Origo

The mind-body problem, so debated between reductionists and dualists, continues to intrigue me. As Jaegwon Kim asks in The Oxford Companion To Philosophy, "...how, and why, does conscious experience emerge out of the electrochemical processes occurring in a grey mass of neural fibres?"

Reductionists tell us that there is no such thing as an immaterial mind, but if thought is only another variation of stimulus and response, why do we think thoughts rather than just feel feelings? Okay, human language seems to provide form for some feelings, clothing them as thoughts. From a physical stimulus in my stomach, I can imagine that a physical feeling might somehow get itself wrapped in language to appear as the thought, "Arrgh, me hungry; go now to fine restaurant." But how do higher thoughts, scientific, philosophical or artistic spring fully formed into one's mind without any preceding physical feeling? How does the brain (of reductionism) decide to think a thought in the absence of physical stimuli?

And if mind and thought really are only the response to physical and chemical stimuli, why should you care about my opinions any more than you care about how your dog barks when you kick it?