Mind and body problem

The problem of mind and body concerns the question of how mental states and processes are related to physical states and processes (namely, processes occurring in the brain). Ignoring the rather high complexity of this problem, we will generalize it to the level of the problem of “architecture of mind”, which will allow us to talk about whether machines can have a mind.

Why is the problem of mind and body so complicated? The first difficulty was discovered by Rene Descartes, who reflected on how the immortal soul interacts with the mortal body, and came to the conclusion that the soul and the body are two different types of substances; this is the so-called theory of dualism . On the other hand, the theory of monism , often called materialism , is based on the fact that such substances as intangible souls simply do not exist; in the world there are only material objects. Therefore, all mental states (arising when a person experiences pain, realizes himself as riding a horse, or thinks that Vienna is the capital of Austria) are brain states. John Searle aptly formulated this idea in the form of the slogan "The brain gives birth to the mind."

But materialism has to face two serious obstacles. The first of these is the problem of free will : how can it turn out that a purely physical mind, each transformation in which is strictly governed by the laws of physics, still retains some freedom of choice? Most philosophers see this problem as requiring a careful redefinition of our naive ideas of free will, and not an attempt on materialism. The second obstacle is the problem

concerning the general question of consciousness (as well as related, but not identical questions of understanding and self-awareness ). In its simplest formulation, this question is why a person feels like having certain mental states and at the same time does not feel like having some other physical condition (for example, does not consider himself a stone).

To begin searching for answers to such questions, we must find ways to talk about brain states at levels more abstract than the specific configurations of all the brain atoms of a particular person at a particular time. For example, when I reflect on the capital of Austria, my brain undergoes countless minute changes in the time elapsed from one picosecond to another, but this does not lead to a qualitative change in the state of the brain.

In order to take into account possible situations, it is necessary to introduce the concept of types of brain states, within which one could judge whether two states of the brain belong to the same or different types. Different scholars have different views on what is meant in this case by type. But almost all scientists believe that if we take a living brain and replace some of the carbon atoms in it with a new set of carbon atoms, the mental state of the brain will not change.

This hypothesis is quite justified, since in reality in the brain continuously there is a substitution of atoms as a result of metabolic processes; nevertheless, such a process does not seem to cause significant mental disorders.

Now consider a specific type of mental state: propositional positions , which are also known as mental states . These are states like conviction, confidence, desire, feeling of fear, etc., which relate to some aspect of the external world. For example, the belief that Vienna is the capital of Austria is a conviction regarding a specific city and its status. We are interested in the question whether computers can have mental states so that you can understand how to characterize these states.

For example, it can be argued that the mental state in which I want a hamburger is different from the state in which I want pizza, since the hamburger and pizza in the real world are different from each other. And if this statement is true, mental states have the necessary connection with related objects in the outside world. On the other hand, in just a few paragraphs before this, the statement was formulated that mental states are brain states, so the identity or non-identity of mental states should be determined completely "inside the head", without reference to the real world. In order to better study this dilemma, let us turn to a mental experiment that allows us to separate the focused states from the external objects related to them.