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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

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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.