Depth 1 · 34 s

The stubbed toe

Name: The stubbed toe
Uploaded: 2026-11-03T08:45:57.474707Z
Duration: 34 s
Description: You can see and weigh a toe; you can't see or weigh a pain. Yet the knock made the pain. Is the mind something other than the body, or what the brain does? Each answer leaves a puzzle.

You can see and weigh a toe; you can't see or weigh a pain. Yet the knock made the pain. Is the mind something other than the body, or what the brain does? Each answer leaves a puzzle.

About this video

Lena walks into the kitchen in bare feet and stubs her toe on the table leg. "Ouch!" The toe is part of her body: you can see it, touch it and weigh it. The pain is a feeling: nobody else can see or touch it, and it weighs nothing. Yet the knock on her toe made the pain. How can a body make a feeling?

The part of you that thinks, feels, wants and remembers is called your mind. Your pain is in your mind, and so are your thoughts, memories, wishes and dreams. Everyone agrees minds and bodies are closely tied - a knock on the toe makes a pain, a wish to wave moves your hand. The question is what a mind is, and so how the tie works.

One answer: the mind is something other than the body. In 1641 the French philosopher René Descartes tried to doubt everything he could. He could doubt he had a body - he might be dreaming - but not that he was thinking, since doubting is a kind of thinking. So, he argued, he was first of all a thinking thing, and his mind was something other than his body. Some people connect this answer with the soul; this video doesn't take a side on that. The puzzle: if the mind is no part of the body, how can a stubbed toe make a pain in it, or a wish in it move a hand? Elisabeth of Bohemia asked Descartes exactly this in a letter in 1643, and he never gave her an answer that satisfied her.

The other answer: the mind is what the brain does, the way digesting is what a stomach does. There is much evidence of close ties - a knock on the head can change how someone thinks, tiredness slows thinking, some medicines change feelings. The puzzle: scientists can describe the brain cells busy when you taste chocolate, but the taste itself, what it is like, doesn't seem to be in that description anywhere. This video goes with the Mind and Body lesson of Metaphysics Level 1 on Knaph.

This video shows depth 1 of Mind and body.

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Transcript

0:00Lena stubs her toe on the table leg. Ouch!
0:05You can weigh a toe, not a pain. How does a body make a feeling?
0:11The part of you that thinks, feels, wants and remembers is your mind.
0:17Descartes said the mind is something other than the body. Then how do they touch?
0:23Or the mind is what the brain does. Then why does it feel like anything?
0:29What is a mind?