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Mind & body
How do thoughts fit in a physical world?
Your brain is a physical organ: about 1.4 kg of cells, chemicals and electrical signals. Your mind is where you feel pain, see red, and think about lunch. How are those two related?
René Descartes said they are two different substances. The body is extended in space; the mind is a thinking thing that is not. This is dualism. Its hard problem: how does something non-physical push a physical brain around?
Try it · Switch between the three views and see where each one places the mind relative to the brain.
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Physicalism says the mind is the brain, or what the brain does. Thoughts are brain processes, the way lightning is an electrical discharge. Its hard problem: why does any of that processing feel like something from the inside?
Idealism, defended by George Berkeley, flips the picture. Only minds and their experiences exist; the physical world is something that appears within experience.
Key ideas
Words worth remembering
- Dualism
- Mind and body are two different kinds of thing.
- Physicalism
- The mind is a physical process of the brain.
- Idealism
- Reality is fundamentally mental; matter exists within experience.
Think about it
Could a computer that behaved exactly like you have a mind? What would decide it?