Abstract
The elusive relationship between the mental domain and the physical brain, known as the mind-body problem, is still a hot topic of discussion among philosophers and neuroscientists. Rather than solving this problem, our pilot study addresses the question as to whether personality features could influence intuitions of the mind-body problem, or more precisely, whether it is possible to identify a person’s intuitive inclinations toward dualism or materialism and their inclinations toward reduction of the mind to the brain. For the purposes of this pilot study, we developed a questionnaire, which employed several theories of analytic philosophy of the mind, in order to determine which category the participants would belong to. These main categories were dualism, non-reductive materialism and reductive materialism. To test whether personality features affect preferences for these categories, the participants were investigated by Cloninger’s Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI). We found significant differences in the self-transcendence dimension of the TCI between participants who were evaluated as dualists and those who were assessed as reductive materialists. Our data show that the personality dimension of self-transcendence correlates with intuitive inclination toward reductive materialism or dualism. In addition, our results suggest that ideas, theories, and hypothetical solutions of the mind-body problem and possibly even conclusions, acceptance, and disputations of thought experiments of philosophy of the mind can be biased by personality traits. This fact should be taken into account in future discussions of the philosophy of the mind and may also be important for empirical research and an empirical understanding of the mind.
Highlights
The mind-body problem represents one of the most enigmatic and open questions in the fields of philosophy and neuroscience
We aimed to identify psychological personality traits that correlate with a personal inclination toward three different approaches in analytic philosophy of the mind
We chose theories related to dualism, non-reductive materialism, and reductive materialism, which we considered to be relatively clear, not too abstract and their interpretation was not too ambiguous
Summary
The mind-body problem represents one of the most enigmatic and open questions in the fields of philosophy and neuroscience. It refers to the relationship between mental content and its physical (brain) substrate. The mind-body problem has been considered as the main problem of the philosophy of the mind since Descartes (1641) formulated the crucial difference between material substance (res extensa) and mental substance (res cogitans), creating substance dualism. Gilber Ryle, considered by some to be one of the fathers of modern philosophy of the mind, principally criticized Descartes’ (1641) distinction and Personality Features and Mind-Body Problem branded it as a category mistake (Ryle, 1949). Even though 20th century philosophy of the mind was dominated by materialistic theories, dualism still found its way to the discussions of the nature of consciousness, where it became an implicit tool in modern modal and epistemic arguments for the irreducibility of consciousness (e.g., Nagel, 1974; Jackson, 1982; Levine, 1983; Chalmers, 1996)
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