Table Of ContentF
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Duoyi Fei
Beyond
the Brain
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B How the Mind and the Body Shape Each
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Beyond the Brain
Duoyi Fei
Beyond the Brain
How the Mind and the Body Shape Each
Other
Duoyi Fei
Department of Philosophy
China University of Political Science
and Law
Beijing, China
Institute of Foreign Philosophy
Peking University
Beijing, China
This work was supported by the Major Project of National Social Science Fund of China
[Grant No. 18ZDA029] and the Major Project of the Key Research Base of Humanities and
Social Sciences of the Ministry of Education of China [Grant No. 22JJD720005)].
ISBN 978-981-19-9557-6 ISBN 978-981-19-9558-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-9558-3
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature
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Contents
1 Introduction ................................................... 1
1 Approaches of Exploring the Causal Relation Between Mind
and Body ................................................... 2
2 Metaphysical Dilemma ....................................... 4
3 A Look at Mind–Body Relation from the Value Dimension ........ 7
References ..................................................... 11
2 The Conceptual Fetters of the Mind–Body Problem ............... 13
1 Introduction ................................................. 13
2 Incommensurability Between the Concepts of Mind and Body ...... 14
2.1 The Language Limit of Experience Expression .............. 15
2.2 Disclosure of Psychological Events ........................ 16
2.3 First-Person Characteristics of Consciousness ............... 17
3 “Mind” and “Body” as Interchangeable Perspectives .............. 18
4 The Mind–Body Continuum ................................... 21
References ..................................................... 24
3 From ‘the Mind Isolated with the Body’ to ‘the Mind Being
Embodied’ ..................................................... 27
1 Introduction ................................................. 27
2 The Body, Social Symbols and Value Signs ...................... 28
3 Body, World and Embodied Mind .............................. 31
4 Resorting to the ‘Embodied Mind’ .............................. 34
5 Ecological Validity and Mind Evolution ......................... 38
6 Body Image, Self-Identity and Body Metaphor ................... 40
References ..................................................... 43
v
vi Contents
4 In What Sense Should We Talk About the Perception of Other
Minds? ........................................................ 47
1 Introduction ................................................. 47
2 How Does Imitation Create the Inner States of Others in
Our Minds? ................................................. 48
3 The Advantages of Direct Projection Theory Over
Analogy Theory ............................................. 51
4 An Analysis of Causation in the Context of Neurological
Explanations ................................................ 54
5 Epistemological Characteristic of Other Minds ................... 58
6 Discussion .................................................. 60
References ..................................................... 61
5 Comparative Perspectives on Solutions for the Problem
of Other Minds ................................................ 63
1 Introduction ................................................. 63
2 Recent Advances in Contemporary Research on Other Minds ....... 65
3 An Interpretation of Zhuangzi on Other Minds: The
Prioritization of Experience Relevant to the Situation .............. 67
4 The Confucian Presupposition of Extending Oneself to Others:
All Human Beings Belong to the Same “Kind” ................... 70
5 Discussion and Conclusion .................................... 73
References ..................................................... 74
6 The Limits of Mind: An Epistemological Perspective .............. 77
1 Introduction ................................................. 77
2 The Dilemma of Internalism ................................... 78
3 The Dilemma of Externalism .................................. 81
4 Perception vs. Belief About Perception .......................... 84
5 Self-Correction of Experience Basing on Models ................. 86
6 Discussion .................................................. 91
References ..................................................... 91
7 What Makes Consciousness ‘Conscious’? ......................... 93
1 Introduction ................................................. 93
2 The Essence of HOR to Consciousness Interpretation ............. 95
3 Challenges, Retorts and Responses ............................. 97
4 A more Plausible Approach ................................... 101
5 Conclusion .................................................. 106
References ..................................................... 107
8 Social Shaping of Emotions ..................................... 109
1 Main Ideas of the Emotion Social Construction Theory ............ 110
2 Value Internalization and Convention ........................... 113
3 Paradigm Transformation and Emotional Re-Construction ......... 115
References ..................................................... 118
Chapter 1
Introduction
In the contemporary philosophy of mind, physicalism and dualism are two rivals who
dispute each other: reductionists in physicalism argue that the mind can be reduced
to physical states, whereas anti-physicalists claim that reductionism is unsuccessful
in explaining the mind–body problem, especially its inability to explain the qualia.
