Editor's note: This digital portfolio was completed by Ulric Nieminen for PHIL2013 and published by Cirrus as an example of superlative student work.
A 1936 paper by James Bissett Pratt begins as follows:
“On an occasion like the present it would seem appropriate to [contemplate] … a theme general in its nature, fundamental in its relations, crucial in its bearings … I make no apology because, though the theme be threadbare, it is today — as it has always been — a problem of supreme and decisive importance.” (Pratt, 1936, p.144)
The American philosopher is, of course, discussing the mind-body problem.
Seeing as philosophy is often viewed as a means to approach “big questions” (Rescher, 2010, p.1), the relationship between mental consciousness and the physical body and brain can often come to the forefront of these queries.
Accordingly, a number of early modern philosophical systems attempted to explain this interrelation. Although René Descartes’ substance dualism problematises the mind-body relationship on a mechanistic level, both Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza propose forms of monism that avoid the French philosopher’s interactional incompatibilities.
Hobbes’ metaphysics reduces the mind to a product of physical mechanics and hence avoids the problem altogether. However, his materialism encounters difficulties in modelling the phenomenal experience of consciousness. On the other hand, Spinozistic monism resolves Descartes’ mind-body issue by separating thought and extension epistemologically. With a model of human consciousness corroborated by recent empirical evidence about the brain's functioning, Spinoza can be seen as offering a robust solution to the mind-body problem.
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