How did Descartes Explain the Relationship between Mind and Body?

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

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.

As Descartes defines the mind and body, as clearly and distinctly separate entities with mental and physical properties, only when considered separately from each other. But then they cannot without irrationality also be considered as united, for this would be to consider them at the same time as two different and one single substance, which, as Descartes admits,

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.

Descartes then goes on to explain the notion of 'heaviness' and says that believes it has been misused when it is supposed as a real quality, and that it was given to us for the purpose of regarding the way in which the soul moves the body. Princess Elizabeth's then replies, and Descartes writes another letter back in order to answer more of her questions regarding the mind-body interaction and help her more understand his reasoning. He begins by saying that even though she may want to perceive the soul as material (in order to understand its union with the body), she should still recognize that it is separate from the body. He regards that if it is easier for Princess Elizabeth to "attribute matter and extension to the soul than to attribute to it the capacity to move a body and to be moved by one without having matter" (Page 228), then she should do that, and then by doing that eventually she will be able to comprehend and visualize the union of the body and soul that he mentioned in the first

Rene Descartes was a complex man who had questions about God and the human soul, and preferred to work through problems by eliminating all doubt with a particular issue. He works to prove that God exists and develops arguments to point out the limits between the mind or soul and the body, as well as, corporeal (physical) and incorporeal (mental) properties. When Descartes refers to mental properties, he is alluding to thoughts and emotions. When mentioning physical properties, he is talking about the brain. Hence, mind-body

René Descartes’ seventeenth century philosophy receives much of the credit for the basis of modern philosophy, specifically his argument that the body and the mind are completely separate substances, each with its own independence from the other, also known as dualism. Descartes was educated in the Aristotelian and Greek tradition, and those ideas influenced his dualist thought. In Meditations, Descartes focused on dualism in the context of human consciousness. While the work is organized in separate ‘Meditations’, and Descartes’ main motivation for writing it was likely philosophical exploration, there are mentions of God in the part of Meditations on dualism, because the separation of mind and body often leads to the necessity of the existence of a soul, and therefore gave itself nicely to a seventeenth-century theology. Despite its organic religious affiliation, Meditations was not universally agreed upon, or even well liked, specifically by people who believed that the body and the mind, everything that makes up a person, is the same physical substance. Among these disbelievers in Cartesian dualism was Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, a staunch materialist who responded to Descartes’ work through a series of letters. Elisabeth’s doubts of Descartes’ dualism remain one of the greatest arguments against substance dualism.

The Princess Palatine of Bohemia, Elisabeth has been well known for her philosophical writings that were constituted from her correspondence with René Descartes. “In that correspondence, Elisabeth presses Descartes on the relation between the two really distinct substances of mind and body, and in particular the possibility of their causal interaction and the nature of their union. They also correspond on Descartes's physics, on the passions and their regulation, on the nature of virtue and the greatest good, on the nature of human freedom of the will and its compatibility with divine causal determination, and on political philosophy” (Shapiro). In respond to Elisabeth's request for more information on the interaction between the passion and the immaterial mind, Descartes wrote The Passions of the Soul. However in the end, Descartes ended his letter by lecturing Elizabeth as being too philosophical because he could not come up with a clear and direct answer.

In Meditations of First Philosophy, ¬ Descartes forms a strong argument to the conclusion that both the mind and body are two distinct entities from each other. Descartes distinguishes that the mind is an internal entity and is consciously aware and indubitable of its external surroundings (PHL 150 Discussion, November 4, 2015). The physical substances present are external entities in which are directed by the mind, but can be doubted (PHL 150 Discussion, November 4, 2015). Thus, mind and body are completely distinct from each other in the manner of internality and externality. The human mind essentially needs a body to think and always needs a body to experience, which are reasons to which one might object Descartes arguments.

Descartes Argues that The mind and body are completely independent of one another and interact causally. (Pojman Pg. 292) According to him mind interacts with each part of its body separately. He thinks the body is something that does not think. Mind only interacts with brain. He described the material events that casually stimulate one of our five senses

Which shows the mind is basically navigating what the body does. Although the mind and body works together to produce certain physical and mental actions they are still separate entities. He believed it was only one endless substance which is god, but the mind and body are finite substances. Descartes believed that limited substances needed only God to exist. These two limited substances were the corporeal substance (the body) and the thinking substance (the mind).

Descartes’ Meditation 6 explains the distinction between the mind and body. He explains that he is confused as to why his mind is attached to a particular body to which he calls his own. He questions why pain or tickling happens in his own body but does not occur in any body outside of his own and why a tugging feeling in his stomach tells him that he is hungry and that he should eat. From this, he perceives that he is only a thinking thing. The idea of a body is merely extended and the mind is

When Princess Elisabeth questioned Descartes on the possibility of interaction between heterogeneous substances [AT III 661]., he answered recognizing that through his works, he had not said much about the union of mind and body. In his letter [21-05-1643] Descartes justifies this saying he had been primarily focused in the demonstration of the distinction between mind and body.

To support his claim of dualism, Descartes presents a number of arguments that attempt to prove that the mind is separate from his body. Two of his strongest points are from the conceivability argument and divisibility argument. Further reinforcement of his claims comes from the idea of privileged first-person access, where he concludes that only an individual has full access to his own thoughts and state of mind.