More than 400 years ago, Descartes, in the Second Meditation part of his volume
Meditations on First Philosophy, argued for dualism, saying (1) I cannot doubt my
own existence as a thinking being; (2) I can doubt the existence of my body; and
(3) my mind is not the same substance as my body (Descartes 2008). In his view,
the world is comprised of two types of entities, namely material entities and mental
entities. For him, an entity is a thing that is directly inhabited by something else,
that is, it does not require any other creature to exist and its existence is the cause of
its own being. The meditator particularly emphasized that mind and body can exist
independently of one another and that they both have a real nature.
Descartes’ assertions are highly in line with our common sense. According to one
of our scientific understandings of the world, the only way we can explain our own
existence is to recognize that everything is material. We have bodies, but our bodies
are different from ourselves at least in the following sense. After a series of dramatic
changes happen to our own bodies, we can still exist—every one of us has a mind
and can talk about changes in our own mind. At the same time, mental entities and
material entities can interact with each other, although they are completely different.
Each mental entity is extremely closely related to a particular material entity. Our
body would respond to our plans and decisions, while our mind could receive signals
from our body through sensory experience and gain knowledge about the state of
our body and the state of the world around our body. Our senses are the only avenue
through which the world can work on our mind.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 1
D. Fei, Beyond the Brain,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-9558-3_1
2 1 Introduction
1 Approaches of Exploring the Causal Relation Between
Mind and Body
Discussions about “the mind” have been around since ancient times, which took
the form of various statements about the soul in ancient Greek philosophy and have
gradually evolved into an inquiry into the mind in modern times. On the one hand,
the word “soul” has been inextricably intertwined with religion, to which philosophy
is not devoted. On the other hand, Descartes’ mind–body dualism claims that the
essential property of a material entity lies in the fact that it is spatially extended,
while mind, as a mental entity, has no extension, and its essential property is that it
thinks. As he insisted, our mind is not our brain, because it doesn’t have a spatial
location, and it still exists after our death or without our body. Linking the concept
of mind to the activity of thinking and the phenomenon of consciousness turns out to
be an act that distinguishes the mind from the soul, a theological-religious concept in
ancient times including the Medieval Ages, which ignites the philosophical debate
on the mind–body relationship (Hatfield 2009) and constitutes the focal point of the
discussions about the mind–body problem in modern and contemporary times.
In the camp of dualism, some philosophers deny the possibility of mind–body
interaction. Psychophysical parallelism claims that mental and bodily phenomena
take place in two separate but parallel routes. The mental and physical realms operate
in parallel: a mental phenomenon is only in the causal relation with other mental
phenomena. Likewise, a physical phenomenon only exists in causality with other
physical phenomena. However, there is no causal relation between mind and body.
For instance, Baruch Spinoza argued that the order and connection of ideas are the
same as the order and connection of things; an idea does not have as its cause the
object of the idea, but another idea; and the body cannot determine the mind to
thinking, and the mind cannot determine the body to motion (Spinoza 2009). Arnold
Geulincx stated that we cannot act on the material world, nor can the material world
act on us. For the particular action of God, our will does not cause motion, nor is
motion the cause of ideas (Cooney 1978). Accordingly, different from Descartes,
Geulincx in epistemology claimed that we cannot know things in themselves, but
God can know things; we can only know ourselves.
And for Gottfried Leibniz, a representative parallelist, the mind–body problem
is part of a more general problem of causal explanation. As Leibniz held, God first
created the soul, or other real unity, in such a way that everything in it arises from
its own nature, and has a perfect connection with things outside it. This makes all
entities have perfect conformity with each other, which produces the effect as if
these entities could communicate with each other (Leibniz 1989). The soul and the
body are just like two very exact clocks made by God, each working according to
its own laws while remaining in unity with the other. This unity is neither due to the
interaction of the two nor because of God’s ready adjustment. Instead, it comes from
the harmony pre-established by God. The theory of pre-established harmony denies
the existence of direct interaction between mind and body (although Leibniz in his
view does not deny causality here). That is to say, both the mind monads and the
1 ApproachesofExploringtheCausalRelationBetweenMindandBody 3
monads that constitute our body are constantly changing according to their nature,
and this appears to the outside world as if the two are causally connected.
According to Alexander Bain, the main representative of psychophysical paral-
lelism, the body is a closed causal system with cause and effect quantitatively equiv-
alent in terms of energy, and the mind is another causal system, both of which
go in parallel to each other, unified and inseparable (Bain 2006). David Hartley,
the proposer of the mind-brain parallelism, argued that nervous vibrations are in
parallel with sensations and movements, and that vibrations in the brain are parallel
to ideas (Berrios 2015). By the nineteenth century, almost all physiological psychol-
ogists were parallelists. Edward Bradford Titchener, for example, recognized neural
processes as preconditions for mental processes, but denied that the former were
causes of the latter. He insisted on a parallel correspondence between the two, while
denying their causality (Titchener 1908). Wilhelm Wundt proposed his psychophys-
ical parallelism from the perspective of idealism and empiricism, arguing that expe-
rience is the only reality, and that the different perspectives on experience have led to
the formation of natural science and psychology and the formation of parallel physio-
logical and psychological processes. He wrote that “we found it to be a truth of equal
universality that mental processes are connected with definite physical processes
within the body, especially in the brain; there is a uniform coordination of the two.
