mind and body

mind and body

An association long regarded as a Cartesian duality of disparate entities, after the work of Rene Descartes (1596–1650) but now recognized by most medical scientists as aspects of a unity. The prevailing view, today, is that the manifestations of the mind are wholly the result of neurological (mainly brain) activity and that, given sufficiently detailed knowledge of the structure and function of the nervous system, the association between function of the nervous system and corresponding mental capacity will be seen to be complete. Mental processes involve widespread brain function and are not localized to single brain areas. The existence of the mind body problem has been dismissed by some philosophers, especially Gilbert Ryle (1900–76), as an example of a category error.