The Mind-Body Problem

How does thought move matter? Descartes split the world in two and Elisabeth of Bohemia asked the question that put it back together.

Descartes drew a clean line between mind and body. The mind is thinking substance — unextended, invisible, free. The body is extended matter, following mechanical laws. Everything in the universe falls on one side or the other. The problem is that they obviously interact. Pain in the body produces a thought. A decision in the mind moves a hand. How does immaterial thought reach across into physical matter and make anything happen? Elisabeth of Bohemia, in her correspondence with Descartes, pressed this question with precision he could not fully answer. His attempts to locate the junction in the pineal gland did not satisfy her or anyone else. Spinoza dissolved the problem differently by denying the cut: mind and body are two aspects of one substance, not two different things. The puzzle Elisabeth identified remains alive in contemporary philosophy of mind, neuroscience, and debates about consciousness.