The connexion can only be regarded as a parallelism of two causal series existing side
by side, but never directly interfering with each other in virtue of the in-comparability
of their terms. Wherever we have met with this principle, we have named it that of
psychophysical parallelism” (Wundt 2014).
With the dual classification approach, we can distinguish three kinds of
psychophysical parallelism. The first is entity parallelism. Regarding the mind and
the body as different entities, it believes that the two never interact with each other,
but only develop in parallel. In other words, there is some kind of correspondence
between the mind and the body. The second is attribute parallelism, which asserts
that there is actually only one kind of entity. Either mind and body or thought and
extension are two attributes of an entity, which develop in parallel and in correspon-
dence with each other. The third is phenomenal parallelism. It claims that the same
reality manifests itself as a certain activity of the body on the one hand, and as a
certain thought/consciousness on the other hand, which is the mind–body dualism
by nature.
Clearly, dualistic parallelism relies on vague and highly controversial theological
assumptions. Although psychophysical parallelism avoids the dilemma faced by the
theory of mind–body interaction, it is both theoretically insurmountable and intu-
itively at odds with the reality of everyday life. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated
by modern science that mental processes are based on physiological processes and
that mental processes can, to a certain extent, affect physiological processes. There-
fore, this theory has received little credence from modern philosophers, despite its
popularity over the period from the eighteenth century to the early twentieth century.
In addition to interactionism and parallelism, there is another view in dualism
known as “one-way theory”, which asserts that only physical states lead unidirec-
tionally to states of mind, whereas states of mind cannot generate any outcome. For
4 1 Introduction
example, epiphenomenalists hold that mental properties are not reducible to neural
properties and are not efficacious. Mental events are viewed as completely dependent
on physical functions and, as such, have no independent existence or causal efficacy;
it is a mere appearance (Robinson 2010). The problem facing this assertion is how
to explain we are intentional actors. If our consciousnesses cannot trigger our bodily
actions, is our sense of actors merely an illusion?
Overall, it seems that interactionism is fairly prevailing among many dualistic
theories.
However, interactionist dualism substantially contradicts our belief in the causal
closure of the physical world. The promise that the physical world is causally self-
sufficient has been justified by modern science, but if mental entities can act on
the physical world, it means that the physical world is not causally self-sufficient.
Moreover, such a dilemma remains inevitable, even assuming that mental entities
can have some particular physical characteristics in addition to psychological ones.
If there are only two types of entities in the world, namely physical and mental ones,
how do we define them? How can we maintain the coordination between physical
and mental entities, while adhering to the mind–body dualism?
It is a common view that Descartes’ causal principle is to be understood in light of
a similarity condition that accounts for how finite causes (as opposed, or in addition,
to God) contribute to an explanation of their effects. Some scholars challenge this
common view and offer a sui generis reading of Descartes’ views on causation that
also has the advantage of solving the two exegetical issues of whether Descartes
thought of the body-to-mind relation in occasionalist or causal terms and of whether
Descartes regarded sensory thoughts innate or caused by bodies (De Rosaa 2013).
2 Metaphysical Dilemma
Mind-body problem gives rise to a serious metaphysical dilemma. On the one hand,
dualism (in whatever form it appears) mystifies the status and existence of conscious-
ness. How can we conceive of any kind of causal interaction between consciousness
and the physical world? By setting up a separate mental realm, dualists can’t explain
how this mental realm relates to the physical world in which we live. Physicalism,
on the other hand, claims that there is no such thing as a first-person or subjective
ontological consciousness, which ultimately denies the existence of consciousness
and thus the existence of the phenomena that give rise to the question (Flage 2014).
So where is the way out?
Modern psychologists have largely agreed on the relation between the mind and
the brain. Our perceptions of the world hinge on the way physical stimuli act on our
bodies and ultimately activate our thinking, feeling, and consciousness. In turn, our
minds and desires explicitly govern our bodies and influence our behavior. Yet the
close relation between the brain and the mind has ended up with a subject of much
debate—how can a physical object like the brain dominate an invisible entity like
the mind?
