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Essay On Dualism And Monism

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What is the Mind?
Introduction
To try and explore the ‘mind’ it is necessary to examine if the mind and the brain are separate or if the mind and body are distinct from one another? Is the mind and body separate substance or elements of the same substance? Is consciousness the result of the mechanisms of the brain, wholly separate from the brain or inextricably linked? I will explore this question by looking at how this question has developed into two key schools of thought: Dualism and Monism. Dualism states that the mind is not physical and exists separately while Monism states that the mind and body are not separate. There are arguments for both theories and these dichotomous ideas have brought to light the mind-body problem, which I will analyse below. There are sub-forms of both schools of thought and one of the key sub-schools of thought under Dualism which I will discuss is Interactionism; that the mind and body are separate but both influence each other

The Mind-Body Debate Rene Decartes believed that the mind …show more content…

Materialism or Reductive Physicalism (developed from Materialism) states that there is no differentiation between mind and matter because only what is material exists and as a result the mind is the formation of consciousness. Mental faculties occur because of the physical, for Materialists the brains purpose is to create consciousness. Phenomenalism states that physical objects are perceivable because of our mental faculties. The mind creates what we perceive as physical and what is physical is merely a mental construct therefore deducing that it is the mind that truly exists (McLeod, 2007). A study on hemiplegic victims demonstrated that when stimulated the mind can trick the body into believing a missing limb is still there contrary to the physical evidence, demonstrating that the “reorganized cortex is capable of processing sensory inputs so that they result in tactile perception” (Pons,

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