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Philosophy vocabulary · Philosophy of Mind

Mind-body problem

Meaning in philosophy, with examples

nounCore term

In philosophy, mind-body problem means: The question of how the mind, with its thoughts and feelings, is related to the body and especially to the brain.

In Turkish: zihin-beden problemi, zihin-beden sorunu

How it is used

Usually traced back to Descartes, who treated mind and body as two different substances and then struggled to explain how they interact. The main answers include dualism, physicalism, idealism and functionalism.

Example sentences

  1. In her letters, Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia pressed Descartes hard on the mind-body problem.

  2. Neuroscience has advanced a great deal, but the mind-body problem remains open.

Common collocations

  • the mind-body problem
  • solve the mind-body problem
  • Cartesian mind-body problem
  • dualismThe view that the mind and the body are fundamentally different kinds of thing, so that mental states are not simply physical states.
  • physicalismThe view that everything that exists is physical or depends entirely on the physical, so that the mind is ultimately part of the physical world.
  • consciousnessThe state of having experiences, of there being something it is like to see, feel or think; also the state of being awake and aware.
  • functionalismThe view that a mental state is defined by what it does, its causal role between inputs, other mental states and behavior, rather than by what it is made of.

More terms: Philosophy of Mind

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