Descartes Body Vs Mind Dichotomy

Philosophers try to answer, or simply ponder upon, many questions. One of them being what we fundamentally are; that is, are we a material body or an immortal soul. Are we a pile of bones and skin that walks, pumps blood, eats, etc. or are we mostly an amorphous, intangible soul? What is our main function, which one is better, or more fundamental? The way one would answer these questions depends on the philosophical practice they subscribe to and instill. Skeptical philosophers, like Sextus Empiricus, examine this question while believing true knowledge is impossible. Skeptics search for the truth anyway, just as Rene Descartes searches for truth in his Meditations. Through the works of Rene Descartes, illuminated by Empiricus and Simon Blackburn,

we can see the Skeptic process in practice as Descartes tries to figure out if the self consists more of the soul or the body, and can analyze how he fits in with other Skeptics on this issue.
In Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Sextus Empiricus breaks down what a Skeptic is and what their process is. His outlines are important for giving a background look into the Skeptic philosophy, from which we can examine the work of Rene Descartes and Simon Blackburn. Empiricus writes, “Sceptics go on searching […] we declare that we do not make any positive assertion […] we merely report accurately on each thing as our impressions of it are at the moment” (318) The goal of the Skeptic is the suspension of judgment and reach tranquility. Explaining further Sextus says:
The criterion of the Sceptic discipline is the appearance […] dependent on feeling and involuntary affection […] Therefore, no one, probably, will dispute that an object has this or that appearance; the question is whether it is in reality as it appears to be (320)

Using sensory perception the Skeptic examines their reality and decides what is true and what is false. They do not harp on the appearance of a thing, as all objects have appearances. Skeptics simply aim to understand the reality of that object. In one’s search, they find so many opposing opinions and views on the reality of an object and they realize they cannot truly decide which idea is true or false. Therefore, they suspend their judgment of the object. Once they realize that they cannot decide the truth of anything, they enter into the realm of tranquility (they are no longer searching).
This background on what the Skeptic philosophy is helps follow Descartes’ musings on the mind verses the body.

Rene Descartes uses the Skeptical method to re-examine everything he knows and form concrete beliefs in the process. In some of his meditations he touches on the body verses mind dichotomy. First, the “body” and “mind/soul” need to be differentiated. Rene Descartes and Simon Blackburn lace definitions of these two entities through their writings. In his second meditation Descartes briefly discusses the difference between the mind and body. Descartes notes that he pulled this thought from his old, misguided days, but it is still useful for defining these two terms, as it gets the essence of difference between them. He writes, “I had a face, hands, arms, and the whole structure of bodily parts that corpses have – I call it the body. The next belief was that I ate and drank, that I moved about, and that I engaged in sense perception and thinking; these things, I thought, were done by the soul” (4). Basically, the main activity of the body is movement and sustenance, while the mind is used for sensing and thinking. Blackburn calls him a substance dualist. He further explains this distinction in discussion Descartes dualism, “thoughts and experiences ate modifications in one kind of stuff; movement and position belongs to the other” (51). The body’s basic function is movement and the mind’s basic function is sensing – one is tangible, while the other is

ethereal.
Descartes arguably most famous idea is “cogito, ergo sum”, or “I think therefore I am,” which he focuses his second meditation on.

This idea begins the philosopher’s ongoing discussion on the body and the mind. The first thing he must do is prove he exists beyond a doubt. Descartes declares, “If I convinced myself of something then I certainly existed” (4). This idea rests on the ability of his mind, if he did not actually exist, he would not be have any sort of mental activity. From this early point in the text, Descartes foregrounds the superiority of the mind. As Blackburn puts it, “he is forced to recognize that his knowledge of his self is not based on knowledge of his embodied existence” (20). For Descartes, the ability the think defines the self (the mind/soul)– he cites thought as the one thing that cannot be separated from him. He believes if he stopped thinking he would stop existing. His ability to think sustains him, at this point in his meditations he is only a mind, his mental existence is the only thing he has

