The mind-body relationship in emotions

Is my mind something that only I experience and that belongs only to me? This difficult question to answer has been the basis of much philosophical research throughout the centuries.

In fact, Rene Descartes one of the most influential thinkers in the birth of Psychology as a science (despite the fact that he died long before its appearance), took as starting point an idea closely related to this topic: the French philosopher assumed that the fact of experiencing our own mental activity is a one of the only certainties of which we can be sure, since everything that goes beyond this can deceive us through the senses: “I think, then I exist ”. Our existence as conscious entities is what we never doubt.

Now, something that is closely linked to our conscience is the emotions that we experience mixed in it: it is practically impossible to be conscious and at the same time not feel ourselves in any way; spontaneously, we value our state of mind, whether the sensations that our environment transmits to us are good or bad, etc. And if we add to this that

emotions cannot be reduced to wordsIt is not surprising that many people see emotions as something totally private and subjective, or that it is even independent of their body and everything earthly in general. How accurate is this view of the human mind?

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Two main positions regarding the mind-body relationship

There are several ways of understanding the link between the concept of "emotions" and the concept of "body". Several of them can be grouped into the philosophical perspective that we call dualism: the idea that a thing is the human mind and another clearly different is the human body and all its organic and material components in general.

This position, represented among other thinkers by Descartes, shows the human being as a soul imprisoned in the material prison of his own organism. In fact, the French philosopher proposed that in the human brain there is a structure, the pineal gland, from which the incorporeal being of each human being controls the body's “machine” based on sensory information that comes through its imperfect circuitry latest.

Other philosophical positions opposed to dualism are included in philosophical monism, and specifically, in materialistic monism (there is also a non-materialistic monism, but it has little influence nowadays).

This perspective considers that both emotions and all psychological states in general are a simple product of the body's organic processes, and that the fact that we experience subjectivity as something private and reserved exclusively for each person or is more than an illusion. Which of these two ways of understanding the human mind is more accurate? Although this issue is not yet completely settled and it will not be resolved in a short time. article like the one you are reading, I would like to show you that both positions offer a part of truth.

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Why do emotions exist?

Can we say that emotions are a phenomenon totally disconnected from the material? Decades of research show us that it would be unwise to think in these terms. It should not be forgotten that if philosophers like Descartes reserved the human being a privileged position in accessing the Transcendence through the ability to have a soul was partly due to a series of religious and anthropocentric dogmas that were very much in vogue. in his time; but nevertheless, today we know that emotions are practically omnipresent in the animal kingdom, and this has nothing to do with whether or not they have a soul. The truth is that beyond how we subjectively experience the emotional, the fact of experiencing emotions has practical effects: they predispose us to behave in one way or another.

Moreover, this predisposition is clearly reflected in our actions through the patterns of behavior that we activate in a more spontaneous and less premeditated way. What makes us emotional beings is our biological heritage, all a series of physiological and neuroendocrine mechanisms that we have obtained from our ancestors because they were and are key to survival.

That is why emotions almost always go ahead of reason. Specifically, brain structures such as the limbic system, closely connected to parts of the ancestral nervous system and present in all vertebrates, are the ones that make it possible that we feel one way or another: in this way we react quickly to danger, we learn from our mistakes and our successes without having to stop to reflect a lot, etc. If the brain is a machine for learning and predicting possible future situations based on what has happened to us, Emotions are the fuel for our motivation, which leads us to have reasons to progress and learn.

But nevertheless, assuming that emotions are simply a consequence of brain activity is also not accurate. We cannot equate emotions to hormones and neurotransmitters and other substances secreted by our organism, among other things because these depend on our way of thinking and interacting with the environment and with others. And both language and the ability to think about our own mental states, which is known as metacognition, are as natural phenomena in humans as the activation of neurons.

That is why understanding our moods, our emotions and feelings is not an "artificial" process or secondary to the biological; it is an essential part of the human experience. To assume otherwise would be like considering that Homo sapiens should not exist, since we have evolved and prospered thanks to use of tools and systems of symbols and words that do not arise from concrete body structures, but from life in community.

Therefore, the relationship between mind and body in relation to emotions is as follows: because we have a body, we cannot not feel, and because we are human beings, or we can stop getting involved in understanding our "I" and the nature of what we feel.

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