Descartes’ Philosophy: Exploring Mind-Body Dualism and Thought
Descartes: Knowledge and Ideas
The Cartesian notion of cogitatio, or thought, is central to Cartesian philosophy. According to Descartes, for an act to be considered thought, it needs to be borne by immediate consciousness. Descartes identifies two types of acts that fall under thought: cognitive acts (perception) and acts of will.
Thought is the main attribute of the spiritual substance, which is why identifying the soul means identifying the thinking substance. It is also thought that confirms one’s own existence. There are three types of thought: ideas that come from cognitive acts, judgments, and volitions of the acts of will. For Descartes, images are ways of thinking through the immediate perception and awareness of that thought.
Ideas are characterized as ways of thinking. To determine the thought, the idea becomes the thought of this and nothing else. To be perceived and have a representative value, ideas are spiritual in nature, have reality, and make sense to apply the laws of chance. Descartes changed his mind about previous philosophy. Previously, the idea was a medium quod, half-thought; the thought did not lie about things but about the ideas.
Classification of Ideas
Descartes classifies ideas based on their origin:
- Adventitious ideas: These appear to come from external experience of realities beyond oneself.
- Factitious ideas: These are constructed from other ideas.
- Innate ideas: These come from one’s own nature.
Images can be considered as ways of thinking and are all alike. Also, as objective realities, they are images that represent things. In this sense, they are very different from each other.
Descartes: Body and Soul
For Descartes, the soul and body are distinct substances. In Principles of Philosophy, he states that we conceive of a substance when we conceive that there is only one thing that does not need anything else to exist. Only God is like that. For Descartes, the soul is a substance whose main attribute is thinking (res cogitans). As Descartes said: “What am I? I am a thinking thing, I am a thinking substance.”
The body, for Descartes, is a substance whose main attribute is three-dimensional extension (res extensa). The existence of extensive substance is established after affirming the existence of God and divine truth. Size, shape, and motion belong to the corporeal world. The res extensa is applied as something material and mechanical. This radical distinction raises the question of the relationship between the two substances.
The Mind-Body Problem
The problem only arises in the case of humans. The human body is part of the extension and is a machine, like any other animal. There is conclusive evidence, absent in animals, of the presence of creative thinking, the res cogitans: language and cognition. In his last work, Descartes raises the question of how the soul is united to the body and responds that it is necessary to know that the soul is truly united to the body. However, there is a place where the soul exerts more particular functions: the pineal gland.
Descartes chose this gland as the crossover point, which is unique. Dualism allows Descartes to establish freedom. The freedom of the soul is revealed, as while Descartes doubts existence, doubting is an act of freedom. This allows him to set the immortality of the soul after death. Descartes separated the limitations of the capabilities of the soul to the psychic life, defined as the set of activities that can be consciously willed. For Descartes, love is identified with the mind.