Platonic Dualism: The Separation Of Mind And Body

Descartes distinguished between the res cogitans and the res extensa. The res cognitans talked about the soul or mind and was said to be essentially “a thing which thinks.” The res extensa was the material stuff of the body. It was characterized primarily by the fact of extension: it occupied space and was therefore amenable to measurement. In some previous years neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists have argued that this ontological separation of mind and body is no longer arguable. The former tell that mental functions can be fully explained by brain science. The res extensa make the case for a different psychological realm but one whose works, like those of computer applications, are measurable and open to scientific investigation.

Their studies imply that this easy structure might not be encapsulating the complexities of people’s understanding. Instead, it seems that people are adopting what might called a “Platonic dualism”. On such a view, the two categories of mind and body are divided up somewhat differently. The “mind” category contains one particular part of the mind, the capacity for thinking and reasoning; the body category includes both the body and a second section of the mind, the extent for extra visceral emotions and affection. So, if one centres his attention on a person’s body, one becomes synchronously less interested to characteristic to that person a capacity for abstract thought and more inclined to attribute seeking desires and feelings. A great number of arguments for dualism begin from a theory about a cognitive gap between physical truths about consciousness, and formulate an ontological gap between physical processes and consciousness. These type of arguments mainly include the conceivability argument, the knowledge argument, the explanatory-gap argument, and the property dualism argument. Such arguments are