays of intelligence, whether in speech or action, do not entail private planning,
that to exercise the will is not to engage in mental acts of volition, that motives are not
“ghostly thrusts”, that neither perceiving nor imagining entails the awareness of private
objects”.*
*A. J. Ayer, “An Honest Ghost?” in “Ryle” Modern Studies in Philosophy. Edited by
Oscar P. Wood and George Pitcher.

In spite of Ryle’s attempt to eliminate mental events, he does not succeed in doing so, for
in many of the passages in the course of making a distinction between ‘knowing how’
and ‘knowing that’, what would appear to be inner occurrences are permitted to remain
just so. Ryle maintains “that much of our ordinary thinking is conducted in internal
monologue or silent soliloquy, usually accompanied by an internal cinematograph – show
of visual imagery”.*
G. Ryle: “The Concept of Mind” pg. 27

It recognizes a special sense of the words ‘mental’ and ‘mind’ in which “a boy is said to
be mental arithmetic” when he says numerical symbols to himself “performing his
calculation in silent soliloquy” or “a person is said to be reading the mind of another
when he describes truly what the other is saying or picturing to himself in auditory or
visual image”. Even though he claims that such mental processes cannot be taken as
evidence for the dogma of the ghost in the machine, the very existence of such inner
processes appear in any case to be granted for some concession.

Behaviourism as well as other forms of reductive theories which attempt at abandoning

the aspect of the mental is bound to be a failure since “The picture of human beings as
having … both an “inside” and an “outside” is so common place, so commonsensical that
we find it hard to realize how strikingly modern it is. But to appreciate its modernity one
need only cast about for statements of it earlier than Descartes. One does find interesting
anticipations of it in Augustine, but not much earlier, and not much between the time of
Augustine and that of Descartes”.*
Mathews, Gareth: “Consciousness and Life” Comments from Rorty, Richard’s
“Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature” pg. 51. Published by Princeton University Press
1959.

The point is Ryle was attacking a basic institution, when he was attacking Cartesian
dualism as a dogma of the “ghost in the machine” and not just the Cartesian idiosyncrasy.
Any attempt on the part of Ryle to reduce the mental wants to physical dispositions in
behaviour is incompatible with the notion of creativity which is an innate capacity of
human beings to respond to certain stimuli in a variety of different responses.
Behaviourism presupposes some kind of a reduction of all of one’s inner experience into
a kind of externally verifiable behavioural disposition. Since my disposition to respond to
a specific stimulus would depend on my environment, the antecedent conditions just prior
to the stimulus in addition to my psychological temperament, the behaviouristic claim
that all mental processes are nothing but certain dispositions to behave in such and such a
manner doesn’t seem to be intelligible.

The behaviouristic position having been brought to a point of unintelligibility let us pass
on to the most controversial of all theories that have been offered namely the “Identity
Theory”. Identity theory is of the view that the mental states are identifiable with certain
physical states. But it is to be noticed that though the behaviourists method of
identification of the mental and the physical is somewhat similar to the identity theorists
they differ in the way they are characterized or defined. The behaviourists define the
states of the body in terms of what changes they result in when certain specifiable
conditions obtain. But the identity theorists define them in terms of the process in the
neurophysiological structure or in other words the very cells which make up our body.

Another respect in which identity theory differs from behaviourism is in the analysis of
the meanings of mentalistic terms. For the behaviourists to be in a certain mental state
“means” that the state of the body is in a disposition to behave in such and such a
manner. The identity theory would however reject that as wildly impossible, and claim
that one cannot have the faintest idea of what bodily state one would be in when one
experiences a thought; but simultaneously would claim that to have a thought is “to be”
in such and such a brain state.

Having seen the ways in which these two reductive materialists differ let us see what the
logical difficulties are regarding the identity theory. The difficulty arises in apprehending
a physical phenomenon in a misleading way. Saul Kripke, in “Naming and Necessity”
sums up the intuition on which the defenders of dualism usually rely, in the following
passage.

