Mind-Body Problem

The mind-body problem (MBP) names a philosophical and scientific identity issue that is highly debated. The complexity of the issue arises from the intersecting interest of all the arts, humanities, and science disciplines throughout history, not to mention the social, political, and religious interests of various cultures, East and West. The MBP highlights this identity process as a puzzle in which human beings must interrogate the identifying connection between their expression and perception of communication and culture. The identity process accounts for the emergent evolution of the consciousness in behavior that we call human. Human beings, unlike animals and machines, function on three simultaneous levels of consciousness that integrate the expression and perception of (1) affect or emotion, (2) cognition or thought, and (3) conation or purposeful action. The scholastic philosophers in the Middle Ages used the respective Latin terms: (1) capta, (2) data, and (3) acta, which today are still in use to varying extents. In the specific context of the MBP, human consciousness thus functions as a simultaneous integration of (1) awareness, or preconsciousness; (2) awareness of awareness, or consciousness; and (3) representation of awareness of awareness, or variously, nonconsciousness, subconsciousness, unconsciousness. Jacques Lacan offers a shorthand version of the three respective functions that he names (1) the real, (2) the imaginary, and (3) the symbolic. Likewise, Charles S. Peirce describes the semiotic nature of consciousness as a triadic identity among (1) an object, the thing expressed or perceived (an icon); (2) the representamen, the expressed or perceived sign of the object (an index); and (3) the interpretant, the learned experience of combining the object and its representamen (the symbol). Educational psychologists often summarize the three integrated semiotic states of consciousness as deutero learning, that is, “learning how to learn.”

This entry begins with an overview of identity methodologies and the various schools of thought regarding identity and consciousness. Then, the entry defines foundational terminology. The entry concludes with a discussion of the discourse model of identity.