Topics Mind

Question Have the advances in brain scanning techniques that allow the brain to be monitored in real-time had an effect on the philosophical discussions regarding the mind/body question? If so what are they? I'd be interested to find out what a student of Wittgenstein or Peter Winch had to say about the subject?

Accepted:
February 22, 2007

Comments

Wittgenstein once posed the following question: If one could open up the top of one's head and then hold a mirror in front of oneself so that one could see inside one's own brain, would one see one's thoughts and feelings? It seems to me that the answer is no, and so whatever the relationship of mind is to body, brain activity is not properly called thought and feeling. Realtime monitoring of the brain gives us something like Wittgenstein's mirror. It shows us what goes on in the brain when we think and feel. But it doesn't follow that we should call what it shows us thought and feeling.