Question

PHILOSOPHY:

1. What is the mind-body problem?

a.) Why does my body not do what my mind tells it to?

b.) How does the mind relate to the body?

c.) How can there be thoughts and no souls?

d.) How can it be 'mind over matter' in certain contexts?

The mind-body problem is a very, very, old puzzle in philosophy. It is trying to explain how our 'what-it's-likenesses' relate to our bodily states. It's trying to explain how our thoughts, emotions, and other mental qualities relate to physical (bodily) events. Basically, the Mind-Body Problem is trying to answer a question of the form:

How is X related to Y?
Where X and Y are the mind and the body respectively. Now, not just any question of that form is philosophically interesting. There are some with many different answers and very easy answers, for example:

How is 2 related to 4?
Answers: 2 is less than 4, both are numbers, 2 squared is 4, and so on.
For a question of this form to be philosophically interesting, or just interesting in general, there needs to be something extra. The answer, certainly, could be easy to get to, but there needs to be something problematic about the relationship between the two. In this case, the question "how is the mind related to the body?" is not easy to answer and just about any claimed relationship between the two seems to have problems. But, it seems very obvious that the mind, my 'thinker' so to speak, does have some kind of relationship with my body. I think of thinks, my body does them, I feel sad, my body cries. So, the core question is:

How are our mental states, beliefs, feelings, or thinkings, related to our bodily states, the events which go on physically?
There are two dominate theories about this and both have their problems, which we will go into detail about.

Answer 1

1. Mind-body problem, also called as the mind-body conflict, was coined in 17th century. This theory suggests that mind consists of 2 parts ie dualism.

i. Brain as a physical body or organ within the body

ii. Brain as consciousness or conscious activity

While the activity takes place in the form of impulse exchanges through neuron and brain functions to control the activity such as controlling heart beat, releasing hormones, and maintaining motor activities.

Consciousness is not defined by the neurology as its ot recognized by the neurology as the process. However, psychologists who defined conflict between the both argued that brain and mind are too different entities.

Mind and body are one entity only. These are 2 things irresponsible in brain for 2 important things that define consciousness. One is hippocampus, which is responsible for the memory and the other one is hypothalamus, which controls hormones (hormones are responsible for different feelings of high and low). When these two stop functioning properly, then the person loses his identity and consciousness too. So, there's no psuedo science behind it.

Regarding mind is ot listening to the body or vice versa, it your conditoning. Your super ego or subconscious brain tells to do something good but your ego (rational self) which you call it as body would ask to do things that are beneficial to you.