Thinking Through The Philosophical Problems Of The Dualism Of Descartes Essay Example

The aim of this paper is to think through the philosophical problems of René Descartes’s (1596-1650) metaphysical dualism, an issue he presents in both Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) and Discourse on Method (1637). Firstly, the issue of what constitutes a thinking substance will be discussed. Since Descartes posits a pluralistic ontology, it is important to clarify the distinction he makes between thinking and extended substances, and why he considers such a dualism to be philosophically useful. Secondly, the issue of what makes Descartes’ position satisfactory will be examined, as well as outlining central flaws in his argument. Thirdly, the main conundrum of Descartes’ dualism, namely how can two separate substances interact even though they are distinct will be puzzled out by virtue of analogy and philosophical example and thought experiment. It is important to point out that when Descartes uses terms like soul or mind, he essentially means thinking substance, so when he talks about “our soul is of a nature entirely independent of a body” he is speaking about the dualism between thinking and extended substances, or what is sometimes called in shorthand “the mind/body problem” (Discourse on Method 33). Finally, the thesis outlined in this paper is that Descartes’ dualism presents a major philosophical problem of how mind and body can work together based on the assumption that both mind and body are separate by interactive substances.
It is important to point out that Descartes’ position maintains an ontology of pluralism. Unlike monist philosophers who posit that ultimate reality is composed of one thing, pluralists maintain that ultimately reality must be based on more than one ultimate reality. By ultimate reality, we mean what Descartes means when he writes in Meditations that the is looking for the undergirding structure of a first philosophy (13). In other words, what are the original foundations of reality itself, and how is reality even possible. By reality, we mean the assumption that understanding things how they really are and not merely how they seem is an important clarification to make. To understand reality in this way, Descartes argues that essentially there are two kinds of substances: thinking and extended things. By substance, Descartes means an entity broken down into its most basic parts. So for example, a tree, while made up of bark, leaves, water, et cetera, is ultimately composed of material reality, and that material reality is what Descartes means by extension. By contrast, reality is not only material in nature, but also has an immaterial basis. While trees are physical in nature, for we can see them, touch them, and so on, there is also the ability to understand “tree” and in this way I can conceive of tree in my mind. The “tree in my mind” also has substance, according to Descartes (Discourse on Method 25-26). The idea of the tree is a thing in the sense that it has substance in a similar way, but distinct, from the extended tree in the world. Thinking substances are what form the basis of everything that is which is why Descartes famously declares that since I can think, and since I can know my thoughts without doubt, then indubitably, thinking must be knowledge I can know clearly and distinctly (Discourse on Method 18).
Since there is a separation between extended things, chairs, trees, armchairs, telephones, bodies, the glass of orange juice on the table from those things in my dreams, thoughts, motivations, desires, et cetera, there must be some kind of unity between these disparate realities that makes the world a whole even despite its separateness. The way Descartes frames this problem is to think how is it even possible to say “I am; I exist” by keeping together the dualism he has created between extended and mental, between mind and body, by also acknowledging that the sensory world, the world I perceive through my bodily senses (taste, touch, etc.) is in tandem with that which is not sensory but is rather supersensory? (Meditations 18).
What makes Descartes philosophically interesting and useful is that he rejects the thesis that the body is just all body, and he also rejects the thesis that all there is ultimately is mind. To illustrate this concept, Descartes has think of a piece of wax. What makes the wax what it is? If I thump it with my fingers, I can hear it thud. It is hard, it has a scent, and so on and so forth. A part of me wants to believe that it is these “parts” that makes the wax what it is. When I go to light the wax and watch it melt, what about the max changes. But even when the wax melts, what has made the wax essentially wax gone away (Meditations 21)? Is the wax that is melted the same substance as the wax that once stood in front of me? Descartes concedes that, even though, the parts that attune to my senses, the smell, the touch, and the contours of the wax, have changed the wax itself is essentially unchanged. I do not conceive of the wax through its extension, but I conceive of the wax firstly through the construct of thinking. The wax, its physical form, and the wax as a thought are inextricably combined but separate. The wax cannot exist without me thinking of it, is one way to put the argument. Or, conversely, the wax is not merely a thought in my mind — for if this were the case there would be no difference between dreaming and reality. When I dream of a wax, it is merely my imagination at play. Reality itself is always more than just a dream.
