The Mind-Body Problem
by Tatiana Velitchkov © 2009

Many studies have been carried out to explain the relationship between mental and physical phenomena. There has been no agreement on the correct answer and it is the single most important gap in the understanding of the natural world. The problem here is that every time an answer is given to the question, it appears unacceptable. Therefore, many attempts have been made to explain this relationship but at one point in time, there will be one acceptable answer.

In our mental lives, consciousness is the most salient feature. It is believed that the first concrete fact which everyone of us will affirm to belong to his/her inner experience is the belief that consciousness of some kind goes on within ourselves. Even though consciousness is believed to bring a mark of the mental in our lives, it pushes the question one-step backwards. We are rather conscious when we are awake than when we are in a dreamless sleep. We have conscious states when we are conscious therefore, we cannot discriminate at the same time, we cannot forget. Each conscious mental state is a way of being conscious.

When a person knows his conscious mental state or its qualities, the only thing in question is oneself: what he understands is the particular modification of that object, the way it is conscious. For instance, when we see a red apple, we see just the apple and not the redness as something different from it and, hence we represent the apple we see as red. When a person is conscious they will know that they are, and they will know how they are conscious, that is their mode of consciousness but they cannot infer, when they are conscious, that they are, or how they are. There is, however, some kind of relationship between our own and others’ conscious mental states. Because of our behavior, others have to infer that we are conscious but we do not have to, but they cannot know non-inferentially. Others will have to know our mental states.

In the mind-body problem, consciousness has been seen as the central mystery and is the primary obstacle in understanding the mental. Another traditional mark of the mental is what is called “intentionality”; its adjectival form is “intentions”. It is the feature of an event or the state that makes it about, or is directed to something. Beliefs are intentional states that represent words as being in a certain way. These can be true or false and it is their particular condition of satisfaction. There are no differences between the false beliefs and the true ones. Understanding consciousness and intentionality is a great step in solving the mind-body problem.

In this video Bertrand Russell gives his brief insight on mind and body problem