Dominique Wenzler-Steves

Intro to Philosophy
September 28, 2015

Mind-Body Problem
The soul or mind inside the physical body. How does the mind relate to the
body? The soul to the physical? When our senses are triggered, like touch, taste, and
smell; we have a moment where we experience something no one else does. There is
no way to know if anyone is affected the same by pain or sees colors the same way we
do. We can look at the brain when the neurons fire but no one else can experience the
event. The body being the physical made of things we can test and matter we can all
verify to be true, and the mind being something we do not entirely understand. We know
what the mind is made of and can see it do things but we cant verify that we all
experience things the same way.
Wittgenstein used the beetle in the box analogy to justify why the body
has a soul and why we can believe our minds work like others minds. Imagine, he
says, that everyone has a small box in which they keep a beetle. However, no one is
allowed to look in anyone elses box, only in his or her own. Over time, people talk
about what is in their boxes and the word beetle comes to stand for what is in
everyones box. The beetle is an example of the mind. We do not know what is in
anyone else's mind but we can assume that everyone's mind works similarly.
Blackburns analytical argument presents a solution to the mind body problem by
looking at the things that can be determined. Being able to determine the average and
the normal of mankind. He used people's reaction to pain as an example. If you feel

pain and react a certain way that is the way to identify what pain is. A reaction to a prick
like a needle would be to pull away and say ouch the identification of pain itself would
be that reaction. That is what others can observe. A problem with this doctrine called
logical behaviorism is that people can react differently to the same pain at different
points in time. The next day that prick from a needle, though it would be the same pain,
would have a different response from the previous day. One could adapt to the pain
even though the pain is the same making behavioralism an unreliable guide to
sensations, thoughts, and feelings. Though there are flaws in relying on behaviorism
Blackburn claims it can be reliable in the sense that it is almost impossible to suppress
tendencies to pain behavior entirely.
Functionalism is another aspect similar to behavioralism in Blackburn's analytical
argument. By looking at the function of the mental state it is similar to logical
behaviorism, but functionalism looks at the case and affect other mental events have.
Mental states with natural expressions that are shown threw behavior, emotions that we
express like sadness, fear, and anger. Blackburn's argument was ultimately
unsuccessful.
Problem with looking to functionalism for the relationship between the mind and
body is there is still little reason to believe we all feel the same sensations and react the
same to identical circumstances. Similar to Blackburn's zombie a mutant argument we
cannot know what goes thru other peoples heads. If there a zombie he states that they
act the same as we do and have the same viewable brain patterns but do not possess a
soul. Mutants are exactly like everyone else, they react the same and there is nothing
that visibly distinguishes them from everyone else but they sense things differently. It

goes for behavioralism as well, people can react differently to the same event. Using
their reactions to determine the relationship between mind and body is useless.

Though I believe that there is a connection between the mind and body and there
is such thing as a soul it cannot be determined by looking at reactions because they are
inconsistent. Judging by my ability to think for myself and even if I cant tell what
happens in other people's heads I can use the beetle in the box analogy and say I can
assume they work similarly. It is the only assumption we can make to keep this thought
moving some were. If there is nothing reliable to test then the assumption has to be
made. Though the idea of relying on reactions isnt reliable or flawlessly testable it is all
we can go on the determine that the mind is infact separate but still related to the body.