Consciousness is an ambiguous entity. This is a fundamental reason why it is so fiercely debated. It is so personal to each of us – it’s within us – yet we cannot explain with assurance what it actually is, what it does, what it is made of. This has led to many different theories regarding the mind and consciousness, none of which are right as in ‘true’ – each can be argued. There is no ultimate knowledge, only beliefs and opinions. Descartes has made the closest statement to ‘truth’ within the topic of the mind when he said ‘I think therefore I am.’ This seems so irrefutably true – none can accurately contest the statement. Yet, as good a starting point as it is, where do we go from there?
The most argued aspect of consciousness appears to be whether it is a physical or mental state of the brain. I think due to the uncertainty of what consciousness is, Dualism, Descartes’ belief, is held to be the strongest. Dualism is the theory that the mental and physical are distinct from one another. Descartes’, a theist, argued that while the mind and body are linked, ‘the body is the prison of the soul’ and that the mind can feasibly exist without the body, which is what happens after death. The (main) problem with Descartes’ view is that he cannot explain how the brain and mind, if separate entities, interact. How do physical brain states give rise to non-physical mental states? As Colin McGinn explains, How is the water of the brain turned into the rich wine of consciousness? Descartes replies that the penal gland is the link between the mental and the physical, but as it is physical, it seems that if the physical and mental are separate, that there is no apparent link to connect the two. This can lead to more extreme theories such as Parallelism where the series of mental and physical events are simultaneous, Spinoza’s Double Aspect Theory where the mind and brain are two different aspects under one underlying reality, or even Occasionallism, a theory of...