Neurological energy that prompts immediate responses between the mind and body

The argument

The materialist case here is built on the observable dependence of mind on brain. Mental processes are visible on MRI scans, which means that each mental state, feeling and emotion has a physical correlate that can be located and imaged. On the materialist reading this is not merely a useful research finding but the beginning of an explanation: if every mental event shows up as a physical event, then a physical account of each mental state is available, and nothing further is required to explain it. The stronger evidence comes from what happens when the physical substance is damaged. The brain is the physical substance in which mental processes occur, and people who suffer damage to it suffer impaired mental function as a result. The relationship is reliable enough to be treated as causal rather than coincidental: physical injury to the brain produces reduced mental capacity, in proportion and in the specific faculties the damaged region served. Many materialists take this to be irrefutable evidence that the mind is a purely physical entity, on the reasoning that something non-physical ought not to be so precisely vulnerable to physical harm. Alzheimer's disease is offered as the clearest case. It is a purely physical disease, and as it progresses a person loses many of their mental states — not only memory but the traits and dispositions that made them recognisably who they were. The components that constituted them as a person and an individual are gone, and they are gone because physical matter has deteriorated. If the self can be dismantled by a physical process in this way, the argument holds, then the self was physical to begin with. Because neurological activity is what prompts the responses between mind and body, materialism is the best answer to the mind-body problem.

Context

The materialist argument proposes that humans are made out of purely physical matter. There is no non-physical aspect to our being, nor is there a non-physical mind which exerts force over our bodies. Within the neurons and fibres of our brain, we are able to experience everything known as life. Emotions, feelings, and mental states can be reduced to brain activity and the release and production of chemicals. When we say, “I feel pain”, we are essentially saying, “I am experiencing c-fibre stimulation”, in exactly the same way as when we say, “a noise is loud”, we are simply saying, “the airwave signal has a large amplitude”.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Introspective Thought We understand colour in a way that is almost entirely non-physical. When I think of the colour purple, I can picture “purpleness” in my mind, but no part of my brain is physically turning purple.

Rejecting the premises

We do not see colour in physical terms. Therefore, not every mental state is reducible to a physical state. Therefore, there must be a non-physical element to our minds.