The evolution of mind/body representations among psychology students

In the context of experimental philosophy, many empirical studies have focused on the intuitive representations of the mind/body problem. In this paper, we study such a type of representations in a population of psychology students from BA level to MA. A crucial theoretical concept in the philosophy of the mind is at the center of this study: supervenience. Supervenience means that mental states depend on brain states. In such a way, supervenience is the minimal assumption of any form of physicalism. In this empirical work, we show that students’ acceptation of supervenience increases from the beginning to the end of their studies. But giving up dualism and adopting instead the surpervenience theory depends very much on the students’ choice of discipline within psychology itself. We then discuss the theoretical and practical implications of this research both from the point of view of pedagogy and the exercise of the profession of psychologist.