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The Human Mind: Dualism And Materialism

996 Words4 Pages
The nature of “mind” has long been a very abstract concept to most, if not all of us. Therefore, the study of the issue is of great significance. Given that the mind is the most familiar yet mysterious concept for humankind as stated by Chalmers (1995), the resolution of the mind-body problem is fundamental to the development of breakthrough perspectives towards philosophical topics of ‘being’ and ‘life’, which may involve new fundamental laws, resulting in startling consequences of our views on the universe and ourselves. This essay intends to look into the debate over the controversial topic, whether “the human mind is something physical or nonphysical”. The theory of dualism and materialism will be presented and further analysed. The former believes that the human mind is something nonphysical, and a human being is composed of two different sorts of components, which is a physical body and a nonphysical mind (Descartes, 2013); the latter refers to the view that a human mind is composed of the physical body (or its physical states) only (Papineau, 2002). This essay supports the dualism theory, that the human mind is something nonphysical.
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A sympathetic understanding of materialism
The key idea of materialism is that as both “the mind” and physical part of human leads to physical effects, they are pointing towards the same thing. Papineau (2002), being one of the most
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