IndieAgora

This is perhaps the most horrifying problem in philosophy, thinkers from Descartes and Newton to Nietzsche and Davidson have tackled this problem.

Some of the more wacky explanations are from Liebniz and Berkeley, although I have sympathy for Berkeley and Idealism as it solves the dualist problem of how mind and body interact by simply eradicating the body - but this is clearly counter-intuitive. Leibniz says mind and body never interact and are akin to two pendulums swinging in harmony (parallelism) which is absolute nonsense.

Newton at least gives us a view of the mind as though it is a force like gravity and so it can interact with matter, we just can't see it.

I personally, am a materialist and I think the mind is an illusion that is part of the physical system, I don't believe we have free will, but our experience and being is complex enough for me to think I have free will. This would also account for change and flux of my self. 

Other views are Occassionalism and Spinoza, who was a substance monist, all is God and we are modes of God/nature - a kind of panentheism, which I do have a soft spot for.

What do you guys think?

Similarly I liked Spinoza's rejection of the dualism of the mind/body problem by stating that they were different attributes of the same substance, two ways of talking about the same thing...however, more modern thinkers that are noteworthy that I remember from my uni days are Gilbert Ryle and Peter Strawson - Ryle states that the distinction of mind/body rests on a 'category mistake' and Strawson stated that 'persons' are 'logically primitive' i.e. is prior to the notion of an individual consciousness or a body

This looks good: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/philosophy/people/cassam/contemporary_reactions_to_descartes_philosophy_of_mind.doc

As the universe is responsible for the composure of the body, it is reasonable that it also composes what we experience as the mind. When I look at DNA, I see an antenna that receives a universal signal.

As the universe is responsible for the composure of the body, it is reasonable that it also composes what we experience as the mind. When I look at DNA, I see an antenna that receives a universal signal.


Could you elaborate on this?

So interesting!

To question what we are is the answer to what is it to be human.

What are the odds in the vastness of space that this one planet (that we know of) created the evolution of Man to question Man?

A inconceivable blend of matter in chance.