“Someone can be in the same epistemic situation as he would be if there were heat, even
in the absence of heat, simply by feeling the sensation of heat: and even in the presence
of heat, he can have the same evidence as he would in the absence of heat simply by
lacking the sensation ‘S’. No such possibility exists in the case of pain or in other mental
phenomena. To be in the same epistemic situation that would obtain if one had a pain is
to have a pain; to be in the same epistemic situation that would obtain in the absence of
pain is not to have a pain…. The trouble is that the notion of an epistemic i.e. a situation
qualitatively identical to one in which the observer had a sensation ‘S’ simply is one in
which the observer had the sensation. The same point can be made in terms of the notion
of what picks out the reference of a rigid designator. (an expression which designates the
same object in all the possible worlds in which it designates at all). In the case of the
identity of heat with molecular motion the important consideration was that although
‘heat’ is a rigid designator, the reference of that designator was determined by an
accidental property of the referent, namely the property of producing in us the sensation
‘S’…. Pain, on the other hand, is not picked out by one of its accidental properties; rather
it is picked out by the property of being pain itself, by its immediate phenomenological
quality. Thus pain, unlike heat, is not only rigidly designated by ‘pain’ but the reference
of the designator is determined by an essential property of the referent. Thus it is not
possible to say that although pain is necessarily identical with a certain physical state, a
certain phenomenon can be picked out in the same way we pick out pain without being
correlated with the physical state. If any phenomenon is picked out in exactly the same
way that we pick out pain, then that phenomenon is pain.” *
*Richard Rorty: “Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature” pp78-79, published by Princeton
University Press 1979.

In fact Kripke’s recent contribution to logical theory (Naming and Necessity) has far
reaching implications for other areas of philosophy. In fact his work on “Identity and
Necessity” has been applied in the philosophy of mind to show that the identity theorist is
wrong.

We normally take necessary statements as being a priory true and have nothing to do with
factual discovery. But Kripke argues for the existence of a class of statements which are
necessary and yet a posteriori rather than a priori.

E.g. “The Morning Star is identical with the Evening Star”.

That the morning star is identical with the evening star was something which was
empirically discovered and yet the above identity statement expresses a necessary truth.

To understand this we have to go into Kripke’s notion of a rigid designator (an

expression which designates the same object in all the possible worlds in which it
designates at all). We also have to distinguish three types of identity statements.

a. Identity statements which join two individuating descriptions: “The first

Postmaster General of the United States is identical with the inventor of bifocals”.
b. Identity statements which join two proper names: “Cicero is Tully”.
c. Theoretical identifications: “Heat is the motion of molecules” or “Pain is a certain
brain state”.

Kripke argues that statements of type (B) and (C) are necessarily true and identity
statements of type (A) alone are contingently true. Identity statements of type (B) and (C)
are statements which join two rigid designators; Kripke argues that such identity
statements are, if true, necessary. This needs some explanation.

A rigid designator is, as I had pointed earlier, that which designates the same thing in all
possible worlds. In this actual world Jawaharlal Nehru was the first prime minister of
independent India. In some other possible world Jawaharlal could have been a school
teacher but he can’t be anyone other than Jawaharlal Nehru. Proper names like Jawaharlal
Nehru and theoretical names like ‘heat’ designate the same thing in all possible worlds
although the description used to identify it in any one of the worlds is purely a contingent
matter. We identify heat through the sensation of it but Martians, with a different
physiological structure, may identify it differently; yet “heat is molecular motion”. Both
‘heat’ and ‘molecular motion’ are rigid designators for Kripke, for they designate the
same object in all possible worlds. Once heat has been discovered empirically to be
nothing other than molecular motion, the identity statement ‘heat is molecular motion’
becomes necessary and yet a posteriori.

In the context of the mind-body problem, the identity theorists claim that ‘Pain is a
certain state of the brain or nervous system”. Construed as an identity statement, the
identity theorist argues that the above assertion of identity is only contingently true. But
Kripke argues that the above identity statement, if true, is necessarily true, for in
Kripke’s understanding, the above identity statement conjoins two rigid designators, and
hence if true is necessarily true. But the identity theorist himself is not willing to grant
this and the identity theorist says that the identity is only contingently true. Hence Kripke
contends that the identity statement is not true at all.

Chapter IV

The Person Theory

The Person Theory is a modified version of the double aspect account. The historical
ancestor of the person theorist is Spinoza, who held that the mental and the physical are
both of them simply aspects of something which in itself is neither purely mental nor
purely physical. The analogy that has been proposed for the double aspect account is of
an undulating line which at a given moment may be concave from one point and convex
from another. In this, my final chapter, what I propose to do is to examine in simple detail
the theory offered by P.F. Strawson, which I feel is a diligent view; and can be
considered as a plausible solution to the Mind-Body Problem. The manner in which
Strawson’s conception differs from that of Spinoza is that, for Strawson only a person
can have physical and mental attributes whereas Spinoza held that the whole Universe
had them.

