Posted by: confused November 20, 2004
mind N body
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hehe here am back, had been very busy for past there days, but hey no regrets coz, now i have whole of next week offf :) At this very moment as you are reading this paragraph and understanding the details written in it, your mind is functioning at its best. Just like the moments, when you are starving for food, or feeling thirsty, your mind is working. Hence, your mind is always working in every consciousness state. This is the definition of mind. Mind is the "soul" of our human body which constitutes our feelings and thoughts, where as body is something physical. Philosophizing the mind means philosophizing consciousness, intentions, thoughts and reasons to its depth and giving it a mutual agreeable understanding, and in no circumstances this battle has been easy for the great philosopher?s among the years. The growth of Philosophy of mind is as old as Plato, when he detailed his distinction of the world and the forms, but none the less, the major bang on this philosophy arrived when Descartes Meditations gave a brief explanation of "the real distinction of the mind from the body.? Descartes believed that mind was a not a divisible parts like body. Mind did not contain any parts, because no being can takeaway any sense, reason, or willingness from mind, but likewise hands, legs, eyes can be taken away.. He also elaborated on how mind can affect body as well as body can be affected by mind. This is known as Dualism of mind and body. Hence after this period, many philosophers lingered around the Dualism philosophy of mind and body. Then after Spinoza, Leibniz, arrived Kant and his transcendental arguments on this subject. His view of mind was complex, which "they" say, is very similar to "functionalism" which was developed by Hillary Putnam (on 1960?s) almost after 200 yrs when Kant had established his view. Functionalism basically is a philosophy providing an answer to the mind? body (brain) problem. Its deepness lies in understanding the mind, without accounting any physical fragments of the body, but rather understanding ?functions? such as beliefs, emotions etc. There is also "subjective idealism", which was put forward by Berkeley which simply can be defined as, physical event produced by us is nothing but properties produced by mind. So, in other words, only mental events exists which constitutes the physical event, which completely differs from dualism. Now, there is other philosophy called, materialism, which is very different from dualism and subjective idealism, which states, that only the physical event exist and all the mental events are the action of the physical event. Materialism can also be found on Karl Marx writings, whose political philosophy has changed the world since he elaborated, defined it. So, this is as much as I know about the philosophy of mind, and problems between mind and body. As far as my opinion is concerned in this topic, I do not have an established view on it yet that I can define, but I am learning and might have one someday. For now, I am still learning and thinking, does the world I am living in really exist?
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