Reply to comment

The hip hop culture slang term original gangster refers to someone who laid the foundation of cultural practices previous generations, which is now being expanded on by new generations. The OG's sole contribution is something of the past.

To me, Descartes was part of the group of Original Philosophers who laid the foundation for the thought of trying to figure out being, who we are, the I and the me. But thats where it ends. We must recognize Descartes, Aristotle, and the rest for leading our minds in this direction and allowing us to be where we are today, we must recognize their importance in laying the ground for our thoughts to grow.

However we must also recognize that Descartes lived in the 17th century. Descartes did not live in a time of FMRI's, single-cell recordings, lesion studies, PET scans. These relatively recent advances in technologies have allowed us to discover circuitry in the brain responsible for behaviors like executive control, fear, depression, sexuality, hunger, sleep and with time probably much more emotions and behaviors will be added on to this list. It is well known that the brain can explain many behaviors. Something to think about is that if Descartes was alive right now amidst these technologies and discoveries would he still believe in his mind and body theory?

My own personal theory... 

 We all have time to spend and attention to give and how we spend our time and where we focus our attention determines our individuality. How we spend our time and focus our attention is determined by a person's beliefs and goals which is a product of the interactions of our inherent personality, physical characteristics with environment. We have inherent personalities determined by DNA combined with physical characteristics that influence how we interact with our environment, who we are friends with, the experiences we have, what is important to us and what we do in life.

I think  the brain is responsible for certain behaviors but if we all have the same brain wouldn't we all act exactly the same? One way to look at it is that we all do act the same, we are all capable of experiencing the same emotions, of having morals, of thinking the same things, we all feel pain when something hurts us, etc. But the degree to which we feel emotions, or when we feel these emotions is different. These differences largely influence and are correlated with what I referred to as our inherrent personalities in the last paragraph. Why do different people react differently to the same situations? Some might call this the mind but we must remember that it is known that personality can be temporarily modified with drugs (both legal and illegal), alcohol, through their effects on the brain.

I think we each have very similar brains, with different default settings, that allow us all to be capable of experiencing the same things but also makes it so that we each have different personalities which then influence our life. I think one procedure that could confirm this would be when technology allows us to do a brain transplant and if the personality of one person is seen in the person that his or her brain is in.

Simplified, I am a believer of brain= behavior but recognize Descartes for his importance in laying the foundations for thought in this field.