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Theories of the mind and existence

by XYZ890

Created on: July 19, 2008   Last Updated: August 11, 2008

According to my view, the human mind is the biggest miracle of the universe and its relation with physical body is the biggest puzzle. Everything originates from the mind, first as a thought and then it is expressed by body as an action. Our surrounding is nothing but the perception of our experiences by the mind and our actions are nothing but the expressions of our body. So our life is nothing but the result of this unique "mind-body union"



"Cartesian Dualism" identifies our existence as nothing but the awareness of the mind. Descartes says "when I think, I exist". If I do not aware of mind existence, I cannot say that I exist. It is the cognitive capacity of our mind, which makes us aware of our existence. Not only the existence of inner self but also existence of outer world is dependent on mind. We can notice things because we already know them or at least we know something related to it and then we correlate it for identifying that thing. We go to big party, we cannot notice all people, but we definitely notice those faces, which we are familiar with. Today also I do not know many small nation in the world, for me there are equivalent to "not existing". That means existence of inner as well as outer things is dependent on our mind. That is what "Cartesian dualism" describes as extension of mental properties. But do my awareness really affects the existence of that thing? Things will exist even if I am not aware of them. So these can be two faces of argument.

This was about the existence of inner and outer world. But how does the functioning of these worlds operate? Outer world is perceived by our senses, which cause C Fiber activation (as per Kim's argument), which conveys message to brain and brain responds to it. Sometimes physical behavior is just result of spinal cord reflexes. Putnam describes this internal state as "Functional sate". He thinks that our behavior is nothing but expression of our functional state, which he describes as "functionalism". But the question arises, how to conceive this functional state? If we can not prove the functional sate then does it really exist?

If we accept above facts then conclusion will be there are inner world, outer world (extension of inner world) and functional state in the mind. Our behavior is nothing but the physical state. But if this is true then same sensory stimulus should produce the same behavior. But that does not happen. This can be explained by "inconsistent triad of Davidson", where third principle

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