Introduction
All humans, presumably, are self-aware, conscious beings. This state of being has been the topic of thought for many philosophers and scientists for as long as we have realized that is a unique feature. One of the first to tackle the issue of mind and body was Plato, who founded the original hypothesis of dualism. Later his contemporaries expanded on the subject and altered it to form several variations including rationalism. All these theories try to combine the mind, body, physical and mental events into some sort of order that we can make sense of and to form a relationship in between the physical world and the unseen world
Dualism
Descartes
Plato postulated that the mind was not dependent on the physical body of a person. Meaning that the mind (or soul) should be regarded as separate from the physical part of a person’s being. This proposal is the ground work from which Descartes would expand his theory of the mind. Descartes established that the mind and body were two distinct things. He stated that the mind is a thinking and non-extended thing and the body a non-thinking and extended entity. Furthering on this idea, he suggests that because the mind is not a tangible object and does not exist in three space the mind must be a quality of the body, just as all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares. This connection is a contradiction because a square can only be a square if it is changed into a rectangle; the quality of the shape being a square is also gone. In contrast, a stone by itself can exist independently of all others without exact dimensions. For Descartes this meant that “God, if he chose, could create a world constituted by this stone all by itself, showing further that it is a subst...
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...time, speed, and variations that could occur then you catch the ball. This all happens without you realizing it hundreds of thousands of times a day for thousands of different tasks. I believe that mind and brain are different facets of the same thing. In essence that all phenomena that could be described as the mind have roots in physical processes. This would include consciousness and leave the possibility for life forms other than humans to possess the same trait. Whereas dualism, the way it is presented, leaves this possibility unacceptable because according the theories logic animals have no soul or mind but humans do, humans are also animals, we must be special therefore nothing else is. This would mean a loophole has been created for humans, presumably by God, to make humans above all other life. I, as a scientist, find that to be a hard concept to tackle.
Bertrand Russell expressed his belief on knowing other minds, in an article based primarily around the notion of ‘analogy’, meaning similar to or likeness of. His belief is that, "We are convinced that other people have thoughts and feelings that are qualitatively fairly similar to our own. We are not content to think that we know only the space-time structure of our friends’ minds, or their capacity for initiating causal chains that end in sensations of our own" (Russell 89). Russell speaks of the inner awareness, such as being able to observe the occurrences of such things as remembering, feeling pleasure and feeling pain from within our own minds’. This would then allow us to presume that other beings that have these abilities would then be that of having minds.
rity and distinction, but we can conclude what Descartes means. He is saying that we can be sure that these primary qualities exist in bodies in the same way that they do in our ideas of bodies. This cannot be claimed for qualities such as heat, color, taste and smell, of which our ideas are so confused and vague that we must always reserve judgment. This can be seen in the wax example. Do you think that Descartes qualifies to your satisfaction that the mind and body are separate from each other?
The Mind-Body problem forms the basis of the philosophy of the mind argument. Descartes, the rationalist philosopher and scientist, was the first to propose a coherent, in depth theory, known as Cartesian dualism which supposes that “the mental and the physical – or mind and body or mind and brain... are radically different kinds of thing” or in other words, humans have a “non-physical soul existing independently from our bodies”. Descartes believed that the soul (or spirit) contains all our mental states. In this way he used the words ‘soul’ and ‘mind’ as synonyms. This might latter cause confusion with the idea of materialism so in order to avoid contradiction, the soul will be defined as “the non-physical aspect of a person” while the mind will be defined as “a collection of your mental states”. Whereas the brain, will be defined “as the organ that controls mental states and the nervous system” in accordance with the definition of the body (that material...
Outline and assess Descartes' arguments for the conclusion that mind and body are distinct substances.
