Descartes’ Argument from Divisibility

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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).

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