A Solution to Dualism

From Plato’s mind - body paradigm to Descartes’ bodily machine controlled by a nonmaterial soul the notion of dualism has been crawling up the ally of science and now, psychology, for centuries. If to follow Descartes’ deduction – consciousness is irreducible primarily because it does not hold the same properties as matter and it is the only aspect of the person identifying his existence, Cogito Ergo Sum (Descartes, 1998). However, if to look at the aspect of consciousness phenomenologically, even in the early views akin to Husserl and Heidegger, one can see that the mind-body problem disappears and an entirely different conception comes into play.

In Husserl’s description of the subjective natural world one has a number of explicit objects in his perceptual field some of which he is dimly aware of (i.e. thoughts), some he is fully aware of (i.e. perceptual reality) and yet others remain at the potential of perception which he described through the notion of co-presence (Husserl, 1983). Co-presence marks the inner boundaries of phenomenological description where the physical thing retains the capability of being perceived in the reflection of the surrounding world (Husserl, 1983). The person’s relationship with those objects is that of intentionality; as if wearing a miner’s hat does one pursue the world illuminating certain areas and hiding others in the darkness of potential perception. Living naturally, however, is living naively in the constructs of socialization and day to day attitudes of humans as observers existing in the totality of the objective world (Husserl, 1983). How then does this new notion of subjectivism solve the problem of dualism?

If to analyze the person’s relationship with his world, one cannot find a distinction. A person is not just an identity or a body or a thought processor, it is a collection of many different processes and patterns that of relation to the world in terms of intentionality, and the actual coincidental pattern of the universe which allowed for the current existence of the person. The person is dispersed in the world; in his intentionality or directedness (as in Heidegger) he is dispersed temporally and spatially (Heidegger, 1962). There is no distinction between body and mind anymore; it is a naïve division which never should have been applied. A person is the consciousness, the environment of that consciousness and the relationship between the environment and that consciousness. It is the presence of a certain directionality, spatially, and a throwness from the past into the future, relating to that intentionality (Heidegger, 1962). A person is his own world, full of personalized understanding and perception. A personality would then include all the reflections of the self that the person sees in his world; personality is the degree of this dispersion, its direction, purpose and timing.

So, what does this new definition of personality imply for psychology and psychotherapy? Validity of Husserl’s phenomenology and the process of reduction towards pure consciousness is questioned with the arising problem of the existence of other minds (Levinas, 1969). Heidegger’s approach to solving the problem by treating people at the level of objects or at its best trying to assimilate another person to the self, does not seem to be appealing to most (Levinas, 1969). Levinas, however, starts a new wave in phenomenology by studying the relationship with the Other. What can one know about the other? According to Levinas, nothing (Levinas, 1969). We cannot even start to understand him because the Other is past the horizons of our perceptual capabilities (Levinas, 1969). One cannot know what the other is thinking about, because even if we can accurately guess, the thought switches and changes like ripples on a stream. It can never be caught. The Other is the unknown.

How is psychotherapy then possible, if one never knows what really goes on in the head of the patient sitting in front of them? Understanding another should never be equivocated to putting oneself into another’s shoes, because it is impossible. One will never know another’s past, future and present, all intentionalities and dispersions which constantly change and grow. Even if the Other tells the therapist everything about himself, the therapist can only interpret his words in his own world and a word in another’s world might not always mean the same thing. The patient can build a shell with his story and the therapist can step into that shell and only interpret it through his worldhood, personal understanding and capability.

In conclusion, one can see that the problem of mind and body has been resolved through changing our understanding of mind and body, providing no distinction but an infinite extension from the person’s consciousness and other intentionalities towards phenomena and possibility. While the Other can never be known from one’s point of view, understanding this concept will guide us in its more correct application (Levinas, 1969).

Works Cited

Descartes, R. (1998). Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy. (4^th ed.) trans. Cress, D. Indianapolis: Hacket Publishing Company

Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and Time. (7^th ed.) trans. Macquirre, J. and E. Robinson. New York: Harper Publishers.

Husserl, E. (1983). Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: First Book . trans. Kersten, F. Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers

Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and Infinity: an Essay on Exteriority. trans. Lingis, A. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.