Wikipedia:Today's featured article/May 17, 2006

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Philosophy of mind is the philosophical study of the exact nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, and consciousness, and of the nature of their relationship with the physical body. Two major schools of thought attempt to resolve the mind–body problem: dualism and monism. Dualism can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle in the West and the Samkhya school of Hindu philosophy in the East and was most precisely formulated in modern terms by René Descartes in the 17th century. Dualism asserts the separate existence of mind and body. Monism, first proposed by Baruch Spinoza, maintains there is only one substance. Substance dualists argue that the mind is an independently existing substance, while property dualists maintain that the mind is a jumble of independent properties that emerge from the brain and cannot be reduced to it, but that it is not a distinct substance. (More...)

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