Understanding The Mind Body Concept

The article titled “The Mind-Body interaction in Disease” starts off with a long anatomy lesson breaking down hard to understand immune and brain interaction. The article uses terms even more advance then my level two anatomy course making me wonder was this articles audience intended for the everyday reader? The opening of the article explains that in the earlier part of practicing medicine the whole body and mind were treated together, that this practice of holistic medicine was the original way of seeing things. The belief that the mind can affect the body was moved away from during more modern medicine focusing instead on the immune response without as the article presents it looking at the whole picture.

In Nagel’s What Is It Like To Be a Bat, issues regarding consciousness are raised. One such issue is the mind-body problem which, as noted by Nagel, does not seem to fit with reductionist theories. That is, reductionist theories aim to explain things (e.g. persons and/or animal experiences) in relation to physical processes (i.e. organisms are just the sum of their physical parts). However, consciousness does not easily cooperate with such theories because it must be given a physical account. In addition, the nature of consciousness is that it is unique to a specific viewpoint (e.g. we can imagine what it would be for us to be a bat, but we cannot experience the mindset of said organism).

In his text “What is it like to be a bat?” of 1974 Thomas Nagel claims that consciousness is the

The view I am arguing for is physicalism. Looking at Nagel’s argument what it is like to be a bat will first seem like a counterargument to mine, but with more explanation I will form it into physicalism (403). Another author to help me explain my view is Frank Jackson with his argument of Qualia (421). In this paper, I am going to explain what I believe consciousness is from what I gathered from the specific readings listed above. To help me do this I use examples that make at first dualism seem like a better choice, but I am really trying to explain consciousness as physicalism.

But, in another section of Jackson’s article, he refers back to the famous article What is it Like to Be a Bat?, written by the philosopher Thomas Nagel, to help strengthen his argument against physicalism. Jackson states how there is no amount of physical information that could possibly tell us what it is like to be anything other than a human being (Jackson 416-417). For instance, the dualist would say that I cannot possibly understand what it is like to actually be a dog. Even if I were able to obtain all the possible physical information there is about dogs, according to the dualist, I would still be missing the actual experience of being a dog. However, the physicalist would still argue that, although I am not a dog, I can still know the physical information about what it is like to be a dog and know how they perceive and experience everything in life. Then if, some day, I

To help assert his take on the falsely posed take on the subject mind Nagel creates his definition of the subjective character of experience. It is defined as: There is something that it is like to be that organism. He creates this definition to show that it may be possible to know that other organisms have a consciousness – and in turn relate to the mind-body issue. He quotes

In “What is it like to be a bat?” Thomas Nagel argues that physicalism cannot possibly account for consciousness and quaila, or qualitative states. The objection in his article is target the flaws of both functionalism and physicalism with emphasis on the importance of consciousness and its subjective nature. In this paper, I will argue on Nagel’s argument but also focus on how a functionalist can respond to his objection.

Nagel then proceeds with his argument by demonstrating why we cannot know ?what it is like to be a bat?. A human has an imagination and could therefore imagine what it would be like to have the characteristics of a bat. However, a human cannot imagine what it is like for a bat to be a bat. Nagel supports this by saying, ?if I try to imagine this, I am restricted to the resources of my own mind, and those resources are inadequate to the task.? (p.536). I agree with Nader on this point. In order for me to experience what it would be like to be a bat I would have to make the actual transformation to a bat and there is no way for me to do that. The only other possible way for this to occur would be by a proper explanation about the mind of a bat but this too

TTL and AILD in their radical attempts to represent subjective consciousness as it is must satisfactorily resolve the question of whether or not it is possible to do so. The themes of the ineffability of consciousness, the failures of language, and the inevitability of aloneness are clearly present throughout the text as the efforts of multiple characters to communicate their own internalities and to understand those of others are shown. Despite dealing with the same fundamental issues, the texts approach this theme in differing ways and they, due to their choices in narrative style, can come to opposing conclusions without falling into contradiction. *Thesis[ Turn this into the thesis:

Consciousness, Thomas Nagel states, “is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable.” Here he refers particularly to phenomenal consciousness, which Block defines as “perceptual experiences,” and Nagel describes as “something that it is to be.’ This experiential element appears to present a challenge to the physicalist assertion that all mental processes are explicable in terms of physical brain states, biochemical reactions and the laws of physics. Frank Jackson presents this argument in his 1982 thesis Epiphenomenal Qualia. Whilst Jackson’s argument occupies a seminal position in philosophy of mind, whether he adds anything new to knowledge of the nature of conscious experience, is debateable. Thomas Nagel’s What is it like to

For centuries philosophers have engaged themselves into conversations and arguments trying to figure out the nature of a human person; this has lead to various theories and speculation about the nature of the human mind and body. The question they are tying to answer is whether a human being is made of only the physical, body and brain, or both the physical or the mental, mind. In this paper I will focus on the mind-body Identity Theory to illustrate that it provides a suitable explanation for the mind and body interaction.

“What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” is American philosopher, Thomas Nagel’s, opinion on the widely debated mind-body problem. Nagel introduces the paper by explaining what it means for something to be conscious. He defines consciousness as an organism’s ability for there to be something it is like to be that organism. Using his definition of consciousness Nagel suggests that physicalism cannot be successfully defended using the popular reductionism theory. This is because in order to be defended a physical account must be given to phenomenological features themselves. This leads Nagel to his argument, “Every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view, and it seems inevitable that an objective, physical theory will

According to different theories; the human mind and body may or may not have a correlation. In other words, there are explanations that concur that the mind and the body have a relationship of some kind. Yet there are other explanations that may disagreed and appose the fact that there is such an idea of the mind and body correlation. In this paper I will discuss the history of theories regarding the relationship between mind and body, as well as my understanding of this relationship. I will also discuss how psychological factors and physical illness relate to each other. In the second part of this essay I will give an example of a physical illness and explain how do psychological factors impact it. Last but not least I will mention how

“Clear thinking, health, happiness, friendships, and prosperity are all important and worthy. They are steps on the stairway up which man climbs in his ascent in spiritual realization.”

The concept of the relation between the mind and body, between what motivates thinking, and the possibility of an unknown quantity called the soul controlling the mind and body has existed through out history. The mystic and the metaphysical explanation of mankind took into consideration an inexplicable resident or entity that governed not only the body but also the mind. The mind was not associated with the physical brain. The mind was a system believed to be controlled by an entity called the soul. Looking at this chain of thought, it has to be noted that Aristotle, an ancient Greek philosopher, argued that the soul is incorporeal, being intangible and spiritual; the mind was the intellect, meaning it had knowledge or it is where the person stores their knowledge. Descartes, a 1500's philosopher, argued that the incorporeal soul is solely identical with the mind with the exception of perception and the senses.