You could spend grant money until all the foundations went broke supporting your research without positive results. And why bother? There is nothing deficient in the concept that the mind and body are one. We are embodied beings, made of flesh, and our minds are part of our flesh.

Soul? Another can of worms. (If you were reaching for the idea of the immortal soul, there is no way of proving or disproving that. It's a matter of belief. If you like thinking you have an immortal soul, fine.). Cartesian dualism (separate mind and body, after René Descartes) is a consequential theory, which is why it is held in low esteem.

the point of the question I suppose it what would convince you outside of simply faith.

There is no standard.

Even the standards or perspective which maked you "you" changes every moment.

Any new thought or idea creates a new version of yourself.

So here is the question:

What is the standard to prove to you mind body dualism? Assume you had the grant money. How would you prove the mind body separation is valid enough to put more study into? What is your standard for simply being convinced that it is in fact the truth of our being? Essentially I'm curious where folks at large stand on this. Not in any religious sense but in the look in the mirror sense. When you hurt your arm do you feel it in your soul or simply in need of repairs on the old jalopy? Discuss. — MiloL

For me, one would have to begin by explaining what nonphysical existents are supposed to be in a manner that not only makes some sense, but that assigns positive attributes to them--in other words, it can't just be a set of negations a la "not physical," "not spatially-located," etc.

the point of the question I suppose it what would convince you outside of simply faith. — MiloL

Nothing would convince me of the soul's existence outside of simple faith (or complicated faith) because it is a question of faith by its very nature. I might be mistaken about this because I son't have a strong grasp of the history of philosophy, but it is my impression that "mind" existing apart from "body" is as old as Plato who thought "mind" was capable of perceiving the "highest, eternal, unchanging, and non-perceptible objects of knowledge, the Forms" which the body could not perceive. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy uses the term "soul" as well as "mind". "Soul" is loaded with different meaning in Christian thinking than "mind". So, soul/mind... confusing terms.

The mind imprisoned in the body (Plato's idea) is part of a system which I don't accept. Do you think your mind (soul?) is imprisoned in your body, and that your mind can perceive the "highest, eternal, unchanging, and non-perceptible objects of knowledge, the Forms"? Do you think your mind or soul flies free of your body when you die? I don't.

Double check: Are you sure you subscribe to the philosophical systems which produced a separated mind and body?

How is mind/body separation consequential?

1. It places the whole process of thinking in a realm which is not subject to examination except through philosophical examination. There is nothing in your head except your brain which is busy running the body and is somehow (mysteriously) related to your mind, which exists... somewhere else.

2. The essential substance of our existence--sensation, perception, memory, sex, needs, wants, drives, emotions, feelings, self-identity, and much more--is all based in our bodies, which the platonic theory considers an inferior facility. This leads to some highly unfortunate consequences for embodied beings, like you and me.

3. Separate mind located in the body's inferior facility hinders our acceptance of an integrated existence where physical realities and mental realities are intimately intertwined and not separate at all.

4. Feminists are death on Cartesian dualism, because they recognize in it a tool of oppression. This quote is from an article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I'm not a feminists, but they have some good arguments against mind-body dualism.

for feminists, the opposition between mind and body has also been correlated with an opposition between male and female, with the female regarded as enmeshed in her bodily existence in a way that makes attainment of rationality questionable.

I would add that we are all -- male and female -- enmeshed in bodily existence which, if it doesn't make rationality questionable, at least regularly trips up rationality. Women are dominated by their bodies? What man hasn't been guided by his stiff cock at one time or another?

It all sounds good but even the man giving in to his member is what I’d term one step amongst many overlooked. What is the actual number of thought processing steps between the option to use the member and actually using it. You might be guided by your choices but that is only after it’s been processed. By your machine then you make a choice and the next steps begin. What to say what to do. How in control are you over all those steps? Call it what you like but it’s not one mind/body. It’s a mind making choices based on the processes of the brain. A brain mind you that processes this opportunity through a series of filters for which you don’t directly control. Attraction, mood, desires, maybe yo u have hang ups or preferences. Few people can adequately explain something like preferences to convince anyone that they are in control of those. I mean a guy likes blondes for reasons of history and association which even landed in in their internal preferences slot. Am I wrong and this is all controlled by the conscious mind?

As for differences in woman I think it’s short sided to try and separate the genders. A car is a car albeit different designs, engines and parts. They all require mechanics and tools with a knowledge of their differences but no one suggests they different based on the gender of the drivers. We all have different makes and models but that doesn’t impact the reality of self vs machine

What is the standard to prove to you mind body dualism? — MiloL

The ancient Mind/Body conundrum is based on a false assumption : that the Mind/Soul is a thing apart from the Brain/Body. Like the "Hard Problem" of consciousness, it derives from the human propensity to reify abstractions.

