Mind/Body Dualism: Two Together or One in the Same?

Descartes proposes that his mind and body are seperate entities that are in independent of each other but united in him. The body uses the faculties of sense and imagination to interact with the external world while the mind understands and makes judgments, which is to affirm or deny ideas. He reasons the two are separate in that: 1) mind is indivisible whereas the body can be divided into parts 2) The mind can operate independent of most body parts (with the brain as an exception) 3) The body has an interface that communicates with the mind (nervous system). It is this mind/body union that Descartes uses to restore the credibility of the physical world. The body uses its senses to inform the mind of bodies that must exist, since they indeed produce a sensation, and the mind wills which bodies should be desired or avoided. The cooperation of body and mind to pursue pleasure and avoid pain is the work of God's goodness, according to Descartes, and must be true.

This account of Mind/Body dualism is very alluring. Based on experience, it makes sense. One learns not to touch a stove by burning their hand. One knows when to eat when hunger is felt. In terms of thinking, forming ideas, judgments, etc. one doesn't necessarily use his/her entire body to do so. But can Mind and Body really be separate entities? Can one exist without the other? Or is it that the mind is simply a sophisticated feature of humans, but still bound by mortal flesh? The mind, as powerful as it can be, cannot live beyond the body because it is part of the body (the brain); it is not a separate entity.

The sciences have observed just how much the mental lives of people are tied to the brain. Different parts of the brain serve different functions. Sensation, perception, judgments, all the aspects of the mind, have been tied to parts of the brain. It has been shown how damage to the brain affects the performance of the mind.

How, and where, can a mind exist without a body? There has yet to be a credible account of someone having ideas and making judgments after their body has perished. Would that be the equivalent of a ghost? Descartes says he exists because he is a thinking thing, which is true. His body IS the thinking thing.

Meditation IV: On the Will and Understanding.

In the forth meditation, Descartes continues to build upon his previous meditations paying particular attention on the relationship between God, will and understanding. His proof of God's existence, poses numerous questions with one of them being in what capacity does truth and falsity exist if God is all powerful, true and benevolent?

Descartes creates a spectrum of being where on one end God is placed as being the most “real” (having the most formal reality), the most certain and thus the most good while complete nothingness is placed on the other end as being the most uncertain and nonexistent thus the most evil. Humanity is placed in the middle of the spectrum where we are more “real” and good that nothingness but not as “real” and good as God. He states that, “insofar as I participate in nothingness or non-being, that is, insofar as I am not the supreme being and lack a great many things, it is not surprising that I make mistakes” (Descartes 123). He maintains that should one focus all their energy on God, there will be no cause of falsity in their lives because God has given humanity the capacity to be fully benevolent and error free (123). However, as soon as ones attention is turned on ones self, falsity, and thus evil, emerges as a privation of truth or goodness. It is not that falsity is something separate from truth but that it is a lack of truth or nothingness.

But wait! There's more. It is not enough that humanity errs because we are less real than God. Humanity is imperfect and limited in the knowledge we can attain however, we are not limited in terms of choice or the will. He establishes that the will is, “limited by no boundaries whatsoever” (124). The infinity of the will within humanity leads Descartes to state that, “This is so much the case that the will is the chief basis for my understanding that I bear a certain image and likeness of God” (124). All this builds up in a mind-boggling claim that, “God's faculty of willing does not appear to be any greater” than humanity's (125). Because humanity is not infinite, we lack the capacity of the infinite knowledge necessary to make the most perfectly informed decisions, and thus true decisions, possible. With this final claim, Descartes comes to the conclusion that one should not judge anything that they do not clearly and distinctly understand (127). He proposes that in an effort to keep from making false choices, one should refrain from making the choice and should instead meditate until the truth makes itself apparent. Sexy stuff.

One the most important questions man has had to ask is his purpose, his own being (reality), and the existence of God. It is safe to say that most people believe in God and /or an afterlife but the proof of Gods existence still escapes us. To the average person, to believe in something is reason enough not to call into doubt Gods existence. Obviously science and philosophy does not go by mere here-say and dogma. If that were the case I could quote a statistical survey that says, >80% people on the planet believe that there is a God and we can all pack our books and call it a day. Just because a few billion people believe in something doesn’t always make it true. Let’s look at this question two ways, both scientifically and philosophically. I want to emphasize Descartes argument since this is a PHILO blog.

First scientifically. Using a null hypothesis, the ‘there is nothing until you show me something method’, we see by nature that one thing whether it be mass or energy must be preceded by another thing IE a wave in the ocean must have been created the currents and these currents were created by a force and the force came about means of another force etc…In this way it safe to reason that everything in the known universe must have a supreme being setting this in motion and that great mover being God.

