Chapter 1: Embodied Musicality
René Descartes’ mind–body dualism is based on the premise that the mind (responsible for activities of thinking) constitutes the essence of knowledge, while the body (responsible for activities of doing) serves as the mind’s extension and executive organ in space. Thus, Cartesian philosophy handles these two components as distinct from each other, with a hierarchical relation in which the mind transcends and governs the body. Influential as it had been, however, the concept started facing significant challenges in the beginning of the 20th century when some philosophers sought to meld the boundaries between body and mind. Instead of viewing knowledge as a solely intellectual matter, they proposed that the experience
…show more content…
To Hanna, soma is organic and adaptive, constantly adjusting itself to the surroundings, while the physical body refers to a static and close-ended object. Tracing the etymology of soma back to its Greek root, Hanna (1983) describes it as “the living body in the wholeness” (p. 6), which involves not only the three physical dimensions (height, depth, and width) but also a fourth––time. With this fourth aspect, soma is not merely a physical entity, but a synthetic integrity that is held together through time. It is a process that never reaches completion. To understand this process, wrote Hanna, is “to understand the how of life” (Ibid, p.8). Thus, soma aomprises the entire package of life in which the body, the mind, and the environment are all included and interrelated. It is a living unit that performs and rehearses continually. This development is ongoing and never …show more content…
57). That is, what one feels, perceives, and practices in daily life would regularly be encoded into one’s entire being, including cognition. This concept is nicely articulated in Dalcroze’s Eurhythmics for music. In this method, music –especially rhythm– is taught through bodily movements or via the moving objects that the students are already familiar with. Émile Jaques-Dalcroze believed that all the rhythms embedded in our bodies and the world surrounding us, such as walking, running, heart beating, and ball bouncing, would prepare one’s learning path toward musical intelligence and skills. The interaction between internal and external time is becoming one’s (musical) rhythmic ability. Therefore, to learn rhythm is to discover the rhythm both inside and outside of the body. To teach rhythm is not to introduce a new concept to the learners, but to direct them to find similar temporal experiences from their past. This idea corresponds to what Wayne Bowman described, that sensations and actions are not cognitive achievements; rather, they are the quintessential core of cognition (Bowman, 2004,
May the 4th be With you: Keeping the Spirit of the 4th Alive 365 Days of the Year
In this paper, I will examine the principal merits and challenges of René Descartes’ concept of dualism and then defend my preferred alternative among the options Paul M. Churchland discusses. After briefly defining Cartesian Dualism, I will show that its principal merits are that it is consistent with common sense and that it is able to explain phenomena that appear mental in nature. Next, I will show that its principal challenges are its failure to adequately explain how the mind and the body can causally interact, and its failure to respond to the observation that brain damage impairs the mind. Finally, I will explain why Functionalism is the best alternative to Cartesian Dualism.
Curt Thompson, a Christian psychiatrist, expresses in his book that understanding and cultivating the mind-body connections can improve people’s relationships with others and with God. One of the great things Dr. Thompson writes about in his book, Anatomy of the Soul, is the insights of the various aspects in neuroscience that connected in improving yourself. He provides a new way of thinking of transforming the mind and your life. His approach of methods to carry out his goals in this book includes; Scripture, science, psychiatry, spiritual disciplines, exercise, and theology. The accounts of his counseling sessions helped related to the theme of each section.
An illustration of the holistic approach can be seen in the humanistic and interactional perspective. The two views show the importance of blending both physical and mental factors. The humanistic view allows us to see and understand the “theory of life” based on highlighted premises such as the human being mind invisibly connected to the human body (source). This specific premise shows us the mind- body relationship in holistic view. The interactionism view allows us to see …… An understanding of the two views can demonstrated
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.
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.
Reneì Descartes’ treatise on dualism, his Meditations on First Philosophy, is a seminal work in Western intellectual history, outlining his theory of the mind and its relation to the rest of the world. The main argument running through the Meditations leads from his universal methodic doubt through his famous cogito, to proofs of dualism, God, and the world. The Cartesian dualism is one of the most influential ideas to come out of the work; the style of the Meditations, however, is one of personal rumination, following what appears to be Descartes’ stream of consciousness , and it allows for mild tangential discussions. Hence alongside his more famous argument for dualism,
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.
Thesis: The mind-body problem arises because of the lack of evidence when looking for a specific explanation of the interaction of mental and physical states, and the origin and even existence of them.
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.
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.
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.
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
This paper will attempt to explain Descartes’ first argument for the distinction that exists between mind and body. Dualism is a necessary aspect of Descartes’ metaphysics and epistemology. This distinction is important within the larger framework of Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) because after doubting everything (body, extension, senses, etc.), Descartes comes to the conclusion that because he doubts, he must be a thinking thing and therefore exist (p.43). This means that the mind must be separate and independent from the body. One can doubt that the body exists while leaving the mind intact. To doubt that the mind exists, however, is contradictory. For if the mind does not exist, how, or with what, is that doubt being accomplished.
During the twentieth century, one composer in particular, John Cage, challenged the idea of music, sound, and art. Because of a distinct style and the utilization of innovative mechanisms, Cage proved to be one of the world’s most original composers. He took music into a new direction creating sounds and works that have never been performed before. Through his philosophy of silence and chance operations, John Cage distinguished the difference between sound and music; sounds possess the ability to stand independently while the creation of music depends on sounds and their particular arrangement.