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I. Claudius

12 Things You Might Not Know About 'I, Claudius' | Mental Floss

In a Facebook group recently, a FB friend asked me why I believe there is a "mind-body problem" that requires resolution.

I responded with reference to the classic historical novel (and television mini-series) I,Claudius.

Instead of thinking of something new and clever to say in this blog today, I'll repeat what I said there. 

There is in general the appearance of something intangible in the world, to which one person has privileged access, and the question of how it relates to the tangibles of the world, to which anyone has access. 

I, Claudius is about a  man who appeared from his physicality, from all tangible and public evidence, to be a stuttering idiot. Yet "inside," in some intangible way, he was cunning and clear-eyed -- facts that allowed him to survive as others around him died and in time to become Emperor. (I don't think that really counts as a spoiler -- the charm of the series does not depend on how it will turn out.) 

Graves nicely dramatizes the mind/body duality. Discussing the question of how this duality came about historically, how there come to be beings in the world capable of presenting a false front to each other and hatching detailed plans in their interiority, that also turns out to challenge our ontology, our take on causality, and our ethics. It makes for a nest of problems, collectively called the mind-body problem.

My own bias is toward some sort of emergentism, with "mind" entailing new properties but no new substances (if "substance" even means anything). Yet I am also tempted by panpsychism, which tells us that mind didn't have to emerge in time because it was always in place, it is a permanent feature of matter. 

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