Philosophy
There are a lot of questions concerning the correlations of mind and body of a human. We surely know that humans posses some physical characteristic as seize, weight etc. But we also know that we have additional mental activities such as brain, consciousness and emotions. A number of questions such as whether the mental is a subclass of physical or vice versa, how do they influence one another and the question of definition of the body and the mind. Some behaviourists claim that mind is a materialistic matter, an embodiment of physical form while some of the idealists consider physical state as a mental one. The dualists believe that both the mental and the physical are real, independent and of different nature.
Plato used to believe that “bodies are just imperfect copies of our immortal minds which make the world intelligible” (Robinson 1). The only mystery of his theory was why the specific body was bound to the specific mind or why the particular soul was locked in the particular body. Aristotle had quite different theory where he explained the soul as the form of a body. This theory was interpreted as a materialistic one because the soul merely reflected the nature of human being still being in serve of a human body. So arguing the Plato`s theory Aristotle consider intellect the property of a soul supporting it with the idea that if the intellect were the organ it would be sensitive to other physical things just as organs of perceptions.
Big attention to the issue of mind a body was paid by René Descartes. He believed that the nature of mind and body are different as in thinking and extended but it was the reason of rising of some new questions. How can we control our physical body with our mental mind or how can the physical organs of perception called the awareness of our mind? We should mention that Descartes uses here a term of “real distinction”. It means that he claims mind to be of religious nature supporting the idea of mental immortality while the body was a mechanistic thing. It gives a good start for new scientific theories such as Mechanistic. But still Descartes argument his ideas with the theory of afterlife and his point is that the soul can exist even without the body. Descartes realizes that “everything has final goals and objectives even the substantial forms of mind and body. He also touched the laws of gravity in the idea that gravity is carrying our physical body because in the centre of the Earth because there are some knowledge required for our mind so the goal of everything in the world is to reach the centre of the Earth. In his works Descartes explains mind and body as absolutely opposite things, as two materials with nothing in common so it was another argument in the questions of mind and body co-existence all by themselves” (Skirry 3). He referred to the powerfulness of the God and his ability to make mind exists without a body. So in order to make body without a soul or a physical shell without a mental soul we need a God`s power.
Another reason for such theory was in the indivisible nature of a soul while the body is always divisible. Opposed to the previous religious theory this one was more pragmatic, scientific and applicable. We can easily take some object and brake it into two pieces making the two bodies of it but we can`t do anything like that with something mental. Their nature and all their properties are ultimately contradicted which leads Descartes to the conclusions that mind and body are totally different and divertive objects that can exists without one another. Trying to explain how does the relations between mind and body work he considered all the voluntarily movements the result of body and mind interaction. Some of his predecessors considered that everything was either physical and extended or mental and thinking so they used to give the mental properties to physical thing that cannot possess such features. All of them considered the soul as the substantial complicated form different from the physical. They contradicted themselves in an attempt to prove that soul was the principle of composition of the human body while others were arguing whether soul is just a form of a body. Descartes says that the form and content of the body is determined by the motions and movements it does as opposed to the ideas of soul as a substantial form. From that time the body`s purpose was considered to properly configure to form an inseparably union with the substantial form of a mind. They are incomplete without each other. Their components are irreplaceable. And one more essential point is that these relationships need only the presence of God to exist. Another question is if they are of a different nature then how do they interact? It proof that body has slight mental features while mind have some physical characteristics.
We cannot consider our mind as just a “thinking thing”, it is much bigger. The mind cannot be easily shape and we are not sure whether he is in motion or stable but we surely know that he can cause changes of our body becoming some sort of a tool for controlling our physical activities. Apparently we cannot argue the existence of strong relationships between mind and body. It can be easily proofed by observations physical-mental and mental-physical causations. On the classes when a child want to ask the question her mind give a command and he or she raise the hand applying mind to body causation but when a person hear a beautiful song with the help of his ear and then analyze the sound with her mind she`s applying body to mind causation. In fact this causation are not made by only a body or a mind but by their correlation, by the union of physical and mental.
As the conclusion we would like to point that body is united with a mind by powerful bounds as two metaphysical parts. Such a union provide a human being a lot of unique features and possibilities you can`t achieve without one of this components. Actually the bigger issue is to realize all the potential it provide a human being not the properties it possessed separately.
Works Cited
Robinson, Howard. “Dualism”. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2012. Web.
Skirry, Justin. “René Descartes: The Mind-Body Distinction”. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2004. Web.
