ABSTRACT
The mind–body problem has been in existence for thousands of years going back to the ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle. The problem is rather simple to state but has been extremely difficult to resolve. One of the first attempts to deal with this problem was called Vitalism, a movement that arose as a strictly materialistic view of reality began to gain credence. John R. Searle's method to deal with the mind–body problem is to put the history of the problem behind him as well as traditional ways of thinking about the problem. He first concentrates on the matter of consciousness and then deals with the problem of intentionality. Mind and body seem to be integrated with each other, and consciousness could be seen as an emergent aspect or emergent property of an otherwise naturalistic system that cannot be reduced to brain functions.
