A dispute · spans 2 eras
The Mind-Body Problem
How do mind and matter relate? Are they two things, or one, or neither?
Descartes' dualism – mind and body as utterly different substances – generates the problem more than it solves it: how can two such alien stuffs interact? Spinoza answers: they are one single reality, seen under two attributes. Leibniz answers: they don't interact at all; God pre-coordinates them. Hume bypasses the question by dissolving the mind into a bundle of perceptions. The 20th century re-poses the problem as the hard problem of consciousness: how does any arrangement of matter give rise to experience?
// The sides
Dualism
Mind and body are two utterly distinct substances: a thinking one that has no extension, and an extended one that does not think; I can doubt that my body exists, yet never that I, doubting, think.
Monism
Mind and matter are two aspects of one single reality, viewed now under the attribute of thought, now under that of extension.
Pre-established harmony
Mind and body do not act on each other at all; they are merely coordinated, like two clocks set in advance by God – for no one has ever explained how a push of matter could produce a thought.