Descartes Mind and Body

Descartes has a very distinct thought when thinking about the mind, and how it relates to the body, or more specifically then brain. He seems to want to explain that the mind in itself is independent from the body. A body is merely a physical entity that could be proven to be true scientifically and also can be proven through the senses. Such things are not possible with the meta-physical mind because it is independent of the body. 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.

Renee begins with his premises to finding this out in his first Meditation. He assumes that there are no such things as physical bodies. He uses the dream argument to set him free of the things he thinks he knows. By doing this, he can only begin his argument with things that he is absolutely certain of. He continues to ponder thoughts in Meditation two where he establishes one thing that he assumes has to be true, and that is that if he is doing the thinking, then he must be real. Here is where you begin to see his famous, “I think, therefore I am” line which is showing that he acknowledges that he has a mind, without being sure if he has a body. In Meditation three he begins to attempt to prove that God is real. He believes that is he can prove that God is real, and that he is all powerful and all good then he will be able to prove other truths. He comes to think that God has to exist because the idea could not have come from within himself.

In Meditation six he tries to begin to show you that there is a material world. Since God is all powerful and all good, then he would not have mislead us in thinking that there was such thing as a material world, if there truly was not. He then thinks about why there are evil things in the world, and if it was true that God was all good and all powerful then why would he create such things. In my eyes this does not cancel out that God is real, because it is possible that at first God created everything with good intentions, and left individuals to live and react to certain situations their own ways.

He then begins to address the problem of imagination. If he realizes that things are around him, that rules out the possibility that he is imagining such entities. He says that imagination is not essential to his existing, so he removes himself from these thoughts.

After seeing this, he then attempts to see if the body truly does exist. He explains the beliefs he has about the outside world. He understands his body and such experiences it goes though, and through that he realizes that they must be present, and if they were not it would be impossible for him to feel them. He distinguishes the body from other things because the body must always be present, while other things could be merely different feelings. He here uses premises that he developed in Meditations three and four to help state that mind and body both exist, but separately. He says that his mind is different from his body, so therefore it must be separate from it. He then comes back to 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 says that god has made him think that his mind and body at distinctly separate, so they must be. He argues that his body and mind are separate because he can think of them being that way. He says, “My essence is only as a thing that thinks, and not an extended thing.”(Kemerling,