Week 5 - Dualism and Physicalism

This week we've been learning about the worldview of dualists (who believe that the mind is a separate entity from the body) and physicalists, who believe that there is no mind separate from the body and that what is commonly referred to as the "mind" is just the neurochemical activity of the physical brain.

I find myself leaning more toward the physicalist approach. I don't think we can deny or ignore all of the advances in the field of neuroscience, which continually provides more and more information about the brain. We don't understand everything about how the brain functions, but more is being revealed all of the time. The example of Phineas Gage, the nineteenth century man who lived through a severe brain injury (a metal rod being blown through his brain), shows just how inextricably linked the mind and brain are. Gage's entire personality and demeanor changed (for the worse) after the injury. The person that he had been no longer existed.

It makes me think of a relative of mine who suffered from Alzheimer's disease. We weren't that close and didn't see each other often, but I observed a change in his personality even before I knew that he had the disease. When I saw him last, before he died, he did not acknowledge me at all. He seemed to have forgotten that he ever knew me. The idea of a separate mind remaining intact while his physical brain was being destroyed, doesn't make sense.

I also had a conversation with someone recently about a relative of hers who had died of Alzheimer's disease. She commented, "It's a shame when the mind and the body don't go at the same time". I found myself thinking at that moment, where exactly would a dualist think that mind went? Are there disembodied minds floating around somewhere thinking about things?

On the other hand, the purely physicalist approach does leave something to be desired. It feels a little empty to me, like something is missing.  Even though we are constantly increasing our knowledge through science, we are continually running up against the limits of the human brain's capacity to understand. I'm leaving myself open to the idea that there are valid methods of  understanding reality other than in the scientific, physicalist sense. I suppose deep down that I have some strong emotional attachment to the possibility that there could be a mind that remains behind even when the brain dies. I guess that's what makes the dualistic approach so appealing to so many people.