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The Mind-Body Distinction- René Descartes

One of deepest and one of the most lasting legacies in philosophy is that of Descartes in his thesis that the mind and the body are distinct. Descartes thesis is now referred to as dualism (Descartes and Laurence). He reached a conclusion through the argument that the nature of the mind which is a thinking and non-extended thing. It is entirely different from that of the body which refers to an extended and a non-thinking item and therefore it is possible for an individual to survive and exist without the other as they tend to be independent of one another. The argument brought forth by Descartes give birth to the famous problem of the mind-body causal interactions that are still debated today that include how the mind can influence the movement of the body limbs such raising the hand and how the body’s sense organs cause sensations in mind despite their natures being completely different.

What is a Real Distinction?

Descartes refers to real distinction as a technical term that denotes the difference between two or more substances (Nolan). A substance is anything or something that does not require the assistance of another for its existence and can only exist with the help of God’s concurrence whereas a mode is the quality or affection of that substance. Similarly, the mode requires the substance of existence and not just the consent of God. Being sphere shaped is a mode of a substance extension, for example, a sphere needs an object extension in three dimensions to facilitate its existence: an un-extended sphere can’t be conceived without contradiction, but a sphere can get to be understood to exist by itself without requiring the presence of any other creature. An example to explain this would be the stone that can exist by itself that is it, therefore, do not depend on the presence of the minds as well as the other bodies, and consequently, a stone can exist without possessing any particular shape or size. For Descartes, this implies that God, if He chooses, would create a world that would be constituted by the stone all by itself, further indicating that it is a substance which is distinct from everything else in the world except God. Through this, the thesis that the mind and the body are separate implies that each one of them could exist all by itself without any necessary interaction from the other creature if only God chose it to happen. However, the explanation does not mean that the substance does exist separately and as whether or not they live apart is a different issue altogether.

Why a real distinction

The question arises as to what is the point of arguing that the mind and the body could each one of them exist without the interaction of one another. For Descartes, the payoff is twofold with the first one being religious in that it has the provisions of a rational basis for hope in the immortality of the soul as Descartes tend to presume that the mind and the soul are more or less the same things (Collette). The second fold is more scientifically oriented, for the complete absence or mentality from the nature of the physical things is central to making way for Descartes’ version of the new mechanistic physics.

1. The religious motivation

In his letter meditation on first philosophy, Descartes states that his aim in showing that the human mind or the soul is distinct from the body is by refuting the irreligious individuals who happen to have their faith only in mathematics and would not believe in the soul’s immortality without having a mathematical demonstration. He goes ahead and explains how due to this the people would not pursue the moral virtue without the prospect of an afterlife to which there are rewards for the attributes and punishments for the vices committed by the individuals. But since all the arguments in the meditation that includes the real distinction arguments, are for Descartes certain on a level with the geometrical demonstrations as he believes that those people will later be obliged to accepting them. Thus, the irreligious people will be forced to believe in the prospects of life after death.

However, Descartes conclusion is only that the mind or the soul can exist without the body and stops short to illustrate that the soul is immortal and can survive without the body even after death. In the synopsis to the meditations, Descartes only claims to have demonstrated that the decay of the body does not at any point logically or metaphysically insinuate the destruction of the mind. In this case, further argumentation is required for the conclusion that the soul can survive the destruction of the body. The argument would involve both an account of the whole of physics and the discussions indicating that God cannot annihilate the mind. Even though the real distinction arguments do not extend that far, they do, according to Descartes, they happen to provide a sufficient foundation for religion, since the hopes for the life after death have gained rational basis and is no longer a mere article of the religious faith.

2. The scientific motivation

The other motive for the argument that the mind and the body could actually exist without each other’s interaction is more scientifically oriented, stemming from Descartes intentional replacement of the final causal explanation in physics which were thought to be favored by the late scholastic and Aristotelian philosophers that had the mechanistic accounts that were based on the model of geometry. Although the credit for the setting of the stage should be awarded to the scholastic Aristotelian philosophy that is dominant over Descartes period should go to Thomas Aquinas due to his initial, thorough interpretation as well as the appropriation of Aristotle’s theory. It should also be important to note that other philosophers who worked in the same Aristotelian framework such as William of Ockham, Duns Scotus, and Francisco Suarez, diverged from the position held by Thomas on a variety of important issues (Owens).

