Here’s some useful reading to help with the study of the Mind-Body problem and Dualism:

Mind and Body Cartesian Dualism at www.blutner.de — a useful summary in slides which includes a number of challenges to Cartesian dualism

Descartes and the Mind Body Problem — New York University, Wayne Waxman’s course on the History of Modern Philosophy.

From Philosophy Now — Consciousness Resurrected — Güven Güzeldere asks where we are now with the mind-body problem.

While the mind-body problem has been around for a long time, it is no less compelling for philosophers today. This is not to say that we are in the same place with regard to understanding it as the philosophers of bygone ages. On the contrary, there has been impressive progress. This progress has been due to great advances in the scientific understanding of the workings of the brain, and to the continual refinement of our philosophical concepts and of the questions we ask about the mind. For these reasons, can we now say that the mind-body problem is nearing a (re)solution, and probably won’t be among the open-ended puzzles of 21st century philosophy?

Psychology Today — Is Your Mind Separate From Your Body?

Which raises another question — what’s the relationship between psychology and philosophy? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

The mind-body problem seems fairly straightforward — it’s where we question the relationship between the physical and observable (our bodies, for example the brain), and the theoretical and untouchable elements like the mind or even the soul.

You might recall from Episode 26, where we discussed the theory of the Forms; that’s one of the earliest examples where questions about what is going on with the body were raised, and whether it is separate from the world of the Forms and limited, unlike the soul. 

But the most famous account is by Rene Descartes, where he argues that the mind was explainable through a part of the brain called the pineal gland; the ‘principal seat of the soul and where all our thoughts are formed’ — the ‘gland makes the spirits move the limbs’, as he wrote in the Treatise of Man and Passions of the Soul. As the mind and body are so different, they cannot be the same thing and work separately. This theory is known as Cartesian dualism or substance dualism, the mind is separate but can influence matter.

So some theories to keep in mind (no pun intended!) — that dualism is where there is a distinction, a separation between mind and matter. Monism is the opposite, where there’s a single reality that can explain it all.

I’ll discuss other theories further in forthcoming episodes. 

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Here’s a couple more theories of thought that can help unpack our topic of knowledge.

Firstly, C.S Pierce was a famous American philosopher who introduced the idea of pragmatism with a paper called “How to make our ideas clear” in 1878. He believed that the links between thought and action were very important, that we can achieve clarity of thought through figuring out the consequences of our ideas — while there may be abstract ideas and concepts, they still have value, but pragmatism aims to be more practical in its outlook.

While it was C.S Pierce proposed the idea of pragmatism, it was William James’ book Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking that suggested that clearness in our thoughts about an object required consideration of what practical effects that the object might involve. He rejected the idea of objective truth, and that an idea is true if it works. While he deviated from Pierce’s philosophy (to the point that Pierce suggested that James’ ideas be called pragmaticism!), he did suggest that ‘true ideas are those we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify’.

German Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the more difficult philosophers to study, and his theory of perspectivism is a challenge in itself! While the influence of his thought reality do raise some questions about world views, we can see how it is reflected in postmodern and modern feminist philosophy.

For Nietzsche, reality is chaotic, and requires categorisations, as there ‘are no facts, only interpretations’ He believed that all human beings have this need to service, grow and to use their powers, and this ‘will to power’ influences our perspective on reality. We are influenced by what ‘lenses’ we use to navigate the world, whether they are our needs, values and so on, that is also different according to different people and their backgrounds.

One of the most enjoyable books I’ve used when encouraging ‘getting into thinking’ is Julian Baggini’s The Pig that Wants to Be Eaten And 99 Other Thought Experiments, published in 2005, and still in print today. Whether or not you’re a Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy fan and have thought about a creature turning up to your dinner table suggesting which parts would be best for lunch or not, this is a very accessible book with numerous philosophically-based quandaries and scenarios for unpacking, with discussion points included.

There’s a hundred in total (not unlike an earlier book. Martin Cohen's 101 Philosophy Problems published in 1999) — ranging from the classic runaway tram problem, brains in vats and golden rules and much more. As the author himself writes — sometimes the essays suggest ways of resolving what appears to be intractable problems, or reveals problems you didn’t think existed before: “Many lines of thought can be started from this book. But none ends in it.” 

It’s also a very challenging book too — eating the household pet might not seem logical or feasible with modern ethics, but the proposals given through thought experiments are a great way to consider the basis of how you think the way you do — and if there’s anything that grounds your answers beyond what might seem to be intuitional responses to the scenarios.

While the front cover of the edition I have suggests it’s like a ‘sudoku of moral philosophy’ it’s also a great way to introduce yourself to some of the big questions in the field.

Here’s a few discussion questions (and these can be extended answer questions):

Considering that a belief can be true or untrue, does confidence about it guarantee knowledge? What do you need to characterise something as knowledge?