proved.
The existence of the mind was easy for Descartes to prove, but the truth of the body comes later in his meditations. His basis for the body existing is the basis of imagination. He theorizes, “my power of imagining depends on something other than myself; and I can easily understand that if there is such a thing as my body […] then it might be this very body that enables me to imagine corporeal things” (28). When imagining a body or anything else, one forms an image from things they associate with the word or object. Imitation, or the impression of worldly things, is the only thing that can form this image. This must mean that he has a body, as he could not simply imagine something out of nothing. (Lucretius’ principle “nothing comes from nothing” could be used here to explain Descartes point). Descartes also points out the senses and sensory impressions. The feelings of hunger, wind, or heat are not caused inside the mind because they come on without warning or thought in the mind. Wind is not made or controlled in one’s mind, but one feels it anyway. This must mean that there is an outside world one feels and a vehicle with which to feel it, or the body.
Now that both faculties exist, the body and the mind, Descartes debates which one is more important to the self. He starts this debate with the ability to imagine, but throughout gives more credit to the mind than the body. He even proclaims, “my mind is me” (30). He then dissects why the mind is superior to the body. For Descartes one could still be the individual they were without the ability to imagine, but not without the ability to understand because imagination depends on an outside influence or force. He says, “the mind understands, it somehow turns in on itself and inspects one of its own ideas; but when it imagines, it turns away from itself and looks at something in the body” (29). One imagines a ball of wax because they have seen it out in the world, while one understands the wax an infinitely change because it can analyze it in the mind. The analysis comes from an original place “inside” the mind, but what the wax looks like an imitation of something worldly. Our senses are fallible, though, and this means we can conjure incorrect imitations. Our senses are wrong sometimes; they can cause us to perceive a building as round, when it is really square, or make us think something is enormous from a distance when it is actually not that large. The incorrect inputs from our senses can affect our imaginations. What one imagines as their body could actually not be real because one’s senses may have given them wrong data. As Blackburn summarizes, “souls are certain, bodies are doubtful” (29). This happens constantly in our culture – people think they are fat or overweight when in actuality they are healthy, but their senses have deceived them. The body cannot be the foundation of the self because, through our sense, we can have doubtable perceptions of the world and something is only true if it cannot be disputed.
It seems Descartes chooses the mind over the body. While that it true to an extent, he does not completely discredit the body. He describes the relationship, “the whole mind seems to be united to the whole body” (33). For him, the two are different, yet connected in a way. Blackburn explains it well as a “ghost in a machine.” He says, “there is a close correlation between events of the one kind and those of the other: sticking a pin in someone makes physical changes, but it also causes a mental event in the feeling of pain” (52). While these two entities are distinct realms they do correspond to each other and cannot be fully separated. We only analyze the piece of wax because we imagine it melting, and we imagine it because we have seen it melt, etc. The linkage between the body and mind is not ignored here, but they are still too different to be one united thing.
There are issues with Descartes position on the mind or body question. A true Skeptic would follow the same process as Descartes, but would not come to a conclusion as he did. Throughout his lamentations, Descartes favors the abilities and superiority of the mind, instead of giving both the body and mind equal criticism and praise. Once he proved the mind existed, he never critiqued this claim – though it does seem impossible to disprove, but so does the body and he does that. His conclusion also leaves a lot of room for interpretation about the relationship between the body and the mind. How do we know all mind and body relationships are the same? How do we know a cut causes the same kind of pain in one person as another? Could some relationships be stronger than others? Or could we be zombies or mutants, mindless drones walking around looking and acting like humans? Blackburn raises all these possibilities from Descartes statement that the mind and body correspond, but are hugely, fundamentally different. A complicating factor to the idea is it is not as easy for one to imagine the co-dependent but separate relationship between the mind and the body. Most people think of their selves made up of these two entities, they cannot separate them. When someone is asked who he or she is, they picture what they would look like in a mirror, but recognize their mental activity. If one thing is easier to imagine does that make it true?
For a Skeptic, the answer to this cannot be known, as true knowledge is impossible. Are we a body, a soul, or a team of both depends on one’s impression at the moment, as states Sextus Empiricus. While one idea may be more appealing to some, another idea might be more appealing to another, and both may be have merit for that individual. This is why it is hard to choose an opinion, and why Skeptics do not. Descartes wanted to find true knowledge that could not be doubted. His statement on the mind’s superiority in the mind can be doubted though. This raises the question if infallible knowledge is possible? Can we really discredit someone for thinking they are more of a body than a mind or vice versa? We cannot because these things cannot be absolutely proven and because Skeptics work on the reality of a thing at the moment, and that opinion is someone’s reality. Though Descartes did not correctly use the Skeptical approach, he seems to still have found inner peace; he is happy with his mind, his body, and his god all proven true. His reality of the mind verses body dichotomy provides him with his own true reality, creating his own tranquil space in the validity of his self.