Reductive Materialism

In his writings, “A Contemporary Defense of Dualism,” J.P. Moreland argues the point that the mind and brain are separate from each other. It seems as a quick thought that both are the same. However, the mind deals with ideas, thoughts and hopes. The brain is made up of the neural process. Throughout the entire argument, Moreland tries to prove the theory of physicalism, which is the idea that only things that exist are composed of matter. His explanation is that the soul doesn’t exist and the brain controls everything.

In metaphysics, the problem of distinguishing the mind versus the body has persisted throughout time and remains a highly debatable topic in philosophy today. Two opposing perspectives in particular remain especially favorable in modern philosophy. Dualism, considers the mind and the body to be separate in that humans are, in effect, immaterial non-physical beings—people are souls. René Descartes examines in Meditations on First Philosophy the incompatibility of a reality in which the mind and body exist as a singular, strictly physical entity. In opposition to this perspective is materialism (or physicalism). Materialism argues that the human person is one with the human organism, and therefore exists solely as a physical being. In an

The problem with this for physicalism is that fact Mary would realize how mistaken her knowledge of other's conceptions has been. Even though Mary would have known all of the neurological processes in a person's mind, she would not have known the person's actual experience involved in the process. There would also be facts she did not know about objects, but she would know all physical facts about them. For this reason it is not any experience the object may have, but a fact about the object itself.

In the paper "Epiphenomenal Qualia," Frank Jackson presents the concept of Qualia and the knowledge argument in order to prove physicalism false. Jackson 's knowledge argument introduces a thought experiment about a neuroscientist called Mary. His thought experiment is designed to refute physicalism by showing that there is non-physical knowledge in the world. However, there are many flaws in Jackson 's thought experiment that lead to its ultimate failure in proving that physicalism is wrong, such as its appeal to a misleading intuition, the ambiguity of its premises, and the assumption that it is possible to gain all physical knowledge of color from a colorless room.

The idea that mental states are non-reducible properties of brain states is the central tenant of a theory of mind called property dualism. However, before we can assess the theory we must be aware that the question assumes the existence of mental states and as such we cannot answer this question from some perspectives (e.g. eliminative materialism)

According to J.P. Moreland in his argument for dualism, he states that humans are composed of both an immaterial substance and a physical substance. Moreland notes that there are contrasting differences between the minds and the brains and that they are ultimately separate entities. By defending dualism, Moreland seeks to make nonbelievers believe in immaterial souls, while discrediting materialism. We can look at the arguments in which Moreland uses to support the argument of dualism and belief that the mind and brain are separate entities.

I am faced with the philosophical task of defending either dualism or materialism, depending on which one is most attractive to me. So either I support the theory of dualism, which is the belief that there is both a physical and a spiritual state, or I believe in materialism, which is the belief that everything that exists is material or physical. Although I believe materialism to be easier to prove, I find dualism more attractive to believe. Throughout the following, I will attempt to build a case for the theory of dualism giving insights both documented and personal. I will also shed light on the theory of materialism and the proofs that support this theory; showing that

The three responses to this longstanding issue in western philosophy include materialism, dualism and idealism. Materialism can be defined simply as the only things there are all material or physical things. Idealists believe that there are no material things; there are only minds, and thoughts and experiences. While dualists think that the mental and physical are deeply different in kind: thus the mental is at least not identical with the physical.

In David Armstrong’s thought-provoking work titled, The Nature of Mind, he explains that the most convincing way to make sense of the mind-body problem is to approach it in a materialistic way. Specifically, Armstrong shows that the science of physico-chemical processes of the brain is the best way to explain the nature of our mind. He goes on to explain traditional and dispositional behaviorism, and states his own materialistic take on behaviorism. His arguments throughout his paper are very logical, and though there have been arguments against his explanations, he effectively justifies the materialistic view of the mind.