Indeed by Descartes time, the academic areas that were divergent from Thomas point of view became so widely spread end subtly in their differences that sorting them out proved to be more difficult. Notwithstanding the convoluted array of opinions, Descartes understood one thesis to stand at the heart of the other traditions, and that is the doctrine that everything ultimately behaved for the sake of some end or goal. Though the final causes, as they were known were not the only cause that was recognized by the scholastic philosophers, it is sufficient for the present purposes to acknowledge that Descartes believed that the natural scholastic philosophers used the final causes as principles for the physical explanations and for this reason a brief look as to how the final causes were expected to work is in order.

Descartes understood that all the scholastics maintained that everything was thought to have a final cause and that is the ultimate end or the goal for the sake of which the rest of the organisms were organized. The principle of organization became known as a thing’s substantial form as it was this principle that explained as to why some hunk of the matter was arranged in such and a manner to be some species of substance. For example, for the case of a bird such as a swallow, the substantial form of swallowness was thought to organize matter go the sake of the swallow species of substance. Accordingly, any dispositions that a swallow species might possess such as the disposition for making the best would therefore also be explained via the means of the ultimate goal of a being swallow that is the swallows are disposed of for making the nests for the sake of their being swallow species of substance. The explanation scheme was also thought to work for the plants and the inanimate natural objects.

A criticism of the employment of the substantial forms along with their final causes or the goals in physics gets to be found in the sixth replies, where Descartes tries to examine how the quality of gravity was used in the explanation of a body’s downwards motion.

“But what makes it especially clear that my idea of gravity was taken from the idea I had of the mind is the fact that I thought that gravity carried bodies towards the center of the earth as if it had some knowledge of the center within itself” (Descartes).

On the voice pre-Newtonian account, a specific goal of all the bodies was to reach its proper place, and that is the center of the earth. And so the question as to why the stones fall downwards would be because they are striving to achieve the end goal of reaching to the center of the earth. According to Descartes, it implies that the stone must possess the knowledge to the ultimate goal, have the knowledge to attain it and as well understand the location of the center of the earth. But, how does the stone happen to know anything? Surely it is only the minds that can possess knowledge. Since the rocks are inanimate natural objects without souls, it follows that they cannot know or understand anything at all left alone about the center of the earth. Descartes continues;

“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 the body and corporeal motion; and I found that all those other ideas of… ‘Substantial forms ‘which I had previously held were ones which I had put together or constructed from those basic ideas” (Descartes).

In this excerpt, Descartes claims that the concept of a substantial form as part of the entire physical world stems from a confusion of the ideas of the mind and the body (Johnson). The confusion led people to mistakenly ascribe the mental properties such as knowledge to the entire non-metal objects such as the stones, plants and even the non-human animals. The real distinction between the mind and the body can also be used in the alleviation of the confusion. as well as it sounds resultant mistakes via indicating that the bodies do exist and move as they do without any mentality and that as such principles of mental causation like the goals and purpose which is the final cause, as well as the knowledge, have no implications into the explanation of the physical phenomenon. And so the real distinction the mind and the body also tend to serve the more scientifically oriented end of the elimination of any elements of mentality from the idea of the body. Through this, a proper understanding of the geometric nature of the bodies can be achieved and the better explanations obtained.

3. The real distinction argument

Descartes formulates the discussion in various ways leading to the belief by the majority of the scholars that there are several but the different real distinction between the arguments. It is, however, more accurate to consider the formulations as different versions of the same case. The fundamental premise of each evidence being the same and identical as each possess the fundamental assumptions that the natures of the mind and body are entirely different from one another.

Version one – The first version is found from the excerpt located from the sixth meditation:

“On the one hand, I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, in so far as I am simply a thinking, non-extended thing that is mind and on the other hand I have a distinct idea of body, in so far as this is simply an extended, non-thinking thing. Accordingly, it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and can exist without it” (Descartes).

The argument is given in the first person perspective as are the others in the entire meditations. The argument, therefore, is provided directly from Descartes perspective as he is a drinking mind and the argument intends to work for any person or the mind. Through the replacement of the ‘I’ with the ‘mind’ we have three distinctive points that are;

“I have a clear and distinct idea of the mind as a thinking, non-extended thing, I have a clear and distinct idea of the body as an extended, non-thinking thin and therefore the mind gets to be especially different from the body and can exist without it.”

At first glance, Descartes may be seen without justification that he views the body and the mind as being entirely two different things and it is from his perception that he infers that the mind can survive without the body. The truth of his intellectual understandings of the nature of the mind and the body is supposed to be assured by the fact that the perception is clear and distinct.

