Understanding the Human Being: A Philosophical and Scientific Exploration of Mind and Body

Spiritual Materialism

The spiritual monist conception of human beings is the opposite of materialistic monism. According to spiritualists, also called idealists, all reality is mental. What we call matter is simply a creation of the mind. Thus, the human being is conceived as a mind that perceives itself as being. These beings, including their own bodies, only exist as perceptions of the mind. In Berkeley's philosophy, reality is to perceive or be perceived. It makes no sense to speak of the existence of the body or matter as independent of the mind because all we can say about material reality comes from our perception of it. This idealistic argument will be continued in the 19th century in the philosophy of Hegel.

Intermediate Monism

The Dutch philosopher Spinoza (17th century) proposes a neutral solution between materialism and idealism. For Spinoza, the human being is one thing; body and mind belong to a single order. It is true that humans consist of body and mind, and the human mind is united to the body. However, the human body is the human being as a mode of thought. Body and mind are two aspects of the same thing, and therefore the issue of intention no longer needs to be raised.

EXTENSION <= HUMANS => THOUGHT

The Human Being in Science: Mind-Brain

Modern science considers the human being the product of evolution. This evolutionary process, leading from hominid to rational human being, is directly linked to the development of the brain. Today, discussion revolves around reductionist monism, which reduces psychic phenomena to brain processes, and those who advocate for the uniqueness of mental processes as a form of energy, also called new dualism.

Materialist Reductionism

This theory supports mind-brain identity for all known physical or psychological phenomena. What we call "mind" is nothing but the process of neuronal ensembles occurring in the brain. The study of the mind should be approached scientifically, based on observation and study of the brain. In a similar vein of reductionism, psychological functionalism asserts that the mind consists of functional states dependent on the material base. Functionalists like Putnam affirm the possibility of artificial intelligence. Since the mind is nothing more than the operation of a physical system, the material substrate of the system doesn't matter. Therefore, there is no difference between a human mind and an intelligent computer or other machine.

Emergentism

Contrary to previous approaches, emergentism is the thesis of philosopher Searle. His work, Mind, Brain, and Science (1984), argues that mind and brain interact but are completely different. Mental phenomena result from certain brain processes but are not to be confused with them; they are an emergent property of the brain. Robustness is a property of a chair, but it cannot be confused with the chair itself. No matter how much we physically examine the object, we will not discover that property. On the other hand, it is clear that there can be no robustness without a chair. Similarly, states of consciousness (thinking, imagining, loving) are macroscopic features that are the product of physical processes at the molecular or microscopic level. They cannot be identified with these physical processes but must be studied independently through deliberate intent and subjectivity.

The New Duality

At some point in human brain evolution, thought emerged—a conscious mind began to guide human behavior. This fact created a radical difference between humans and other animals. Popper understands the conscious mind, as the repository of subjective experiences, as capable of independent abstractions applicable to the outside world. Therefore, the subjective world of the mind would be independent of the objective material world. The mind, encompassing all the feelings and thoughts of a person, is conscious because it knows itself as something that can act on things.

AWARENESS <== MIND ==> BE AWARE

Therefore, just as neurophysiological science studies the brain and its functioning to process information from the senses, psychological science studies the mind and consciousness that arise when analyzing information registered in the brain, linked to the development of intelligible behavior.