Descartes Ambiguity Of The Mind

René Descartes believed that the mind and body are separate; that the senses could not always be trusted, but that because we as humans are able to think about our existence, we possess some sort of entity separate than our fleshly body. I believe this separate entity to be a soul”an immaterial and

In this paper, I will discuss the “Divisibility argument” on Descartes mind- body dualism presented on Descartes meditations. I will claim that the mind and the body are in fact different as Descartes argument suggests, but I will more rather neglect and explain why his belief that the mind is indivisible is wrong. I also will discuss how Descartes argument on the body’s divisibility is reasonable, and the reasons why I believe this argument is true.

Descartian dualism is one of the most long lasting legacies of Rene Descartes’ philosophy. He argues that the mind and body operate as separate entities able to exist without one another. That is, the mind is a thinking, non-extended entity and the body is non-thinking and extended. His belief elicited a debate over the nature of the mind and body that has spanned centuries, a debate that is still vociferously argued today. In this essay, I will try and tackle Descartes claim and come to some conclusion as to whether Descartes is correct to say that the mind and body are distinct.

What is the mind-body problem? The mind-body problem asks the question, are the mind and body separate substances of elements of the same substance? In this paper I wish to propose, and try to provide support for Descartes notion of the immaterial mind, by critically discussing the view of substance dualism, pertaining to the relationship between the mind and body. The two arguments of which I will provide in this paper to support this view are divisibility and disembodied existence. There are two fundamentally different substances in this universe, physical and mental properties, this paper will explore both of these substances (8).

The purpose of the wax argument is designed to provide a clear and distinct knowledge of “I”, which is the mind, while corporeal things, “whose images are framed by thought, and which the senses themselves imagine are much more distinctly known than this mysterious ‘I’ which does not fall within the imagination” (66). Through the wax argument, Descartes’ demonstrates that corporeal things are perceived neither through our senses nor imagination, but through our intellect alone. In this argument, you will see that there is cause to doubt Descartes’ analysis of the wax and his method of philosophical reasoning.

Descartes’ argue that mind is better known than body by first claiming humans as fundamentally rational, meaning “a thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, is willing, is unwilling,” ( Descartes, 19) he therefore argues that humans have the ability to know their proper minds clearly and distinctly. He proposes the conception of the mind where the imagination and the senses are also inherent capabilities of the body (faculties), specifically powers of the mind.

Summary: The problem of the soul continues as Descartes suggested that the human is composed of two completely different substances; a physical body which Descartes compares with a machine, and a non-physical mind, related to the soul, that allows humans to think and feel even if it has no “measurable dimensions” (67). But Elizabeth put in doubt his ideologies when she realized that a non-physical thing doesn’t have the strength to push and move the body. This led to several questions unanswered and also let space for other materialist theories such as behaviorism, mind-brain identity, and functionalism, which also fail in offering an explicit solution.

In Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy, he introduces the divisibility argument for his idea of mind-body dualism. It argues that the mind is distinct from the body and that they are different "substances". The argument has two premises; the mind is indivisible and the body is divisible. In this essay, I will interpret Descartes' argument by discussing the key points of these premises and how they are supported. I will also be incorporating my own thoughts on the argument to determine whether the divisibility argument is enough to validate the idea of mind-body dualism.

In Meditation six: Concerning the Existence of Material Things, and the Real Distinction between Mind and Body, Rene Descartes wrote of his distinctions between the mind and the body, first by reviewing all things that he believed to be true, then assessing the causes and later calling them into doubt, and then finally by considering what he must now believe. By analyzing Descartes’ writing, this paper will explicate Descartes’ view on bodies and animals, and if animals have minds. Before explicating the answer to those questions, Descartes’ distinctions between the mind and the body should first be summarized and explained.

Some have suggested that René Descartes argues that sense perception relies on the mind rather than on the body. Descartes asserts that we can know our mind more readily than we can know our body. In support of this idea he gives the example of a piece of wax which is observed in its solid form and its liquid form. After pointing out the difficulties of relying on the senses of the physical body to understand the nature of the wax he makes this claim: [P]erception ... is neither a seeing, nor a touching, nor an imagining. ... [R]ather it is an inspection on the part of the mind alone (Section 31). 1 This quote is perhaps the most direct statement of the author's thesis on this subject.

The concept of mind and body interactions has been debated among many modern philosophers. Some believe that our minds and bodies are different things, thus existing separately, while others believe that they exist as a whole. In this paper, I will be introducing two rationalist philosophical views regarding this topic, one which is by Rene Descartes and the other by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Rationalists, in philosophical terms, are the ones who obtain their knowledge through reasoning rather than the human senses. Descartes and Leibniz both have similar perspectives, but Leibniz takes a slightly different approach to improve Descartes’ argument. This paper will first show Descartes’ original argument, an example that proves the argument to be invalid, and then lastly, a revised version of the argument with Leibniz’s help.

In order to build a different interpretation about the Cartesian dualism and the union of mind and body, I have established two categories. I call diachronic interpretations those that maintain that Descartes was first a dualist (i.e., in the Meditations), and later on developed his stance on the union of mind and body (i.e., in the Passions).

In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes strives first and foremost to provide an infallibly justified foundation for the empirical sciences, and second to prove the existence of God. I will focus on the first and second meditations in my attempt to show that, in his skepticism of the sources of knowledge, he fails to follow the rules he has set out in the Discourse on Method. First I claim that Descartes fails to draw the distinction between pure sensation and inference, which make up what he calls sensation, and then consider the consequences of this failure to follow his method. Second, I will show that in his treatment of thinking Descartes fails to distinguish between active and passive thinking.

Building off his established idea of the Cogito, Descartes continues to formulate an idea of how the world operates. He arrives upon one of the most widely held metaphysical opinions, especially among a majority of the world’s religions, which is mind-body dualism. Mind-body dualism states that there are two types of entities in the world; those which have extension and measurable qualities such as the body and existing separately is the non physical mind.

In Meditation Six entitled “Concerning the Existence of Material Things, and Real Distinction between the Mind and Body”, one important thing Descartes explores is the relationship between the mind and body. Descartes believes the mind and body are separated and they are two difference substances. He believes this to be clearly and distinctly true which is a Cartesian quality for true knowledge. I, on the other hand, disagree that the mind and body are separate and that the mind can exist without the body. First, I will present Descartes position on mind/body dualism and his proof for such ideas. Secondly, I will discuss why I think his argument is weak and offer my own ideas that dispute his reasoning while I keep in mind how he might