At a very early stage in my childhood I must have recognized the presence of my physical body which I may have readily identified with my own self. I was told to take good care of it, as it was me who was occupying this singular body. I must have been a bit older when I realized the existence of a discrete ‘mind’ separate from my ‘body’, which had made me a thinking person. This realization made me a ‘dualist’ - one who believes in the dual existence of the mind and body. Unsurprisingly, that was precisely what my religion also taught me. Like everybody else, I too had the same religion as my parents, and I could consider myself lucky as it coincidentally turned out to be the right religion!
Duality
Over the years I gradually came to realize that many of the great thinkers of the past too had looked into what is widely known in philosophy as the ‘mind-body problem’ and expressed similar opinions on mind-body dualism, or the duality of mind and matter. Although the ancient Greek philosopher Plato did not believe in the reality of matter, his world view was actually dualistic in nature, as he maintained that all objects are nothing more than mere shadows of non-material Forms (or what he termed ‘Universals’) which exist independent of any human thought. Substance (or Cartesian) dualism closely associated with Rene Descartes also asserted that mind is a nonphysical and non-spatial substance distinct from that of the physical world. However, with his famous remark “I think, therefore I am”, Descartes claimed that since one cannot doubt his own thinking, what one really knows without any doubt is only the existence of his own mind. Although one can perceive a world outside the mind, he argued that it is possible to doubt the reality of the external world as consisting of ‘real’ objects, instead of mere ‘thoughts’ or ‘images’ in mind.
Philosophy
All this was satisfactory enough, until I learnt that much of the philosophy which came afterwards on the basis of Descartes thinking had given rise to the growth of what is known as ‘Idealism’. Idealism is the philosophical position that our mental impressions and ideas make up the fundamental reality of everything around us. All objects and phenomena outside the mind exist only by virtue of our perceptions. With the influence of many other thinkers such as George Berkeley, John Locke, David Hume and Immanuel Kant, idealism became one of the major tenets of classical philosophy. In the words of idealism’s main advocate, George Berkeley “To be is to be perceived or to perceive”, meaning that perceptions and perceiving minds are the only things that can be said to exist, and none of the physical things including my body ‘truly’ exist. With such a viewpoint, the dualistic world view I had thus far seemed to fall apart in favour of a form of ‘monism’, postulating a reality with only one kind of unitary substance - the mind.
Physicalism
In spite of the difficulties I had in comprehending the very counter-intuitive reality of idealism, I was able to prevail upon my sanity by being a passionate student of Science. Before long, what is popularly known in science as ‘Physicalism’ which stood in direct contrast to idealism, appeared to me as more rational than idealism. Physicalism is the philosophical position that all of reality is ultimately physical, and that everything as existing in the universe observable by our senses are to be found and inferred by measurement and reason. Physicalism is actually an extension of materialism, since materialism upholds ‘matter’ which is basically a manifestation of certain physical processes, as the ultimate substance. Although monistic in its approach in the same way as idealism, physicalism seemed more credible and pragmatic to change my stance from that of a deep-seated dualist to a monist.
Evolution
Championing physicalism, it is the modern science which has been at the forefront in explaining everything that needs an explanation using its physical theories on relativity, quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, wave-particle duality etc. It has been extremely successful in explaining everything from the origin of cosmos to the evolution of life on our planet, and from gravitational forces to non-material forces between particles. Physicalism as a monistic ideology asserts that there is just one set of physical laws governing the whole of reality and that everything from gravity, matter, light to thoughts, feelings and concepts are ultimately dependent upon this one substance called physical. However, ever since I wanted to be a monist of the physicalist kind, I had to grapple with the problem of how the physiological processes in the brain could bring about extraordinary states of mental consciousness. A viable solution to this is offered by the ‘Type Identity Theory’ of physicalism which suggests that mental states are not caused by, but identical to, brain states, thus eliminating the need to invoke a separate hypothetical mind. But, this theory is challenged by the well-known ‘knowledge argument’ paraphrased as follows.
Descriptions
Mary is a super brilliant Neurologist, who has mastered everything about the physical activities of the brain, but lived her whole life inside a black-and-white room. She knows exactly how one visualizes and experiences colour through the physiological processes involved, but if she comes out of this room and sees, for instance, the colour red for the first time she will learn something new - What it is like to see the colour red. The argument points out that ‘the way things seem to us’ has a subjective quality which is qualitative in a way that brain states are not, and thus the two states are not identical.
To overcome this objection other physicalists have suggested that descriptions of mental states cannot be reduced to lower level explanations of brain states. The mental is said to ‘supervene’, or depend, on the physical, but with no power to influence the physical. Thus, any change in the mental state can happen only with a corresponding change in the physical state. However, this theory too has encountered problems since the physical states of the brain run as a causal chain of events, with each physical state caused by a preceding state. As a result, the sequence of mental states which must strictly accompany the physical states seems to be devoid of a direct causal relationship of its own. The mental appears to be totally excluded from a causal story of why we do the things that we do, leading to a denial of free will.
Mind and body
Is mental consciousness a fundamental quality of reality beyond the physical that cannot be found or inferred by measurement and reason? Do I really have a mind only, or a body only? I feel trapped in a prolonged debate over the reality of a monistic existence, yet it is the inborn dualist in me that must find a way out of this haze now. I am just beginning to realize that regardless of how the physicalists would sort out the mind-body problem in the future, I will have to carry on as usual, with both my mind and body intact.
- Dr. H.D.Goonetilleke