Stanley Cobb - Mind-body Problem

Mind-body Problem

Throughout his professional career, Cobb was troubled by the attempts of medical scientists to draw hard-and-fast distinctions between mental and physical symptoms, between psychic and somatic causes, between functional and organic diseases, and even between psychology and physiology. Cobb addressed the mind-body problem in Borderlands of Psychiatry (1943):

I solve the mind-body problem by stating that there is no such problem. There are, of course, plenty of problems concerning the "mind", and the "body", and all intermediate levels of integration of the nervous system. What I wish to emphasize is that there is no problem of "mind" versus "body", because biologically no such dichotomy can be made. The dichotomy is an artefact; there is no truth in it, and the discussion has no place in science in 1943... The difference between psychology and physiology is merely one of complexity. The simpler bodily processes are studied in physiological departments; the more complex ones that entail the highest levels of neural integration are studied in psychological departments. There is no biological significance to this division; it is simply an administrative affair, so that the university president will know what salary goes to which professor.