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The Mind And Body Problem

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Nishtha Patel
December 13, 2014
PHILO 1100-091
The Mind and Body Problem
The issue of the origins of consciousness has been a problem that has philosophers and scientists alike, puzzled for years. Is it a matter of science? Can it be explained through neurobiological processes or is it just something that simply cannot be reduced to words? Rene Descartes had struggled to explain this problem through his idea of substance dualism. This idea states that the mind and body are of two separate worlds, the physical world and the mental world. He then goes on by describing himself as a “thinking thing” and questions the existence with the mind and body thus bringing the questions of the material and the immaterial. From this sprouts the mind-body problem, the connection between mental phenomena and the physical world on which the mind depends. In this philosophical essay, I will question whether the mind and body coexist or if they are two separate entities that make us who we are.
One of the first arguments made in Cartesian Dualism is the argument of doubt. Descartes starts to doubt the perception of his body, but handedly cannot conceive the possibility that he is without a mind. This is because he of the very act of doubting that he is a thinking thing, there has to be something that is doing the doubting as. He continues to make the argument by saying as followed:
I am certain that I am a thinking thing
I am not certain that I am a physical thing
Therefore, I am not a

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