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Descartes and dualism
Dualism and rene descartes
Rene descartes philosophy summary reflection
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Descartes’ Argument from Divisibility
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Reneì Descartes’ treatise on dualism, his Meditations on First Philosophy, is a seminal work in Western intellectual history, outlining his theory of the mind and its relation to the rest of the world. The main argument running through the Meditations leads from his universal methodic doubt through his famous cogito, to proofs of dualism, God, and the world. The Cartesian dualism is one of the most influential ideas to come out of the work; the style of the Meditations, however, is one of personal rumination, following what appears to be Descartes’ stream of consciousness , and it allows for mild tangential discussions. Hence alongside his more famous argument for dualism, which is based on doubt and then the properties of his mind as he discerns them, Descartes devoted a small space to outlining a very simple and straightforward supplementary argument for dualism, designed to be an independent verification of his ideas.
This separate argument in support of dualism hinges on the concept of divisibility. As Descartes himself put it,
we cannot understand a body to be anything but divisible, whereas we cannot understand the mind to be anything but indivisible. For we cannot conceive of half of a mind, as we can conceive of half of any body whatever, no matter how small. From this we are prompted to acknowledge that the natures of mind and body…are different from one another. (Meditations, p. 8-9)
We can state the argument schematically to make it easier to work with:
(1) If something is true of A that is not true of B then A and B are distinct.
(2) Any body, being an extended thing, is divisible, at least in theory.
(3) The mind, being immaterial and non-ext...
... middle of paper ...
...these considerations aside, Descartes’ argument from indivisibility is formally fallacious from the outset, however. The argument is intended as an independent proof of mind-body dualism and is only true if the mind is indeed indivisible. Yet, the premise that the mind is not divisible can only be valid if the mind is distinct from matter. The argument assumes what it is trying to prove, namely dualism, and so cannot be considered sound. The objection that premise (3) might not explicitly entail dualism, but only embodies an observation on Descartes’ part that he cannot conceive of a divided mind, is not really good enough to salvage the argument, because it raises the issue of the validity of mere conceivability as an arbiter of truth. The argument from indivisibility fails or at the very least withholds judgment pending a definite proof or disproof of premise (3).
To read Damasio's critique alongside Stephen Gaukroger's remarkably rich intellectual biography of Descartes, however, is to realize that Damasio could just as aptly have titled his book "Descartes' Vision." As Gaukroger points out, Descartes was reviled during his lifetime and for a century after his death not for his dualism but for his materialism. Only when the history of philosophy was rewritten in the nineteenth century as the story of epistemology did Descartes come to bear the double designation of being both the "father" of modern philosophy and the ranking nativist who visited upon us the catastrophic separation of mind from body and of reason from emotion. These labels are essentially caricatures that distort the actual complexity of what Descartes struggled to work out in his cognitive theory. Gaukroger reconstructs this struggle for us, sometimes on a month-by-month basis, showing how Descartes shuttled back and forth between an account of the body and the pursuit of the mind.
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Every since Plato introduced the idea of dualism thousands of years ago meta-physicians have been faced with the mind-body problem. Even so Plato idea of dualism did not become a major issue of debate in the philosophical world until the seventeenth century when French philosopher Rene Descartes publicized his ideas concerning the mental and physical world. During this paper, I will analyze the issue of individuation and identity in Descartes’ philosophical view of the mind-body dualism. I will first start by explaining the structure of Cartesian dualism. I will also analyze the challenges of individuation and identity as they interact with Descartes. With a bit of luck, subsequently breaking down Descartes’ reasoning and later on offering my response, I can present wit a high degree of confidence that the problems of individuation and identity offer a hindrance to the Cartesians’ principle of mind-body dualism. I give a critical analysis of these two problems, I will first explain the basis of Descartes’ philosophical views.
Two of the most fundamental parts within the Cartesian dualism argument are both the conceivability argument, and also the divisibility argument. Both arguments aim to show that the mind (thinking things) and body (extensions) are separate substances, both of which arguments can be found within Meditation VI. Within this essay, I shall introduce both arguments, and critically assess the credibility of both, discovering whether they can be seen as sound arguments, or flawed due to incorrect premises or logical fallacies.
René Descartes laid the foundations for Cartesian Dualism within his Meditations on First Philosophy. Descartes provides most of his dualist view within the second and sixth meditations. Dualism is the belief, or school, within philosophy of mind that the mind and body are separate. Cartesian Dualism, specifically, is essentially substance dualism, which argues that the mind and body are of separate substances, in Descartes’ case, the mind being spiritual and the body being physical. This viewpoint was a common one during Hobbe...
In this argument, Descartes is stating that the mind and body are not identical. And spatial divisibility is a property of matter/ body while it is not a property of the mind i.e. is not spatially divisible. By digging deeper into this
René Descartes was the 17th century, French philosopher responsible for many well-known philosophical arguments, such as Cartesian dualism. Briefly discussed previously, according to dualism, brains and the bodies are physical things; the mind, which is a nonphysical object, is distinct from both the brain and from all other body parts (Sober 204). Sober makes a point to note Descartes never denied that there are causal interactions between mental and physical aspects (such as medication healing ailments), and this recognition di...
In this paper I will describe the foundationalist structure of Descartes’ arguments in his work Meditations on First Philosophy. Foundationalism is the view that there are some beliefs are epistemologically basic and can be known without knowing anything else is true (Loeb, Lecture 1-14). For example, philosophers such as Descartes would acknowledge that geometric truths, such as 2 + 2 = 4, are so fundamental that they don’t need to be proven through argumentation. Thus, these truths can provide the basic foundation for further arguments. In my paper, I will show that two foundational claims of Descartes are first, the existence of the mind, and second, the existence of God. From these claims Descartes derives many others, including the argument for material objects and souls. As I lay out Descartes’ case, I will examine the philosophical soundness and validity of his foundationalist account, as well as its merits and potential weaknesses. In the end, I will conclude that Descartes’ foundationalism, while alluring in its simplicity, does not survive deeper investigation.