What is the mind?

Monism, dualism and the philosophy of mind

The Philosophy of Mind is the area of philosophy that asks what human minds are made of and how they work. We all agree that we have a mind. We can think, we can feel, we can take decisions, we can relate to others, we can do physics and play chess. But what, exactly, is that elusive mind?

The philosophy of mind is an area of philosophy that attempts to explain what exactly the mind is. Dualism assumes (like Christianity does) that our material bodies contain some kind of immaterial soul (or mind) that obeys different rules than the physical world. Monists would dispute that and claim that there is only one kind of substance throughout the universe that constitutes both minds and all the other things. Computationalism claims that the mind is nothing but a computer.

Animal minds

The human mind is unique and we know of no other comparable phenomenon in the universe. The question of what exactly the mind is and how it works has troubled philosophers for as long as philosophy exists. One problem arises when we think of things that have “less mind” than we do. A dog, for example, a cat, a pig. Or: a pigeon, a sparrow. A palm tree. A Christmas tree.

Some of these clearly do have mental processes very similar to ours, but they are much more…