The Mind-Body Problem

Abstract

The most popular view about the nature of the mind is that it is immaterial, hence separable from the body. Moreover, it is still widely believed that we are alive (“animated”) as long as we have souls (animae), and that we die when these leave us. Saul Kripke (1971) revived this prehistoric myth by claiming that mental processes cannot be neural because the brain-mind association is contingent rather than logically necessary – hence people in alternative worlds might not need brains to think. This is all that modal (or possible worlds) metaphysics manages to tell us about mind. Psychologists tell us much more, of course, but many of them are still not interested in the brain, which cognitive neuroscientists regard as the organ of mind: whether or not they are dualists, those psychologists behave as if they were. Indeed, they act as dualists whenever they write about the neural “substrate” or “correlate” of this or that mental function, which is like saying that the legs constitute the substrate or correlate of walking.