The mind-body problem is an age-old topic in philosophy that questions the relationship between the mental aspect of life, such as the field of beliefs, pains, and emotions, and the physical side of life which deals with matter, atoms, and neurons. There are four concepts that each argue their respective sides. For example, Physicalism is the belief that humans only have a physical brain along with other physical structures, whereas Idealism argues that everything is mind-based. Furthermore, Materialism argues that the whole universe is purely physical. However, the strongest case that answers the commonly asked questions such as “Does the mind exist?” and “Is the mind your brain?” is Dualism.

The mind is perhaps the most fascinating part of the human body due to its complexity and ability to rationalize. In essence, the mind-body problem studies the relation of the mind to the body, and states that each human being seems to embody two unique and somewhat contradictory natures. Each human contains both a nature of matter and physicality, just like any other object that contains atoms in the universe. However, mankind also is constituted of something beyond materialism, which includes its ability to rationalize and be self-aware. This would imply that mankind is not simply another member of the world of matter because some of its most distinctive features cannot be accounted for in this manner. There are obvious differences between physical and mental properties. Physical properties are publically accessible, and have weight, texture, and are made of matter. Mental properties are not publically accessible, and have phenomenological texture and intentionality (Stewart, Blocker, Petrik, 2013). This is challenging to philosophers, because man cannot be categorized as a material or immaterial object, but rather a combination of both mind and body (Stewart, Blocker, Petrik, 2013). Man embodies mind-body dualism, meaning he is a blend of both mind and matter (Stewart, Blocker, Petrick, 2013). The mind-body problem creates conflict among philosophers, especially when analyzing physicalism in its defense. This paper outlines sound

In denying that the mind and mental properties, like qualia, are nonphysical things, mind-brain theory objects to both substance and property dualism. Therefore it is a physicalist approach to the philosophy of

What can roughly be seen as a more radical approach to reductionism, eliminative materialism asserts that not only is physical matter the only constituent of everything that exists, but that the laymen's terms of describing mental states, referred to folk psychology, is completely false and is in no way an effective or accurate method to describe mental states, including one’s own mental faculties and consciousness. Seeking to completely replace folk psychology with purely empirical neuroscientific evidence and language, eliminative materialism remains a more reformist and radical kind of materialism, going as far as to surmise that some mental states, such as love, desire, and belief, do not even exist, and that they can only be understood by how closely they relate to biological and physical processes. With her philosophies constituting a blurry amalgamation of eliminative materialism and reductionism, Patricia Churchland seeks to explain human consciousness by employing a reductionist research strategy, a strategy that attempts to explain consciousness and poorly understood mental faculties entirely through neurobiological

Another issue Cartesian dualism faces in the mind-body problem. This is how the soul and the body are integrated, and considers how they affect one another. Descartes’ solution is that the body and the mind is separate. Idealists’ solution is that there is only mind, explaining the body as only being an extension of the mind. However as technology has advanced and neuroscience developed, processes such as emotions, memory and perceptions have all been shown to have a neurological basis, refuting the dualism theory of consciousness. PET, MRI, EEG and MEG are all ways of measuring electric and magnetic neural activity, gradually allowing the pathways and areas of the brain to be understood (Taylor 2013.) The mind is no longer such a mystery. A physical reductive approach could be taken to this mind-body problem, where our consciousness is purely generated from matter, and there is no “mind” in the way

Opposed to Mind-Body Materialism is Mind-Body Dualism, a view which supports that mind and body are not identical, but, in some sense, radically different kinds of thing. It denies that the mind is the same of the brain, or a product of the brain, by arguing that the thoughts and the material things are composed of different substances, and the mind is a thinking thing that lacks the usual attributes of physical objects: size, shape, location, solidity, motion, etc. According to the Dualism, the soul is comprised of a non-physical substance, while the body is constituted of matter. This view also establishes that mind and body are capable of causally affecting each other, even if they are necessarily not the same thing. When applying this notion the human body, the meaning becomes clearest: the intellect is responsible for all our acts, but it does not imply that the intellect is the brain. For example, before eating a meal, which is a physical action, you probably felt hungry,