As a psychology major, one of topics that I find most interesting in philosophy is the mind/body problem. This can be defined as the relationship between the immaterial mind and the material body.
Philosophers from all times have contemplated this problem; two of which are Rene Descartes and John Searle. It is my hope in this essay to present an overview of Descartes and Searle’s theories as related to animal’s minds and human minds while putting emphasis on their differences and similarities.
René Descartes is whom we owe the first account of the mind/body relationship to. Descartes can be seen as a duelist, someone who believes that the mind and the body are not only separate, but competent of independent existence. He is of the belief that animals can be considered extremely complex machines. However, he does not clearly state whether he is assured that animals do not have souls. Descartes states that even if machines having
Furthermore, there is no other animal that can speak and communicate like humans. Descartes uses the example of a parrot to illustrate this idea. Sure parrots can be taught to speak words like humans, but they do not have the capacity to ever be able to formulate sentences and have a conversation like humans so. Therefore, they must not be made with a mind or soul, but must merely be complex machines.
Searle differs from Descartes in that he is not considered a dualist. Searle believes that the mind is caused by the brain and that the mind is merely a feature of the brain.
Both theories came out of a careful observation of his dog. Searle realized that his dog must have a conscious mind because his dog shared human behaviors. However, Searle took this theory and went further with it. In The Rediscovery of the Mind, Searle states “this is his skin.. That if you pinch his skin… you get behavior appropriate to pinching skin.”
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