preview

Descartes 's Meditations On First Philosophy

Decent Essays
In Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes introduces the dualistic idea of a sharp split between mind and body. This mind-body split is a Western secular idea and discounts many important aspects of the human experience. Descartes argues that, “…a body, by its very nature, is always divisible. On the other hand, the mind is utterly indivisible” (Descartes, 56). This idea that there is a distinct difference between the mind and the body is nonsensical from both a phenomenological and a scientific perspective. Furthermore, it is a very privileged point of view. Descartes was first and foremost a scholar. Before dedicating his life to philosophy, he worked with analytic geometry and analytics. In many ways, Descartes was spared experiences that might have caused him to reassess his thoughts on the split between mind and body. Unlike the example of the man with an amputated foot that Descartes uses in Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes did not lose a limb. If he had, he may have realized that the mind is just as divisible as the body, as is the case with traumatic experiences. Based on the theoretical possibility that Descartes is wrong, it follows that mind and body are essentially the same. This can be seen through a cognitive perspective of human experience, and in particular, the application of modern neuroscience.
Take, for example, the neuroscientific phenomena of the Placebo Effect. The Placebo Effect occurs when a fake treatment with no active ingredients
Get Access