What Descartes is saying is that the external world does exist. But the external world’s existence cannot be based on sensory perception alone. As Descartes explains in Meditations, senses deceive me, and the world that I know it through my perception could be simply a trick (55). Since I can doubt what I know through my senses, I have to base the existence of a material world on thinking, which cannot be doubted. Another way to think about Descartes’ dualism is to think about the relationship between numbers and things. Math — and it is interesting to note that Descartes was a mathematician — is based on theoretical ideas that underpin concrete facts about the world. Formulas do not exist in a vacuum, but the formula for the area of a square is distinct from the room that is being measured, but they work together, and moreover, the mathematical basis for space and time undergird. There is a unity of existence — in such a way that if I lose my brain, I cannot think, but thinking is superior to brains. The body has its limitations, for it is extended into space, and when the body dies, the mind is separate and we can imagine that the mind is immortal and lives forever. So what makes the human person a self — one can conclude — is that I am a thinking thing (5).
Of course, the main problem with Descartes’ line of thinking is that why does he even need to set up such a duality in the first place? Descartes’ ontology takes a lot of work for reality as we know it to happen. It involves an intricate relationship between thinking things and extended things, and it also brings up such complicated additional problems. Descartes in his books never quite explains what I called earlier in this paper the ignition switch between mind and body. At one point, Descartes opined that the gateway between mind and body was located in the pineal gland (Finger 78). Could we not just say, like the material monist, that the only things that exist are material things, that what we think of as “mind” is only merely the firing of neuronal activity in the brain. Thoughts are not mental things with immaterial substances, but are only a byproduct of physical activity that is conjured up by cerebral activity. What we are is merely a biological construct of nature, and what we call thinking is only an offshoot of pure materialism. The weakness of Descartes is that he tries to maintain the immortality of the soul so he can buttress this notion that the self lives long after it dies, and his philosophy suffers from this fallacy of contending that the soul is immortal.
The other glaring fallacy in the argument of Descartes is his insistence that thinking things are things. If thinking things are “something” and they have a substance, should we not be able to locate this substance? There is no evidence that immaterial things exist in the way that Descartes tries to posit. If we put a patient inside of an electron scanning device to pick up proof of mental things, the scientists will surely find evidence of brain activity, which will be represented on a graph as a series of undulating lines. But it is not as if the mental things that Descartes discusses can be separated out from the extended things and placed in a petri dish to observe. In a way, this is still a mystery for the neurobiologist who in vain tries to locate the pure essence of thought itself and isolate it in a lab.
What we can give credit to Descartes for is that, even though, his solution to what philosophers call the mind/body problem is ultimately unsatisfactory, he still does offer us an example of a philosophical problem. The starting point is based on the common sense observation that there are physical things and there are mental things and the problem of how can we know for sure what is real when we are limited by our faculties of perception? Descartes also introduces the power of thinking, which he tries to show can provide “clear and distinct ideas” (Meditations 22).
In conclusion, when examining the dualism of Descartes it is frustrating because as a philosopher we are brought back to the kernel of an indissoluble puzzle. Do we live in two different worlds? Descartes lets us think about a relevant issue that is still broiling today. What is the most cogent view: the scientific view that is buttressed by empirical observation and trial and error, or the religious-mythological view that is buttressed by pure belief and the hope for a better world? While Descartes does do damage to philosophy by presenting us with the incurable division of two separate worlds, we realize that we cannot just do away with the problem by either embracing a world of pure physicalism on the other hand, or a world like the Matrix movie where everything is sheer illusion and we are just products of an evil genius (Meditations 16). The middle way is to realize that Descartes, in his seventeenth-century thinking, still presents us with a puzzle that still challenges how we make sense of the metaphysical truth of the universe and our place in it.

Works Cited

Descartes, René, and Donald A. Cress. Discourse on the Method for Conducting One's Reason
Well and for Seeking Truth in the Sciences. Indianapolis, Ind: Hackett Pub. Co, 1998.
Internet Resource.
Descartes, René, and Donald A. Cress. Meditations on First Philosophy: In Which the Existence
of God and the Distinction of the Soul from the Body Are Demonstrated. Indianapolis:
Hackett Pub. Co, 1993. Internet Resource.
Finger, Stanley. Minds Behind the Brain: A History of the Pioneers and Their Discoveries.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Internet Resource.