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8/19/2019 Core Theme Response - Exemplar Script (1)
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With explicit reference to the stimulus and your own knowledge, discuss what you think is the
defining feature of being human.
This image raises the question of what a mind truly is. The image is a
cartoon of a “brain bisecting and transplanting ward”, where someone
is about to have their brain removed, cut in half and transplanted into
two brainless bodies. This raises the question of what will become of the
person’s physical body once the brain is removed, whether the person will
still have a mind if they don’t have a brain, and thus what constitutes
the mind of a person to begin with.
The predominant theories with regard to this question are Descartes “amind is a thing which thinks”, and the functionalist idea of the mind
8/19/2019 Core Theme Response - Exemplar Script (1)
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as essentially a computer system with inputs and outputs, but no
metaphysical existence. Each theory has its problems, but these can be
reconciled into a combination thereof. Overall, a mind has a
metaphysical and a physical presence.
Descartes would have it that the mind is not an aspect of the body, but
an aspect of the spirit, whose existence is entirely independent of the
body. He reaches this conclusion through methodological doubt of all
things that are at all questionable. He revokes the possibility of the mind
as a physical substance by saying that we could be dreaming, and our
senses deceiving us. He establishes personal identity and the mind as an
essence which doubts, which is an act of the mind. He claims, after
reconstructing the world through various methods which are not the
focus of this essay, that the mind directs the body as a conductor directshis orchestra.
The fundamental problem with this conception of the mind as a
metaphysical force is the way in which it is capable of interacting with
the world. Descartes dooms his theory by designating the pineal gland
as the medium for this interaction. This implies that the mind does in
fact have a physical existence, which reduces his dualistic concept of the
individual to a monistic one, thereby losing any connection to the
reason he purported as so fundamentally important. Skinner points outthat the metaphysical directing the physical is as nonsensical as a ghost
controlling a machine.
After the fall of Descartes’ theory, the functionalists jumped in to propose
that the mind is simply a collection of physical parts, analogous to a
computer. This system is subject to all the physical laws of the universe,
and is defined not by any special metaphysical identity but by solely its
physical existence. This theory works well until you look a bit too hard,
and see that it cannot account for all the humans for which it cannotaccount. Firstly, neuroscience has not advanced nearly far enough to
establish whether or not this is the actual nature of the mind, so in the
status quo it is non-falsifiable. Secondly, functionalism fails to account
for qualitative features which are integral to humanity. It is all well
and good if the mind can perform calculations, or throw a ball, but the
computer model cannot explain things such as enjoyment, sadness or
anger.
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Furthermore the functionalist mindset leaves out the idea of
consciousness. It is as nonsensical to say that a computer is conscious of
itself as it is to say that a stone is. The mere physical absence of the brain
as a calculating system fails to account for a whole myriad of things
that are undeniable aspects of the mind. Furthermore the basic tenet offunctionalism, namely that there is no metaphysical mind, is not
disproven by the possibility that the brain s a computer system with
physical inputs and outputs. These flaws make a solely functionalist
conception of mind impossible.
Both theories have their merits and demerits, but if we take parts from
each we can construct a more or less viable conception of the mind. The
initial problem with dualistic theories of the mind is resolved by
thinking of the spiritual aspect of the mind not as a person pressingbuttons to make the body move, but as a field or guiding force such as
gravity. This removes the need for a physical means of communication
between the mind and body by saying that mind, in addition to charge
and mass, is just another axiom of the universe and the interaction of
particles. Then we may satisfy the functionalists by saying that this
“mind force” directly correlates with physical existence, but is not
caused by it. This would be able to account for both the problems with
Descartes’ theory and those of functionalism. The mind is a series ofparticle interactions which are guided by the metaphysical mind,
through tendencies of the universe to organise in that fashion, and not
by a ghost in a machine.
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