Q&A: What Caused What
Originally published:
This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.
What Caused What
Question
Hello to Rabbi Michael Abraham, may he live long and well. Some time ago, the Rabbi wrote to me that the brain does not create the mental processes; rather, the opposite—the mentality creates the processes in the brain. But this is hard for me, since different drugs can affect the mental state. So we see that the brain is in fact what creates the mental, no?
Answer
Sometimes it works this way, and sometimes the other way around. It is similar to the influence of the physical on the mental even apart from the brain (a painful wound), and the influence of the mental on the physical (depression and moods lead to illness). Interactionist dualism believes in both kinds of influence (as opposed to epiphenomenalism and emergentism).