85246 - Τranscription: Approaches to the body-mind problem

N. Lygeros

Let’s talk about the body-mind problem and we want to approach this problem as a framework with an opposition between dualism and monism. So, we have two ways to study this body-mind problem, one way is to use a dualism and more specifically a Cartesian dualism which means that  matter and mind have the same level of existence, they’re interdepended but they are at the same level. Now, if we try to develop the approach of monism, we have at least three different ways to do it. So, we have physicalism which means in fact only matter produces something which is the mind in one way, we have also idealism which is in fact the opposite, this time it’s mind which produces matter, so there is an impact on the other side and we have also the neutral monism which uses a third substance  which is in fact the initial point to create matter and mind in the same way. It’s very interesting to see this in the centuries and in history to understand the changes of mentations of  a human people about this simple thing.  We thought that it was simple. Many people thought it was easy to solve it but we see that even in our century we are still saying something about the body- mind problem. So, it’s not solved, it doesn’t mean  that it is complex or simple but it’s here. And it’s a way for us to imagine that, for example, the third substance can be also the soul.
Imagine now that in dualism you don’t have anything to worry about source. In monism the problem is quite different and I think there is this option with the neutral monism which is quite different from the physicalism and the idealism. So we can use it as a third path to find something new. So, the idea is that we are in problem with an opposition, at least at the initial level but we can see that this opposition can be also a path and an epiphenomenon of a  complementarity and if we get this complementarity as the first step in the path which conducts to harmony, we can imagine that with the neutral monism system we can find a new solution. So, we have the problem with two components and we can see that there is an option when we are using a third component to solve this problem in a quite different way but maybe it’s in fact the most efficient.