<P> A related problem is how someone's propositional attitudes (e.g. beliefs and desires) cause that individual's neurons to fire and muscles to contract . These comprise some of the puzzles that have confronted epistemologists and philosophers of mind from at least the time of René Descartes . </P> <P> Dualism is a set of views about the relationship between mind and matter (or body). It begins with the claim that mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physical . One of the earliest known formulations of mind--body dualism was expressed in the eastern Sankhya and Yoga schools of Hindu philosophy (c. 650 BCE), which divided the world into purusha (mind / spirit) and prakriti (material substance). Specifically, the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali presents an analytical approach to the nature of the mind . </P> <P> In Western Philosophy, the earliest discussions of dualist ideas are in the writings of Plato who maintained that humans' "intelligence" (a faculty of the mind or soul) could not be identified with, or explained in terms of, their physical body . However, the best - known version of dualism is due to René Descartes (1641), and holds that the mind is a non-extended, non-physical substance, a "res cogitans". Descartes was the first to clearly identify the mind with consciousness and self - awareness, and to distinguish this from the brain, which was the seat of intelligence . He was therefore the first to formulate the mind--body problem in the form in which it still exists today . </P> <P> The most frequently used argument in favor of dualism appeals to the common - sense intuition that conscious experience is distinct from inanimate matter . If asked what the mind is, the average person would usually respond by identifying it with their self, their personality, their soul, or some other such entity . They would almost certainly deny that the mind simply is the brain, or vice versa, finding the idea that there is just one ontological entity at play to be too mechanistic, or simply unintelligible . Many modern philosophers of mind think that these intuitions are misleading and that we should use our critical faculties, along with empirical evidence from the sciences, to examine these assumptions to determine whether there is any real basis to them . </P>

Who spread the theory that one is a product of the mind and body