Introduction The mind/body problem has been a discourse which many philosophers have tried to combat to no avail due to its complex and demanding nature. In this paper however, we are going to present Descartes view on the mind/body relation. Our methodology will begin with an introduction about Descartes, the philosophical schools he belonged to, a list of some of his works, his main argument, and finally his position on the mind/body problem. The mind/body problem Basically, the problem involves answering the questions what is the fundamental nature of the mind and body? and how are mind and body related? An elementary consideration of what we know about mental and physical events might well lead one to suspect that the most general characteristics of each are different from the other. 1 For example the body is among other things material, tangible, visible, and corporeal, while the mind on the other hand is immaterial, intangible, invisible, and spiritual, but in another development, they seem to bear some relation to each other or have some influence upon each other. A List of Descartes works The history of the original works and their early translations into English is as follows: (1637; A Discourse of a Method for the Wel-guiding of Reason, and the Discovery of Truth in Sciences, 1649); Meditationes de Prima Philosophia (1641; and its 2nd ed., with Objectiones Septimae, 1642; Six Metaphysical Meditations; Wherein It Is Proved That There Is a God, 1680); Principia Philosophiae (1644); and Les Passions de 1Richard A. Popkin, Philosophy Made Simple (New York: Doubleday Publishing group, 1993), p. 105 1
l âme (1649; The Passions of the Soule, 1650). Modern translations into English, many with valuable commentaries, include such selections as The Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans. by Elizabeth S. Haldane and G.R.T. Ross, 2 vol. (1911 12, reprinted 1982); The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. by John Cottingham et al., 3 vol. (1984 91); Philosophical Letters, trans. and ed. by Anthony Kenny (1970, reissued 1981); Descartes Conversation with Burman, trans. by John Cottingham (1976); Le Monde; ou, traité de la lumière, trans. by Michael Sean Mahoney (1979), in English and French; Treatise of Man, trans. by Thomas Steele Hall (1972); Discourse on Method, Optics, Geometry, and Meteorology, trans. by Paul J. Olscamp (1965); Principles of Philosophy, trans. by Valentine Rodger Miller and Reese P. Miller (1983, reprinted 1991); The Passions of the Soul, trans. by Stephen Voss (1989); and Descartes: His Moral Philosophy and Psychology, trans. by John J. Blom (1978). 2 His Life René Descartes, a 17 th century philosopher who is recognized as the Father of modern philosophy was a creative French mathematician of the first order, philosopher, and physiologist. He was born in Touraine, in the small town of La Haye and educated from the age of eight at the Jesuit college of La Flèche. At La Flèche, Descartes formed the habit of spending the morning in bed, engaged in systematic meditation. During his meditations, he was struck by the sharp contrast between the certainty of mathematics and the controversial nature of philosophy, and came to believe that the sciences could be made to yield results as certain as those of mathematics. 2 Students Encyclopedia Britannica 2010 2
Schools of Thought Descartes belonged to the Cartesians school of thought which opined that the mind is being wholly separate from the corporeal body. Sensation and the perception of reality were thought to be the source of untruth and illusions, with the only reliable truths to be had in the existence of a metaphysical mind. Such a mind can perhaps interact with a physical body, but it does not exist in the body, nor even in the same physical plane as the body. In general the Cartesian divides the world into three areas of existence: that inhabited by the physical body (matter), that inhabited by the mind, and that inhabited by God. 3 He was also a rationalist for Descartes thought that only knowledge of eternal truths including the truths of mathematics, and the epistemological and metaphysical foundations of the sciences could be attained by reason alone; other knowledge, the knowledge of physics, required experience of the world, aided by the scientific method. He also argued that although dreams appear as real as sense experience, these dreams cannot provide persons with knowledge. Also, since conscious sense experience can be the cause of illusions, then sense experience itself can be doubtable. As a result, Descartes deduced that a rational pursuit of truth should doubt every belief about reality. He elaborated these beliefs in such works as Discourse on Method, Meditations on First Philosophy, and Principles of Philosophy. Descartes developed a method to attain truths according to which nothing that cannot be recognised by the intellect (or reason) can be classified as knowledge. These truths are gained without any sensory experience, according to Descartes. Truths that are attained by reason are broken down into elements 3 Student s Encyclopedia Britannica 2010 3
