Descartes Dualism

Throughout this class, we have continued to discuss the idea of dualism and its importance to modern philosophy. These discussions stem from the essay read in class by René Descartes titled “Meditations on First Philosophy.” In Descartes essay, he does an excellent job illustrating his thoughts and ideas on what exactly the body and the mind are. These ideas are the building blocks for Descartes thesis on how the body and mind are separate substances from one another. This essay will focus on the topics discussed in class of what the idea of dualism is, how it has created the dualist position about the nature of the mind, and how Descartes’ arguments about the differences between the mind and the body support the dualist position.

In his essay,

However, this until after all of his questions of the mind and body have been brought forth throughout the essay. Therefore, it isn’t until Meditation Six that he discusses this argument. What the argument is trying to explain is that without the ability to distinctly understand the difference between the body and the mind you will of course not know that there is a mind, but rather your understanding would be that the mind is simply the brain. This is because if Descartes could not distinguish that that mind was not part of the brain, a part of the body, then there would be no argument as to the fact that the body is a separate substance from the mind. Descartes explains his understanding that the two are different by saying, “First, I know that all the things that I clearly and distinctly understand can be made by God such as I understand them. For this reason, my ability to clearly and distinctly understand one thing without another suffices to make me certain that the one thing is different from the other, since they can be separate from each other, at least by God.” (Descartes, “Meditations on First Philosophy”, p51). With the explanation of his complete understanding Descartes is now aware that the mind is separate from the body and he can go further into depth on how and why they

He does an excellent job of explaining his thoughts and views of the matter, which help to both create and support the dualist position of the nature of the mind. He comes to the final conclusion that the mind and the body are in fact two separate substances. This is also his thesis for the essay and creates the theory that is now know by modern philosophers as mind-body