In fact, the Mind or Soul is merely the Function of the Brain/Body : to produce Consciousness & Life.

Transportation is the function of an Automobile, but we don't imagine it as a spooky doppelganger of the car. Likewise, Mind is merely what the Brain does. So, scientific experiments should be trying to clarify exactly how the brain does what it does, and not looking for mysterious Ghosts or Homunculus operators of the body. It would help to view the Mind/Body as an integrated whole system instead of as a loose association of parts.

Considering mind is an experience, and body is a physical object, I'm actually curious what the argument is for these two being the same?

Considering mind is an experience, and body is a physical object, I'm actually curious what the argument is for these two being the same? — Tzeentch

Minds have experiences . . . and lots of other phenomena, too--thoughts, concepts, desires, etc.

Phenomena, and properties in general, are what physical things in dynamic relations are like. They're qualities or characteristics they have.

Minds have experiences — Terrapin Station

Explain to me the difference between mind and experience, then.

Explain to me the difference between mind and experience, then. — Tzeentch

I just did. Concepts, ideas, desires etc. are also mental phenomena. They're not experiences.

Why can they not be experiences?

Conventional definitions of "experience":

"direct observation of or participation in events as a basis of knowledge"

"something personally encountered, undergone, or lived through"

"practical contact with and observation of facts or events."

Conventional definitions don't interest me. Explain it to me.

Conventional definitions don't interest me. Explain it to me. — Tzeentch

That's fine, but how am I supposed to know what unconventional definition you're using? You'd have to tell me.

Mind: body roughly corresponds to the division between symbol: meaning. A symbol is a physical object but its meaning is not physical. The rational mind is what understands or interprets symbols.

The ancient Mind/Body conundrum is based on a false assumption : that the Mind/Soul is a thing apart from the Brain/Body. — Gnomon

That's not 'the ancient mind/body problem' but 'the modern mind body problem'. The ancients never conceived of the soul as a separate entity in the way that Descartes did.

The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. (Mind and Cosmos, pp. 35-36) — Thomas Nagel

Whereas, Aristotle's dualism was that of matter (hyle) and form (morphe). Hyle- a term coined by Aristotle for this purpose - was nothing like the modern concept of matter but closer to that which 'receives form' as wax receives the mould of a seal. But Aristotle pointed out that the mind possesses a capacity which can never be accounted for in terms of sensory or material objects, namely, that it knew logical and other such truths immediately and universally. More could be said as it's a huge topic but I'll leave it there.

Use whatever definition that helps your argument, but I am much more interested in how you arrive at that definition than the definition itself.

Conventional definitions of "experience":

"direct observation of or participation in events as a basis of knowledge"

"something personally encountered, undergone, or lived through"

"practical contact with and observation of facts or events." — Terrapin Station

I’m not sure I follow how concepts, ideas, desires, etc are not experiences (albeit internal ones), even according to these conventional definitions.

The only distinction between the experience of an idea and the experience of, say, a play is the lack of external sensory interaction. Are you saying that an experience must be reducible to an interaction with 3D physical space in time in order to be an experience?

I recognise that ‘mental phenomena’ loosely describes the nature of these events from a physicalist standpoint, but surely there is still an internal, subjective experience of the phenomena, just as there is an internal experience of the play that is related to, but not reducible to, the event itself?

Don’t get me wrong, I disagree that mind is something separable from the functions of the brain, but I also disagree that it’s the same as the brain or contained by it.

The way I see it, ‘mind’ is a concept that collectively refers to all our relations of experience, including sensory data, thoughts, ideas, memories, knowledge, feelings and intuition. Some of these relations are the result of brain function, but some are not. These relations interact as mind - irrespective of time and according to subjective, sometimes amorphous or conflicting structures of value/significance (ie. logic, language, self, society, etc) - and inform the organism as an integrated system, not just the brain. That’s my take.

What is the standard to prove to you mind body dualism? — MiloL

To me it's the impossibility to explain feelings, emotions, desires, even things like seeing and not just looking, and hearing, not just listening, and such like sensations, merely with the physical attributes and physical functions of the body.

In other words, I can't explain the FEELING of hunger. Yes, I believe that if I had enough eductation in physiology, I would pretty well be able to explain how the receptors inside the body measure blood sugar levels, fullness of the stomach, and other such feedback- and feedforward mechanisms that trigger or create the feeling of hunger. But the feeling itself I could not explain on simply physical bases.

I believe the two are connected (the physical triggering and the ensuing feeling) but I can't put my finger on the actual bridging of how a physical phenomenon becomes a feeling. Some say it's a function of the brain, which I also understand must be true. But still. A brain is still nothing more than a bunch of semiconductor units. There is something in living things -- not just in humans, but in all animals -- that created a feeling in them, instead of just making them mechanically respond to stimuli.

