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Descartes Mind-Body Dualism

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One of the deepest and most lasting legacies of Descartes Philosophy is his thesis that mind and body are really distinct, a thesis now called "mind-body dualism." Descartes believe that your mind is one thing and your body is another. The body is external and minds are internal, they do not need the other to function, they are able to function independently. While our mind is active our bodies react to what it is being told.
I kind of agree with Descartes, I agree because the mind and body are able to function without each other. However Descartes also believed that the mind and body were somewhat intertwined. There is a big difference between the mind and the body, the body is divisible, while the mind is completely indivisible. Descartes
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CHIDIEBUBE OPARA PHIL 1301 PROF BROWN July 10, 2017 PRINCESS ELISABETH First, in my essay about what Princess Elisabeth was asking Descartes to clarify was about the meditation. This meditation was to give an expression of how the mind and the body interact to one another. Next, In Descartes response to Princess Elisabeth, he claims that the mind and the body are the two different important substances in our human beings.

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He reasons that the idea of the body is the ideas of something extended like shape and size. This predicts the mind and body dualism, and the regulation of essential and supplementary qualities. Descartes found the essence of the mind which is to think; and the embodiment of matter, which is to be expanded. He also infers that despite his underlying beliefs, the psyche is a far superior knower than the body and that it is more realistic than the material world. Descartes infers that he must know his mind more than anything.

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Therefore, Descartes argues that the mind and the body must be two logically distinct

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Rene Descartes’ argument for substance dualism (the theory that the mind and body are two separate substances) and an immaterial mind is as follows. It is conceivable for me to be a mind without a body, but not vice versa, so the mind must be independent of the body. Logically this argument is valid such as that if it is possible for a mind to be without a body then the mind must be independent. The problem with this argument is on the premise that it is conceivable to be a mind without a body. Theodore Schick criticized this argument well by asking if is truly possible to be a mind without a body.

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In the sixth meditation, Descartes postulates that there exists a fundamental difference in the natures of both mind and body which necessitates that they be considered as separate and distinct entities, rather than one stemming from the other or vice versa. This essay will endeavour to provide a critical objection to Descartes’ conception of the nature of mind and body and will then further commit to elucidating a suitably Cartesian-esque response to the same objection. (Descartes,1641) In the sixth meditation Descartes approaches this point of dualism between mind and matter, which would become a famous axiom in his body of philosophical work, in numerous ways. To wit Descartes postulates that he has clear and distinct perceptions of both

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The theory then goes on to state that if it is logically possible for the mind and body to exist separate from each other, then they are distinct substance, and therefore the mind and body are separate substance. Antoine Arnauld’s argument that Descartes doesn’t have a complete understanding of the mind convinces me that Descartes’ second premise is not true. It can be coherently conceived that even though Descartes’ believes he has a complete

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However, in Cartesian Dualism, the mind is an immaterial thing: there is no visible, physical path to trace! We cannot physically see the mind interacting with the body. This raises not only the question of which mind is paired with which body, but also if there is even a causal interaction at all, like Descartes claims there is. Indeed, how can I know that the mind interacts with the body if there is no evidence that I can see that tells me

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One way that Descartes might explain the mind-body interaction is by appealing to God. Since God created the union of mind and body, God gave both the mind and the body the ability to interact with each other. In his Fourth Meditation, Descartes argued that there are some things that we cannot understand because our understanding is limited compared to God’s. Thus, Descartes can conclude that we cannot understand specifically how the mind and body interact with each other, since the specific details of mind-body interaction are beyond our understanding. However, this explanation fails to resolve the contradiction between (1) and (2).

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He also stated that “For since I know that my own nature is very weak and limited, whereas the nature of God is immense, incomprehensible and infinite, I also know without more ado that he is capable of countless things whose causes are beyond my knowledge”. Descartes believed that it is his mind that prevents him from understanding why God gave him the chance to create human error. The model of descartes human error problem does not succeed because nothing can be seen or perceived without the mind, and the mind is everything for us at the moment. Altough the physical body and the mind are different both are controlled by the mind. This means that even thought descartes can not see God he still believe in him, and anything that have anything evil like actions who knows it did not come from God.

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Rene Descartes’ philosophies on dualism is one that still to this day philosophers ponder about, and have not fully answered all of the questions that have stemmed from the famous theory. The major thought behind his philosophy was that after God there are two natures known as extension and thought. According to the text “On one hand is material substance, whose sential attribute is extension (occupancy of space), and on the other hand is mind whose essential attribute is thought.” (Moore, Bruder, 99) Essentially what Descartes was saying was that while the mind and the body are both two separate entities, they work as one from time to time.

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In his philosophical thesis, of the ‘Mind-Body dualism’ Rene Descartes argues that the mind and the body are really distinct, one of the most deepest and long lasting legacies. Perhaps the strongest argument that Descartes gives for his claim is that the non extended thinking thing like the Mind cannot exist without the extended non thinking thing like the Body. Since they both are substances, and are completely different from each other. This paper will present his thesis in detail and also how his claim is critiqued by two of his successors concluding with a personal stand.

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Performance enhancing drugs are substances or drugs that are used to improve any form of activity performance in humans. These performance enhancing drugs have the ability or potential to tremendously alter the human body. The use of those performance enhancing drugs in competitive sports is known as doping. This includes the fact that it can also improve an athlete's performance in certain areas. This is the reason why many athletes and bodybuilders are associated with the use of PEDs (Reardon and Creado, 2014).

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Self and body Marcel's view of the self is unique in existentialist intellect. Marcel is not convinced with any other philosophical ideas. For instance, the Cartesian analysis of the relationship of self to body is not satisfied Marcel, because his analysis is superficial. On the other hand, Marcel engages Descartes' view that the self cannot be miniature to the body, observing that " Descartes was right… consciousness is essentially something that is the contrary of a body, of a thing…"(Sweetman, 2008, p.23). He notes that "postulate that body and soul are things must be rejected; and this rejection entails consequences of the first importance" (as cited in Sweetman, 2008, p.24).

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But may believe even Descartes isn’t exactly clear on the inner working of the relationship (Robinson, Howard). Spinoza’s substance monism cleverly dissolves this issue by labeling mind (thought) and body (extension) as attributes to a common and singular substance. Other substance pluralist philosophies are also denied when we truly capture the infinite extent of

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Two important ideas of Descartes which are 1) perception, reproduction and attention as function of body and 2) animal do not possess soul helped who follow him to study on animals and understand to human behavior. Descartes provide testable hypotheses about relationships between behavior and physiology. He believed in concept of consciousness that was the distinction between human beings and animals. From his influential work, Spinoza and Leibnitz contribute to early development of science of psychology.

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