It seems natural to speak of physical occurrences and
mental processes interacting. I step barefoot on a tack. Unless my foot is
asleep, I will feel a pain where the tack has entered. The tack is logically
distinct from the sensation of pain caused by stepping on it. Stepping on the
tack precedes the feeling of pain. It happens regularly and predictably. Is
there something philosophically wrong about speaking this way?
Going in the other direction, imagine waiting for your beloved
at the station. The whistle of the approaching train makes your heart go
pit-a-pat in anticipation. This would probably stop if Uncle Henry got off
instead. Our thoughts, desires and feelings are regularly followed in time by
changes in body chemistry and neural activities. We can learn to predict what
effects having certain thoughts will have on our bodies.
I remember as a teenager climbing a steep switchback
trail rising over 4,000 feet. Trying to keep up with the other back packers, I
began to get out of breath, my heart raced and I started to feel dizzy. A
friend advised me to listen to my body and find a rhythm of walking that suited
me. This turned out to be slow but steady. I was told to count my steps over
and over, one to four, in a time that brought my heart rate down and calmed my
breathing. This was good advice. My thoughts about hiking changed and so did my
body’s response to the task.
From a common sense point of view, there is nothing wrong
with talking about physical events causing mental events, or vice versa.
Philosophically, however, the theory that mind and body interact is difficult
to maintain. One reason may be that the problem arose in the context of
Descartes’ dualism. Given his metaphysical position, it is hard to see how there
can be any interaction between mind and body, since they do not share any
properties. Descartes’ own solution is hard to accept, since it requires occult
entities called ‘animal spirits’ that somehow run messages from the mind to the
body and the other way around.
However, speaking about mind-body interactions the way we
do seems most apt in the examples I have given and many others. Does using the
language of mind-body interactions require a commitment to a metaphysical
dualism of substance between mind and body? Surely not. When we speak of mind
and body, we are not speaking of two separate things. There is only one thing
that is in question.
How, then, can there be mind-body interaction if mind and
body are really one? I grant that there is a problem here. If mind and body are
one, then it is misleading to speak of them interacting as of they were
different things. There may, in fact, be no interactions on some metaphysical
level, but it is difficult, if not impossible, to describe in any other way the
ordinary cases of what we pre-reflectively call ‘mind-body interactions.’ It is
sufficient for my purpose to remain at the level of phenomenological
description. Looking at how we experience the world, it seems that
philosophical identity theories of mind and body make it harder to say what we
want to about common appearances of mind body interactions.
It would be so much easier to square identity theories
with our experience if we were not inherently temporal beings, living through a
sequence of times. In this contingency, we find the mind-body distinction
useful to us in a rough and ready way. This is all we need to register the
patterns of mind-body interactions that commonly appear to occur in life. We
can learn from experience which patterns to cultivate and which to avoid. If I
drink too much, I will get a hangover. If I think too long about a personal
insult, my heart rate will increase and nasty chemicals will be injected into
my body.
The mind-body distinction is ‘thought constituted’ and
not a distinction in reality. However, we use the distinction because we find
ourselves in a situation where mental processes precede bodily processes, and
vice versa. We find it useful to distinguish ‘things’ from ‘consciousness of
things’. Experience teaches us the connections. So, in conclusion, we do not
have to feel philosophically embarrassed to speak loosely of mind-body
interactions. On the contrary, it is for those who hold that mind-body
interactions are either senseless or impossible, to explain why it appears that
mind-body interactions happen all the time.
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