The Mind- Body Problem is a meta-physical argument concerning the intellect and how that relates to the body. In short, it asks the following question

Is there an immaterial soul (for lack of a better term) that gives credence to our unique ability of conceptual thought?

There are two different sides to this argument of course, the side of dualism and the side of monism.

Dualism says to the question I postulated above, "Yes, there must be an immaterial soul or something alone those lines that allows us conceptual thought. Though, this soul must be dependent on the brain, but the brain itself cannot conceptually think."

Monism says, "No. Our brain is enough to conceptually think."

Dualism

I had written a post a while back in a thread concerning reality about Descartes' view on this argument, here's a quote of that post.


This argument was touched upon by Plato and Aristotle, and then made modern by Rene Descartes.

Plato and Aristotle used the argument concerning universals and particulars, as opposed to Descartes' Cogito Ergo Sum. In a nutshell, they said that ideas are universal, while the material world is only particular. By universal, I mean there is an essence to an object that makes that object, well, that object.

For example, if you try to imagine a triangle, you can imagine a scalene triangle, an equilateral triangle, a blue triangle, an obtuse triangle, or a red triangle. These are all particular types of triangles. This means that the concept (note: conceptual thought being demonstrated) of a triangle is universal, capable of being imagined as so many particular things that the concept itself cannot be a particular thing.

Our ability of conceptual thought as being demonstrated above shows us that our intellect is capable of dealing with said universal concepts, but that our imagination is not, because imagination derives from memory, and memory is all particular. We can then go on to say that as we have studied our brains, it is an organ of memory, perception, and imagination; but not of conceptual thought. You may ask that imagination would create conceptual thoughts, but we can only imagine particular thoughts, as I said above. We can't imagine triangle as such, we need to imagine a scalene... etc particular type of triangle.

Thomas Aquinas said that the brain and mind are like a rower and a rowboat. The rower works in accord with his rowboat, but the two do not necessarily require each other to work.

Mortimer J Adler stated that the mind requires the brain, but the brain cannot conceptually think on its own; in the same way that an eye cannot see on its own.

Personally, I am a subscriber to dualism. I do indeed think that the brain is only capable of perception, imagination, and memorization. I feel that if monism is true, neurology and psychology would be one and the same. If we could not use universals, then we wouldn't be able to use common nouns. When we talk about a triangle, we refer to anything to which the name triangle is capable of applying to. Triangle is thus a common noun and a universal. When we say triangle A, we talk about a particular triangle we have labeled with the letter A.

Monism

To counter the argument of universals, David Hume stepped forth. He invented Bundle Theory. He stated that when something is thought about without its particular qualities, it ceases to exist. Here was his famous thought experiment:

Try to think of a triangle without any of its particular qualities. Try not think of the triangle as having any size, any color, or any measures. You will then realize that you cannot because universals do not exist.

That leads us to the Monist's argument about universals in general. They do not exist. Common nouns and so called universals are only so because we assign particular qualities to them.

A Duelist's reply to this is that we cannot comprehend universals as such, just as we cannot comprehend triangles as such without properties, but we use triangles as such to name the three-sided, three-angled conceptual objects we have invented. We can't imagine universals. That's the point.

As for Aquinas' argument, there is one objection which I think nullifies it. When someone suffer's brain damage, the mind should be able to per se, swim away. If a row boat is damaged, the rower is able to swim away.

So, that's really all I've to say about it right now. Feel free to reply and rebut.

This isn't my place of discussion (Mainly because it doesn't really concern or interest me too much and likely requires higher level think of which I can't reach atm since I recently just had Tylenol infused in me), but if this is relevant, I'd have to agree with dualism as being a Christian (Or even if I wasn't), I do believe your soul is the main structure behind your brain functions your soul is made up of what you believe and who you are theoretically. This in turn, in my opinion (Can't provide any hard evidence (if you will)), gives your brain a blueprint to work off of and therefore making up you yourself physically and mentally.

Anyone may refute me or try to, but you won't really get a response, kind of loopy atm.

I would say no, mostly because I am at Uni with a passion for physics, I can't agree with a 'immaterial soul' since you can't have something without matter, it has to physically exist. The only thing that I could think of being close to it would be the messenger particles of gravity and light - graviton and photon, they have no mass (or atleast, all the evidence points to them having no mass, reason being is you can't move at the speed of light if you have mass at rest, and gravity moves at the speed of light according to general relativity.) but that is nothing close to a soul.

So no, I agree with Monism in a way, since my reason to refute Dualism is there cannot be a 'soul' which has no substance, helping us with conceptual thought.

@Ray: I would say that neurology and psychology are one and the same - they both look at the human mind, in different ways. Remember neurology is still in it's childhood, we don't know much yet, whereas psychology is an old, well worn area. I think in say, 50 years time, neurology will be able to explain in greater detail what psychology tries to explain. And even if they don't, neurology is still a child science, it's not really 'fair' or accurate to compare the two, when many breakthroughs are being founded every day in neurology, the lay of the land in that science is changing every day, so to speak.

Here's a quote from Mortimer J Adler's The Four Dimensions of Philosophy


To put in in context, Adler denounces Stephen Hawking for saying that everything that is not material/cannot be measured/cannot be empirically investigated as default-ly not existing.



So far, neurology has only answered questions concerning how the brain remembers, perceives, and imagines; just as Adler predicted the brain can only do. If neurology can answer why I can think conceptually, why I can think things that I have never perceived (concepts), then I would be able to say that there is no need for a soul.

Well, I'd disagree with Stephen here, since I'd say if you can think of it, and provide some evidence, be it theoretical or otherwise, then it is 'true', until more evidence is found that disproves it. For example, look up general relativity, that is accepted as fact (or pretty well, considering the conflict between that and quantum physics.) and there isn't physical strong proof for it.


Well, I'd say that neurology has the potential to answer those questions, not will. Based on current state of those sciences, you can't make a definite decision on what is a likely to be true, or which is the stronger argument, since I'd say it's not accurate to base evidence on an area of science that hasn't grown into it's prime yet, as I said before, in a couple of years there should be stronger evidence for this argument, for one or the other. =P

Given the philosophical arguments I presented, I definitely don't think that neurology can ever answer those questions.

I present you with another question.

What can definitely disprove dualism?

It must be material for it to exist, it must exist to do anything. Yet you say it is 'immaterial'. How would it be immaterial? How would it interact with a material world? The job of those arguments is to convince me that it is the better argument, and right now Monism is, to me. So convince me! =)

No. Something does not have to be material for it to exist. It seems to me that you are doing assumed materialism in reverse "Things have to be material to exist act, so material only exist." The assumption in dualism is that the soul works through the brain to think. Of course, it's immaterial, so we can't know how it acts.

The point being made by all dualistic arguments is that there needs to be a soul for us to think, not how a soul makes one think. If we see that we need to have something exist to explain and cause a phenomena yet to be explained, we can justifiably say that that cause exists and acts in order for that phenomena to exist (see: Occam's Razor).

How can there be a need for a soul for us to think? The brain is a powerful machine, the frontal lobe is what separates us from animals, that is the part of our brain that gives us this higher reasoning functions and such. I'd say that's what you say the 'soul' is.

Basic logic isn't conceptual thought. As I explain in my first post, the intellect can deal with universals, but our imagination cannot apprehend them. Reasoning in the brain puts together things we perceive, while conceptual intellectual thought is entirely imperceptible.