Rene Descartes: The Mind-Body Problem Of The Philosophy Of Mind

RENE DESCARTES

Rene Descartes was born in Indre-et-Loire, France in 31 March 1596. Descartes who lost his mother at an early age, went to Jesuit Colleege Royal Henry-Le Grand in 1607. He met mathematics and physics in here and he learned about Galileo’s works. Then, he completed his degree in law. After finishing the faculty, he travelled some countries. However, he spent most of his life in the Netherlands. Philosophy system that overturn the Western civilization are created by the Descartes in Netherlands. The basis of this philosophy is based on the principle to doubt everything to reach real information. Therefore, it is necessary to accept that all informations based on unrealiable basis. Doubt is the only thing that can not be suspected.

Philosophy of mind examines the mental events and their features and explores the relationship to the body and the brain. The most important and main problem of the philosophy of mind is considered as the mind-body problem. Mind-body problem is about what kind of relationship between mental processes and physical processes and conditions.There are different approaches about this issue. Some of the most important are interactionism, paralellism, idealism, epiphenomenalism, materialism, monism and dualism. Dualism is an approach that advocates mind and body are two different things(substance) apart from each other. This approach is based on the most basic form of Descartes on Platon. Because, Descartes thinks that people have soul and body and these two things can not be reduced to each other. Mind is something that is regardful but material objects occupy a place in the space. Physical world is mechanical. It is controlled by physical laws. Whereas, mind becomes subject to other policies, such as the laws of thought. Although they are so different, mind and body affect each other. Physical world events cause to acquire certain experiences to people. Besides, thought to act on a

He has found the basic law of reflection in optical; the incidence angle equals the departure angle. His greatest contribution to mathematics was on analytic geometry and he has worked to apply the algebra to the geometry. He created the cartesian geometry concept and classified the curves according to the equation that produces them. The importance of the history of philosophy is that removing the bottlenecks where church-oriented philosophy in the Middle Ages and moving to New Age. Descartes’s works has led to the emergence of rationalism approach. His works influenced many philosophers, primarily Spinoza and Leibniz. Descartes ' s ideas are still spoken many times in our day, including ‘’I think therefore I am(cogito ergo sum)’’. For these reasons, he is considered the father of modern philosophy. In addition, Descartes also made studies about physics and the law of the nature and these studies were the source of information for the famous physicist Isaac Newton. Besides all of these, Descartes is a philosopher and first scientific approach psychologist that tried to get into the psychology to the natural sciences. Descartes explained the relationship between behavior and the nervous system. Descartes’s book that is called the World carries an integrative structure for several disciplines. This quality has become to the World one of the first modern