Is the Mind-Body Problem a Problem at All?

Is the Mind-Body Problem a Problem at All?

© Rick Hanson, PhD and Rick Mendius, MD, 2007


One could rightly ask: How can intangible thoughts affect tangible matter (i.e., the brain)? This question is at the heart of the longstanding “mind-body problem,” and related questions include: How can mind arise from matter? Is mind reducible to matter? Does matter determine mind?

These are important, non-trivial questions, and they’ve occupied philosophers for millennia – and now, neuroscientists. Increasingly, their research is suggesting that the account of dependent origination (particularly, related to the moment of “contact”) given by the Buddha long ago is profoundly insightful: based on preceding conditions, mind and matter co-arise, co-causing each other, distinct but intertwined domains, empty of independent self-nature, joined fundamentally as a whole.

Let’s take this step-by-step. First, our thoughts, desires, feelings, personality, sense of “I,” etc., are patterns of information that are represented in the matter and energy of our nervous system. (Since E=mc2 , we’ll us the word “matter” alone from now on.)

In a similar way, patterns of information – say, a letter to a friend and a picture of the two of you together – are represented by the matter of your computer’s hard drive. Just so, information is carried by wires during a phone call, much as the Ode to Joy playing softly on a stereo was represented by modulations in a radio signal. And so on.

Second, matter can act on information, as anyone knows whose hard drive has crashed . . . or who has an aging parent with a fading memory.

Third, information can be conveyed by any suitable material medium. For example, the Ode to Joy can be represented by a written score, a radio frequency, electrical charges in an iPod . . . or by neuronal activity in your brain as you hum it from memory. In fact, the specific neural structures and processes involved in remembering the tune today will be different from those activated when you recall it tomorrow. It’s the melody that counts, not the medium which conveys it. This means that while information requires representation by matter (apart from any possible transcendental considerations), information can be causally independent – in a sense, free – of the domain of matter.

Fourth, information can act on matter – and act on information itself – through the patterning of matter that represents it. Using the example of the Ode to Joy, the matter of the CD which represents it modulates radio waves, which shape the flow of electrons going to your stereo speakers, which pattern sound waves in air, which activate circuits in your brain, the patterning of which is then – finally! – translated back into the lovely information of Beethoven’s masterpiece.

In sum, immaterial information cascades through the mind by the vehicle of linked, co-arising materiality. Even without reference to a transcendental principle, mind – consciousness – exists, it can’t be reduced to matter alone, and it shapes matter through the action of the material substrate which represents it.

Information and matter in the human nervous system are interdependent and reciprocally causal (which creates opportunities to use the mind to change the brain to benefit the mind). Much as light is both waves and photons, our existence is both informational and material. The teachings on emptiness apply here as well: distinctions between mind and brain are relatively true and often useful, but in an absolute sense, mind and brain form one unified system, each aspect of which is empty of inherent self-nature (as is any mind/brain system itself, in its interdependence with the world and other people).

While the details are complex and could take centuries to unravel completely, at its essence, we believe the mind-body problem is actually no problem at all.



Dr. Ramani Durvasula is a licensed clinical psychologist, author, and expert on the impact of toxic narcissism. She is a Professor of Psychology at California State University, Los Angeles, and also a Visiting Professor at the University of Johannesburg.

The focus of Dr. Ramani’s clinical, academic, and consultative work is the etiology and impact of narcissism and high-conflict, entitled, antagonistic personality styles on human relationships, mental health, and societal expectations. She has spoken on these issues to clinicians, educators, and researchers around the world.

She is the author of Should I Stay or Should I Go: Surviving a Relationship With a Narcissist, and Don't You Know Who I Am? How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility. Her work has been featured at SxSW, TEDx, and on a wide range of media platforms including Red Table Talk, the Today Show, Oxygen, Investigation Discovery, and Bravo, and she is a featured expert on the digital media mental health platform MedCircle. Dr. Durvasula’s research on personality disorders has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and she is a Consulting Editor of the scientific journal Behavioral Medicine.

Dr. Stephen Porges is a Distinguished University Scientist at Indiana University, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina, and Professor Emeritus at both the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Maryland. He is a former president of the Society for Psychophysiological Research and has been president of the Federation of Behavioral, Psychological, and Cognitive Sciences, which represents approximately twenty-thousand biobehavioral scientists. He’s led a number of other organizations and received a wide variety of professional awards.

In 1994 he proposed the Polyvagal Theory, a theory that links the evolution of the mammalian autonomic nervous system to social behavior and emphasizes the importance of physiological states in the expression of behavioral problems and psychiatric disorders. The theory is leading to innovative treatments based on insights into the mechanisms mediating symptoms observed in several behavioral, psychiatric, and physical disorders, and has had a major impact on the field of psychology.

Dr. Porges has published more than 300 peer-reviewed papers across a wide array of disciplines. He’s also the author of several books including The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-regulation.

Dr. Bruce Perry is the Principal of the Neurosequential Network, Senior Fellow of The ChildTrauma Academy, and a Professor (Adjunct) in the Departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago and the School of Allied Health at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. From 1993 to 2001 he was the Thomas S. Trammell Research Professor of Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine and chief of psychiatry at Texas Children's Hospital.

He’s one of the world’s leading experts on the impact of trauma in childhood, and his work on the impact of abuse, neglect, and trauma on the developing brain has impacted clinical practice, programs, and policy across the world. His work has been instrumental in describing how traumatic events in childhood change the biology of the brain.

Dr. Perry's most recent book, What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing, co-authored with Oprah Winfrey, was released earlier this year. Dr. Perry is also the author, with Maia Szalavitz, of The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog, a bestselling book based on his work with maltreated children, and Born For Love: Why Empathy is Essential and Endangered. Additionally, he’s authored more than 300 journal articles and book chapters and has been the recipient of a variety of professional awards.

Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith is a child clinical psychologist who specializes in trauma and issues of race. She earned her undergraduate degree from Harvard and then received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. She performed postdoctoral work at the University of California San Francisco/San Francisco General Hospital. She has combined her love of teaching and advocacy by serving as a professor and by directing mental health programs for children experiencing trauma, homelessness, or foster care.

Dr. Briscoe-Smith is also a senior fellow of Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center and is both a professor and the Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the Wright Institute. She provides consultation and training to nonprofits and schools on how to support trauma-informed practices and cultural accountability.

Sharon Salzberg is a world-renowned teacher and New York Times bestselling author. She is widely considered one of the most influential individuals in bringing mindfulness practices to the West, and co-founded the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts alongside Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein. Sharon has been a student of Dipa Ma, Anagarika Munindra, and Sayadaw U Pandita alongside other masters.

Sharon has authored 10 books, and is the host of the fantastic Metta Hour podcast. She was a contributing editor of Oprah’s O Magazine, had her work featured in Time and on NPR, and contributed to panels alongside the Dalai Lama.

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