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In class on Wednesday I was one of the people who agreed with the Descartes explanation for behavior. Not that I necessarily believe in the soul/mind…it’s just that I think the brain alone cannot be responsible for all behavior. Many things that exhibit behavior do not even have a nervous system to speak of. Plants and fungi for example do not have a central nervous system and yet they undoubtedly show characteristic behaviors. The same could be said of bacteria or really any cells that have certain functions to perform in the body. Individual cells within an organism have their own separate behavior and never would you find that an osteoblast takes over the function of a lymphocyte. One can even go so far as to say that things that are not alive, like viruses for example, most definitely exhibit characteristic behavior that is intrinsic to their existence.
Whether all of these behaviors most definitely not associated with the nervous system are due to a soul or mind or something else that is present in all creation I really don’t know and would not hazard to guess at. However it does make me realize with wonder the truth in Emily Dickinson’s poem. The world as we see it, the wideness of the sky the vastness of the sea, our ability to comprehend philosophical ideas like infinity, morality and spirituality is ours alone. Only with the development of the brain do these things become possible. Only with a very advanced nervous system can we exhibit behavior that shows our ability to perceive things outside ourselves.