Because that would equally be as effective as a force to make the organism live. Whether you feel too hot, or your feedlback mechanism automatically compels you to go to a cooler place, are both effective, yet one employs sensation, the other, does not. In fact, many religions rode on the ideal that animals are much like machines, therefore their killing and slaughtering and enslaving is no different from building steam engines and torturing those (other than being more environment friendly, I guess.)

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Can I please have several billion dollars now for my research, please?

What is the standard to prove to you mind body dualism? — MiloL

Some really solid evidence that someone out-of-body is really out and observing something not observable by the body would go a long way.

Also, one of the main factors that leads so many to believe such things as mind-brain identity is the tight correlation between the structure of experience and brain events. If you could show strong evidence of a non-correlation here, you might be onto something.

Or can the mind do something that neural processes cannot possibly do, even in principle, even if those neural processes are eventually found to involve something exotic like quantum computing? This seems hard, because we simply don't know what such systems might be able to do. But if you could show the mind doing things that physical systems can't do, it might be persuasive. Many think we already have this in the bare fact of subjective experience, but I think this seeming difference between physical and mental arises only because people stupidly define matter as dead and incapable of subjectivity from the get-go, and without any good justification.

I’m not sure I follow how concepts, ideas, desires, etc are not experiences (albeit internal ones), even according to these conventional definitions. — Possibility

So in your view a concept that you have is an event?

Also, one of the main factors that leads so many to believe such things as mind-brain identity is the tight correlation between the structure of experience and brain events. If you could show strong evidence of a non-correlation here, you might be onto something. — petrichor

ok so what if one could show intentional communication when the biology suggests no one is home. nothing earth breaking but something that told anyone who actually knew the person that they were witnessing and intentional expression of some message. would that suffice in proving anything?

So in your view a concept that you have is an event? — Terrapin Station

An event is not the same as an experience, in my view - although one can have an experience of an event.

So, no - a concept is not an event. In my view, a concept is a structure of related experience.

ok so what if one could show intentional communication when the biology suggests no one is home. nothing earth breaking but something that told anyone who actually knew the person that they were witnessing and intentional expression of some message. would that suffice in proving anything? — MiloL

Depends on the strength of the evidence and resistance to alternative explanations. Describe the scenario you have in mind.

pick a medical condition that interferes with communication there are so many. assume that the norm is deterioration to a point where communicating seems impossible. Seems to me there are so many things they do and say that might be intentional communication. the trick is with some, such as, dementia, one can't be sure of the legend by which their otherwise incoherent communication is rooted.

I listened once as parents were talking and tending to kids of all ages. you can't help but see this short hand formed through closeness and understanding one another. it got me to thinking even if a guy is say 70 with dementia his wife of 50 years may not be all the familiar with his childhood. at least not enough to know he said X when he wanted B because C taught him to or he couldn't pronounce A. Yet those around him have deemed his flirting X out as in coherent.

Given what we already know about communication and language it seems misleading or maybe just convenient to determine they have nothing to say that merits real attention. What exactly would be a standard for coherent and incoherent? I imagined at this point its up to the person making that distinction.

So in this scenario, though I'm sure there are so many variations given the amount of conditions impacting communication, what would be enough to prove we've been looking at this all wrong?

An event is not the same as an experience, in my view — Possibility

No one is suggesting that.

You had said, "I’m not sure I follow how concepts, ideas, desires, etc are not experiences (albeit internal ones), even according to these conventional definitions"

The definitions in question are about a relationship to events. If you want to argue that a concept is an experience per the definitions in question, we have to be talking about a relationship we have to events when we're talking about concepts. So I asked you if you considered concepts to be events.

If a concept is defined as something about experiences, as you suggest, then a concept can't itself be identical to an experience, otherwise you're defining a term by a relationship it has to itself.

That's not 'the ancient mind/body problem' but 'the modern mind body problem'. — Wayfarer

I see your point. But the notion of a Soul separate from the Body goes back at least to ancient Egypt. Descartes merely made the distinction formal in order to allow physical Science to proceed without concern for controversial metaphysical assumptions. It was an early form of the Non-Overlapping Magisteria argument.

Ironically, now that Science has allowed us to create human-like autonomous robots, the question again arises whether they have souls. That's a staple theme of futuristic Sci-Fi like WestWorld. :smile:

You seem to be describing someone with dementia who seems incoherent, and possibly brain-dead, to most, but whose ramblings or gestures might be made sense of by someone close to that person, suggesting that the person is still in there, but is just hampered in their efforts to communicate via the body. I think if you are encountering such a sitation in your life, you'll have to decide what it means.