Discuss the mindbody problem

Discuss the mind/body problem, including variables, process, and determinism. Show you understand the positivists solution of psychophysical parallelism and how it solves the m/b problem. When dealing with the mind/body issue the concern is A) is the body directly connected to the physical (brain) events, or B) mental events are separate and through the separateness cause brain events to change their course. To understand the mind/body issue as the positivist seen it one first needs to understand what their thoughts were on the terms "variable" "process theory" and "determinism". A variable is a property that can take on more than one value. Example is gender only two values, verses, color that has many different colors. Process theory has to have relevant variables (positions velocities and masses of each planet relative to each other and the sun) items have to be consistent with each other in order to make observations. Process theory permits perfect predictions on the assumption that the theory is based on closed systems. (star and gravitational pull) Determinism is events in nature that are lawfully related. Determinism can never be proven to be true, because it uses inductive reasoning; meaning generalization is made be a limited # of observations. Until an observation can be proven false its is true. Determinism may be falsified by empirical data. You must sate your theory in such a way that if you find false observations they can be found out through observation. Because of falsifiability of science it separated itself form other system of thoughts. The way in which the mind/body problem is solved for the logical positivists is by Psychophysical parallelism. Psychophysical parallelism says two kinds of events need to occur, a) brain events and b) mental events. The when the brain is in a particular state then the mind will be in a corresponding state. ( the following is directly from the hand out) Altho...