Rene Descartes Meditations On First Philosophy

While human beings certainly display a materialistic tendency, philosophers continuously dispute the physicality of the human mind. It is obviously impossible to deny the tangibility of the brain, philosophers argued about the materialism of thoughts, knowledge and morality. Rene Descartes, Plato and Thomas Nagel have downplayed the significance of the material world in relation to consciousness in their respective works, Meditations on First Philosophy, the Phaedo, the Republic, and What is it like to be a bat. While all three philosophers create distinct and separate theories, they all demonstrate belief that there are two separate kinds of existence: a physical existence and an intangible existence. Rene Descartes begins his Meditations

Socrates reassures his friends that he does not fear death, because he believes that death is “the separation of the soul from the body…the habit of the soul gathering and collecting herself into herself, out of all the courses of the body; the dwelling in her own place alone, as in another life, so also in this, as far as she can; the release of the soul from the chains of the body” (13:8). This introduces Plato’s theory that there are two levels of reality: the visible and tangible world where the body resides, and the intelligible world that gives the tangible world meaning. This theory again comes into play in the Symposium when Socrates and Diotima discuss the existence of beauty, and the Form of beauty. Socrates tells his companions about a “woman named Diotima…famous for her expertise in all areas of Love” who taught Socrates everything he knows about love (301). Through dialogue, Diotima convinces Socrates that love is simply the desire for beauty, and that love would promote “ultimate knowledge, which is the knowledge of beauty itself” (313). This knowledge of Beauty is later realized to be knowledge of the Form of beauty, mainly the abstract beauty that exists in the intelligible and intangible reality. This forces the reader to understand that while because there are two distinct different realities, one of body one of mind, beauty can exist in a

He explores consciousness and the meaning of a conscious experience for a physically existing individual. He states, “An organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism—something it is like for the organism” (245). In drawing a distinction between imaginative reality and actual reality, Nagel suggests, “Our own experience provides the basic material for our imagination, whose range is therefore limited. It will not help to try to imagine that one has webbing on one’s arms, which enables one to fly around” and essentially have all of the characteristics of a bat (247). He goes on, “in so far as I can imagine this it tells me only what it would be like for me to behave as a bat behaves” not what it would actually be like to be a bat (247). He finalizes that “if the facts of experience are accessible only from one point of view, then it is a mystery to know how the true character of experiences could be revealed in the physical operation of that organism” (248) which becomes his conclusion on the mind-body