René Descartes - Daniel Bonevacphilosophical.space/philosophy/DescartesMind.pdfDescartes’s Argument for Dualism •“And although possibly (or rather certainly, as I shall say

René Descartes

Philosophy of Mind

Friday, October 11, 19


Conclusions

•I am a thing that thinks

•I am essentially a thing that thinks

•I can know my own mind more securely than I can know anything else: “I see clearly that there is nothing that is easier for me to know than my mind.”


• “Surely my awareness of my own self is not merely much truer and more certain than my awareness of the wax, but also much more distinct and evident.

• For if I judge that the wax exists from the fact that I see it, clearly this same fact entails much more evidently that I myself also exist.

• It is possible that what I see is not really the wax; it is possible that I do not even have eyes with which to see anything.

• But when I see, or think I see (I am not here distinguishing the two), it is simply not possible that I who am now thinking am not something.”

I Am


Dualism

• Mind and body are distinct


Descartes’s Argument for Dualism

• “And although possibly (or rather certainly, as I shall say in a moment) I possess a body with which I am very intimately conjoined, yet because, on the one side, I have a clear and distinct idea of myself inasmuch as I am only a thinking and unextended thing, and as, on the other, I possess a distinct idea of body, inasmuch as it is only an extended and unthinking thing, it is certain that this I [that is to say, my soul by which I am what I am], is entirely and absolutely distinct from my body, and can exist without it.”


Descartes’s Argument for Dualism

• I have a clear and distinct idea of myself as a thinking and unextended thing

• I possess a distinct idea of body as an extended and unthinking thing

• Therefore I am entirely and absolutely distinct from my body, and can exist without it


Pilot in a Vessel

• “Nature also teaches me by these sensations of pain, hunger, thirst, etc., that I am not only lodged in my body as a pilot in a vessel [in the Latin: sailor in a ship], but that I am very closely united to it, and so to speak so intermingled with it that I seem to compose with it one whole.”


Union and Apparent Intermingling

• “For all these sensations of hunger, thirst, pain, etc. are in truth none other than certain confused modes of thought which are produced by the union and apparent intermingling of mind and body.”


Mind and Body

•I am a thing that thinks

• I also have a body

•How does my mind relate to my body?

•How is their “union and apparent intermingling” possible?



Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia (1619-1680)


Mind-Body Problem

• “I ask you to tell me how man’s soul, being only a thinking substance, can determine animal spirits so as to cause voluntary actions.”


Mental Causation

•How can a mental act cause bodily motion?

•We have a theory about what causes bodily motions: physics

•Physics portrays the universe as causally closed

•So, too many causes: Physics already explains bodily motions


Mental Causation

• Causes must be extended in space, contact object moved

• But mental acts aren’t extended in space

• We have no theory that explains how something not extended can move something extended


Descartes’s Answer

•We perceive the interaction of mind and body

•Union of mind and body “known very clearly by the senses”

•Doesn’t this miss the point?


Mind/Body Problem

• Body —> mind: sensation

• Mind —> body: mental causation




Interactionism

• Mind and body do interact

• Perception: body —> mind

• Mental causation: mind —> body

• How? This requires scientific investigation


Occasionalism

• God is the only true cause

• God is something like the conductor of the universe

Mind Body


Pre-established Harmony

• God coordinates from the beginning two causal chains

• Mental causes

• Physical causes


Monism

• Idealism: Everything is really mind

• Physicalism: Everything is really body

• Neutral Monism: Everything is really something




Modern Options

• Reduction: We can translate talk of the mental into talk of the physical

• Functionalism: Mental language and physical language are two ways of describing the same thing

• Supervenience: The physical determines the mental

• Grounding: The mental is grounded in the physical


Knowledge of the External World


Descartes’s Argument

• Argument concerning the conditions of the possibility of certainty

• It is possible for me to be certain of something

• But that could be possible only if I could trust what appears to me clearly and distinctly to be true

• Therefore, I can trust what appears to me clearly and distinctly to be true


Clarity and Distinctness

• But can I doubt the premises?

• Can I doubt the conclusion?

• Can I doubt whether it follows?

• Note the caution: ‘seems’ (Latin: ‘videor’)


External Objects

• Sensations come to me involuntarily

• Therefore, sensations are caused by something external to me

• Therefore, there exists something external to me


External Objects

• How to get from involuntariness to external causation?

• We have to show that nothing inside me can be causing my sensations


External Objects

• Essence of the mind (thinking) wholly distinct from essence of the body

• “... nothing can be in me, that is to say, in my mind, of which I am not aware.”


External Objects

• But could my body be the source? Could God? No:

• God has given me “great propensity” to believe that my sensations come from external objects

• God has given me no faculty for correcting false beliefs about this

• So, a good God wouldn’t allow me to be wrong about it


René Descartes - Daniel Bonevacphilosophical.space/philosophy/DescartesMind.pdfDescartes’s Argument for Dualism •“And although possibly (or rather certainly, as I shall say

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