Title
Deborah L Jones
Philosophy 106

Abstract
The mind body problem.
Title of Paper
I’ve always wondered how our minds work. Although I’ve thought about it before; I hadn’t pondered on it until I took philosophy 106. Then I started thinking….What causes us to think, to memorize, to like, or to dislike something? I know I have a body with a brain made up of neurons. Somewhere within these neurons there is something called a conscious (mind); it is what allows me to think, and take action, so I would say it is pretty advanced. Mona (my cat) seems to have a perceptual mind, she doesn’t seem too complex. She know when she will be fed, she allows me to know that she is hungry or needs affection. I feel cats are pretty smart. Of course they cannot talk to us but they seem to get their point across to their masters. I also have a fish. The fish doesn’t let me know it is hungry, although it knows when I am throwing some flakes into his tank, and swims up to the top and eats. Maybe he is conscious that those flakes swimming around in his tank is food, and therefore swims up to get it. But is it a mind? I don’t know. I took an interest in Descartes’ philosophy, being that the mind is a mental substance, just as physical elements and compounds are physical substances. But what could such a substance be? Try to imagine it. Does it have parts, ingredients, constituents? In what sense it the mind a thing at all? Here we are going to discuss the sense of the mind, and how it interacts with the body.
As I close my eyes and imagine a mind (my mind), there is something similar to a Dadaism collage. The pictures consist of sexual abuse, brother dying, and physical abuse, words of hate, rejection, drugs, and alcohol. Heading to my adult hood I see happiness, children, jobs, Leukemia, grief ect. My mind contains different photos consisting of fundamental memories my life. So… I ask myself, is this all my mind does? Hold memories! No,my mind also interacts with my body. I like to think it does at least.
The problem with the mind and body is that it derives from an instinct that, in some way, the mind is not like matter. If this were true There is a commercial for a travel company that comes on television: it has a brain surgeon controlling a man’s movement playing with his