that intuition can grasp, which, through a purely deductive process, will result in clear truths about reality. 4 Descartes therefore argued, as a result of his method, that reason alone determined knowledge, and that this could be done independently of the senses. For instance, his famous dictum, cogito ergo sum, is a conclusion reached without an inference from experience. This was, for Descartes, an irrefutable principle upon which to ground all forms of other knowledge. Descartes posited a metaphysical dualism, distinguishing between the substance of the human body (res extensa) and the mind or soul (res cogitans). This crucial distinction would be left unresolved and lead to what is known as the mind-body problem, since the two substances in the Cartesian system are independent of each other and irreducible. 5 Descartes Dualism The drift of Descartes thought is in the direction of dualism, the notion that they are two different kinds of substance in nature. A generally well-known version of dualism is attributed to René Descartes (1641), which holds that the mind is a non-physical substance. Descartes was the first to clearly identify the mind with consciousness and self-awareness and to distinguish this from the brain, which was the seat of intelligence We know a substance by its attributes, and since we clearly and distinctly know two quite different attributes, namely, thought and extension, there must be two different 4 5 4
substances, the spiritual and the corporeal, in other words; the mind and the body. 6 According to Stumpf, Descartes defines a substance as an existent thing which requires nothing but itself to exist. He considers each substance as thoroughly independent of the other. Hence, to know something about the mind, we need make no reference to the body, and similarly, the body can be understood without any reference to the mind. 7 Since the mind and the body according to Descartes are different substances, he decided that the basic feature of the latter was its geometrical qualities that is the size, shape and so on, while the basic feature of the former was thinking. 8 ( Thus according to Descartes, the essential property of the mind is that it thinks and the essential property of the body is that it is extended. 9 Now if thought and extension are so distinct and separate, how then can we account for living things? In answer to this question, Descartes reasoned that because living bodies partake of extension, they are part of the material world; hence living bodies operate according to the same mechanical and mathematical laws that govern other things in the material order. Descartes regarded animals as machines or automata, governed entirely by the laws of physics, and devoid of feeling or consciousness. He saw no reason for attributing mental powers to animals because all their motion, or action, can be accounted for by mechanical consideration alone, since it is nature which acts in them according to the disposition of their organs. 10 Men are different; they have a soul, which according to him resides in the pineal gland. There the soul comes in contact with the 6 Samuel E. Stumpf, Philosophy History and Problems (Sic), p. 245. 7 Ibid. 8Richard A. Popkin, op.cit., p. 105. 9Ibid., 10 Samuel E. Stumpf, op.cit., p. 246. 5
vital spirits, and through this contact, there is interaction between soul and body. 11 Descartes believed that every physical event can be accounted for by a consideration of mechanical or efficient causes, he continued that there is no need to consider a final cause when describing the physical processes of the body. His reason for saying this was that since the total quantity of motion in the universe is constant, the movement of the human body could not originate in the human mind or soul. 12 Descartes also said that the soul could only affect or alter the direction of the motion in certain elements and part of the body. Just how the mind could do this was difficult to explain precisely, because thought and extension, that is mind and body were such different and separate substances. He went on to say that the soul does not move the various parts of the body directly but having its principal seat in the brain, in a place he called the pineal gland, comes first of all in contact with the vital spirit and through these the soul interacts with the body. From this we can see that Descartes tried to give the human body a mechanical explanation and at the same time preserve the possibility of the soul s influence, through the activity of the will, upon human behavior. Men therefore unlike animal is capable of several activities, he can engage in pure thought, his mind can be influenced by physical sensation and perceptions, his body can be directed by his mind, and his mind is moved by purely mechanical forces. 13 However, Descartes dualism made it difficult for him to describe how the mind 11 Cf. Bertrand Russel, History of Western Philosophy ( London: MPG Books Ltd., 2001), p. 545. 12Cf. Samuel E. Stumpf, op.cit., p. 247. 13Cf. Ibid. 6
and body could interact with one another. If each substance is completely independent, the mind must dwell in the body as a pearl in an oyster or as Descartes described it a pilot in a ship. 14. if the mind dwells in the body as a pearl in an oyster or a pilot in a ship, it means that one is and can be independent of the other. Descartes aggravated the separation of the mind and the body by his novel definition of thinking, for he included in the act of thinking some experiences that had traditional been referred to the body, namely, the whole sphere of sense perceptions, for example feeling. When Descartes defines what I am as a thing which thinks he makes no mention of the body, for everything is included in thinking, a thinking thing is a thing which doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, refuses, and which also imagines and feels. Presumably, the self could feel heat without a body. Descartes denial of his own dualism But Descartes denies his own dualism when he says that nature teaches me by these sensations of pain, hunger thirst, etc., that I am not lodged in my body as a pilot in a vessel, but that I am closely united to it, and, so to speak, so intermingled with it that I seem to compose with it one whole. He even tried to locate the mind in the pineal gland, though even there the technical problem of interaction remains, for if there is interaction, there would be contact, and so the mind would have to be extended. On this problem, his rules of method did not lead him to any clear and distinct conclusion. 15 Another point to note is that in spite of the complete separation in his theory 14Cf. Ibid. 15Cf. Ibid. 7
