I'm not sure about the mind. Philosophy of the mind is an endless field of Philosophy. People tend to want to believe in a soul or something immaterial that makes us who we are.
However, is talk of the soul just because of our lack of knowledge of how the brain actually works? One day, will science be able to explain in a physical term what makes us who we are?
Dualism is a theory that says we have both a physical and a mental existence; that we are made up of both. Physical being our bodies and obviously mental being our 'mind'. The problem with believing this would be that there's trouble explaining how the immaterial, non-physical mind is one with (or impacts on) a wholey physical and material body.
If you believe that the mind is just the brain, and that the mind is not external to the brain and will one day be explained in physical terms then this is a physicalist theory.
The problem with that is as soon as you believe that the mind is the brain, you have to agree that when the brain dies, so does everything that you are and were. Basically this makes any concept of life after death completely contradictory to that belief. There simply cannot logically be a life after death if we are completely physical beings.
Another problem is that it completely destroys all freewill. If you believe we are physical beings then we cannot have freewill. In the physical world, things follow a cause and effect trend. If a person throws a brick at a window, the window will break. There is no random acts. All physical objects follow the laws of physics. Therefore, as we are made up of lots of little individual Physical molecules, that all adds up to follow a trend. Neurons firing in the brain cause the feeling of anger which causes an act like throwing that brick at a window.
This is called Determinism (which is very obvious, and this is probably patronising, so i apologise). This then goes on to make concepts like Morality or the sense of a person completely nonsensical. If we have no freewill, then ultimately we cannot choose to act moral, so therefore there's no such thing as morality. Also, if we have no freewill, then what is a person? They must simply be a biological robot. Just a walking chemical reaction and therefore any sense of self is fake, right?
Physicalist theories are a slippery slope to these counter-intuitive and depressing conclusions.
If you read this, thanks. If you're into Philosophy, then i'd love it if you message me.
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