No cool story here...

          I had a lot of trouble coming up with a good example for this blog post. I have never blacked-out, never been hypnotized, and never personally known anyone with an eating disorder, etc. After searching my mind for a suitable example I finally found at least one original idea that seems relevant to this topic; it’s called the facial feedback hypothesis. This idea says that simply the way one moves one’s facial muscles can alter one’s mood. One study had some participants clench a pen in their teeth while reading comics, while another group read the comics with pens clamped between their lips. The participants who held the pen in their teeth reported a greater humor response to the comics than the other participants. The inference is that this heightened humor response was caused because this method of holding the pen closely mimicked the action of smiling whereas the other method did not. This sort of evidence leads me to believe that a mind-body split as described by Descartes is impossible. Furthermore, I believe it shows that reason is important, yet it must take a back seat to evidence. Reason is necessary to interpret what we gain through our senses, yet rely on our senses we must or reason has nothing to act upon. Living in the Western world we can never entirely escape Descartes, yet some of us follow his ideas more closely than others.