As a neurologist, Sigmund Freud found that the minds of some of his patients were making their bodies physically sick: hysterical blindness and paralysis, for example. Thus he abandoned neurology and founded the school of psychology called psychoanalysis. Franz Alexander called this mind-body relation, in which the mind can generate physical illness, psychosomatic disorder (different from hypochondriasis) and pioneered the field of psychosomatic medicine.
No one who has worked in a psychiatric hospital would swallow the doctrine that all illness has physical causes.If the mind wasn’t a natural, physical phenomenon, it couldn’t affect the rest of the body in any way. It’s just that we are still in the process of elucidating the precise means in which the two interact…still getting over the notion that the mind is somehow connected to a “supernatural” soul.
That’s my understanding, it seems pretty obvious that’s the case, but the danger in asking these questions on the internet is that lots of people somehow think they are experts when their only qualifications are they once read a blog, or had coffee with someone who works in a psychiatric hospital, or saw a TV show on Discovery Channel or whatever.
It is not necessary for the mind to be a physical phenomenon in order to affect the body. “the rest of the body” begs the question of whether the mind is brain activity.
The expression “getting over the notion” is further evidence of the intolerant secular mentality that belief in a supernatural soul is a form of mental illness! It is similar to the sceptical belief that the mind plays no part in causing physical illness - which runs counter to modern medical opinion and practice.
There is a great book on the topic written by Ramond Tallis (who is a neuroscientist) called Aping Mankind. In the book, Tallis criticises what he calls ‘neuromania’, or the obstinate insistence of some pseudo-scientists who keep equating the brain and the mind.Can anyone here refer me to some books recently written that explains the difference between the brain and the mind? If I’m understanding the topic correctly, we are to believe that the brain and mind are entirely two different entities, yet, with the little I know about neuroscience, and I’ll admit, I know very little, this seems to be an impossibility. I’m trying to understand this and am doing a poor job of it.
I also highly recommend the neuroscientist Raymond Tallis’ book Aping Mankind to you. It will explain very well why you are dead wrong.
So have they been trying to do since the time of Aristotle (or at least since the time of Descartes), and so will they still be trying to do when the Lord comes again, as it is a problem with no solution. Any method of inquiry that contains as an axiom that all phenomena are physical (whether it be methodological or the eminently ruinous philosophical physicalism-naturalism) runs in to a major (maybe non-surpassable) roadblock right about where modern empirical science finds itself, especially in the realm of physics and non-deterministic processes. (Although, the physicalists are still trying to save a sinking ship by reinterpreting even there to be physical-reductive processes at work.)
It amounts to blind faith in the power of physical processes to understand and account for themselves. Who said miracles never occur? I guess subnatural forces must be immensely powerful - even though they’re severely handicapped by a total lack of insight and knowledge. Anyway I suppose science has achieved so much we may as well regard it as virtually omnipotent. After all it’s far more convenient than believing in the objective reality of good and evil. 
At its most basic, physicalism posits that all detectable reality is of one kind - precisely the kind that has detectable effects! To claim that the mind is physical is not an attempt to “reduce” the mind to something inferior in nature to what we imagined it to be - if anything, it supports what physicists have been aware of for decades, the revelation (for so it must be called, that lifting of the veil of ignorance and superstition) that reality is far more wonderful than we thought, and that capabilities formerly assigned (ignorantly) only to gods and souls and other magical entities are all right there in the universe around and within us. When it comes to studying the mind, the best way to get nowhere is to consign the mind to the realms of supernatural phenomena.
Oh, I see. So you simply dismiss, as it were with a wave of the hand, the fundamental problem of Cartesian dualism - the lack of correspondence or connection between natural and supernatural, between physical and nonphysical. Why didn’t anyone else think of this before? We can solve a problem by simply saying it doesn’t exist. What a pity that examinations of the pineal gland have revealed no natural/supernatural interface socket for the soul to jack into.
Intolerant? Say rather ‘impatient’. The proposition that the mind is some kind of nonphysical or supernatural magical stuff does nothing to assist with our attempts to understand it. And I am well aware, not least thanks to having suffered periodic bouts of clinical depression, of just how profoundly the mind affects one’s general well-being, and is affected by it in turn. Such intimate enmeshing speaks to me of interrelated natural phenomena.
I read four reviews, none said the book has anything at all to do with explaining the mind as requested by the OP, they all said it’s instead an argument against a simplistic culture. Even then it doesn’t sound very balanced:
From the reviews I read, this seems to be exactly the kind of superficial headlining that Tallis (an atheist and evolutionist) is arguing against!
The full title is delightful as well as insightful:
**Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity
**The naked ape hypothesis is well and truly nailed down in its coffin!
So basically you’re saying if at first you don’t succeed, give up?
I don’t know that committed supernaturalists actually want the neuroscientists to succeed - at least, it has been my impression that they don’t.
A clinical diagnosis of depression generally rules out any bad experiences to which we might normally be expected to react in a negative manner - you know, if my life takes a definite downward turn, such as having a friend or familiy member die, or separating from my spouse, or being involved in a traumatic accident, or losing my job…I could go on, but the point is that it’s “normal”, whatever that means, to react with unhappiness to negative life experienes. Depression can occur rehardless of, and dispropotionately to, one’s immediate experiences. I might point out at this juncture that I have never taken antidepressant drugs, but have managed my depression through exercise and counselling. But I don’t suppose you would have any explanation for how such actions could modify chemical balances in the brain, since you think that “chemical interactions” come from the outside. I’ll leave my insights to be provided by the professionals…
Well done at not addressing my implied question, and completely ignoring the fact that a bodiless mind has never yet been encountered. In what possible way does the persistence of bodily vitality in the absence of mental control actually demonstrate that a bodiless mind could exist? To me, it looks like bodies precede minds, rather than the other way around.
Oh, please - are you really going to claim that no atrocities have ever been motivated by claimed knowledge of the preferences of a supernatural being?
Merely reversing my words does nothing to help your case. “Physical magical” stuff, as an expression, explicitly ignores the fact that any physical stuff is, by nature, subject to scientific investigation. Supernatural magical stuff is held aloof by those who don’t want reality to be explained. It may well be that our ability to understand - to link causes to effects and formulate explanations - is explained in terms of electrical activity, but there may also be other physical forces at work. We’ll never know if we assume mental activity is supernatural and thus inexplicable.
What do you suppose the mind is if not a collection of events within the skull? The infusion of immaterial ectoplasm? Immaterialists are certainly no closer than materialists to formulating an explanation of the mind, but you console yourselves, apparently, by supposing that the assertion of immateriality absolves you from any responsibility for explanation.
Let’s have a quick look at the tally sheet, shall we? Psychoactive drugs have demonstrable effects. Consciousness, as far as we can discern, depends upon a minimum level of brain function. Actual, physical damage to the brain results in changes in personality. The interaction between the brain and the rest of the body is a two-way street. Are we, when considering the mind, dealing with an independent supernatural entity or with an interrelated natural entity arising entirely from physical forces? The ball is still in your court, since all the evidence is on the side of the physicalists.
Mindless bodies result from physical or biological damage to the head or body or both; while bodiless minds cannot be detected physically, if present.