On Certainty — Importance of Philosophy

Certainty — Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy

Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? — Edmund Gettier

A Priori and A Posteriori | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

And here’s a question I raised earlier — do your opinions change after learning more about what defines knowledge?

Further resources that I’d suggest checking out include:

· Using philosophical terms in an essay — Monash University

· Skills for writing in Philosophy.

The Question Quadrant is a method used to identify philosophical questions, distinguishing them from other kinds of questions.

For example, if we were asking questions about this cartoon, from Punch, 1910:

Source: 
“Excelsior!” Punch (13 Jul 1910): 21.

We might ask the following kinds of questions:

Phillip Cam proposed that we can then split these kinds of questions into different categories:

Textual Questions — closed — these are questions that can be answered through looking at the text given.

Textual Questions — open — these are open for literary speculation, we can have many possibilities as to what the answer is.

Intellectual Questions — closed — these are questions that we can we can read further to find out, or do more research involving the text to find the answer.

Intellectual Questions — open — these are questions that are broader — we evaluate our reasons for the answer, examine the concepts further, and will have to discuss, maybe disagree, and engage intellectually to come up with answers.

A closed question has a settled answer, whereas an open question can have more possibilities. Have a look at the questions I’ve suggested for the cartoon and identify which quadrant they come from — and come up with a few of your own.

One of Plato’s most famous theories is related to knowing — the Theory Of Forms. The basic idea is that we understand the world around us through our senses, but we are only seeing shadows or representations of unchanging, eternal ‘essences’ that are known as forms. These forms are the true reality and all genuine knowledge is knowledge of those forms. 

The idea of the theory of the forms come from Plato’s Republic, with his parable of the cave:

[Socrates] And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened: — Behold! human beings living in a underground cave, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the cave; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets….they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave… what will naturally follow if the prisoners are released and disabused of their error. 

At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive some one saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision, -what will be his reply? And you may further imagine that his instructor is pointing to the objects as they pass and requiring him to name them, -will he not be perplexed? Will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the objects which are now shown to him?

This theory, according to Plato, is the basis of things around us — there is an essence of ‘dog-ness’ that is behind all kinds of dogs, for example. We can identify a square, because there is a true, eternal square that is the basis of all squares in an imperfect world. We are only seeing the shadows of the puppets, while chained in a cave.

Of course, this has issues with where these perfect forms are, and it does seem like a simple solution to making a basis for knowing things and even how to behave (is there a ‘perfect form’ of a human being, with perfect behaviour as well?). However, the theory does provide us with an interesting proposal on how do we trust our senses and if there are standards or definitions for things, which we then build upon.

When investigating how we know things, there’s a number of theories that have been proposed. 

For example, knowledge can be obtained through empirical observations or using the experiences of the senses — also known as a posteriori. Empiricism is a theory that draws upon such an approach, understanding ourselves and the world through using our senses.

Knowledge can also be ascertained through use of reason and using logic, and not require involvement with events or experiences. This is known as non-empirical or a priori. Rationalism proposes that a priori or innate understanding of the world is the key to knowledge. 

Some famous examples of both schools include the British Empiricists in the 18th and 19th century, such as George Berkeley, John Locke and David Hume. The rationalists included philosophers such as René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and Gottfried Leibniz.

To sum up, here’s a great video by Jennifer Nagle, part of a series on YouTube called Wireless Philosophy: Epistemology: Introduction to Theory of Knowledge.

Knowledge is one of the big topics in philosophy — the discipline within the field is known as epistemology (which comes from episteme, meaning knowledge and logos, meaning word, reason or plan).

Then how do we define knowledge? One great definition you can find inJulian Baggini’s and Peter S. Fosl’s book The Philosopher’s Toolkit, where they point that that it isn’t just believing in something (after all, I could believe in pink unicorns, but it doesn’t necessarily make them true creatures or that the majority of people will agree about my belief). So, we have to factor injustifying the belief, and what can be found to be true about it.

This is where our senses and experiences come into play — but we also know that our senses might not be trusted or can be limited. We can have realistic dreams, hallucinations, be influenced by illusions after all. This illusion argument challenges whether or not we can be certain of reality at all. And then there’s the question as to whether we’re in something like the movie The Matrix, just an organism in a jar, being fooled by a fake reality, merely a brain in a jar. How do we reliably know anything about the world at all then?

There’s a number of philosophers who investigate knowledge — some famous ones include the seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650) is famous for his work Principles of Philosophy, where we get the claim ‘I think therefore I am’ (cogito ergo sum). We are thinking, therefore we exist. And that is the basis of understanding ourselves and the world around us and various concepts.

Philosophers like A. J. Ayer (1910–1989), argued that it should be clarified further — just because there is thinking, doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a thinker attached! There’s a number of arguments about how we can truly know things, and that will be the focus for the rest of the week. Further links on the topic can be found at www.365daysofphilosophy.com.