Descartes Substance Dualism

Descartes immediately defines the role of the mind and body; the mind is a non-extended thing that thinks, and the body is an extended thing that has no thinking capability – “But what then am I? A thing that thinks. What is that? A thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, refuses, and which also imagines and senses.”

Just because one can clearly and distinctly perceive the mind and body as distinct, does this mean that they actually are? Some argue against Descartes’ claim that the mind can exist without the body, saying that just because Descartes can think of his mind existing without his body, does not mean it really can. The main difficulty with Descartes argument relates to the overall idea of dualism, specifically about whether one thing, the mind, is the same thing as another, the body, or whether they are

Descartes, a philosopher, mathematician and scientist, was a fundamental player in the scientific revolution, which influenced his perspectives on the question of self. His principle tenant, the famously quoted, “Cogito, ergo sum – I think, therefore I am,” reflects his core belief of thinking and of self-awareness as key to personal identity. Descartes was strongly influenced by Plato and Augustine. Descartes philosophical underpinnings can be understood as an extension of Plato and Augustine’s dualistic view in which, “…body and soul remain irreconcibily divided, two radically different entities with diverging fates: the body to die, the soul to live eternally in a transcendent realm of Truth and Beauty” (Descartes 99). While Descartes acknowledges the body, he argued that it was secondary because it can be thought of independently. Descartes felt he was, “…able clearly and distinctly to conceive one thing apart from another, in order to be certain that the one is different from the other, seeing they may at least be able to exist separately …” (Descartes 106). Descartes argued that mind is completely different from body and it is possible for one to exist without the other.

In the section given, Descartes is trying to argue that there is a great difference between the mind and body. His conclusion states along the lines that he was correct, the mind and body are completely different. His reasons include that the body is a tangible thing that can be hacked to pieces, while the mind and thought cannot be divided in the same way.

Descartes says the mind is distinct from the body, or anything physical for that matter. He says, a thinking substance is nonphysical or spiritual in nature (mind), and an extended substance is physical, but not capable of consciousness or thought (body). However, this very claim is also his biggest problem as his mind – body interaction has many critics and to some, can seem invalid. This is mainly due to the challenge by those who ask how mind and body can interact if they are two different substances altogether. Over Descartes' period of teaching, he has conceived many arguments to support his view of

In Meditation VI, Descartes explains to us what bodies and minds are. He says that bodies are made with a substance that is bound to the laws of nature. In other words, anything that is comprised of matter is considered a “body”. Minds are made of some other immaterial substance that allow for thinking, understanding, deciding, perceiving, doubting, reasoning, etc., and are not bound to the laws of nature. He supports his belief with “[T]here is a great difference between mind and body [our bodies are made of physical matter], inasmuch as body is by nature always divisible [as is all matter], and the mind is entirely indivisible. [ … ] [T]his would be sufficient to teach me that the mind or soul of man is entirely different from the body. (Descartes

PHIL20033: Philosophy of Mind - First assignment A. Short answers: 1. Explain Descartes’ argument for substance dualism and why it seems plausible. Substance dualism is the argument that there are two distinct kinds of objects that exist, one being mental substances and the other being physical substances. In René Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy, this refers to the mind being the mental substance and the body as the physical substance.

The French philosopher, René Descartes based his search for knowledge on his belief that he was a thinking being. He used a cogito argument, “I think, therefore I am” to explain the idea of substance dualism. Substance dualism is the view that human beings are made up of two separate and distinct substances: mind and body. In his work, “Principles of Philosophy” Descartes supplies his well-known argument for substance dualism through two major premises. His first premise being, “If I can exist without a body, then I am not a body, ” and his second premise being, “I can exist without a body,” allows him to arrive at the valid conclusion that substance dualism is true and “I am not my body”.

