Rene Descartes: Mind-Body Dualism

Bryan Kidd 10/28/02

Rene Descartes has overtaken a monumental task in his Meditations on First Philosophy. He wants to answer the tough questions about his own existence, the existence of God and the truth about the world around him. In arguably the most important book in philosophy, Rene uses simple steps of logic to build up difficult conclusions. Building on his previous premises, Descartes finally proves whether material things exist or not and determines whether his mind and body are separate from each other or not. In Meditation Six, Descartes lays the foundation for dualism which has become one of the most important arguments in philosophy.

Before we can understand what Rene concludes in Meditation Six, we must start with his premises. If the premises are true and the argument is valid, then we can accept his conclusions. In Meditation One, Descartes assumes for the sake of his experiment that material objects do not exist. He uses the Dream Argument to free him of all the things he believes to know. By doubting everything, Descartes can start with those things he can be sure of and build a solid foundation for knowledge.

Traces of Descartes dualism start in Meditation Two. He establishes that the one thing he can be certain of is that he is thinking. Initially it seems that by closing himself off from the world, he would not be able to arrive at any true statements on his own. However, this first conclusion seems impossible to refute. Since he knows he is doing the thinking, it follows that he must exist. His famous line, “I think, therefore I am,” lays the foundation for his mind-body dualism. He has established that he has a mind without needing to assume that he has a body.

So Descartes can be sure of his mind, but he cannot be sure of anything he takes in through the senses. He argues that he could actually be under the control of an evil demon that is deceiving him into incorrectly believing what he takes to know as reality.

In Meditation Three, Descartes sets out to prove the existence of God. If he can prove that God exists, then he can begin to establish other truths. He starts with the idea he has that God is all-powerful and all-good. He argues that this idea could not have come from within himself. Therefore, the idea must have originated from God. From this line of reasoning, Descartes is convinced that God must exist. This line of reasoning is not completely convincing to someone who has not had that idea about God. They might argue that since they did not have the same idea, it follows that God does not exist. But how can God exist for one person and not another. He either exists or does not exist.

His argument seems convincing to someone who already believes in God, but it does not seem capable of proving God’s existence to an atheist. I do believe in God, but I do not think that his existence depends on me having an idea of him. Just because some people do not believe in God does not make him not exist. The same logic can be true with Descartes reasoning. Just because Descartes believes there is a God does not mean that God has to exist. I look to more concrete forms of proof like the Bible and the person of Jesus Christ to base my beliefs in God. If God wanted this to be a guessing game, he would not have sent Jesus as a living testimony. I think philosophy is a bad avenue to establish your beliefs on whether God exists. God transcends our own limited knowledge, even Descartes admits to that.

Before Descartes can speculate on the relationship of his mind and body, he must first prove that material things do exist. He sets out to answer this tough question in Meditation Six. He argues that God can bring about anything into existence. Since Rene now knows that God exists, then it follows that the rest of the material world exists. Since God is all-powerful and all-good he would not have made our judgment about the world around us to be faulty. Here Rene runs into the problem of evil in the world. Since God can make the world any way he wants, why would an all-good god choose to allow bad things to happen?

Personally, I believe that God made a world that was good but decided to give man free will so we could truly love him. Without free will we would have been more like robots than human beings. And God’s nature is true love which requires a choice. Descartes wants to say that God’s mind is infinitely larger than his and he cannot begin to understand the logic behind God allowing evil in the world. In some regards, I agree with Descartes assertions here. But God does not leave us in the dark to why there is evil in the world. That is the price we pay for the original sin of Adam and Eve. Yeah, God could have wiped them out and started over, but that’s not what a true artist does. He loves his creation too much.

First, Descartes addresses the problem of imagination. He could just be imagining the things around him that he takes to know. For Rene to know that things do exist around him is to rule out any possibility that he is simply imagining them. Descartes rules this possibility out by saying that imagination is not essential to his existing. Therefore, he can separate himself from this faculty for this exercise.

So Descartes sets out to determine if the body actually exists. He begins by listing beliefs that he has about the outside world. He has knowledge about his own body like their pleasurable effects and appetites and he has knowledge of other bodies he has observed in nature. He acknowledges that he must sense them if they are present and it is impossible to sense them if they are not present.

But he makes the distinction between the body and other things. The body is different because it is always present. It has a special relationship with the mind because it is the seat of appetites, feelings, pleasure and pain.

Here, Descartes uses previous premises established in Meditations Three and Four to state that his mind and body exist separately. He says that what God makes separately is different from something else. His mind is different and therefore separate from his body. He also falls back on his Truth Rule from Meditation Four. ‘Every judgment that I make concerning matters that are “clear and distinct” to me is most assuredly true.’ He asserts that God has made him clearly and distinctly understand that his mind and body are separate, and therefore must be separate. Descartes argues that he is distinct from his body because he can think of himself as distinct from it. ‘My essence is only as a thing that thinks and not as an extended thing.’ So Descartes has established a valid argument for dualism. If you take the premises of the existence of God and his Truth Rule to be true, then you must accept that his mind is separate from his body.

So Descartes wants to say that his mind and body are two completely separate entities. In fact his mind is not necessarily located in any one space. It is a non-measurable, non-physical entity, much like how we view our soul. This Cartesian mind is independent of his body, but has a special relationship such that they are always joined. His thoughts, feelings, emotions, appetites, pleasures and pains are a form of both his mind and body.

The strongest objection I can make to Descartes’ mind-body dualism is the scientific evidence we have that the mind and body are one thing. The mind is not this unexplainable force that makes us who we are. Actually it is a function of our chemical and neurological makeup that is in our brain. Descartes makes an interesting point that our personality, the essence of who we are, is much more than simply a function of the tissue that is in our heads. I agree with that. But I do not believe that it is necessarily because we have a Cartesian mind. It does not follow that our mind and body are separate entities. Our mind does not have to be separated from our body to explain the dynamics of our being. I think it is actually the soul that is the one thing that can be separate from our physical being.

The reason that I believe that the mind and body are not a separate function is because of the science that has proved where our thoughts and emotions come from. The inter workings of our physical body is a testimony to the fact that there must be a creator that designed such an efficient machine. The brain is an unexplainable organ, in that it gives us something different than any other creature. We have reason, knowledge and intellect. We have emotions that no other animal has. I believe that is because God gave us a soul. And that is the thing that can be separated from the rest of our body. When we die, it is the soul and not the mind that goes to the afterlife.

Descartes would answer by saying that his idea of the mind is one that encompasses this notion of a person’s soul. His Cartesian mind is something that was given to us by God and something that will remain with us after we die. I think that Rene Descartes was an amazing thinker and mathematician but his mind-body dualism cannot be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. But such is the case with philosophy.