The differences of mind and soul have intrigued mankind since the dawn of time, Rene Descartes, Thomas Nagel, and Plato have addressed the differences between mind and matter. Does the soul remain despite the demise of its material extension? Is the soul immaterial? Are bodies, but a mere extension of forms in the physical world? Descartes, Nagel, and Plato agree that the immaterial soul and the physical body are distinct entities.
Descartes’s approach to understanding the difference between mind and matter initially began by him doubting all truths which he had grown up believing to be true. He believed that if anything he held to be true was ever deceiving, he would reject its reliability all together. This extreme doubt resulted in Descartes
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Despite having contrary qualities and fundamentally opposing natures, the mind and body are intertwined and interact with one another. Interactive dualism hold the idea that the mind is eternal and has the ability to exist apart from the body. Descartes holds the idea that if the physical realm in which the body material body exists ceased to exist, the mind would still be. However, if a circumstance arose which annihilated his ability to think, he would cease to exist. Interactive dualism explores the idea that the body is simply an extension of the forms of the individual in the physical world, that the demise of the material body does not render its fundamental nature to be obsolete. Interactive dualism can seem to diminish the importance of the material body, but it does not. Descartes states that the mind and body are united and interact so closely that it seems to create one whole. This unity is expressed by when the physical body experiences pain. If the mind simply related to the body in the manner a sailor relates to a ship, the mind would simply perceive pain through …show more content…
This very intricate nature of consciousness led reductionist to not adequately addressing the difference between mind and body. For Nagel, what makes consciousness or the mind so difficult to grasp is its subjectivity. In the article “ What is it like to be a bat?”, Nagel argues that although science allows us to understand certain attributes and of their behaviours, one simply understands what it would be like to be a bat from a human perspective. This understanding is thus flawed as it is subjective to individual’s preconceptions. Angel asserts that the subjective nature of the minds acts as a barrier to understanding what it is truly like to be anything, other than one’s self. This subjective theory does not simply apply to animals, Nagel gives the example of a blind individual, although constitutionally similar to an individual with sight, there is no way a blind person could perceive or understand what the experience of seeing colour entails. As one’s perception of colour is described in a subjective point of view. One cannot to any sufficient detail, objectively describe what it is like to experience anything, as all experiences as based on
This philosophical study will support the theory of interactive mind/body dualism in the writings of Renee Descartes. The distinction between the energy of the mind is typically separated from the function of the body, yet Descartes found that they interacted to form thoughts. Descartes’ theory of dualism also defines how the mind can generate thoughts through the bodily function of the brain. In this context, Descartes found that the pineal gland was an example of a bodily organ, which could transmute the pneuma (aka. the spirit) to generate a thought through the mind. This type of mind and body interaction successfully defines Descartes dualism in the development of the thought process. The pineal gland supports the contention that the brain must work in conjunction with the mind I the formation of human consciousness. In essence, Descartes’ interactive dualism defines the cooperative operations of the brain and the mind that work to form thoughts through the pineal gland and the pneuma.
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
Richard Taylor explained why the body and the mind are one, and why they are not two separate substances. In the article “The Mind as a Function of the Body”, Taylor divides his article in a number of sections and explains clearly why dualism, or the theory that the mind and the body are separate is not conceivable. In one of these sections it is explained in detail the origin of why some philosophers and people believe in dualist metaphysics. As stated by Taylor “when we form an idea of a body or a physical object, what is most likely to come to mind is not some person or animal but something much simpler, such as a stone or a marble”(133). The human has the tendency to believe a physical object as simple, and not containing anything complex. A problem with believing this is that unlike a stone or a marble a human (or an animal) has a brain and the body is composed of living cells (excluding dead skin cells, hair, and nails which are dead cells). The f...
Elizabeth writes a letter to Descartes asking him to explain to her the relationship “there is between the soul, which is immaterial, and the body, which is material” (Margaret A.: p16). She seeks this clarification particularly on the aspect of how the soul influences the body movements. This question comes following a claim that Descartes had made “regarding the body and the soul” (Gordon B. and Katherine J.: p17 -19). He intimated that the body and the soul exist as single entities and that each has autonomous function. This is found in the philosophy of the dualism.
The mind-body problem can be a difficult issue to discuss due to the many opinions and issues that linger. The main issue behind the mind-body problem is the question regarding if us humans are only made up of matter, or a combination of both matter and mind. If we consist of both, how can we justify the interaction between the two? A significant philosophical issue that has been depicted by many, there are many prominent stances on the mind-body problem. I believe property dualism is a strong philosophical position on the mind-body issue, which can be defended through the knowledge argument against physicalism, also refuted through the problems of interaction.
