Reg asked:

I try to keep any philosophical thinking I do as simple as possible. So I'm not convinced that the brain
'thinks'. Matter or extension or any physical object can do but one thing viz. move; all the rest is done
by a mind which of course is non-physical. I'm not convinced that the relationship can be solved by
'going and looking' which, on analysis, is what scientists do is it not?

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Simplicity is certainly a virtue, but not when it is too simple for the facts.

Your argument that the mind is non-physical seems to be to beg the question in that it assumes what
needs to be proved, namely that "matter or extension or any physical objects can do but one thing viz.
move. For instance, here is a counter-example: the mind is a physical object and it can do more than
move, for it can think. For as the philosopher Thomas Hobbes asked Descartes, "Why cannot a
physical thing think?"

You are simply intuiting a certain concept of mind, and then arguing, on the basis of that concept, that
it is not a physical object. That is an instance of what the philosopher Antony Flew calls "an ostensibly
counter-evidential intuition" for all our evidence is that the mind is a physical thing.

Ken Stern

You are right in identifying one of the great puzzles of philosophy — how mind and matter interact.
However there seems to be an inconsistency: You want to keep it 'simple' yet you assume (if I
understand correctly) two 'substances' i.e. 'mind' and 'matter' (the physical brain). That is less simple
than idealism (everything is 'mind stuff') or materialism (there is only matter). Also if you really are a
dualist you have a problem: how to explain the interaction between mind and brain/ body and vice
versa? In other words how can something of an immaterial nature interact with something material?
Also how to explain that various types of physical brain damage can rob you e.g. of your sense of
smell, your memory, your emotions etc.? How to explain that drugs can make you happy, sad,
indifferent, psychotic etc.? How to explain that when you have certain thoughts certain brain areas
are active? How to explain that you can learn to relax by watching the wave patterns of your brain on
screen?

Many philosophers today think that the 'inside' or first-person view of 'mind' and the 'outside' or
third-person view of 'brain-functions' are like two stories we tell about the same thing.

Helene Dumitriu

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