In substance dualism, Descartes is trying to make a strong claim that our mind is separated from our body. Including the brain, the bones, and hands are all different from the mind. Descartes started off his argument by believing that he can doubt the existence of his body and everything around him, but not the presence of the mind. As he said on his famous quote "I think therefore I am", means that he is a thinking thing. In other words, he cannot doubt that he exist because he is a thinking thing. He can visualize that he has a mind without a body but he cant imagine himself with a mind. Therefore, he said that he is a thinking thing and he is just a pure intellect. Furthermore, Descartes is trying to explain that our mind is a thinking thing,

His reply points out that (1) cannot be proven. Those who affirm (1) do so mistakenly because they are thinking about physical causation and applying such a concept of causation to the mind and body which is another domain. To use an example, suppose someone watched a billiard ball hit another ball which causes it to roll away. He then concludes that causation only works when two objects come into physical contact with one another visibly. Hence he rejects concepts such as gravity and magnetism. Obviously this is a categorical mistake to expect them to work in the same way. Likewise, anyone who holds to (1) must show that mind-body causation cannot work without appealing to physical causation, since the mind is not physical in the first

Descartes, Meditation VI, 1641). Within substance dualism, there are several sub-schools of though, for example: Internactionists, who believe minds and bodies ‘casually’ interact with one and other, and parallelists, who generally attribute all interaction between the mind and body to God. (R. Descartes, Meditation VI, 1641) Property Dualists argue that ‘mental states are attributes of brain states.’ (R. Descartes, Meditation VI, 1641) This is particularly significant within the topic of consciousness, as it is considered by a property dualist to be an example of a ‘non physical property of a physical substance’. Descartes argues that we as humans experience mind and body in distinct ways and therefore we must distinguish the mind and body as distinct entities. This is highlighted in his sixth meditation where he

Thus: Cartesian theory is not wrong in its details, but it is corrupted in its principle, for being derived through a series of categorical mistakes. And apart from the interaction question, there’s yet another problem from an empirical point of view. As far as we know through neuroscience, when the brain is affected in some way, consciousness and other mental states are also affected, e.g. the use of

The mind and body for Descartes are two forms of substances that he distinguishes as being separate from one another in operations. This belief by Descartes come from his meditations where he excludes everything he has known including his physical body. Keeping in mind that everything is an illusion, Descartes tells himself if he is being deceived then to be deceived he must exist. Furthermore, Descartes concludes that since he is somehow able to think, he must exist,

Descartes teachings remain as a standard of modern Western philosophy. In one of Descartes’ meditations he proposed one ideology called Cartesian Dualism. Cartesian Dualism is the theory that there exist two distinct entities, which are the mind and body. Descartes claims that the body and mind can operate without one another. The physical state (body) consist of as matter and is extended in space; and the mind, which is not extended in space is a thinking substance. To first understand Descartes’ viewpoints we must consider his theory of doubting the foundation of knowledge. He doubted everything such as his body, however he could not doubt his mind. To think is to exist, thus he created the phrase “I think therefore I am”. The existence of the body can be doubted, however the mind can not be. Therefore, these two must have different properties, thus they are two separate entities. The idea of an afterlife or an immoral soul can be an example of Cartesian Dualism. For instance, if you were to die and your body will cease to exist however the mind will still be able to think. The mind and the body are harnessed together, but after separation (death), the mind will continue to exist and

It is at first worth noting that Descartes was not the first to address the issue of dualism. Indeed, dualist philosophy goes back at least as far as Plato, who argued that there was a distinction between the ephemeral, corporeal physical body and the eternal, ethereal soul which Plato believed to inhabit the body during life and continue to exist beyond death. Plato regarded the body, along with all things which exist, to be an imperfect copy of what he called ‘Forms’, and that the existence of a distinct soul was necessary to acquire innate knowledge. Plato’s justification for his arguments seem reasonable, he recognised that the senses could be deceptive and that for us to understand the real world it must be through reason, therefore for us to acquire an understanding in the physical world it would make sense that an immaterial part of us has a knowledge of the external forms. Plato’s dualism does have some significant flaws, mostly so is the fact that Plato’s idea of a particular soul being bound within a particular body is not sufficiently explained, how can an