This led him to the still debated question of how the mind can work with the body in the process of sense perceptions, feelings, etc. As a consequence, he explained great deal of intellectual functions perceptions, emotions, etc.
At the same time he underlined the immateriality of thinking. In traditional philosophical terminology, this amounted to the theory of two totally distinct substances: mind and body. However, it should be noted that Descartes undermined the concept of substance and reduced it to something deliberately vague.
Therefore, philosophers who cling to the notion of substance as a reality will find substance dualism in Descartes; others, who focus on his attempts at explaining mental operations like perceptions and feelings in corporeal terms, will find him to be a proponent of physicalism.
Adam, Charles and Paul Tannery, eds. Oeuvres de Descartes. Paris: Vrin. Campanella, Tommaso. Compendio di filosofia della natura , eds. Germana Ernst and Paolo Ponzio, sect. Santarcangelo di Romagna: Rusconi. Cottingham, John G. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes , 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ryle, Gilbert. The Concept of Mind. Sepper, Denis L. Lawrence Nolan, New York: Cambridge University Press. Ariew, Roger. Descartes among the Scholastics. Cottingham, John. John Cottingham, Hassing, Richard F. Lanham: Lexington Books. Markie, Peter. Ruler, Han van.
North , eds. Lodi Nauta and Arjo Vanderjagt, Leiden: Brill. Specht, Rainer. Commercium mentis et corporis. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog. Voss, Stephen. Stephen Voss, New York: Oxford University Press. Ryle states: Body and mind are ordinarily harnessed together…. The Immaterial Nature of the Soul Descartes attempts to reconcile having an immaterial soul within a largely scientific and physicalist framework. On the Way to Substance Dualism Descartes entertained a notion of body, and of matter in general, that escapes the traditional terminology of substances.
In the sixth meditation, Descartes distinguishes material objects from mind and stresses: I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, in so far as I am simply a thinking, non-extended thing res cogitans, non extensa ; and on the other hand I have a distinct idea of body, in so far as this is simply an extended, non-thinking thing res extensa, non cogitans. Reshaping the Concept of Substance As pointed out repeatedly, Descartes is working with and around a traditional philosophical terminology while trying to escape it.
References Adam, Charles and Paul Tannery, eds. Further Reading Ariew, Roger. Adam and P. Tannery eds. Cottingham, R.
Stoothoff, D. Even philosophy, metaphysics, and science, is undergirded by a shared sense of world that cannot emanate from a rational mind in-itself. In so doing, these simple illusions can be presented alone or together with differing philosophical perspectives as pedagogical tools to educate students by promoting increased and critical thinking about dualistic presuppositions.
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. We would also like to thank Adrian Johnson and Adam Morrill for demonstrating the illusions in Figures 1 and 2. Botvinick, M. Nature , Burrack, A. Individual differences in susceptibility to experimentally induced phantom sensations.
Body Image 2, — Demertzi, A. Dualism persists in the science of mind. Descartes, R. Google Scholar. DiZio, P. Fahrenberg, J. The mind-body problem as seen by students of different disciplines.
Farrer, C. Experiencing oneself vs. Neuroimage 15, — Forstmann, M. Geist, R. Child Health 13, — PubMed Abstract Google Scholar. Graziano, M. Prinz and B. Hommel Oxford: Oxford University Press , — Greene, J. An fMRI investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgment. Science , — Guignon, C. Heidegger, M. Being and Time. New York: Harper and Row Publishers. Lackner, J. Some proprioceptive influences on the perceptual representation of body shape and orientation.
Brain , — Lonka, K. Epistemologies, conceptions of learning, and study practices in medicine and psychology. McGeoch, P. The appearance of new phantom fingers post-amputation in a phocomelus. Neurocase 18, 95— Preston, J. Neuroscience and the soul: competing explanations for the human experience. Cognition , 31— Ryan, M. Monitoring text comprehension: individual differences in epistemological standards. Stone, J.
Functional weakness. Yet, since stones are inanimate bodies without minds, it follows that they cannot know anything at all—let alone anything about the center of the earth. But later on I made the observations which led me to make a careful distinction between the idea of the mind and the ideas of body and corporeal motion; and I found that all those other ideas of. Here, Descartes is claiming that the concept of a substantial form as part of the entirely physical world stems from a confusion of the ideas of mind and body.
This confusion led people to mistakenly ascribe mental properties like knowledge to entirely non-mental things like stones, plants, and, yes, even non-human animals. The real distinction of mind and body can then also be used to alleviate this confusion and its resultant mistakes by showing that bodies exist and move as they do without mentality, and as such principles of mental causation such as goals, purposes that is, final causes , and knowledge have no role to play in the explanation of physical phenomena.
So the real distinction of mind and body also serves the more scientifically oriented end of eliminating any element of mentality from the idea of body. In this way, a clear understanding of the geometrical nature of bodies can be achieved and better explanations obtained. Descartes formulates this argument in many different ways, which has led many scholars to believe there are several different real distinction arguments.
However, it is more accurate to consider these formulations as different versions of one and the same argument. The fundamental premise of each is identical: each has the fundamental premise that the natures of mind and body are completely different from one another.
Notice that the argument is given from the first person perspective as are the entire Meditations. At first glance it may seem that, without justification, Descartes is bluntly asserting that he conceives of mind and body as two completely different things, and that from his conception, he is inferring that he or any mind can exist without the body.