Descartes explains the meaning of clear and distinct idea where he likens a clear intellectual perception to clear visual perception (Descartes, Elizabeth, and George). Just like a person may have a sharply focused visual perception of something, similarly, an idea is deemed to be clear when it is in a sharp intellectual focus. Moreover, an idea can be assumed to be distinct when in addition to being clear, all the other ideas not belonging to it get to be extremely excluded. Thus, Descartes is claiming in both premises that his idea of the mind, as well as that of the body, tend to exclude all the other ideas that don’t belong to them with each of them included and that all that remains is purely what can be clearly understood of each one of them. As a result, Descartes clearly and distinctively understands the mind all by itself, separating the body from the mind. Descartes asserts that his ability to clearly and distinctly understand the mind and the body separately from one another implies that each one can exist without the other one. The reason is that the existence is contained in the idea of every single thing since we cannot conceive of anything except as existing.

Version Two- The argument is formulated differently in the sixth meditation:

“There is a great difference between the mind and the body, in as much as the body is by its very nature always divisible, while the mind is utterly indivisible. 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” (Descartes).

From this argument it can be reformulated by replacing the mind with ‘I’ as in the first version; I understand the mind to be indivisible by its very nature, I understand the body to be divisible by its very nature, and therefore the mind is completely different from the body. The most interesting thing about this formulation is how Descartes reaches his conclusion that the mind and the body are really distinct. Descartes does not exert a clear and distinct understanding of the two natures as completely different but instead makes his point based on particular properties of each. However, it is not just any property but a property that each possesses by its very nature. Something’s nature is simply what it is to be of that nature of a thing, and therefore the term nature is used synonymously with essence. On this account the extension constitutes the nature or essence of the bodily kinds of things and it is evident that Descartes argues that a property of what it is to be a body or an extended thing, divisible, while a property of what it is to be a mind or thinking object is not to be divisible.

The line of reasoning of Descartes in support of the claims about the respective natures of the mind and the body runs as follows. For one, it is easy to notice that the body is divisible for example a pencil can be cut into pieces. The second aspect on the line of reasoning that that Descartes believes his nature of the mind cannot be divided. Descartes states that if the mind could be divided, then two minds would result, but since the ‘I’ is just himself, then-then it is him who would be the result. Therefore the conclusion arises that the body is primarily divisible and the mind is fundamentally indivisible. The difference in the two things that is the mind and the body is any nonessential property that would have shown the mind and the body is different.

The real distinction between the mind and the body is based on their completely diverse natures tends to be the root of the famous mind-body problem (Fodor). The argument by Descartes that he is nothing but a thinking thing or mind implies that he is a thing that can doubt, understand, affirm or deny, willing and unwilling and as well imagines he possesses some sensory perceptions. It makes no sense to ascribe the modes to non-thinking things like the stones, and thus it’s only the minds that have the capacity of possessing the modes. On the opposite, it is entirely of no sense to ascribe the modes such as of shape, size, motions, and quantity to the non-extended thinking objects. It is awkward to imagine that the mind is rectangular or oval in shape which does not make sense. Therefore the mind cannot be understood to be in shape, in motion nor can a body understand or sense anything. The human beings are however supposed to be a combination of both the mind and the body such that the mind makes choices causing the modes of let’s say motion in the body and movements in specific bodily organs, for example, the eye causes the mode of sensation in mind.

Descartes’ inferences to the mind and the body may be considered as one of the influential theories in the metaphysical world. It is true that the word is made of two aspects; the thinking and the non-thing which are the mind and the body. The mind can sense and think and also possesses the characteristics of being indivisible and cannot be inferred to having any properties of the shape. On the other side, the body being a non-thinking thing down not, however, possess the aspects of thinking but have the capacity of being divisible such as the pencil can be split into two thus it’s divisible. Human beings possess both the body and the mind, and that enables them to think and arouse movements both voluntary and involuntary. Rene Descartes, therefore, can be credited to be a philosopher whose work is recognized globally and is still relevant today.

Work Cited

Collette, Daniel. Stoicism in Descartes, Pascal, and Spinoza: Examining Neostoicism’s Influence in the Seventeenth Century. Diss. University of South Florida, 2016.

Descartes, René, and Laurence J. Lafleur. Meditations on first philosophy. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1960.

Descartes, René, Elizabeth Sanderson Haldane, and George Robert Thomson Ross. Meditations on first philosophy. New York: Macmillan, 1951.

Fodor, Jerry A. “The mind-body problem.” Scientific American244.1 (1981): 114-123.

Johnson, Mark. The body in the mind: The bodily basis of meaning, imagination, and reason. University of Chicago Press, 2013.

Nolan, Lawrence. “Reductionism and nominalism in Descartes’s theory of attributes.” Topoi 16.2 (1997): 129-140.

Owens, Joseph. The doctrine of being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics: a study in the Greek background of mediaeval thought. PIMS, 1978.