Materialsm and the mind and body problem : a critical analysis

Abstract

The philosophy of mind has become dominated by the mind and body problem: the relation between the physical (the body) and the mental (the mind). Substance dualism had traditionally been the method for accounting for this problem. Substance dualism though, as we shall see, has been very ineffective in accounting for all problems. A consequence of this failure has been the rise of materialism in the forms of behaviorism, identity theory (also known as physicalism) and functionalism. Many tend to believe that materialism may provide us with the solution to the mind and body problem; however, in this essay I will argue that the materialist perspective, like the substance dualist tradition, is flawed. It can only account for the quantitative and objective aspects of the mind and not the qualitative and personal ones.