The Case for Mental State in Relation to the Normal Organic Brain and Non-organic Brain - Essay Example

In effect, different experts in the fields of philosophy and medicine will arrive at different deductions on the mental states of patients using different approaches. In the case presented, it is evident that the doctors took these different approaches based on their philosophical principles. However, as a doctor, I consider the friend to have a mental state. In my view, there can be no appropriate approach in reconciling the doctors’ view as basing on the dualist approach, and reinforcing it with the behaviorism approach.

The dualist approach acknowledges that, to some extent, the mental state may be described based on the non-physical aspects. In one way, the intelligence of a human being, which is a relative to the mental state, may not be described based on physical identity of the body. This point may not be disputed because even the studies that have sought to qualify the relationship between brain volumes and intelligence have failed, while it is also beyond doubt that one could become consciousness when the brain matter is removed.

Yet the common view on why dualism is appealing is the fact that it questions and reconciles the physical and mental attributes of consciousness. For instance, it may be reasonable to ask how a blind snake looks like, how a child’s voice sounds or how it feels to swim in cold water. However, it would become odd to ask about the processes taking place in the hippocampus regions of the brain. These questions point to what is often referred to as the qualia, and it all difficult to give the mind a physical attribute (Kim, 1996).

The crucial question is then that if the mental state exists independently, from the physical reality, it should be in the position to account the actual processes of memory construction to inform consciousness. Only duality is in better placed to describe these. Here, an account follows that