Are the Mind and Body separate?
Have you ever conceived of the idea that the Mind and Body could be two separate things entirely? A man by the name of René Descartes did. He was a French philosopher from the 1500-1600s also knows as the Father of modern philosophy for all his great work in the field. You might remember him from his famous saying "I think therefore I am".
His View was that the Mind and Body were two distinct things entirely, meaning they share no common properties. So Minds are essentially thinking non-extended things and Bodies are essentially extended non-thinking things. When something is said to be extended it is said to occupy space. Descartes believed is causally affected by the human mind and which causally produces certain mental events. For example, willing the arm to be raised causes it to be raised, whereas being hit by a hammer on the finger causes the mind to feel pain. This part of Descartes’s dualistic theory, known as interactionism, raises one of the chief problems faced by Descartes: the question how this causal interaction is possible. This argument is often referred to as "Cartesian Dualism" but may also be known as "Mind to body Dualism".
Commentaires