INTRODUCTION
RENÉ DESCARTES by career being a Mathematician carried his interest of entering into the philosophy realm. At a very young stage, he decided that nature is to be explained with certainty as Mathematics. Mathematics in itself is very numerical, where the nature cannot be expressed numerically but is bound in a neat and clear cut way. Thus, his philosophy about everything in nature is very mechanical and machine-like.
According to Descartes, Mind and Body are the 2 different kinds of substances that prevail not dependent on one another, but are connected to the absolute substance i.e. God. He believed that substances are the foundation for everything in this world. Substances are present naturally and act like a base.
This extreme
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The possibility of life after death could be the claim for Descartes’ inclination in arguing for substance dualism. If mind and body exists as 2 entities, then souls can survive even after death. Physical substances are the subject matter in physics. As thoughts and sensations cannot be expressed mathematically, they don’t assume to become a problem for Descartes as physical substances. For this, Descartes introduces another type of substance called the mental substance, entirely different from the physical substance. The following is the way how Descartes came to his theory of Dualism -
1. Things that can be doubted
He suggests that the physical substance (body) and mental substance (mind) are different in nature from each other. He believes that what we see could possibly be deceiving us and that this world might just be a dream.
According to Meditations (2008), it seems to him that there exists a computer monitor in front; but there is no plausible way to distinguish between being awake and dreaming. He said that an evil demon is the one behind this whole drama. Here, the important point for him is that it seems possible that an evil behind this is controlling his life and not that he isn’t able to reflect. The whole point behind the first meditations is to prove that there is only mind i.e. mental substance that exists and that material body
René Descartes signifies a unique change compared to ancient and medieval traditions in many ways. The ancient and medieval traditions consist of ideals of which people impose meaning on things. These classical traditions also consist of how a person identity starts from outside of the body and the works its way inwards towards a complete person. Those traditions had a perception that humans began to analyzes themselves outside of themselves first before they analyze themselves internally. Descartes challenged the ancient and medieval traditions by having a different perception of how he came to know things. Descartes, instead of imposing meaning on things, he would derive meaning from things. He also challenged the classical traditions because
One of Descartes’ most popular theory? is the distinction between mind and body. This is known as substance dualism. Substance dualism is a human being consists of two kinds of things that interact. Using this theory of substance dualism, we can explain why some people can experience excruciating pains and urges like the phantom limb syndrome.
This same line of reasoning is used to describe the body and mind’s essences and necessary properties. A thinking thing can exist with it’s sole essence being thought and other modifications(modes) of thought such as affirming and denying, willing and unwilling. According to Descartes the mind is conscious and non-extended, whereas the body is extended but not conscious. Descartes uses these essences as evidence that the mind and body are two completely different things that essentially have nothing in
According to René Descartes, substance dualism is a dual particular kind of matter that has two kinds of properties. In this case, the two kinds of properties are mental properties and physical properties of human beings. The mental properties are the thoughts of an individual and the physical properties are the extension in space. Descartes explains that a person is not identical to a body; a person can exist without a body because it is not a body. Henceforth, Descartes claims that substance dualism is true. From this point of view, Descartes makes his claim that substance dualism is true in order to make clear what the new science really is about, to explain the new physics of the contemporary period, and to figure out the vitality of the
In conjunction with this theory, any matter is known through the mind. This reasoning was used as a basis toward the dualism of the mind and body. The mind is a thinking entity. It has the ability to imagine, dream, and ultimately encompass the aspects that are not fundamentally matter. The body exists outside the mind. It is the connection to the external world based on the scientific properties of mass, size, shape, and motion. Descartes argues that the mind is distinct from the body. The mind thinks and does not have scientific properties. One’s body is a non-thinking thing. This distinction leads Descartes to conclude that the mind is not the same as the body. There is no characteristic that is categorized as both mind and body; the body can be changed, the mind cannot. In continuation, the mind can exist without the body and the body can exist without the mind since each thing is distinct. Descartes later explains how the brain is not the same as the mind. The brain is the connection between the mind and body in a human being. Descartes argues that matter cannot be the same as anything mental. The mind is affected by the brain, providing one with insight into the external world. Also, the mind can influence the brain, hence one’s body being controlled by the mind. However, it is possible for the brain to cease functionally and the mind to still operate. Essentially, one can conclude that the
Many ancient philosophers, including Plato, explored metaphysics in relation to reality before Descartes’s in-depth questioning of the subject. However, Descartes’s views on mind/body dualism differ greatly from Plato’s. As Marleen Rozemond (author of Descartes's Dualism) points out, Plato believes that the body is simply a vessel for the soul to use, while Descartes provides proof that the body and soul are interconnected (172). One does not simply use the other; though they are separate, the mind affects the body and the body affects the mind. Cartesian dualism tells us that "although the whole mind seems to be united to the whole body, I recognize that if a foot or arm or any other part of the body is cut off, nothing has thereby been taken away from the mind" (414). However, Descartes also states that "nature also teaches me by . . . [sensations] that I am not merely present in my body as a sailor is present in a ship, but that I am very closely joined and, as it were, intermingled with it, so that I and the body form a unit" (412). Descartes shows through his dualism that though the mind and body are separate entities, they are connected and reliant on one another. This is one key idea that separates Descartes from great thinkers like Plato. Add another Rozemond quote.
