Theories of Mind, Body, and Human Nature
Body and Soul
The relationship between the soul and the body has been one of the most debated issues. “Brain” refers to the principal organ of the nervous system, so its ultimate reference is the body dimension. “Mind” refers to the intellectual, emotional, volitional, mental, and spiritual dimensions of humans. The question is: does the brain give rise to our minds, or is it just an instrument that serves a higher entity which we call “mind”? There are several positions:
Advances in artificial intelligence have compared the human brain with a very powerful computer that we may someday be able to construct. Genetic engineering allows the modification of the information of embryonic cells, leading to changes in the characteristics of a person before birth. Does this mean our minds are just a manifestation of the brain, already determined by information in our genes? Religious beliefs, agnostics, and atheists continue to consider the possibility of a soul that can survive bodily death.
Theories on the Brain and Mind
Monistic materialistic theories support only a material reality (the brain) and explain the human psyche (mind) as a consequence of the development of our brains. There are several variants:
- Materialism, physicalism, or physicalist theories maintain that mental activities are only physicochemical or neurophysiological processes. This position is called “physicalist reductionism” because it reduces mental phenomena to physical ones, oversimplifying them.
- Cyber materialism says the brain is just a complicated computer, making humans conscious automatons.
- Emergent materialism believes that the mental is not just physical but emerges (arises) as evolutionarily physical. According to this theory, matter, through a long evolution, has acquired different properties, articulated at various levels such as the physicochemical, biological, and mental.
Dualistic Theories
Dualistic theories say the human being is composed of two elements: a material one (the body) and an immaterial one (the soul/mind). There are four versions:
- Platonic Dualism: says the soul/body combination is accidental. The soul is immortal and immaterial and exists before joining the body. The soul is the real human being and the vital principle of the body. Its main function is knowledge through contemplation of the world of ideas. Meanwhile, the body is material and mortal, the soul is its prison during earthly life, causing needs (eating, drinking, etc.) and material desires (wealth, luxury, property, etc.) that distract from the world of ideas.
- Hylemorphism: Aristotle believed that the soul and the body are two complementary and inseparable principles of a single reality or substance that constitutes the human being. These principles are separable only in the imagination, because in reality, they always go together. The body is the base material (Hyle), and the soul is the form (morphe) of the human, hence the name hylemorphism. The soul gives the body life, sensation, movement, speech, and thought. However, it was difficult to argue that the soul is immortal, so Aristotle postulated that humans possess a nous (mind or intellect) which is separate, immortal, and eternal.
- Thomas Aquinas attempted to reconcile Aristotle’s thought with Christian faith, suggesting that after death, and until the Christian resurrection, the soul separated from the body survives to join God forever.
- Cartesian Dualism: According to Descartes, man is composed of the union of two entirely different substances: extended substance (body) and thinking substance (soul). The pineal gland enables communication between them.
- Interactionist Dualism: John Eccles argues for interaction between the physical and mental. For him, mind and brain are two different realities. He believes that some human actions, such as will, memory, and language, can only be explained if there is a self-conscious mind. The interaction between the physical and mental in the cerebral cortex occurs between the dendron (physical) and “Psicon” (mental). He believes there is another brain structure, the “self”, “psyche”, “soul”, or “ego”, responsible for the uniqueness of human beings.
Other Theories Beyond Monism and Dualism
Emerging Interaction: Karl Popper combines monism and dualism, arguing that there are three interacting worlds conforming to humans:
- A world of observable physical bodies (materialist).
- A world of mental states, consisting of states of consciousness, dispositions, and psychological experiences.
- A world formed by all products of the human mind, including stories, myths, science, social institutions, works of art, and language.
Structure: Pedro Lain Entralgo believes that the concept of “structure” is more appropriate than “emergence” to explain the relationship between the physical and mental. Thus, the mind emerges from the brain, but since it is structured. He argues that some acts rely on a single brain region, such as seeing, hearing, and speech, but others, such as thinking, self-awareness, the exercise of freedom, and intellectual and artistic creation, can only be explained by the functioning of the brain as a whole.
Subject, Consciousness, and Life History
All human beings have a capacity to receive information from the environment and themselves, called consciousness, which gives them independence and control over their environment. The human being is a subject, not an object, because it is a man who acts, a who responds, a self that can ask: Who am I? This capacity to turn on itself is called human consciousness and has two functions: to regard ourselves as reality itself (I, me, etc.) and to maintain continuity of I. This consciousness of individuality becomes a personal conscience because, apart from being self-consciousness, it is also aware of the possibilities open to us through intelligence, freedom, and privacy. However, this does not mean you have to despise the body, because conscience allows us to also take charge of our history and we are involved in it as well as our bodily existence. This is why humans have not only biology but especially biography. Our place is beyond the simple distinction of body-brain/mind-soul; life is history. Life is the original and originating in which we are and cannot be reduced to biological processes.
Another philosophical tradition regards the human being as a synthesis between reason and feeling.
The Animal That Has Logos
The term “logos” is generally translated as “reason,” that which distinguishes us from other animals. However, it is more accurate to distinguish three senses of “logos”:
- Argumentative dimension: having logos is to have the ability to speak intelligibly or use conceptual language to describe, understand, and explain reality.
- Intersubjective dimension: having logos is being able to live in society through shared language and moral practices.
- Practical dimension: having logos is being able to conduct reasonable thinking, directing action to cope in the world, deliberating about what is good and bad for oneself and others.