The 'mind-body' problem has troubled philosophers for centuries. This is because no human being has been able to sufficiently explain how the mind actually works and how this mind relates to the body - most importantly to the brain. If this were not true then there would not be such heated debates on the subject. No one objects to the notion that the Earth revolves around the sun because it is empirical fact. However, there is no current explanation on the mind that can be accepted as fact. In 'What is it like to be a bat?', Thomas Nagel does not attempt to solve this 'problem'. Instead, he attempts to reject the reductionist views with his argument on subjectivity. He examines the difficulties of the mind-body problem by investigating the conscious experience of an organism, which is usually ignored by the reductionists. Unfortunately, his arguments contain some flaws but they do shed some light as to why the physicalist view may never be able to solve the mind-body problem.
In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes states “I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, in as far as I am only a thinking and unextended thing, and as, on the other hand, I possess a distinct idea of body, in as far as it is only an extended and unthinking thing”. [1] The concept that the mind is an intangible, thinking entity while the body is a tangible entity not capable of thought is known as Cartesian Dualism. The purpose of this essay is to examine how Descartes tries to prove that the mind or soul is, in its essential nature, entirely distinct from the
... part of Descartes philosophy deals with his belief that the mind and body are separate. Although the origins of the philosophical separation of mind and body, called dualism, can be traced back as far as the Greek philosophers, and probably before them, Descartes was the first person to write a systematic account of it. Now, Descartes wanted to prove two more things. One, that he actually was an immaterial thing, and two, that there is in fact an external corporeal world
Therefore, in Meditation two in Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes proves to show the distinction between the mind and that of the body. Descartes knows without a doubt that he is a thinking thing who has certain powers such as affirming, denying, sensing, imagining etc. The example that he provided with the piece of wax showed how we could misjudge and come to error when perceiving a thing. Descartes is able to prove that he exists in the same way that he judged the existence of the wax and how he saw it. Most importantly, Descartes comes to the conclusion that the intellect of the mind is what helps distinct and perceive something, rather than other factors.
However, Descartes claims that the mind and body have been created separated without good reason. This point is not shown clearly, and further, although I can conceive of my own mind existing independently of my body, it does not necessarily exist as so. On page 56, when Descartes talks about how sailors are related to ships and why the mind body union is different, he is vague on the metaphorical analogy. To try to get his point across, dualism is used.
The mind versus the body has been a debate for many years, debate has always proven to be an extremely controversial discussion between various people and their beliefs. For many the idea of the mind being separated from the body is impossible to even think about and unreasonable, yet others may argue that mind can in fact be an entity apart from a physical body. Those who are monist believe that the world is simply made up of one substance, and minds must be contained in a tangible body in order to exist (“Monism”). Contrastingly, dualists emphasize the idea that the mind and the body are each compsed of different substances, allowing the pair to be separate. While these ideas have been unde scrutiny
The pursuit of knowledge has led many a philosopher to wonder what the purpose of life truly is, and how the material and immaterial are connected. The simple fact is, we can never know for certain. Arguments can be made, words can be thrown around, and rationale can be supported, but we as mere humans are not capable of arriving at the perfect understanding of life. Nonetheless, in the war against our own ignorance, we seek possible explanations to explain that which science and math cannot. Philosopher 's such as Plato and Aristotle have made notable contributions to our idea of the soul and its role in the grand scheme of life, while some, such as Descartes, have taken a more metaphysical view by pondering the impact one 's mind has on
...of the body, and no problem arises of how soul and body can be united into a substantial whole: ‘there is no need to investigate whether the soul and the body are one, any more than the wax and the shape, or in general the matter of each thing and that of which it is the matter; for while “one” and “being” are said in many ways, the primary [sense] is actuality’ (De anima 2.1, 12B6–9).Many twentieth-century philosophers have been looking for just such a via media between materialism and dualism, at least for the case of the human mind; and much scholarly attention has gone into asking whether Aristotle’s view can be aligned with one of the modern alternatives, or whether it offers something preferable to any of the modern alternatives, or whether it is so bound up with a falsified Aristotelian science that it must regretfully be dismissed as no longer a live option.
The discussion of ‘mind-body’ problem in the work of Rene Descartes involves a complex philosophical system that combines mathematics, psychology and the physical sciences, for example, the use of mathematics by Descartes help him to establish a separation between mind and body. Descartes(1641/1985) suggests that there are “corporeal things” and the ‘intellectual act” (p.55), he asserts that “[corporeal things] in general terms are comprised within the subject-matter of mathematics” (Descartes, 1641/1985, p. 55), those corporeal things according to Descartes have a physical substance and are extended; whereas, by contrast, he maintains that “the mind is not an extended thing” (Descartes, 1641/1985, p. 54), hence
But, “human persons have an ‘inner’ dimension that is just as important as the ‘outer’ embodiment” (Cortez, 71). The “inner” element cannot be wholly explained by the “outer” embodiment, but it does give rise to inimitable facets of the human life, such as human dignity and personal identity. The mind-body problem entails two theories, dualism and physicalism. Dualism contends that distinct mental and physical realms exist, and they both must be taken into account. Its counterpart (weak) physicalism views the human as being completely bodily and physical, encompassing no non-physical, or spiritual, substances.