Thomas Aquinas And Descartes Theories Of Mind-body Problem:from Comparative Study Perspective

The mind and the body problem is far to be an old debate because it keeps rising new understanding and perceptions without ceasing.In the contemporary philosophy of mind,the focus or the main question should not be any more whether mind is distinct from the body.Rather philosophers should be more focused on the theory of interactionism(how mind and body affect each other).In that logic,some thinkers see the mind as the inner environment in the meaning that its content is not accessible directly by a third person.This position is rejected by those who don't see the mind-body distinction as outer and inner.The old Aristotelian perception limited mind to the intellect from which they make the distinction between human being and dumb animals.According to some others,the mind is made of diverse cognitive faculties such as consciousness,perception,thinking,judgment,and memory.Today,the research in the field of mind and body matter has become a kind of an inconsistent triad.The central question being the difference between the mental and the physical events,their union and interactions.Some scholars describe the mental states as causally efficacious in the sense that the mind and the body causally interact with physical and other mental events and states.Some others look at the physical as a causally closed system in the sense that the causal explanations of events are completely describable in the language of physics.The above statements make it clear to us that there are different perceptions of mind.On the one hand,we can define the mind as the faculty of a human being's reasoning and thoughts.This means that Mind is a non-physical area.Or in many cases,especially in dualism,there is a correlation between the immaterial and the material substance.Then from this logic one can say that the interaction between the physical substance and non-physical substance has become today the new interest of the mind-body problem.It raises the question about the possibility of interaction between substances that are different by nature and by the essence.The new interest in philosophy of mind should be formulated in the light of the following question:how does happen the interaction between mind and body?The answer to this question leads to many possible philosophical position.School of thought falls into discussion when it comes to knowing whether the mind-body relation is a dominion relationship or a balance relation.Some philosophers are in the view that mind and body equally need each other to perform their identity.Some others think that mind supervenient on the body.Other simply ignored the possibility of mental existence.The major contribution of the researcher in this work is to show that the relation between mind and body subscribes in the relation of dominion in which the mind master the body.When the contrary happens,we call that misleading.In that case the man becomes a slave of passion going here and there without focus.Whenever the mind remains in control,man certainly reaches to the goal.In the field of philosophy the interaction between body and mind is not a new thought.From the earlier philosophers to the contemporary thinkers,the mind-body problem keep coming over and over.We are also using a comparative study between Descartes and Aquinas just to show particularity mind-body distinction with more clearness.The choice of Aquinas is intentional,for through him we can see the rupture between Cartesian view of substance and hylomorphism view.As personal contribution,the researcher will demonstrate the eminence of mind over the body from different perspectives.We have divided the work into seven chapters.The first chapter is focused on literature review,the second is focused on conceptual studies,the third and fourth are case studies(Aquinas and Descartes),the fifth is the comparison between Aquinas and Descartes,the sixth the modern advancement of dualism and the seventh the eminence of mind over the body as personal contributions.This work has led the researcher to show the eminence of the mind over the body by arguing that human being is more determined by the mind than the body.That shows that the mind governs over the body.The decision of the action comes before the action itself.But the researcher did not deny the possibility of the reverse to some extent.This is to say that the researcher is in the view that the mind does not escape completely from the influence of the body as well.