Descartes' Perspective on Mind-Body Dualism

For Descartes, this argument doesn’t imply that the creation of the mind and body as separate entities was created inexplicably by God. Instead, he infers that the essence of the mind and body exist as separate and distinct entities. It is natural that these substances are independent of one another. As a result, Descartes’ mind and body argument does not require the appeal to God’s omnipotence, providing that his separate notions are the truth and he clearly observes that the substance of the mind and body are essentially different (Voss, 1993, pp 17). From this, he can establish that the mind and body exist as separate entities, that is, if they exist at all.

Furthermore, Descartes uses the argument of indivisibility to emphasise the relationship between the mind and body as two distinct entities. Descartes claims that the mind and body are two separate, distinct entities since they do not have the same properties. He progresses this idea by arguing that unlike the mind, the body has several parts which can be split: “when I consider my mind, that is to say myself insofar as I am only a thinking thing, I can distinguish no parts” (Ariew & Watkins, 2000, pp 53). A person uses their entire mind to think, doubt, desire, choose, etc. These are simply different ways to think, they are not

separate parts of the mind. In comparison to this, the body is made up of several different parts which you can lose any part of, e.g. you can get your leg amputated and lose it. Therefore, the mind and body are two completely different kinds of entities, and because for Descartes they are existent, he argues that substance dualism is true. (Voss, 1993)
However, there are many critics to this concept. Philosopher John Locke (1991) suggests that even if substance dualism were true, a person’s unique, individual character consists of the continuation of psychological rather than mental substance. He believes that if all thoughts, wills, feelings, etc. was replaced by a different thing that thinks, my wills, feelings, etc. would go with ‘I’, instead of staying with the same thing that is thinking, although this time as an entirely altered collection of mental features. A similar critique is proposed by philosopher Peter Frederick Strawson who argues that by concluding that the mind are body are two separate, independent entities, Descartes is subject to the problem of individuating minds, where Strawson (1999) enquires: what can prevent multiple minds residing in a single body as a sequence or at once? They both argue that, in some way, the movement of thoughts is problematic.
Additionally, by claiming that the mind doesn’t have parts, the indivisibility argument is subject to other problems. It appears logical to suggest that our entire minds think, desire, choose, imagine, as a whole. Although, with cases of people suffering from mental health problems such as dissociative identity disorder, where the individual has a split or several personalities, it can be used to demonstrate that the mind can be separated (Flanagan, 1991, pp 57-70). Such circumstances appear to show that some parts of an individual’s mind cannot interact with other parts.
Many theories about consciousness proposed by psychologist Sigmund Freud convey parallel ideas: individuals may yearn for something consciously and desire the opposite of that particular thing unconsciously. Even though this doesn’t divide the mind into separate parts, it does make sense when talking about separate parts of the mind (Flanagan, 1991, pp 57-70). Yet, Descartes’ response to this could be that the division of the mind is an entirely different thing in comparison to the way the body is separated. Therefore, Descartes’ argument that the mind and body are two separate entities would still stand because they have different properties (Voss, 1993). On the other hand, to counter Descartes’ response, it could be argued that his argument makes the assumption that the mind exists (Skirry, 2006). And if the mind does exist, then their properties cannot be talked about.
Despite this, there are other general aspects of Descartes’ dualism which also appear to be problematic. At present, medical professionals understand that damaging any fragment of the brain could lead to impairment of hearing, vision, speech, etc. Descartes approves of this however, by stating that the brain has a role in undertaking the mental aspects. He believes that only the feature of ‘pure thought’ cannot be touched by the physical since it doesn’t involve any physical roles in the brain or elsewhere for that matter. This results in Descartes stating that regardless of the body being heavily asleep, or being a growing foetus, the soul continues to think. Although, if we are always thinking, the thoughts we think become entirely transparent for us, which means that we would know that we are thinking even when we’re asleep (Reith, 1986, pp 67).
“Thus, methinks, every drowsy Nod shakes their Doctrine, who teach that the soul is always thinking. Those, at least, who do at any time sleep without dreaming, can never be convinced, that their thoughts are sometimes for hours busy without their knowing of it…”(Locke, 1991, pp 65).
This means that for Descartes, we do not know what we were thinking whilst asleep since we have forgotten it. Nevertheless, this doesn’t explain the reason as to why we forget much more whilst sleeping than whilst being awake.
For me, Descartes’ most problematic issue with his dualism argument is that it does not offer a sufficient explanation of mental causation. In the correspondence between Princess Elizabeth (Lim, 2015, pp 5-7), it is suggested that the essences of the mind and body are different; the mind thinks and the body is extended. The mind is not extended, nor is it divided. Thus, how can something mental that doesn’t have any physical properties and isn’t in space, influence something that is physically in space being transported through the force of the physical? Descartes did confess that this was an issue that he didn’t resolved.
To conclude, Descartes’ account on the relationship between the mind and body has been examined in this essay through his accounts in his series, Meditations.

The analysis of Descartes’ arguments for the separation of the mind and body as two clear and distinct entities that comprise of his arguments from doubt, clear and distinct perception, indivisibility and the appeal to God’s omnipotence has also been explored. Ultimately, the account of Descartes on the relationship between the mind and the body encompasses the idea that the two entities don’t have causal, mechanical relations between one another, however, they are somewhat connected to one another as an interactive

compound.