The mind-body relationship in emotions

A reflection on the concepts of "mind" and "body" in understanding our emotional side.

Is my mind something that I alone experience and that belongs only to me? This difficult question to answer has been at the basis of many philosophical investigations over the centuries.

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

However, something that is closely linked to our consciousness is the emotions that we experience mixed in it: it is practically impossible to be conscious and at the same time not feel in any way; we spontaneously evaluate our state of mind, whether the sensations that our environment transmits to us are good or bad, etc. And if we add to this the fact that emotions cannot be reduced to wordsIt is not surprising that many people see emotions as something totally private and subjective, or even independent of their body and everything earthly in general. To what extent is this view of the human mind accurate?

• Related article, "How are psychology and philosophy similar?"

Two main positions on 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 in the philosophical perspective we call dualism: the idea that one 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 its own organism.. In fact, the French philosopher proposed that in the human brain there is a structure, the pineal gland, from which the disembodied being of each human being controls the "machine" of the body from the sensory information that reaches it through the imperfect circuitry of the latter.

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

This perspective considers that both emotions and all psychological states in general are simply a product of the organic processes of the body, and that the fact that we experience subjectivity as something private and reserved exclusively for each person 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 will not be resolved in a short article like the one you are reading, I would like to show you that both positions offer a part of truth.

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 wrong to think in these terms. We must not forget that if philosophers like Descartes reserved to human beings a privileged position in the access to transcendence through the ability to have a soul, it was partly due to a series of religious and anthropocentric dogmas very much in vogue at the time; however, today we know that emotions are practically omnipresent in the animal kingdom, Today, however, we know that emotions are virtually omnipresent in the animal kingdomThis has nothing to do with whether or not they have souls. 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 inheritance, the whole a series of physiological and neuroendocrine mechanisms that we have obtained from our ancestors because they were and are the key to survival..

This is why emotions almost always come before reason. In particular, brain structures such as the limbic system, closely connected to ancestral parts of the nervous system and present in all vertebrates, are responsible for making it possible for us to feel one way or another: we react quickly to danger, we learn from our mistakes and our successes without having to stop and reflect too much, 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 of our motivation, which leads us to have reasons to progress and learn.

However, Assuming that emotions are simply a consequence of brain activity is not accurate either.. We cannot equate emotions with hormones and neurotransmitters and other substances secreted by our organism, among other things because they 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, known as metacognition, are as natural phenomena in human beings as the activation of neurons.

That is why understanding our moods, 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, given that we have evolved and prospered thanks to the use of tools and systems of symbols and words that do not arise from concrete bodily structures, but from life in community.

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

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