Mind "Over" Matter

Uttered in support of everything from supposedly willing physical ailments away to trivializing the way the physical world can impact consciousness, the saying "mind over matter" is in one way a direct admission of mind-body dualism, but in another sense it can be a distinction implied to have misleading characteristics.  It is entirely true that a person's mind, which is their consciousness and its contents of thoughts and perceptions, can enable them to endure otherwise harrowing circumstances and steel their bodies against everything from pain to abnormal temperatures.  Consciousness is even "over" matter in that it is what allows matter to even be contemplated, experienced, and, in the case of bodily actions like raising a leg, directed.

The human mind does control certain bodily movements, and it would be asinine to not believe this as long as one understands the sole way to prove that there even is such a thing as a body our minds inhabit--assumptions that things are as they seem just because they seem that way leave someone unable to know they have a body.  Ultimately, someone who has either never engaged in truly rationalistic analysis of reality or (having become a rationalist) never realized how to prove their body exists would have no way to prove the body exists and thus no basis for belief it exists.  Once a person understands that it is the mind that is responsible for spurring bodily motions of some kinds, however, it is clear to them that mind truly is "over" matter in that the body is inanimate without it.

It is just that our thoughts and wills do not change anything about the external world by sheer reflection and willpower alone.  No sensory perception would ever otherwise be unwanted if someone could just will it away every time.  Certainly, a person can think of a plan to change something in the external world, such as burning a log and thus changing it in some ways, will to carry the plan out, and do it.  This, though, is not the same as changing the material world outside of one's body just by thoughts and will.  Action is the bridge between these and the doable change one wants to enact.  Action where one's thoughts and will drive the body to perform some task is what allows anything in the perceived external world to be intentionally changed by humans.

Mind thus inevitably controls some behaviors of the body, while others can occur inside our bodies without any awareness or psychological involvement.  There is thus such a thing as mind dictating how the body behaves and such a thing as bodily functions that happen involuntarily or without thought.  Mind "over" matter is often used as a hopelessly vague phrase meant to do little more than rally people around some optimistic goal, but it is a phrase that has limited philosophical accuracy depending on what is meant.  What person finds themselves walking while awake without a corresponding desire of the will on some level, even if they reluctantly take each step?  What person has to constantly deal with their limbs acting as if they have their own intentions?  I have neither experienced this nor heard of anyone else experiencing such a thing.

That is not to say that no outward movement of the body is voluntary.  All it means is that the experience of being in control of one's outward behaviors is the default human experience as far as all evidence suggests.  This in turn brushes up against the issue of free will, which does exist in at least some form--otherwise, nothing would be knowable since no one would be in control of their thoughts and would be carried to one idea or another on grounds other than logical proof and personal thought in alignment with the laws of logic.  I do know at least some things; it is impossible for logical axioms and my own existence, along with the existence of several other things like the present moment of time and the and many other conceptual truths, to not be absolutely certain.  Free will is not self-evident, but it is proven by the attainability of true knowledge.  It is other minds and their wills I cannot know the existence of.  My own cannot be an illusion of any kind.