The Many Mind-Body Interactions Of Everyday Life

Everyone already knows that there are both phenomenological and sensory aspects of human life, but rarely does someone understand how to prove the nature or existence of these things, and few even go beyond just taking them for granted based on mere assumptions.  Substance dualism is implied in almost everything people say although very few have ever given serious thought to epistemology and metaphysics.  Thus, some truths about mind and body and how they relate might not be entirely new to everyone, but the context in which they are reflected upon and the details are not known by default unless a person rationalistically puts effort into reflection.

There are nonetheless dozens of ways that a person's mind and body relate and interact on a given day.  What about hunger?  The desire to eat food and to eat food that is specifically pleasing to taste is explicitly phenomenological--that is, desire cannot exist except within a mind that experiences them.  Bodies without consciousnesses experience nothing at all.  A body without a mind is lifeless, unable to even partake in sensory perceptions of the mist trivial kind.  At the same time, a mind without a body could not consume food, which is made of physical substance and thus cannot be ingested simply by willpower or thought.

For an even grander example of the distinction between mind and body, consider sexuality.  Sexuality is an even bigger philosophical subject than something like hunger could ever be because it spans and directly touches things like individuality, ethics, relationships, and introspection in a far deeper, more thorough way.  Sometimes one might hear people speak of sexuality as if it is solely dictated by psychological factors or by physical ones, but it inevitably involves both.  Desire, attraction, affection, and pleasure are, again, experiences of the mind, apart from which there would be no thought or experience.  Arousal of the genitals, in contrast, is a distinctly physical thing that may or may not be accompanied by sexual excitement on a mental level.

Even asexuals demonstrate this distinction: their bodies can still function sexually even though they have little to no sexual feelings.  They might even experience excitement about sexuality without experiencing sexual attraction, and either way they only lack a mental experience that goes alongside or motivates people to seek out physical actions.  If there was no difference between consciousness and matter, then having a sexually functioning body would make asexuality impossible.  Sexuality is a key aspect of life in which the mind-body distinction is evident to all who reflect without making assumptions.

There are many other examples of this distinction in every life, though.  People who drink coffee with the purpose of being more alert are trying to use a physical drink to induce mental clarity.  People who wish to stand up and then use their legs to actually stand are using their will, a feature of consciousness as opposed to the body, to move their bodies in a desired fashion.  Many things people do on a daily basis are really just different cases of letting the mind or body influence the other in some way.  This, of course, means there is not just a mental and not just a physical dimension to human existence; both are involved regularly.

However, it is the existence of the mind that is self-verifying and the existence of the body that is so difficult to prove that I am very relieved and fortunate to have realized it.  The existence of any sort of material object is neither self-evident nor as epistemologically or metaphysically foundational as something like reason and consciousness.  Without reason, there would be no truths about mind or matter to know and no way to prove them, and without consciousness, there would be nothing to do the perceiving and thinking about the body or about itself.  A hypothetical mind without a body could still grasp reason and look within itself, but a body without a mind perceives nothing real or illusory because it is inanimate.