Do you need to have a body to have a mind?

Philosophers have long debated the relationship between mind and body. Some have said that our minds reside outside the body in some sort of immaterial 'soul'; others have suggested that the mind actually arises entirely from the workings of our physical body (especially the brain).

But perhaps there is another interesting question here. Even if we don't know how the mind really relates to the body, we can ask how people think the two are connected. This is where experimental philosophy comes in.

In recent work, philosophers Bryce Huebner, Justin Sytsma and Edouard Machery have asked whether people might think one needs to have a body to have a mind. They proceeded by giving people questions about a creature that does not have a human body but still seems to do some kinds of human-like things -- a robot. The people in their experiments said that a robot could think about math problems and know various facts about the world but that robots could never actually feel anything. But here is the surprising part. Huebner then asked people about a creature that has a CPU in its head but has an ordinary human body. When people were asked that question, they were significantly more likely to say that the creature could have feelings! In other words, it seems like people think the ability to have feelings depends in some way on having a body.

Jesse Prinz and I tried a similar experiment with another sort of creature that seems to perform actions without having a body -- a corporation. If you stop to think about it, corporations can pursue goals and take certain actions... but the corporation itself can never actually have a body. Sure enough, people were happy to say that Microsoft Corporation could 'intend to release a product' or that it could 'believe that Google was one of its main competitors.' But people definitely didn't think it was ok to say that Microsoft could 'get depressed' or 'feel upset.' The principle here seems to go something like: no body, no feelings.

Researchers are still trying to figure out what these findings mean, but it is definitely beginning to look like people's whole way of thinking about each other's feelings is connected in some way with the body. One recent study even showed that people believed that God (the ultimate disembodied being) is not capable of truly feeling emotions!