The origins of
mind and body (and other possibilities)
I -
The origin of
an idea is hard to know, if not impossible. Who was the first to suggest that
the mind and the body are made of two different substances? It might seem obvious
to us now that there is a rational part of the human being, which has the
ability to think things through and make choices, and that there is the bodily
part which is full of primitive drives and urges. For this is the philosophy whose roots stretch back to Rene
Descartes, who is essential in the understanding of this question, but also
saturates it, and whom I shall avoid discussing. What is important is that if
we remember that this mind and body divide was not always so, it was not always
'obvious' to us.
If we go back to the ancient greeks (a
familiar path we take in western philosophy, unschooled as we are in the wisdom
of the east!) we can find a different idea of body and soul in the great works
of the playwright Homer. Although we was a dramatist, his work was so epic that he literally created the
greek pantheon of gods! People
genuinely lived their lives by these passionate deities, believing that
they could influence human beings directly, and so deserved worship. This was a
mythical world view that encourages what we would call determinism - that our
actions are decided for us by a force beyond our human willing. It was only
after the body died that the soul took any real form, enjoying the rest of its
time in the underworld.
Even the idea of mind being associated
with the brain is not so obvious, for it was a popular ancient greek idea that
the main core of consciousness was actually in the human heart.
With
Pythagoras comes a strengthening of the souls place in this equation. A believer
in eternal rebirth (who would stand up for a bullied dog if he thought it
contained the reincarnated essence of a late friend) Pythagoras gives us the
idea of the soul being linked to this world, not departing elsewhere
after death. It is an eternal element within us that is separate from the
actual physical body and can remember its past lives. This makes the body
separate to the soul in quite a profound way, like a passenger switching
between trains.
In addition to this we have the
mathematical world view of the Pythagoreans. Perhaps this was the start of
reason as we know it! For now all could be reduced to mathematics and this
meant that everything could be understood through the power of pure
mindthinking. Suddenly, the prospect of perfect reason separate from 'earthy
things' becomes a possibility.
II -
The
pre-socratics (the philosophers who came before Socrates) were often searching
for the one fundamental substance of the cosmos. They were often asking 'wot
stuff wos made of!'. Thales had his water, Anaximenes had air, Heraclitus
had fire and all had their reasons for believing this. Today we might see
physicists trying to find the building blocks of everything, atoms and quarks
and strings and energy and such. The point to be raised here is thus: If
everything is made of one specific substance, then your computer is made of the
same thing as you. So is the light hitting your eyes, the chair you are seated
upon, and so on. There is nothing differentiating you from any of it. Which
raises the further question - what is so special about us and how do we know
that inanimate objects do not also possess conscience?
If we consider ourselves star-stuff
which somehow gained awareness, then we must at some point have transformed
into life out of this 'inorganic' matter. Yet not all life contains 'mind' (or
at least, we do not all think it does), so at some point we must have moved
from life-without-sentience (awareness) to life-with-sentience. If I may boldly
speculate, I believe this to be the result of a gradual emergence out of wilder
nature through the creation of language and concepts to distinguish things.
Then a sense of time which allowed reflection on the past and thinking about
probabilities in the future, as well as developing an understanding of death as
inevitable. The belief in spirits and perhaps even deities would be the first
acts of creativity which are not so directly related to survival. The
development of counting and planning would be essential to this idea of
continuous identity. Slowly but surely, the world around could be divided up
into more and more parts, with an understanding of how those parts interact to
make up the whole. The greater this process of division and articulation, the
greater the understanding of oneself an as a separate and articulated entity,
yet the greater one understands the outside, the greater one can perceive the
whole and understand how it continues to affect us.
III -
A new question
is raised: If we are made of the same thing as everything else, is it possible
for us to transcend our environment by making choices? Materialists can look at
the world as a machine, a series of causes and effects that could all be
discovered if we had greater knowledge of how the machine worked (we could in
theory discover what caused what, from every perceiveable angle, and then
predict the unfolding of the entire future!). Mind in this case would be
awareness, and 'free will' an illusion. Yet this search for cause and effect
does not have to be limited to scientific study of matter. If everything is
made out of chi, then perhaps this too can be understood as an unfolding
process of cause and effect.
The point is this: Our minds must be
outside of the chain of cause and effect to have freedom.
IV -
Now that we have
had our brief look at this question lets get pragmatic. Why bother talking
about it at all?
Why but for
the reason that the mind / body distinction is of immense importance to our
lives. It is not just 'empty philosophizing'.
The culling of animals every year is
encouraged by the separation of mind and body (animals do not have minds from
this perspective and thus have no basis for the right to life).
When someone commits what we deem a
crime they are tried as an individual capable of making choices, with the
severity of their punishment being decided by how much they were under duress.
We assume that people are always capable of rationalizing their actions.
Intelligence is something separate from
the body, it is not part of a unified process, for the body is just that place
where all of our 'yucky stuff' is contained – it is low and base and disgusting
where all of those horrible things such as taking a s*** happens, and where all
of those immoral impulses such as sexual pleasure threaten the ones 'purity'.
It is of massive importance to the
politics of freedom, to aspiration and competitiveness, egotism and
individuality. In short, it is of importance to every aspect of our lives!
By Selim
'Selim' Talat
The Philosophy Takeaway 'Mind & Body' Issue 35
