MIND-BODY PROBLEM

(by Spinoza’s philosophy)

All since the ancient times there has been the problem how to determine mental and
material world and its interaction between one and another. In philosophy of mind it is
known under the name of mind-body problem. There has been two main attempts to the
solution/explanation made. Dualism, mental and material worlds as two completely
different substances, was first suggested by ancient philosopher Plato, but most precisely
formulated later in the 17th century by the French thinker Rene Descartes. On the other
hand, there is also another explanation of mental and material world as two different
aspects, but with same ontological origin (the substance). This way of thinking first was
first brought out by P(ta folk na p, sm zbrisu in pozabu ime) in 5th century BC and was
later espoused by philosophical rationalist Baruch Spinoza. These two main ideas of
thinking about the world and its creator were adopted(?) [ defaulted ](se strinjam s tvojim
profesorjem, ma bom moj komentar skrajšu na:”WTF”) by many religions (e.g. Hindu,
Shankhya, etc.) and were also an important inspiration to some greatest minds of all time
(e.g. A. Einstein…).

1.1 RENE DESCARTES and DUALISTIC THEORY

The first serious attempt to give some logical and adequate explanation about mental and
material things was performed by Descartes in his work “Meditations on First
Philosophy“, published in 1641. He stated that the distinction between mind and body is
argued in Meditation VI as follows: “I have a clear and distinct idea of myself as a
thinking, non-extended thing, and a clear and distinct idea of body as an extended and
non-thinking thing. Whatever I can conceive clearly and distinctly, God can so create.”
So, Descartes argues, the mind, a thinking thing, can exist apart from its extended body.
And therefore, the mind is a substance distinct from the body, a substance whose essence
is thought (while the essence of the body is to be extended). Which gives us a satisfactory
explanation until there is no casual cause connection between them. But as we can all
percive in a clear manner and so did Descartes, there is some kind of casually interaction
between those two ontologically different substances. Mental events cause physical
events, and vice-versa. But this leads to a substantial problem for Cartesian dualism, an
interaction between mind and body named in honor to Descartes: How can an immaterial
mind cause anything in a material body, and vice-versa? This has often been called the
"problem of interactionism." Descartes proposed a solution, in his letter for Princess
Elizabeth, It was a hypothesis(?) that material affects the pineal gland, a small gland in
the middle of the brain, which transmits these material information to mental ones, which
later affects our mind. But this did not give a sufficient, because pineal gland should have
both mental and material properties in order to be able to transmit two different types of
information, but according to Descartes it was only a part of the body, a material
component. So this problem has remained unsolved from by the Descartes’ way of
interpretation. (plus znanstveno podkrepljeno z 0 dejstvi, hvala)
Later on some adherents of Cartesian dualistic philosophy (e.g. Geulincx, Malebranche)
suggested that pineal gland is actually a God’s intervention, because only He could
satisfy the condition of being able to posses both a mental and material properties at a
same time, but this is an entirely different way of thinking/theory/hypothesis/rajsi ne
“STORY”.

1.2 BARUCH SPINOZA and MONISTIC THEORY

Rather than the necessary presence of anthropomorphic God in every single mental-
material transition, Spinoza offered a different explanation of perceiving mental and
material world. For Spinoza there is no God as an anthropomorphic being which would
create or destroy things, or had any other direct casual cause on nature. Actually he
considered God and nature only as two different forms for the same thing. In his most
famous work Ethics he invented a whole set of mathematically logical axioums out of
which he derives all his conclusions. One of that axioms stated that there is only one
substance, because the definition of the substance is to be perfect, and if there would be
anything outside this substance to differ it from, it would not be perfect anymore, because
it would not posses everything (which is the essential definition of perfection). This
derives to the conclusion there must be only one God and he must be everything in order
to be perfect. So even mental and material worlds, which seem to be completely different
with completely different properties, they still have the same ontological origin; God. So
they are basically only two different ways of perceiving one thing and one thing only,
they are only two out of infinite extensions of perceiving God. And so if both material
and physical things can be both explained through God, there must exist a common
denominator for them. And there is. Because The face of the whole universe and The
order of thought are extensions infinite in its own kind, they must include everything,
what God is, under it’s form, or they would not be infinite. And if one includes
everything and the other includes everything and they have the common denominator,
that means whatever exists as a thing also has to exist as an idea, and vice versa. But then
they are not two things anymore, but rather only two different ways of perceiving a single
thing.

And there is the interaction between body and mind, it does not exist(KAJ?). It is the
same thing so there could not be any casual cause to affect mind that would have an
origin in body, because it would mean the same as to say that mind has been affected
because of itself. And that is also why Spinoza was Einstein’s favorite philosopher. What
did Spinoza prove in philosophy, Einstein tried to back up with some experimental proofs
in physics. Einstein believed that the universe under all its complexity hides a simple
connection/equation with which it would be able to explain everything. And he also
succeeded to some degree. His most famous equation E=mc2 is a tremendous(pocasi
shakespear) loud(evo ti če češ bit umetniški) proof for Spinoza’s philosophy, that even
things that seem immaterial in its own kind have components in matter. Or even a better
example;the light. It is possible to describe light as electro-magnetic waves (e.g. energy)
or as photons (e.g. particles of matter) (ti ne razlagas fiziko ampak odnos materija vs. ne
materija). So light is an immaterial process and a particle at once. And as one changes the
other is also affected, but not through the casual cause of the other but rather by other’s
immanent cause.
So here it is, the logical and physical proof of the monistic theory. Sufficient enough? If
energy is viewd as substance than I’m guessing not… (ne to napisat)

To je brez determinizma, grem vn jest, tko da bom

determinizm pole, preglej, komentiri in uživi ob branju
odlično popravljenega “manj-kot-idealnega” eseja.

Popravljeno by: profo, thank me later…