In Defense Of Mind-Body Dualism Analysis

Humans perceive our surroundings through our various senses; it has been argued that all of these feelings and impressions exist only within the perceiver’s mind. Irish philosopher and Empiricist George Berkeley argues in his Three Dialogues that heat and cold that we directly perceive is no different from pain or pleasure, which are ideas that only exist in the mind, since these feelings stem from the mind as a result of our contact with the outside world (Radcliffe, McCarty, Allhoff, and Vaidya 56). In this essay, I will provide arguments to justify that Berkeley’s pleasure-pain argument fails to justify his claim that pain and pleasure can only exist in one’s mind.

Throughout this class, we have continued to discuss the idea of dualism and its importance to modern philosophy. These discussions stem from the essay read in class by René Descartes titled “Meditations on First Philosophy.” In Descartes essay, he does an excellent job illustrating his thoughts and ideas on what exactly the body and the mind are. These ideas are the building blocks for Descartes thesis on how the body and mind are separate substances from one another. This essay will focus on the topics discussed in class of what the idea of dualism is, how it has created the dualist position about the nature of the mind, and how Descartes’ arguments about the differences between the mind and the body support the dualist position.

Duality within a person is the ideology that there is both a negative and positive contrast residing within everyone, which is usually referred to as the dark and light side of a person. The idea of duality is reinforced throughout Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 American horror thriller film, Psycho. Hitchcock portrays this idea of duality by utilizing the film techniques irony, recurring symbols and mise en scene. The film was produced in black in white to accentuate the concept of duality throughout the film. Hitchcock through the duality of the characters Marion Crane and Norman Bates influences the viewer’s emotions towards the moral choices being decided.

The divide between dualism and physicalism is a driving philosophical question in the discussion of the nature of mind and body. While dualists argue that the mind is an immaterial substance that transcends extension, physicalists believe that everything is physical or supervenes on the physical. A common form of physicalism is set forth in the type-identity thesis, which asserts that every type of mental state is identical to a type of physical state. The token-identity thesis is another, much narrower form which only equates an individual thought to an individual brain state. Physicalism comes to mean that there is nothing in the world that is not physical. Even mental states can be given purely empirical explanations. Frank Jackson objected

“Pain” by Diane Ackerman is a story about pain. The author describes how people can withstand pain, and how difficult it is to define pain “which may be sharp, dull, shooting, throbbing, imaginary” (301). Culture and tradition are very important on people lives. Therefore, many of them do incredible things, in Istanbul for example “teenage boys dressed in shiny silk fezzes and silk suits decorated with glitter” (300), or in Bali people “go into trances and pick up red-hot cannonballs from an open fire, than carry them down the road” (298). This is just couple examples of controlling our body.

The purpose of my paper is to discuss the history of Congenital Analgesia and its presence in the human body. Congenital Analgesia, also referred to as Congenital Insensitivity to Pain or CIP, is a rare neurological disorder of the nervous system that prevents a person from being able to feel pain. Congenital Analgesia results from the “lack of ion channels that transport sodium across sensory nerves. Without these channels, nerve cells are unable to communicate pain” (Hamzelou, 2015, p. 1). While the body does not respond to extreme changes in temperature or bodily harm and damage, those with Congenital Analgesia can still process normal sensations such as body-to-body contact or joint movement.

The interchange of emotions and feelings within one’s self is a particularly hard thing to measure. Pain is a combatant of positive and negative change. Pain is one of the most prevalent causes of human change, and is a provoker of human deterioration. Pain has always been a major factor in healthcare. In this crosspost, the author will elaborate on the original threaded discussion by Ellerbee Mburu, Vail, and Barlow and add additional information on pain assessment and management.

The article is titled the adjunctive role imagery on the functional rehabilitation of a grade II ankle sprain by Anna Christakou, Yannis Zervas, and David Lavallee. The purpose of the study was to see if imagery had a positive effect along with physical therapy on improving muscular endurance, dynamic balance, and functional stability on athletes who suffered from grade II ankle sprains.

Le Guin’s “The Wave in the Mind” relates particularly to Marie de France’s “Bisclarvret” and “Yonec.” Both authors talk about oppression and the deep desire for freedom. Le Guins states he “categorically judge[s] as wrong any person who considers himself or herself racially or socially superior to another or enforces inferior status on another” (212). Similarly, on “Yonec” de France takes a position of opposition to seigneur of Carwent. This seigneur was honored in his city and therefore felt that he was superior to the young girl (91), enforcing her status of inferiority he obligated her to do whatever pleased him and she was imprisoned. Le Guin further says that he finds “it a different matter to pass categorical judgment against people who

consciousness. But I needed the injury before I could do that” (Aarten, 2005). Sometimes, the

Physical pain according to Elaine Scarry is an “absolute slip between one’s sense of one’s reality and the reality of other people.” (4 Scarry) One of the things that I learned this semester after taking the Body in Pain class and having the opportunity of attending House of Loreto Nursing Home is how physical pain can be as painful as mental pain. In many cases, physical pain has no voice. As the audience, we are incapable of feeling and understanding how much pain they are experiencing. In the essay “Body In pain”, Scarry writes about the difficulty of expressing pain and how “Physical pain has no voice but when it finds a voice, it begins to tell a story.” (3 Scarry) After visiting my resident and learning about her constant battle between

Double consciousness, the way in which people, specifically African Americans maintain two behavioral scripts, one for how they would typically move across the world, another that takes racially prejudice onlookers into consideration (You May Ask Yourself). Although first coined in the early 20th century by W.E.B DuBois in a time that racism was more prevalent, the term may still be applicable to the United States currently.

I would like to state that before I make my stance on the question that I will be addressing in my essay as a response to

This essay looks at Thomas Nagel’s account of the problem of consciousness i.e., the mind-body problem. I compare both Nagel’s and Colin McGinn's arguments regarding consciousness. Nagel’s argument introduces us to the intractability of the mind-body problem. The focus for Nagel is not to highlight the distinction between mind and body. Nagel employs one to not be so focused on the problem, rather embrace the possibilities regarding the phenomenology of consciousness. However, this should not deter one from their external investigation, thus giving rise to objective phenomenology. Nagel’s optimism is rooted in the possibility of a different reality that is unavailable to humans given their perception and structure. In this regard, Nagel’s optimism

Berkeley holds the belief that the sensation of heat and cold is mind-dependent. In other words, Berkeley argues the belief that when a person touches a fire and feels pain, the pain is constructed in the person and not within the fire. Berkeley argues his belief that the sensation of heat and cold is mind-dependent through the means of three premises. The first premise being that the sensation of extreme heat is a kind of pain. He justifies this statement through experience. The second premise being the sensation of extreme cold is a kind of pain. He justifies this statement through experience. The third premise being that pain and pleasure is mind-dependent. He justifies this statement through intuition and by Hylas’s agreement. Through these