Should we, as human beings, think of ourselves as made out of two different substances, like Decartes argued? Or are you persuaded by the arguments of physicalism that we are purely physical beings?
If you agree with Descartes, how would you explain the fact that our mental life seems to be very closely connected to a physical organ, namely the brain. If you agree with physicalism, how do you explain the fact that our mental life seems to be like nothing else in the physical world (think of how unique something like consciousness is, for example).
I'm agree with Descartes that our mind and body can interact with each other. Movement or action of the body ran parallel with thought and emotion. You scratched your head while thinking, calculated with your fingers as a kind of bodily abacus, followed your thoughts on foot, expressed your feelings through facial and bodily gestures and vocal intonation, and communicated your thoughts through your voice. Activity or motion always accompanied thought and emotion. Is this just a happy coincidence? Or do we really think with the body? Ordinarily we consider the thinking process a purely mental activity.
Consider some ways we think with the body in everyday experience: athletes and dancers think through their bodies in returning a tennis serve; the act of drawing or the execution of a painting captures more than just visual qualities of people, objects, and scenes. It is also an expression of the body - hand, limb, and whole body movements....What if the brain systems for movement and the brain systems for thought and emotion are intimately connected to each other so that we are literally a "thinking (and feeling) body?"
As it turns out, there are indeed extensive neural connections in the brain from those parts that oversee movement, equilibrium, and balance of the body to those parts that direct - thought and emotion. Our brain doesn't simply manage or regulate the body in the way that a chief executive manages a corporation. The brain doesn't direct the body and the body follows slavishly. What the brain communicates to the body depends on what information the body has imparted to the brain and vice-versa.