existed in life, the physical and the nonphysical. He broke his theory of Dualism into two
According to Descartes, the essence of material substance is simply extension, the property of filling up space. (Med. V) So solid geometry, which describes the possibility of dividing an otherwise uniform space into distinct parts, is a complete guide to the essence of body. It follows that there can be in reality only one extended substance, comprising all matter in a single spatial whole. From this, Descartes concluded that individual bodies are merely modes of the one extended being, that there can be no space void of extension, and that all motion must proceed by circular vortex. Thus, again, the true nature of bodies is understood by pure thought, without any information from the senses.
Descartes is talking about something called interactionist substance dualism. He is stating that the mind and body causally interact with one another. This can be summed up to say that as easily as the mind can cause changes in the body, the body can also cause changes in the mind. Therefore the mind and body must be intimately united. An example of this is having the intuition to raise your hand.
The science’s success story that physical world is causally closed raises another argument against Descartes’ substance dualism. Physical causally closed can be interpreted as my arm reaching for apple is because I am hungry, I am hungry because used up all my energy, and used my energy to do things. So basically it is saying that every physical causes physical actions. This is contradict with Descartes’ belief because he explicit the physical matters and he thought that the mind, which was outside of physical world affects our brain to affect our behavior.
Outline and assess Descartes' arguments for the conclusion that mind and body are distinct substances.
One of the ways in which Descartes attempts to prove that the mind is distinct from the body is through his claim that the mind occupies no physical space and is an entity with which people think, while the body is a physical entity and cannot serve as a mechanism for thought. [1]
Descartes argues that the mind and body can be thought of as separate substances. Descartes writes “I have a body that is very closely joined to me, nevertheless, because … I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, insofar as I am merely a thinking thing and not an extended thing and because … I have a distinct idea of a body, insofar as it is merely an extended thing and not a thinking thing, it is certain that I am really distinct from my body and can exist without it” ( Descartes 50). With this quote, Descartes is saying that the mind and body are separate because he has two distinct ideas of the body and the mind and the body is not a thinking thing as he is but an extended substance. Another point to Descartes argument is that the mind and body are different due to one being indivisible and the other being divisible. Descartes writes “a body, by its very nature, is always divisible. On the other hand, the mind is utterly indivisible” (53). Here is saying that there are ...
Descartes is a very well-known philosopher and has influenced much of modern philosophy. He is also commonly held as the father of the mind-body problem, thus any paper covering the major answers of the problem would not be complete without covering his argument. It is in Descartes’ most famous work, Meditations, that he gives his view for dualism. Descartes holds that mind and body are com...
two distinct kinds of entities, bodies and minds (1). All objects that exist or can exist belong to one of these categories. The two forms are said to be mutually exclusive and commonly defined by fundamentally different characteristics, yet both are required to accurately define the world around us. According to Descartes, the body is a tangible physical substance (the unthinking thing), whereas the mind is an intangible non-physical substance (the thinking thing) and comes metaphysically before the body (3). The mind and body casually interact with one another while maintaining their distinctiveness: the eyes perceive objects and then focus the image to the pineal gland, where it transmits the information to the non-physical mind; the mind then may transmit a signal to the body, telling it what to do. The mind and body are independent from one another, yet they work in harmony; the mind receives signals from the body and the body responds to signals from the mind.