Second philosophically. Descartes, after abandoning all his senses and doubting everything that the might tell him come the conclusion that his being, being the one true and constant that cannot be disproved must have a creator. This does not prove or disprove that God exists, only say that since he is real and not imaginary that he must have been constructed by someone or something greater than him, a master craftsman or artist for example. He states “ Hence it follows that something cannot come into being out of nothing, and also that what is more perfect (that is, what contains in itself more reality) [41 cannot come into being from what is less perfect.” By this reasoning Descartes concludes that himself, his world, whether real or not must have been made and guided by the invisible all seeing all knowing hand of God

Meditations I

The First meditation of Descartes establishes his doubt of sense, body, the world around him and god. His doubt is methodical, he does not doubt every single thing he sees, but like a house of cards once the base is destroyed everything else crumbles down. The senses are unreliable, however, only for certain things like the process of burning wood or the nature of light, even on the size of the sun relative to earth. We see the sun as a tiny ball in the sky when in reality it is thousands of times bigger than the earth. How often do you doubt that your heart beats or that you feel the clothes on your skin? Descartes considers that only the insane could doubt their senses, but given that he was sure he was not insane, he considers dreams instead. But how did he not know he was insane as well?

If we do not know whether we are awake nor asleep, can we be certain that even our most basic senses are not fooling us? First, we must ask the question of whether we have the knowledge to tell dream from reality. Since we cannot, and if we accept that premise, then we can doubt all our senses. Let's turn towards the physical world and extended objects. Even in our dreams, shapes and colors are based from real true colors and basic shapes. People on acid claim to have seen snakes growing from their fingers, or humanlike aliens with eyes, ears, noses and mouths take them on trips to other galaxies. The Minotaur, unicorn and every other myth is something cut and pasted from a real animal. But, even if taken from reality, in our dreamlike state we do not know what is real and what is not. Everything that is extended can be doubted. That is why, as he describes here.

…arithmetic, geometry, and other such disciplines, which treat of nothing but the simplest and most general things and which are indifferent as to whether these things do or do not in fact exist, contain something certain and indubitable. For whether I am awake or asleep, two plus three make five.

Moreover, even these disciplines can be wrong if we can imagine that a supreme being is deceiving us. Let us suppose that god has fooled us of even our own thoughts. Is there nothing then that can be trusted? If that were true then we couldn’t come up with that idea. An all powerful god would see that we do not ever have that idea. Then our thoughts are our own, and god can’t control them. The only thing that is true is then that I can think, I can’t doubt that I am thinking because thinking about my own doubt proves that I DO think. This does not explain if others exist or if the universe exists. Neither does it answer if I have a body or a sense. From here, Descartes continues on his meditations and onto proving the existence of god based on his “I think, therefore I am” premise.

Perception and Object Perceived

For us particularly the empirical view that sensations resemble their causes is perhaps more common sense than it had been for Descartes. That is, it is common for most people to understand the general path of the object perceived to the sensation of a perception, in terms of the objects, light and machinery of the eye involved.  We learn about this in grade school.  Yet the question is why we come to believe that our perceptions resemble the things which cause them. To see the difficulty here, we must first acknowledge that perceptions are non-extended, to use Descartes’ language, beings purely of thought.  Moreover, every part of conscious existence is non-physical, to use our language.  And yet physical or extended things have an existence completely separate from our thought. The chair does not require my perception or consciousness in order to exist, whereas without my consciousness, there can be no perception. That is our first clue that the perception and the thing perceived are different in kind.

Once we grant that premise, we must ask why a conscious perception must resemble the object perceived. Let us say, for simplicity’s sake, that we believe there is a causal relation between the perception and the thing perceived.  The question remains why these things different in kind should have a relation of resemblance. Since they are different in kind, it seems doubtful that such a relation should exist. This would require us to explain why something that is different from another thing is transformed in kind, but in such a way that it may still resemble the original.  For that matter, how do we even explain resemblance between differences in kind?  Why would we say that the portrait of a person resembles that person? The portrait is two-dimensional and presents that person from a single point of view. Whereas the person is three-dimensional, by no means limited to the place in which the portrait is set and visible from a practical infinite points of view.

These are the matters than concern Descartes when he shows that a tickle does not resemble the feather than causes the sensation, nor a word the thing that is signified by it (“The World …”, 31). Given these purely conventional and non-essential relations, why do we cling to our common sense notion that perceptions resemble the objects perceived?