Mind and Body Essays

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Mind and Body

Though Descartes was able to portray how the Mind and Body are two separate things, there were lots of rejections regarding his theory. I have my own opinion on Dualism and how Descartes could be wrong, as well as my own opinion on the three rejections I refer to in this paper. I will also talk about how there are similarities in the arguments and how they contradict each other. One way is Radical Behaviorism. This rejection does not completely reject Dualism, but one side of the theory. Another rejection is the Identity Theory. Instead of denying either side Dualism, it says that the mind and body are one entity. The third rejection is Functionalism. How this rejection works is to think that the brain is like a computer, and a mind is created by the relations between each part in the brain. How radical behaviorism works is how John Watson and B. F. Skinner explained it. He stated that behaviorism in the form of science, events that cannot be physically witnessed to be excluded from scientific study. By doing this, this rejects the mind part of Dualism because behaviorists say that the mind cannot be studied if it is not physically visible. The only problem I find in this is that, if the mind cannot be studied, then how does one explain how we turn into the people that we are? If we are just happening to grow into our personalities without any way to explain how we attained our habits or mentalities; that does not make sense. Many times, there are a lot of small factors when growing up that make us into the person we are today. Skinner often jumps between the use of the word “soul” instead of self-consciousness, but just because, “nobody has ever touched a soul, seen one in a test tube, or has in any other way come into relationship with it,” does not mean we cannot try to study what a soul is. I also believe that a soul and self-consciousness is very different, because having a soul is very religion backed, in my opinion, whereas, self-consciousness is to be aware of what we are doing and having such is what keeps many humans from doing things they believe are wrong. The only reason why this soft rejection may portray what Descartes is trying to say better, is because it narrows down what can be studied down to just one subject, even though it completely ignores the other. The Identity Theory is what they claim is the most powerful rejection of dualism. What the Identity Theory does instead of rejecting the mind and body argument, is that it says that the body and mental events, are identical. The reason why this theory is more plausible than Descartes’ Mind and Body theory is because instead of having two separate entities moving to become what is a human being, it claims both as the same. Scientists believe that feelings like, “want,” “believes,” and “loves,” can be explained by studying the brain and the chemical connection within the brain. I believe this argument is quite feasible. The only thing that bothers me is that, for example, sometimes, we do not know why we start falling in love with another person. Sometimes, it can just spring up naturally, or you could be physically attracted to them. I think, that even if scientists study “love,” that they will never be able to figure out how it works. The brain has so many particles inside of it, I believe it is impossible to figure out how to study a brain while somebody is alive. The reason why, I feel, is emotions like love or want, do not happen instantaneously. Sometimes, it can happen in a short time, but I believe there is usually a trigger that can cause someone to fall in love. Functionalism is a rejection where the brain is not what causes our actions, but rather, the relations between each part in our body. Scientists believe that in the future, that it will be possible to create a human mind out of a computer. Of course, some scientists do not believe this and they believe that our mind is a function of the neurological activity in our
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