between mind and body, Descartes was impressed by the commonsensical and scientific evidence that indicated the reciprocal influence of mental and physical events. For instance, a pin jabbed into the physical, extended finger is followed by a thought or a pain in the unextended mind. But a studious examination of the medical and psychological evidence convinced Descartes that the mind is only aware of physical events in the brain. 16 Various motions can take place in the body without being followed by mental events, unless the physical motions first cause movement in the brain. Similarly, just by producing certain physical motions in the brain without affecting the rest of the body, one can stimulate thoughts. The example that most impressed Descartes was that persons who had lost a limb could be led to think that the limb was being moved, or pained, merely by stimulating parts of the nervous system. This sort of information led Descartes to believe that there must be some kind of contact between the mental and the physical worlds, and that the contact must take place in the brain. 17 On the basis of this conclusion, Descartes developed a theory called interactionism. In Cartesian philosophy and the philosophy of mind, interactionism is a dualistic theory that hold that mind and body, though separate and distinct substances, causally interact. Interactionists assert that a mental event, for instance if I decide to put on the light, this decision, an event in the mental world, is followed by a physical event of a light being turned on. Conversely, the physical event of my putting on the light can be the cause of the mental event of pain caused by electric discharge. The interaction between mind and body according to Descartes takes place in the pineal gland, which is located at the base of the brain. Here, presumably, some sort of 16Richard A. Popkin, op.cit., p. 106. 17 Ibid., p. 107. 8
impart occurred between the physical, extended brain and the unextended, thinking mind, which allowed physical events to lead to thoughts, and thoughts to alter the direction of the motions of extended objects. 18 When it was pointed out to him that his solution to this metaphysical problem was quite unsatisfactory, because he had still not explained plausibly how it was possible for mind and body to interact upon each other if they were really of two totally different natures, Descartes became more and more vague about the matter. He insisted that the fact of interaction was known to everybody; we experience it all the time. But how mind and body were united, he admitted, was most difficult to explain. The pineal gland theory actually produced more problems than it solved, since one could ask whether this gland was physical, and if so, how it could be next to something that did not occupy space. If it were mental, how could it next to any part of the brain? In a letter written to one of his admirers, the Princess Elizabeth of the Palatinate, Descartes threw up his hand in despire and told her that the union of mind and body was best understood by not thinking about it, and that it was just one of those mysteries that had to be accepted without being comprehended. 19 Some of Descartes followers struggle with his mind/body problem and proposed some ingenious solutions. The most notable among them was Arnold Geulinex, who proposed the theory of occasionalism or parallelism. Geulinex maintain Descartes dualism and denied that there is any interaction between mind and body, for they are two separate substances, yet, it is a fact that when I decide or will to move my arm, it actually 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid. 9
moves, but he continued by saying that my will did not cause my arm to move. Rather, there are two parallel series of act going on simultaneously, one physical and the other mental. When I will to move my arm, God on that occasion moves it and thereby creates an action parallel to my will. It can even be said that God decreed this parallelism for the beginning of time. 20 Gilbert Ryle was among the philosophers who rejected Descartes idea, his criticism can be summarized in the following statements; 1. That the mind is a ghost in a machine which is the body, 2. The category mistake which means that the mind gives the body a statue it does not have and 3 the double causation theory which means that the human being has two causes that is the physical cause and the mental cause. 21 Conclusion From this paper, we can see that Descartes tried to provide solution to the mind/body problem, but his solution created more problems and lead down the foundation of what we study today namely the Philosophy of Mind. However, Descartes contribution to Philosophy can not be ignored, for though he could not solve the problem, it is in his footstep that we tread the road to the solution for the mind body problem. 20 Samuel E. Stumpf, op.cit., p. 249 21 http://philosophypages.com.ph/ryle.htm (7 Jan 2011) 10