Essay about Descartes´ Mental and Physical Substances

When Descartes published his ideas in his Meditations on First Philosophy, his ideas were not new, but nonetheless groundbreaking. He proposed there were two separate types of matter or stuff that can exist independent of each other. These are physical substances and mental substances. The physical can only occupy space in the real world, and cannot do any of the things we attribute to mental faculties, such as thinking and reasoning. Though the mental cannot be present in the material world, it can surely have an effect on what the physical body does. Substance dualism, therefore, gives way to the idea of an immortal soul that occupies a different realm than our physical bodies. The question then is how do the mental substances affect†¦show more content†¦Obviously this goes against common thinking, because one can easily see that mental states do matter and affect physical and brain states. The question then is how do they do so? 2. Functionalism and the Chinese Room Functionalism is the idea that brain states are equivalent to their functional roles within the brain itself. That is, functionalists are concerned with how these mental states are related to their causal role and how the functions are organized, much like software programs on a computer. Searle poses an argument against functionalism that he published himself, called the Chinese Room argument. Let’s say I was placed in a room full of boxes of Chinese characters, and I have a book that enables me to answer questions posed in Chinese. There is a computer on which I receive Chinese symbols, and unknowing to me, are questions. All I have to do is refer to the rule book and pick out the appropriate symbols from the boxes in the room and enter them back into the computer. It can be assumed that I can pass the Turing test for understanding Chinese while at the same time not understand a single word of Chinese. Therefore, although I have an under standing of Chinese syntax due to the rule book, I do not have a true understanding of the language because I cannot attach meaning to the symbols. Thus, the idea that mental states and thought can be equated with following a set of syntactic rules isShow MoreRelatedPhilosophy: Descartes Views on the Differentiation Between the Mind and the Body 897 Words   |  4 PagesDescartes views on the differentiation between the mind and the body has given rise to much thought regarding the interaction between these supposedly distinct substances. Through examining correlations between Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia it is evident that Descartes himself struggled to plausibly identify the interaction among the mental and material in relation to causation. This essay will investigate Elizabeth’s quires into the causational relationship between the mind and body by explainingRead MoreThe Mind-Body Problem Essay957 Words   |  4 Pagesbetween the mind and the body. Theorists, such as R enà © Descartes and Thomas Nagel, have written extensively on the problem but they have many dissenting beliefs. Descartes, a dualist, contends that the mind and body are two different substances that can exist separately. Conversely, Nagel, a dual aspect theorist, contends that the mind and body are not substances but different properties. However, although Nagel illustrates the problems with Descartes= theory, Nagel=s theory runs into the problem of panpsychismRead MoreAnalysis Of Elisabeth s Criticism Of Descartes Mind Body Dualism1398 Words   |  6 PagesPrincess Elisabeth’s Criticism of Descartes’ Mind-Body Dualism Renà © Descartes’ seventeenth century philosophy receives much of the credit for the basis of modern philosophy, specifically his argument that the body and the mind are completely separate substances, each with its own independence from the other, also known as dualism. Descartes was educated in the Aristotelian and Greek tradition, and those ideas influenced his dualist thought. In Meditations, Descartes focused on dualism in the contextRead MoreThe Mind Body Problem And Substance Dualism869 Words   |  4 Pagesbody separate substances of elements of the same substance? In this paper I wish to propose, and try to provide support for Descartes notion of the immaterial mind, by critically discussing the view of substance dualism, pertaining to the relationship between the mind and body. The two arguments of which I will provide in this paper to support this view are divisibility and disembodied existence. There are two fundamentally different substances in this universe, ph ysical and mental properties, thisRead MoreThe Mind / Brain Identity Theory1718 Words   |  7 Pagesthrough different mental and corporeal experiences. The former is associated with one having a (non-physical) mind, which contains beliefs, desires, feelings and so on, while the latter involves having a (physical) brain. The Mind/Body problem questions whether the mind and brain are the same or different objects. For a long time, the interpretation of these experiences has been much debated by philosophers and scientists. One influential interpretation is Descartes’s Dualism of substances, which becameRead MoreA Brief Biography of Rene Descartes1580 Words   |  6 Pagesof philosopher Rene Descartes, who had endorsed the mechanistic conception of the world and the human body by coining notions such as mind, substance, and the knowledge argument; although his notions were not always accepted, he managed to provide valid support. Born in France, Rene Descartes, dubbed The Father of Modern Philosophy was, in a way, a Renaissance man having contributed influence amongst subjects such science, mathematics, psychology, and philosophy. Descartes was the medium of theRead MoreEssay about Descartes Theory of Substance Dualism791 Words   |  4 PagesDescartes Theory of Substance Dualism Throughout the history of man, philosophers have tried to come up with an explanation of where our minds, or consciousness, came from and how we are able to have a nonphysical characteristic of ourselves. Does our physical brain automatically give us nonphysical characteristics like feelings, thoughts, and desires or is there something else there, the mind, that interacts with our bodies and makes us feel, think, and desire? Also, is the mind theRead MoreThe Common Notion Of Minds Essay1705 Words   |  7 PagesThe common notion about minds is that they are incredibly simple things that we should easily have the full extent of knowledge on since after all we are constantly using one. It seems completely self-evident as Descartes put it â€Å"I think there for, I am†, that we are a mind and that there is nothing strange going on up there but there is much more to the story here. It’s taken for granted far too much that we have any idea of what a mind is and is not. There are quite a numerous amount of differentRead MoreDescartes s Theory Of Mental And Physical Components Essay1438 Words   |  6 PagesDescartes, a well known philosopher, proposed that the mental and physical components are different things. Considering they are casual connections between the mind and body and the mind and body are two independent substances. I will argue that these premises proposed by Descart es are not reasonable and the theory which best accounts for the â€Å"problem of interaction† is the identity theory. Rene Descartes opposed that the mind was a separate substance from the body which then created the mind-bodyRead MoreEssay Socrates And Descartes On Dual693 Words   |  3 PagesSocrates and Descartes on Dualism Dualism means the complete separation of the mental world and the physical world. In philosophy, it is the theory that the universe is explicable only as a whole composed of two distinct and mutually exclusive factors: the mind and the body. Socrates and Plato are called dualists because they think that mind and body are separate and distinct substances. Mind is conscious and non-spatial and body is spatial but not conscious. While separate, these two substances interact