GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

230
ETHICS
that ii to say, not to have them, lincc they are die effects
of occurrence! in my body. If, however, the body does
not interact with die mind, then it it difficult to explain
the apparent parallelism between the two, a parallelism
which is illustrated at alnfixt every moment of our waking
life* For example, when I feel hungry and see food, my
salivary glands secrete fluid, and when the food is put
before me my hands make the necessary movements to
convey it into a hole which opens in the bottom of my
face. It is difficult to account for this synchronisation
between mental desire and bodily movements, unless we
assume that the mind and body interact. But how, it may
be asked, can that which is material interact with, and
produce effects upon, that which is not? How, for example,
can a sledge-hammer break * wish, or a steam roller
flatten the inspiration which produced Beethoven's Fifth
Symphony? Or 'how, to take an instance which is relevant
to our present discussion, can the secretion of adrenalin
by a gland cause me to feel afraid, if my feeling
of fear is
an exclusively non-material event? Things, it may be said,
can only "get at" one another in virtue of their possession
of certain properties in common, but between a material
and an immaterial entity there are no properties in
common. Therefore they cannot interact with each other.
Yet, as we have seen, mind and body do palpably interact.
The mind then, it is argued, cannot be wholly other than
the body. It too must be material, or must be at least
an emanation from or a function of that which is material,
namely, of those occurrencies which take place in the body.
Now these, as we have seen, are caused events, each of
which is the effect of a preceding bodily event, the first
bodily event in this chain of earned bodily events being
the determined effect of an external stimulus to which the
body is exposed and to which it reacts. What are called
mental events are, the materialist argues, links in the same
chain of caused events, and are dependent upon the
movements in the nerves and the brain which cause them
to happen. Acts of will are mental events: therefore acti of