But this is no blunt, unjustified assertion. Much more is at work here: most notably what is at work is his doctrine of clear and distinct ideas and their veridical guarantee. Here he likens a clear intellectual perception to a clear visual perception. So, just as someone might have a sharply focused visual perception of something, an idea is clear when it is in sharp intellectual focus. Moreover, an idea is distinct when, in addition to being clear, all other ideas not belonging to it are completely excluded from it.
Hence, Descartes is claiming in both premises that his idea of the mind and his idea of the body exclude all other ideas that do not belong to them, including each other, and all that remains is what can be clearly understood of each. As a result, he clearly and distinctly understands the mind all by itself, separately from the body, and the body all by itself, separately from the mind.
According to Descartes, his ability to clearly and distinctly understand them separately from one another implies that each can exist alone without the other. Descartes, then, clearly and distinctly perceives the mind as possibly existing all by itself, and the body as possibly existing all by itself.
Given the existence of so many non-thinking bodies like stones, there is no question that bodies can exist without minds.
So, even if he could be mistaken about what he clearly and distinctly understands, there is other evidence in support of premise 2.
But can minds exist without bodies? Can thinking occur without a brain? However, in the Fourth Meditation , Descartes goes to great lengths to guarantee the truth of whatever is clearly and distinctly understood. This veridical guarantee is based on the theses that God exists and that he cannot be a deceiver. These arguments, though very interesting, are numerous and complex, and so they will not be discussed here.
Moreover, Descartes claims that he cannot help but believe clear and distinct ideas to be true. However, if God put a clear and distinct idea in him that was false, then he could not help but believe a falsehood to be true and, to make matters worse, he would never be able to discover the mistake.
Since God would be the author of this false clear and distinct idea, he would be the source of the error and would, therefore, be a deceiver, which must be false.
However, if it turns out that God does not exist or that he can be a deceiver, then all bets are off. There would then no longer be any veridical guarantee of what is clearly and distinctly understood and, as a result, the first premise could be false.
Consequently, premise 1 would not bar the possibility of minds requiring brains to exist and, therefore, this premise would not be absolutely certain as Descartes supposed. Notice that mind and body are defined as complete opposites. This means that the ideas of mind and body represent two natures that have absolutely nothing in common. And, it is this complete diversity that establishes the possibility of their independent existence. But, how can Descartes make a legitimate inference from his independent understanding of mind and body as completely different things to their independent existence?
To answer this question, recall that every idea of limited or finite things contains the idea of possible or contingent existence, and so Descartes is conceiving mind and body as possibly existing all by themselves without any other creature. Since there is no doubt about this possibility for Descartes and given the fact that God is all powerful, it follows that God could bring into existence a mind without a body and vice versa just as Descartes clearly and distinctly understands them.
The argument just examined is formulated in a different way later in the Sixth Meditation :. For when I consider the mind, or myself in so far as I am merely a thinking thing, I am unable to distinguish any parts within myself; I understand myself to be something quite single and complete…. By contrast, there is no corporeal or extended thing that I can think of which in my thought I cannot easily divide into parts; and this very fact makes me understand that it is divisible.
This one argument would be enough to show me that the mind is completely different from the body…. Notice the conclusion that mind and body are really distinct is not explicitly stated but can be inferred from 3. What is interesting about this formulation is how Descartes reaches his conclusion. He does not assert a clear and distinct understanding of these two natures as completely different but instead makes his point based on a particular property of each.
So, here Descartes is arguing that a property of what it is to be a body, or extended thing, is to be divisible, while a property of what it is to be a mind or thinking thing is to be indivisible.
First, it is easy to see that bodies are divisible. Just take any body, say a pencil or a piece of paper, and break it or cut it in half. Now you have two bodies instead of one.
Therefore, the body is essentially divisible and the mind is essentially indivisible: but how does this lead to the conclusion that they are completely different?
Here it should be noted that a difference in just any non-essential property would have only shown that mind and body are not exactly the same. For two things could have the same nature, for example, extension, but have other, changeable properties or modes distinguishing them. Hence, these two things would be different in some respect, for example, in shape, but not completely different, since both would still be extended kinds of things.
Consequently, Descartes needs their complete diversity to claim that he has completely independent conceptions of each and, in turn, that mind and body can exist independently of one another. Descartes can reach this stronger conclusion because these essential properties are contradictories.
On the one hand, Descartes argues that the mind is indivisible because he cannot perceive himself as having any parts.
On the other hand, the body is divisible because he cannot think of a body except as having parts. Hence, if mind and body had the same nature, it would be a nature both with and without parts. Yet such a thing is unintelligible: how could something both be separable into parts and yet not separable into parts? Notice that, as with the first version, mind and body are here being defined as opposites.
This implies that divisible body can be understood without indivisible mind and vice versa. Accordingly each can be understood as existing all by itself: they are two really distinct substances.
However, unlike the first version, Descartes does not invoke the doctrine of clear and distinct ideas to justify his premises. But if removed from this apparatus, it is possible that Descartes is mistaken about the indivisibility of the mind, because the possibility of the mind requiring a brain to exist would still be viable.
This would mean that, since extension is part of the nature of mind, it would, being an extended thing, be composed of parts and, therefore, it would be divisible. As a result, Descartes could not legitimately reach the conclusion that mind and body are completely different.
This would also mean that the further, implicit conclusion that mind and body are really distinct could not be reached either. The real distinction of mind and body based on their completely diverse natures is the root of the famous mind-body problem: how can these two substances with completely different natures causally interact so as to give rise to a human being capable of having voluntary bodily motions and sensations?
0コメント