ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the nature of the mind-body problem, which is part of the reason why it is such a difficult problem in the first place. It explores some medieval and Renaissance approaches to the mind-body relation that have been linked to either dualism or the mind-body problem. The intellective soul, introduces the capacity for abstract thought and free will and functions as the subject of the authors's thoughts and the authors's intellectual desires. Still, Telesio's view certainly comes closer than any of the other frameworks to anticipating the dualism associated with the Early Modern mind-body problem. One needs only to conceive the material world in mechanistic terms to end up with Cartesian dualism and its familiar mind-body problem. Ficino's soul turned out to be embodied to some extent even when it loses its relation to the authors's earthly body, which resulted in a complex 'embodied' soul-body dualism.
