For many centuries, people have pondered upon the question if there is a relation between what we think and what we do physically. Our physical brain gives way to a mind, full of thoughts and processes, but what interaction do the two have? Materialism is a way that people consider the relations between mind and matter to be inseparable. We are physical beings and our mental reactions are just by-products of a material process. Materialism can be summed up in three theses. The identification thesis equates mind with matter.
States and processes of he mind are nothing more than physical states and processes. Materialists consider the mind to encompass the brain and nervous system. Once the mind is reduced onto an aspect of out central nervous system, mental states are considered neurophysiological. The explanation thesis believes that “human and animal behavior is best-fully and most deeply-explained by something physicalin the more contemporary sense of neurochemistry and neurophysiology. Rational or intelligent action is the upshot of processes or activities physically internal to the brain. Graham, 129)
The exclusionist thesis states that human beings possess no special power which regular physical systems and objects normally lack. Our concept of free choice or free will is a mental concept, and since no physical system is free, there is no free will. The human soul can not exist because the soul is something mental and when the body dies, the brain fails to survive as well and the concept of soul exists no longer. Materialism never states that the mind depends on the body or vice versa, they are identical. One just is the other.
Materialists can claim four main virtues for their doctrine. Economy or simplicity can be found when one takes anything mental or intelligent and explains it in a material or physical sense. The mind and brain are not separate entities; they should be referred to as the brain. Some animals are more complex than others psychologically, for example dolphins as compared to rabbits. Since the dolphin’s brain is more complex than the rabbits, the mind is also more complex. The complexity explains why dolphins are more intelligent than rabbits.
Secondly, Materialists share the virtue of a unified conception of the world. The Materialist believes that nature consists of objects and processes at different levels of organization and sophistication. Put simply, animals are made up of organs, which are made of cells, which are made of molecules, which are made of atoms. All levels of organization are united under Materialist theory. The behavior of higher levels of organization (that of animals) is understood in terms of lower-level units of organization (brain biochemistry). Materialists expel superstition from their understanding of human behavior.
People cannot be afflicted with a demon that does not exist. They believe, correctly, that mental illnesses come from the brain. Today this view of materialists has been proven with brain chemical altering drugs. All mental related illnesses have been proven to be caused a chemical imbalance in the brain. Therefore the mental aspect of a person can be directly related to their physical balance. Material neurons replace spiritual demons in Materialist and scientific thought. The final virtue of Materialists is that they position the mind so that it may be studies by physical science.
The study of the mind is placed within the scope of physical science. Where the study of the mind is concerned, it is no different than the study of the brain. Thus, we should use our knowledge of brain states, neurophysiology, and neurochemistry to understand mental processes and states. Materialists and many scientists agree that the mind’s mental effect can be explained by the sequence concerning physical events. If reality really consists of only matter, then there is no difficulty in explaining a connection between what we think about and what happens outside of us.
Mental events are definitely real occurrences, but they are by-products of the material process that caused them, and have no role in the sequence of events. These mental events casually interact with the body, but since only bodily conditions are caused by and influence other bodily conditions, these mental events are bodily in origin. Pain, for example, is caused by an outside body affecting our sense organs, which affects our nervous system, which then leads us to experiencing a sensation if our mental understanding of pain. Human personality is affected if the brain is damaged.
People with varying mental health problems confirm this. What happens when people use drugs? Their state of consciousness is changed; the drug changes the brain processes and their entire perception of outside reality changes. People under the influence of drugs are definitely changed and it is provable through this sequence of events that it is the occurrences in the body that change the mental events that occur. The major antagonist to Materialism would be Descartes’ Dualism. Dualism, instead, sees the mind as an immaterial substance that casually affects and interacts with the body.
The mind and body are considered two distinct separate things, whereas materialism views the body and mind as inseparable. Descartes would argue with the materialist that bodies differ from how they appear through the senses. Colors, sounds, tastes, smell, feel, all are sensations that exist in thought. There is nothing in our bodies that resemble these sensations or that of pain. The materialist would counter that it was an outside body that influenced our nervous system that made us experience what we felt.
The mind would not have made up any of those sensations on its own, the mental sensation we received would not occurred, had it not been for an outside body triggering a set of nervous reactions, the sensation would never have been discovered. The Materialist view discounts much of Descartes. Descartes has created a mind-body problem, in that he is trying to discover exactly how the mind and body interact with eachother. Materialists do not see the mental as another substance, rather it is an effect of the physical. With no separation between mind and body, the question of their interaction dies. ental states are physical states of the brain” .
Another dualist flaw regards the idea of souls. If all souls are non-spacial and non-physical, how does one distinguish one soul from another? If the mind is non-spatial, how can a person be distinguished as an individual? The Materialist thought is probably one of the most practical and provable of the mind-body theories. Science seems to aid the Materialist side in that most research concerning the mind is performed on the brain. The mere fact that mental illnesses have been proven to be rooted in chemical imbalances seems to negate the idea that the mind is separate from the body.
If the mind was separate from the body, wouldn’t a person’s mental experiences be completely unaffected by the conditions of the body? Descartes said that we could live have a mind separate from a body and vice versa. What good is the mind when the body dies or is in deterioration? Elderly people often exhibit signs that the mind has slowed and aged along with the body. What can a mind do without a body to experience its sensations and react to them; nothing. Materialists have a very sound belief in the physical and are so deeply rooted in science that it will take considerable new developments to prove them incorrect.