Reason and Rationality
“Reason” means a set of capabilities that humans can perform differently. As Kant said, there are various uses of reason, which is why we often speak of “rationalities.”
Theoretical and Practical Reason
Humans can use reason to reach truth or achieve happiness. The first use is called theoretical reason, and the second is practical reason. Aristotle said that theoretical reason is concerned with what cannot be otherwise, i.e., necessary objects or events, about which we can only find the best possible explanation. Practical reason is concerned with what can be any other way or even be sometimes and sometimes not. For example, a person may or may not be generous. Practical reason is responsible for raising the ends that we pursue, and the one who acts is a wise person. Practical reason can be understood as a prudential reason designed to achieve a balance between reason and desire to achieve happiness.
Vital Historical Reason
Reason, like art, science, language, or culture, is not fixed but a historical product, something that comes from our sense of becoming and therefore evolves. Ortega y Gasset founded ratio-vitalism, a philosophical movement that advocates that vital reason is life itself as a reason, i.e., reason is a basic element of life so that life cannot be understood without reason. This implies that the reason of life is also historic as it lives and feeds on time.
Instrumental and Communicative Reason
Instrumental rationality seeks to master technically natural processes to benefit from them. If this extends to social relations, seeing others as instruments to achieve our ends, it is called strategic rationality. Today, we speak of homo economicus (economic man) to refer to those who act trying to get the most from limited means. When human rationality is in the service of the search for agreement and consensus, it is communicative or hermeneutical reason. Through this communicative reason, we discover that we share a language with others who are as worthy of respect as us, helping us agree on the truth or validity of the rules that affect us all.
The Value of Feelings
The main positions that philosophers have maintained regarding feelings, emotions, and passions are as follows:
- Aristotle said that humans are willing or want intelligent intelligence, i.e., reason is responsible for channeling or directing the choice of desires. The intellect is the desire to identify what is right in a given situation and then accomplish it. This process is called deliberative, and the person who does so well possesses the virtue of prudence. According to Aristotle, man is a rational animal, which means that our human condition is not only rationality but also desires, emotions, and feelings.
- Early Christianity, especially St. Augustine, noted the importance of feelings of love with the phrase “love and do what you want”, expressing that once we discover what true love is, no one can act against it. Augustine insists that the important thing for human beings is not to develop reason but the passion of love, which seems linked to reason itself.
- Philosophers of moral sentiment, especially Adam Smith, developed a morality of sympathy, whereby humans experience similar feelings in similar situations. According to him, there is a community of feeling (sympathy) that is the basis of moral assessments and judgments, telling us what actions are good and which are not.
- David Hume holds that reason is unable to motivate behavior and that passions move us to act. Passions can be peaceful or violent, and when we act peacefully, we wrongly think that reason prompted us. For Hume, reason is the slave of the passions.
- Kant: According to this author, reason can mobilize the will to act. However, Kant admits the existence of respect as a moral sentiment, which is the appropriate response to the dignity that all people possess as endowed with reason and freedom.
- Xabier Zubiri: According to this writer, intelligence is not independent of feeling. Humans have sentient intelligence, meaning we have our own way of feeling that gives us things as realities, not merely as stimuli. For Zubiri, people feel sentient intellect or intelligible because our relationship with reality is both intellectual and sentient.
For a Cordial Reason
“Cordial Reason” means that humans discover truth and justice not only through rational argument but also through emotions and feelings. Emotions and feelings select the information that is important to our lives. The heart (feelings) is not opposed to reason because reason interprets the projects of the heart. A person without feelings or emotions could not reject injustice because they would not feel indignation, nor could they capture the suffering of others or experience compassion.
The Human Being is a Personal Being
The Concept of Person
When answering the question “What is personhood?”, there have been various responses:
Ancient and Medieval Roots
The word “person” originally meant “mask,” worn by actors in Greek drama, so “person” came to mean “character.” Later, with Christianity, “person” referred to both the three divine persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and human beings. For the Romans, it had a legal sense, so “person” was one who had rights and duties, i.e., a legal subject. Boethius defines a person as “individual substance of rational nature”, i.e., individual substance because the human being does not depend on fate but subsists itself and not the other; rational nature because human beings are part of nature but also possess self-consciousness, will, and sociability.
Kantian Enlightenment Roots
For Kant, “person” is to be free and autonomous, capable of giving laws to itself and creating a moral world, which gives it dignity. If a person can give themselves laws (moral standards), no one has the right to treat them as an instrument. According to Kant, the person is an end in itself, or has an absolute value regardless of its utility, which provides an imperative of mutual respect between people.
The Personalist Movement
The personalist view is that the human being is a person, a reality both individual and community, and that the relationship between human beings is constitutive for each.
Existence and Being Incarnate
The person is of flesh and bone but open to the world through its privacy, allowing it to exit and open itself to other things.
Communication
Before being aware of being an ego, man learns what a you is. Communication makes it possible to adopt the viewpoint of another, be faithful to commitments, and so on.
Conditional Freedom
To be free is to accept the conditional nature of freedom, not as an impossible limit but as a possibility on which to stand.
Commitment
The commitments that a person takes freely forge their identity because personal action involves a rejection of withdrawal, neutrality, and indifference.
Critical Capacity
To be a person is to be able to say no, trying to transform the world from one’s own convictions.
Eminent Dignity
Among all beings, the person occupies the highest level because they are not dependent on things and do not have a price.
Proximity and Friendship
Proximity is donating some of oneself to another person just because that person needs it. Friendship is willing the good of another person in the global sense, for being themselves.