Normally, we would say, only of a person that he is six feet tall, weighs a hundred
pounds and moves at the rate of three miles per hour, which are all physical attributes and
simultaneously that he thinks about the paper he is writing, feels anxious and wishes that
it were already over etc: which are all mental attributes. The attributions made here are
neither to the mind and body nor to just a body. The attributions are clearly made to a
person. Strawson argues that the person is the underlying entity which has mental
predicates in addition to physical predicates. Thus when we say that the person has a
mind and body, all we mean is that both mental and physical attributes can be applied to
him.

Let us see why Strawson rejects materialism, and contends that mental states must be
attributed to a person rather than to a body. If we consider, for example, that a particular
subject has a headache, according to the materialists the subject of consciousness is
always a body. Strawson argues that this notion of attributing a state of consciousness to
a subject cannot be analysed as the notion of attributing a state of consciousness to a
body. According to the Epiphenomenalist, “Subject A has a headache ‘is synonymous
with’ body A is producing a headache”. Since only subject A’s headaches can be
produced by body A, to say that “All Subject A’s headaches are produced by body A” is
to say that “All the headaches produced by body A is produced by body A”. This is an
utter tautology about which controversy is impossible. So epiphenomenalism cannot be
true. The argument directed by Strawson against the materialists is on similar lines since
the materialists’ contention is that “Subject A has a headache” means “Body A has a
headache”.

Strawson’s point is that in order for the Materialists and Epiphenomenalists to formulate
their claim, they need the concept of a mental state which is the attribute of a person and
a not a material body. The Epiphenomenalists and the Materialists inevitably have to
single out mental states to show that they are dependent on some particular body. Since
the notion of the subject of states of consciousness is different from their notion of
material body they are not able to successfully reduce all mental states to physical states.

According to Strawson, “the concept of a person is to be understood as the concept of a

type of entity such that both predicates ascribing states of consciousness and states
ascribing corporal characteristics, physical situation etc; are equally applicable to an
individual entity of that type”.*
*P.F. Strawson: ‘Persons’ in “Essays in Philosophical Psychology” Edited by Donald F.
Gustafson, Macmillan 1967.

The Person Theory establishes the logical distinctness of subjects of consciousness and
bodies. It clearly points out that the expressions referring to the one cannot mean the
same as the expressions referring to the other. They are not synonymous and cannot be
analysed in terms of the other. The way in which the person theory expresses a form of
identity is in its claim that even though the expression “Subject of consciousness” does
not mean a body of a certain sort, it might turn out that whatever is subject of
consciousness is identical with a body of a certain sort. The Person theory, allowing for
the application of physical and mental predicates, does not claim that they inhere in
separate realms like the dualists do. Strawson does not accept the view that the subject of
consciousness is an immaterial, non-physical thing, to which only consciousness and its
states can be applied. His argument is that for someone to have the concept of a subject of
consciousness is to allow that there could be other subjects than himself. Therefore, in
order to distinguish one subject from another, it is essential that the other subjects of
consciousness are not wholly immaterial or non-physical. For, according to the
Cartesians, the subject of consciousness, being immaterial cannot be identified; the
theory is without any meaning. Moreover, if there was no way of distinguishing one
subject from another, we would not have the concept of other subjects. In that case, one
would not have had the concept of a subject of consciousness at all. Since we do have
such a concept and since it is neither a material body nor an immaterial thing, we have a
reason to accept “persons” as the subjects of consciousness.

Person Theory is the most plausible explanation so far since the mental and the physical
can be applied in this context appropriately. The very concept of the mental – physical
structure is derived only from the existence of persons. All problems regarding the mental
and the physical attributes arise only out of linguistic confusion.
“The concept of a person is logically prior to that of an individual consciousness. The
concept of a person is not to be analysed as that if an animated or of an embodied anima.
This is not to say that the concept of a pure individual consciousness might not have a
logically secondary existence, if one thinks or finds it desirable. We speak of a dead
person – a body – and in the same way we might at least think of a disembodied person,
retaining the logical benefit of individuality from having been a person”.*
*P.F. Strawson: ‘Persons’ in “Essays on Philosophical Psychology” pg.390, Edited by
Donald F. Gustafson. Macmillan 1967.

Bibliography

1. A.J. Ayer - An Honest Ghost

2. Antony Flew - A Dictionary of Philosophy

- Body, Mind and Death

3. Donald F. Gustafson - Essays in Philosophical Psychology

4. Gilbert Ryle - The Concept of Mind

5. P.T. Geach and - Ryle

G.E.M. Anscombe

6. Jerome A. Shaffer - Philosophy of Mind

7. John Hospers - An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis

8. John Wisdom - Problems of Mind and Matter

9. Richard Rorty - Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature

10. Saul Kripke - Naming and Necessity