Written by: Lukash Ratna Kansakar - 21111, Grade XII
Posted on: 19 August, 2020
From an idealist view, however closely the mind may be connected with its body, it is nevertheless distinct and separable from the body. The idealist view of the mind is the opposite of the materialist view. Mental functions of the brain are considered to be the most complicated relations of the animal to the external world. According to idealism, the mind animates the body and makes use of organs to adapt to the external world. A reflex is not only being stimulated by the external surrounding but also reacting to it. The mind reacts to various stimuli for the survival of its body and eventually, the collection of reflexes becomes the consciousness of a mind. This is in essence what primitive people think of as the soul, a very fine vapor of 21 grams that completes a human body; that is responsible to control every aspect of the body. This is what the word “spirit” originally meant – which resides in the body but can come out of it and lead an individual existence.
Idealist philosophical theories believe that the mind and body are two distinct substances. Material substance or body has weight, moves around, and is something physically exposed to surrounding. Spiritual substance or mind, thinks, knows, desires, and is responsible to control the body. However, the definition of material substance applies to the brain as well because the mind and brain are two different concepts and the brain itself is exposed to the physical world.
The mind is, in fact, the soul of the brain. For example, if we think and feel and act intelligently, such behavior is not to be explained from our material existence but from the independent functioning of our mind. The brain makes use of our bodily organs but intelligent behavior stems from the fact that the body is animated, informed, and controlled by an immaterial or a spiritual being, the mind.
Modern materialism, which is equipped with the scientific investigation in the form of organic matter and evolution, gives decisive answers to support the idealist concept. A mind is a product of evolutionary development of life. Living bodies with a certain level of development of the nervous system, such as we find in animals, can and do develop forms of consciousness; and in the course of evolution this consciousness it eventually reaches the stage of thought which is only known to be achieved by the human mind.
Once this is admitted, there is an end to the conception of the mind or soul as a separable from the body and capable of leaving it and surviving it. A mind without a body is an absurdity. The mind doesn’t exist in abstraction from the body. However, to say that the mind does not exist in abstraction from the body is not to say that the mind of a being is a myth. Modern materialism doesn’t deny the reality of mind but it does deny that the thing called “mind” exists separate from the body.
