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Penn Tong's picture

Descartes' Fan

During last Thursday's discussion, I was one of the people who believed that behavior was made up of 2 major components, the mind and the brain. I don't believe they are one entity because we can talk about one without mentioning the other.

The reason I find it hard to believe that the brain=behavior is because I feel that our behavior is also influenced by our soul. When I mean soul, I am referring to something non-biological and more spiritual. Dreams are caused by random firing of neurons in the brain and if we believe brain=behavior then that also means that moral judgment, and thoughts are all caused by physical factors. I don't understand how these abstract concepts can be explained through physical matter (for example, the ability for someone to decide if stealing is right or wrong can be explained entirely upon a specific order of arranged atoms interacting with one another in the brain). I just feel that there is something else that we can't explain, but I'm not quite sure how to define it.

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