Dualism and Monism

There are two facts about the human soul on which depend all things we know of its nature. The first is that it thinks; the second is that it is united to the body and can act and be acted upon along with it. About the second I have said hardly anything. [...] It does not seem to me that the human mind is capable of conceiving at the same time the distinction and the union between body and soul, because for this it is necessary to conceive them as a single thing and at the same time to conceive them as two things; and this is absurd. [...] Everyone feels that he is a single person with both body and thought so related by nature that the thought can move the body and feel the things which happen to it. 

RENÉ DESCARTES (1596~1650), “Letter to Princess Elizabeth (1643),” 

Descartes' Philosophical Letters, trans. Anthony Kenny (1970), p.137, p.142

The mind does not hold a linear or geometric physical space. Matter, as we know it, is defined as anything that takes up space. When one perceives a paper cup approximately half a meter away from their eyes, the physiological mechanism of “perceiving” would be that the light reflects off of the matter, enters the eyes, passes the cornea, reflects upon the retina, and with a complex sequence of events, eventually reaches the occipital lobe. Yet it can be argued that nerve excitation is entirely distinct from the perception of an object. Essentially, are excited nerve signals not mere biochemical outputs of complex human biology? One moment, it is just a relay of voltage, and the next, it is miraculously a projected image that may be perceived as comprising one’s reality. What is this sorcery? 

René Descartes is the main purporter of the dualism argument. Dualism poses the idea that the mind and body are entirely distinct. The body takes up physical space - yet the soul, or the mind, cannot be described as a two-by-two-by-two cube or a sphere with a radius of 5, it simply has fundamentally different properties. Perhaps this is best put in the words of Daniel Boscaljon, PhD, director of research and co-founder of the Institute for Trauma-Informed Relationships. He states that “the mind’s theoretically unlimited potential is contrasted favorably with the body’s susceptibility to time and space.”

Another thought-provoking theory championed by different philosophers in the proposition of Cartesian dualism (Cartesianism) is occasionalism. Perhaps hesitantly and timidly pointed out by Descartes, but more completely established by French Roman Catholic priest and philosopher Nicolas Malebranche - occasionalism too agrees that interaction between the physical (body) and the non-physical (mind) cannot be either physical or non-physical (we must assume thus that there cannot exist a medium space of semi-physical). However, unlike Descartes’ Cartesian view, Malebranche specifically points out that this impossibility of interaction is a property of all created things. Without the middleman, who is God, there cannot be discourse between the two substances. Perhaps better put in the words of an article, 

For René Descartes, the mind is active, unextended thinking, whereas the body is passive, unthinking extension. But these two created substances, the bases of Cartesian dualism, are combined as a third, compound substance—the living human. The problem is that the essential unlikeness of mind and body in the Cartesian view makes it difficult to conceive how they can interact—i.e., how unextended mental ideas can push the body around and how bodily bumpings can yield ideas. Descartes’s opinion that direct interaction takes place in the pineal gland deep within the brain does not answer the question of how. The orthodox view of the French Cartesians Pierre-Sylvain Régis and Jacques Rohault, was simply that God has made mind and body so that they interact directly, even if scientists do not know how. The occasionalist’s answer to the question is to show how interaction appears to be direct when, in fact, it is mediated by the fourth, uncreated Cartesian substance, God.

Put simply, Malebranche posited that the illusion of direct interaction that we know as autonomy is mediated by an all-knowing God. God moves the body on the occasion of (1) the mind’s will, and (2) the body’s physical interaction with other material objects.

when a person actualizes his desire to pick up an apple, his mind does not act on his body directly, but his willing of the action is the occasion for God to make his arm reach out; and when his hand grasps the apple, the apple does not act on his mind directly, but the contact is the occasion for God to give him ideas of the apple’s coolness and softness.

I do not agree with Descartes. The 17th-century French mathematician-philosopher argues (to sum up once again), that the argument of individuality/unity of mind and body is in itself a contradiction because non-interacting entities in entirely different sectors of existence cannot be one. However, the mind and body can indeed be considered to be within the boundaries of the self. 

There are some great flaws to the substance dualism argument Descartes posits. Substance dualism, also known as Cartesian dualism, suggests that the mind and body are fundamentally different. However, this does not take into account emergent properties of life. For example, water has completely different properties from its most basic constituents that are Hydrogen and Oxygen atoms. From a non-scientific point of view, I doubt a micro->macro shift of observation supersedes the output value of a macro->micro sequence of observation. (Does that make sense?) Putting this into the perspective of the mind-body argument, stating that their properties are different thus they must not interact is simply too shallow. Perhaps, the mind itself is an emergent property of the brain. I believe that the mind is a part of a greater plane of existence, but it does not mean that it is non-interacting with the physical body. Emergence is an important perspective to take as it mediates between extreme dualism, which rejects the micro-dependence of some entities, and an oversimplifying, reductionist view on a complex multifactorial phenomenon. Pasted below is an essay that attempts to answer the same Rene Descartes quote. The writer maintains the idea that the mind and body are a part of the “self,” which is elaborated as follows.

Previously, this essay referred to the self as a subjective conscious experience. To elaborate on this further, the self essentially is "experiencing things." As such, the self is, not exactly "defined" by what is referred to as qualia, but rather can be most easily analyzed through the lens of such philosophical concepts. A qualia is the experience of something, rather than the thing itself. For example, a qualia is the taste of chocolate, or stubbing your toe. The thing that experiences these things is the subject, and the self. The exact mechanisms through which this experience is processed may be by utilizing and interacting with the body and the mind (in specific, the physical taste buds or nerve endings in the body, which translate into memories and associations with the experiences). However, the ultimate entity that is experiencing the experience – not the mechanism by which it is experienced – is the self, or subjective conscious experience.

Whilst writing this essay, which in my humble opinion fails to contribute much novel perspective to the century-persisting mind and body problem, I would like to conclude by emphasizing why a comprehensive understanding of this matter is valuable. One may prematurely assume that the relationship between mind and body is simply outside the interest of an average, functioning adult. After all, what value would it bring to understand whether our mind and body are distinct if our experience of the world remains immutable? 

Much to the contrary, however, the significance of understanding the harmony of mind, body, and self is critical to ascertain who one is. In the book ‘The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma,’ author Bessel van der Kolk wrote about how trauma impacts the body in a way where subconscious mental processes give conspicuous changes to the body - cancer, weight gain, acne, etc. Thus, by understanding that the self is comprised of our thoughts that give a non-linear, but certainly existent and strong impact on our physical body, people will grow to appreciate themselves in a new light. Sometimes, however, our body doesn’t act as we wish for it to, and the mind thinks thoughts that we physically resist. In this way, the correlation of mind and body is indefinite as well. Considering these many perspectives, it is unrealistic to make a clear conclusion without objective scientific analysis. For this reason, I do not believe that Rene Descartes’ analysis of the matter is the correct answer. Likewise, I do not believe that any other proponents of the different dualist or monist theories (interactionism, occasionalism, parallelism, and epiphenomenalism) are any better. However, what is most important is the continuous pursuit of this indefinite answer. Though I largely do not agree with Descartes’ point of view, credit should be given when due. To conclude, albeit without a conclusive answer, I simply believe that exploring the complex relation between the three entities holds significance in itself to understanding the larger picture of the world.