Descartes makes a careful examination of what is involved in the recognition of a specific physical object, like a piece of wax. By first describing the wax in a manner such that “everything is present in the wax that appears needed to enable a body to be known as distinctly as possible” (67), he shows how easily our senses help to conceive our perception of the body. But even if such attributes are modified or removed, we still recognize the changed form, as the same piece of wax. This validates Descartes’ claim that “wax itself never really is the sweetness of the honey, nor the fragrance of the flowers, nor the whiteness, nor the shape, nor the sound” (67), and the only certain knowledge we gain of the wax is that “it is something extended, flexible, and mutable” (67). This conclusion forces us to realize that it is difficult to understand the true nature of the wax, and its identity is indistinguishable from other things that have the same qualities as the wax. After confirming the nature of a human mind is “a thinking thing” (65), Descartes continues that the nature of human mind is better known than the nature of the body.
Descartes’ argue that mind is better known than body by first claiming humans as fundamentally rational, meaning “a thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, is willing, is unwilling,” ( Descartes, 19) he therefore argues that humans have the ability to know their proper minds clearly and distinctly. He proposes the conception of the mind where the imagination and the senses are also inherent capabilities of the body (faculties), specifically powers of the mind.
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...
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]
For Descartes, these are mind and body, and for Plato they are body and soul. Aristotle, in contrast, believes in a singular being where both body and soul are connected. For myself, a Christian who believes in the existence of a life after death, Aristotle 's theory creates an obvious negation. While I could agree with the levels of the soul argument, I cannot agree with the body and soul being one and the same for the simple reason that I do not believe that when the body dies, everything dies. I believe something is left over. What that something is, where it goes and what its purpose is, I may not know for certain, but to believe otherwise would not create a better life for me. Believing the soul lives on beyond the body creates an inner desire to seek morality and goodness, and it is in that endeavor that one creates a “better” life. Similarly, it is intuition that leads me to reject Descartes ' argument because my best judgment would tell me not to believe that everything I know, all that I sense, is a figment of my mind. I cannot know if such a thing is true or false, but far too many questions are raised by such an explanation. For myself, neither Aristotle nor Descartes provide an adequate understanding into the nature of the
For many years there has always been an assortment of ancient problems in the wide world of philosophy that has always left people scratching their heads, and that is the mind-body problem. This mind-body problem is a complication that is between our minds and our bodies. This means how our brain thinks and develops thoughts in our mind that include how we act, what we are thinking, our sufferings, feelings and even what our own opinions on an arrangement of topics are, and how they are akin to our natural bodies and universe. And of course, with just about any other dispute or disagreement, there are so many different ways that people reach conclusions and achieve an understanding about the mind-body problem. The mind body
In Meditation Six entitled “Concerning the Existence of Material Things, and Real Distinction between the Mind and Body”, one important thing Descartes explores is the relationship between the mind and body. Descartes believes the mind and body are separated and they are two difference substances. He believes this to be clearly and distinctly true which is a Cartesian quality for true knowledge. I, on the other hand, disagree that the mind and body are separate and that the mind can exist without the body. First, I will present Descartes position on mind/body dualism and his proof for such ideas. Secondly, I will discuss why I think his argument is weak and offer my own ideas that dispute his reasoning while I keep in mind how he might dispute my argument.
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...
Although Plato does not feel exactly the same way as Descartes, Plato does believe the human being exists distinctly from the physical body ...
He believed that the mind was completely separate from the body. He supported the idea that it was completely possible to for each of these things to exist without the other (Skirry, 2015). This is called substance dualism. Where the physical things do not hold any thought and spread into space. Whereas the mental things, are things with all thought and no involvement into that of the physical world. Descartes main argument for dualism is one of indivisibility. He believes that the mind is strictly indivisible whereas the body is divisible. An example of this argument and how it relates to dualism is that if “a foot or an arm or any other bodily part amputated, I know that nothing would be taken away from the mind.” (Calef, 2015). In Descartes eyes, a man is only something that thinks, or in other words, man is mind. To me this describes the body as something where the mind is located within. He does state that humans are far different than any other substances out there (such as objects) in the way that the mind and the body are used in conjunction with each other. In this I believe means that the brain, being a physical part of the body, is not what makes a man. A brain is what works in conjunction with the man (the mind) to enable life in the physical