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.
Rene Descartes Mediations, discusses a wide variety of topics such as the concept of God, Dualism, Deception through the senses and many more. In the Second Meditations, Descartes mentions the idea of sense perception and how we use it to understand the information we gain from our experiences. The passage selected will illustrate the idea behind sense perception and the mental processes we use to better understand it. In the passage mentioned above in the Second Meditation, Descartes concludes that sense perception is the root of thinking and other mental processes, such as understanding and doubting.
Pictorially Illustrated Reflective Analysis: After having read about some of the human nature in Chapter two in the textbook, I understand and believe Descartes’ theory of the Mind-Body Dualism. I do completely feel as though the mind and body should be conceived of as separate and independent of each other. The mind and the body are two completely separate things that work together to create the human body in all. So the argument here is that how does the mind and body interact?
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
The philosopher Descartes speaks on the entities dear to any person, the mind and body. In the Meditations, speaks about the dualism of the mind and body and their properties. Descartes believes with the will of God something as the body and mind that are joined together have the possibility of existing separately. As stated by Descartes, “I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, in so far as I am simply a thinking, non-extended thing; and on the other hand, I have a distinct idea of body, in so far as this is simply an extended, non-thinking thing.” He follows this statement up with “And accordingly, it is certain that I am really distinct from my body and can exist without it.
The mind and body, if still only connected by the penial gland, are not completely distinct if connected in this way. The consequences of this problem are very serious for Descartes, because it undermines his claim to have a clear and distinct understanding of the mind without the body. For humans to have sensations and voluntarily move some of their bodily limbs requires a surface and contact. Since the mind must have a surface and a capacity for motion, the mind must also be extended and, therefore, mind and body are not completely separate. This means the “clear and distinct” ideas of mind and body, as mutually exclusive natures, must be false in order for mind-body causal interaction to occur.
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.
Over the six day reading of Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes uses his meditator to raise questions, explain, and give reasoning regarding our mind and it’s capabilities. One question that gets raised is how our mind and our body are connected or work together, if at all. Through Descartes’s systematic, day-by-day exercises the meditator and the reader of the meditations are supposed to follow the reasoning that he lays out for the meditator throughout each meditation to arrive at a conclusion after finishing the Sixth Meditation. Having read the Meditations in their entirety, I believe that our mental capacities fully allow us to accurately represent aspects of the world that we live in.
A French Philosopher from the 17th century, René Descartes, made an argument on substance dualism. His argument is about how humans are made up of spiritual and physical substances. He states that the mind is a spiritual substance, while the brain is a physical substance. In his argument, Descartes clearly expresses that mental things cannot be physical things. He argues that the body and the mind has to be distinct from one another.
Cartesian Dualism With the “new” Method of Doubt, Descartes arrived at the conclusion, that he can doubt everything except the existence of his own mind. And it is important to understand that he can doubt his physical body but not his mind, therefore he argues that there is a significant difference between Mind and Body. Modern science has shown how the brain is, simplified stated, a machine which causes thinking. For Descartes this was not his understanding of the brain. He rather thought that the brain can be understood as the connecting organ between the physical body and the immaterial mind.
Around 1630 Descartes theorized the idea of “dualism”, where the mind and body are separate, but work together simultaneously. He held a mechanistic view of humans, and he was the first to theorize the “reflex”. His ideas can be seen to be proved in our current research which shows the interconnectivity of our brain to our entire biological physiology. In 1651 Thomas Hobbes led the way of the British empiricism movement.
Descartes was an exceptional man, who wrote many engaging and thought provoking books. The excerpt of his work, The Passions of the Soul was an especially engaging and laborious passage to read. The focal point of the fragment assigned to read for this essay, mainly focused on the body, the mind and how animal spirits are the driving force of the human anatomy. He answers a series of several questions relating to his work on mind and body dualism, and goes into depth on each question so that the reader gets a philosophical understanding of his theories.
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 denied when we truly capture the infinite extent of
Rene Descartes’ view on the mind-body problem is one that is much debated even today, nearly four centuries since his demise. To discuss the mind-body problem, we must first establish the definitions of mind and body, and how Descartes came upon these definitions. Following that, we can then discuss the validity of his views, and some of the criticisms his views have received. To explain how Descartes arrived at his views of the mind and body, we must look into his process of systematic doubt. The first step was to doubt everything that could be doubted: his senses, his prior knowledge (a priori), and his knowledge of the world (a posteriori).
Descartes provides us with the notion of the “self” in his Second Meditation after establishing a plan of radical skepticism. Descartes views the self as the mind, insofar as he believes that he is primarily a “thinking thing”. For the remainder of this essay, the body will be defined as possessing the ability to receive and transmit the senses, as well as being able to interact with the world outside of the mind. I will discuss and judge the merit of the arguments Descartes stands on. Then I will conclude by arguing that the conclusion Descartes comes to cannot be achieved by his own path of logic.
