Difference Between Dualism And Rene Descartes

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Introduction

Belief whether or not the mind and the body are distinct substances have split the philosopher community in two: the dualists and the monists. In this essay, I will discuss how the mind and body are not distinct based on Rene Descartes’ arguments in The Meditations Of First Philosophy. First, I am going to introduce a few of Descartes’ arguments and his position on the matter. Then, I will pick the most appealing argument and put it up against logical reasoning with other philosophers’ points of view. Finally, I am going to conclude how the 17th-century philosopher proposes a fallacious argument which tests his Cartesian dualism theory.
The Position
Rene Descartes believed in what is known as “substance dualism”. Substance dualism means accepting the view that all things come in material and immaterial forms. Rene comes up with three arguments for this throughout The Meditations Of First Philosophy. They are commonly referred to as: The Doubt Argument, The Conceivability Argument and The Divisibility Argument. …show more content…

This is also where he comes up with the famous quote “I am, I exist” (p. 25). Descartes’ famous quote does good to prove that he cannot doubt the existence of his mind, as doubting would be a form of thinking; the nature of the mind. On the other hand, he can absolutely doubt the existence of his body as there is no proof otherwise. Since Rene believes he can doubt the existence of the body, but not the existence of his mind, he is led to believe that the mind and the body are two distinct

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