Editing René Descartes (section)

===Mind–body dualism===
{{Further|Mind–body problem|Mind–body dualism}}
[[File:L'homme V00083 00000004.tif|thumb|''L'homme'' (1664)]]

Descartes, influenced by the [[automaton]]s on display at the [[Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye]] near Paris, investigated the connection between mind and body, and how they interact.<ref>{{cite book
 | last = Olson
 | first = Richard
 | title = Science Deified & Science Defied: The Historical Significance of Science in Western Culture
 | volume = 2
 | year = 1982
 | publisher = University of California Press
 | pages = 33
}}</ref> His main influences for [[Mind–body dualism|dualism]] were [[theology]] and [[physics]].<ref>{{Cite journal |jstor=20013943|title=What Moves the Mind: An Excursion in Cartesian Dualism |last=Watson |first=Richard A. |author-link=Richard Watson (philosopher) |date=January 1982 |journal=[[American Philosophical Quarterly]] |volume=19 |issue=1 |pages=73–81 |publisher=[[University of Illinois Press]]}}</ref> The theory on the dualism of mind and body is Descartes's signature doctrine and permeates other theories he advanced. Known as [[Cartesian dualism]] (or mind–body dualism), his theory on the separation between the mind and the body went on to influence subsequent Western philosophies.<ref>Gobert, R. D., [https://books.google.com/books?id=U8RwsQvrQRgC ''The Mind-Body Stage: Passion and Interaction in the Cartesian Theater''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210816214247/https://books.google.com/books?id=U8RwsQvrQRgC&printsec=frontcover |date=16 August 2021 }} (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013).</ref> In ''Meditations on First Philosophy'', Descartes attempted to demonstrate the existence of [[God]] and the distinction between the human soul and the body. Humans are a union of mind and body;<ref>{{Cite book|title= The Cambridge Companion to Descartes' Meditations|author=David Cunning |publisher= Cambridge University Press|year=2014 |isbn=978-1-107-72914-8|page=277}}</ref> thus Descartes's dualism embraced the idea that mind and body are distinct but closely joined. While many contemporary readers of Descartes found the distinction between mind and body difficult to grasp, he thought it was entirely straightforward. Descartes employed the concept of ''modes'', which are the ways in which substances exist. In ''[[Principles of Philosophy]]'', Descartes explained, "we can clearly perceive a substance apart from the mode which we say differs from it, whereas we cannot, conversely, understand the mode apart from the substance". To perceive a mode apart from its substance requires an intellectual abstraction,<ref name="David Cunning 2014 278">{{Cite book|title= The Cambridge Companion to Descartes' Meditations|author=David Cunning |publisher= Cambridge University Press|year=2014 |isbn=978-1-107-72914-8|page=278}}</ref> which Descartes explained as follows:

<blockquote>The intellectual abstraction consists in my turning my thought away from one part of the contents of this richer idea the better to apply it to the other part with greater attention. Thus, when I consider a shape without thinking of the substance or the extension whose shape it is, I make a mental abstraction.<ref name="David Cunning 2014 278"/>
</blockquote>

According to Descartes, two substances are really distinct when each of them can exist apart from the other. Thus, Descartes reasoned that God is distinct from humans, and the body and mind of a human are also distinct from one another.<ref>{{Cite book|title= The Cambridge Companion to Descartes's Meditations|author=David Cunning |publisher= Cambridge University Press|year=2014 |isbn=978-1-107-72914-8|page=279}}</ref> He argued that the great differences between body (an extended thing) and mind (an un-extended, immaterial thing) make the two [[Ontology|ontologically]] distinct. According to Descartes's indivisibility argument, the mind is utterly indivisible: because "when I consider the mind, or myself in so far as I am merely a thinking thing, I am unable to distinguish any part within myself; I understand myself to be something quite single and complete."<ref>{{Cite book|title= The Cambridge Companion to Descartes' Meditations|author=David Cunning |publisher= Cambridge University Press|year=2014 |isbn=978-1-107-72914-8|page=280}}</ref>

Moreover, in The ''Meditations'', Descartes discusses a piece of [[wax]] and exposes the single most characteristic doctrine of Cartesian dualism: that the universe contained two radically different kinds of substances—the mind or soul defined as [[Thought|thinking]], and the body defined as matter and unthinking.<ref>{{Cite book|title= Descartes: An Analytic and Historical Introduction|author=Georges Dicker |publisher= OUP |year=2013 |isbn=978-0-19-538032-3|page=86}}</ref> The [[Aristotelianism|Aristotelian philosophy]] of Descartes's day held that the universe was inherently purposeful or teleological. Everything that happened, be it the motion of the [[star]]s or the growth of a [[tree]], was supposedly explainable by a certain purpose, goal or end that worked its way out within nature. Aristotle called this the "final cause", and these final causes were indispensable for explaining the ways nature operated. Descartes's theory of dualism supports the distinction between traditional Aristotelian science and the new science of [[Johannes Kepler|Kepler]] and Galileo, which denied the role of a divine power and "final causes" in its attempts to explain nature. Descartes's dualism provided the philosophical rationale for the latter by expelling the final cause from the physical universe (or ''res extensa'') in favor of the mind (or ''res cogitans''). Therefore, while Cartesian dualism paved the way for modern [[physics]], it also held the door open for religious beliefs about the immortality of the [[soul]].<ref>{{Cite book|title= Descartes: An Analytic and Historical Introduction|author=Georges Dicker |publisher= OUP |year=2013 |isbn=978-0-19-538032-3|page=87}}</ref>

Descartes's dualism of mind and matter implied a concept of human beings. A human was, according to Descartes, a composite entity of mind and body. Descartes gave priority to the mind and argued that the mind could exist without the body, but the body could not exist without the mind. In The ''Meditations'', Descartes even argues that while the mind is a substance, the body is composed only of "accidents".<ref>{{Cite book|title= Descartes: An Analytic and Historical Introduction|author=Georges Dicker |publisher= OUP |year=2013 |isbn=978-0-19-538032-3|page=301}}</ref> But he did argue that mind and body are closely joined:<ref name="Georges Dicker 2013 303">{{Cite book|title= Descartes: An Analytic and Historical Introduction|author=Georges Dicker |publisher= OUP |year=2013 |isbn=978-0-19-538032-3|page=303}}</ref>

<blockquote>Nature also teaches me, by the sensations of pain, hunger, thirst and so on, that I am not merely present in my body as a pilot in his ship, but that I am very closely joined and, as it were, intermingled with it, so that I and the body form a unit. If this were not so, I, who am nothing but a thinking thing, would not feel pain when the body was hurt, but would perceive the damage purely by the intellect, just as a sailor perceives by sight if anything in his ship is broken.<ref name="Georges Dicker 2013 303"/>
</blockquote>

Descartes's discussion on embodiment raised one of the most perplexing problems of his dualism philosophy: What exactly is the relationship of union between the mind and the body of a person?<ref name="Georges Dicker 2013 303"/> Therefore, Cartesian dualism set the agenda for philosophical discussion of the [[mind–body problem]] for many years after Descartes's death.<ref>Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (online): Descartes and the Pineal Gland.</ref> Descartes was also a [[Rationalism|rationalist]] and believed in the power of [[Innatism|innate ideas]].<ref name="Eric Shiraev 2010 88">{{Cite book|title= A History of Psychology: A Global Perspective: A Global Perspective|author=Eric Shiraev |publisher= Sage|year=2010 |isbn=978-1-4129-7383-0|page=88}}</ref> Descartes argued the theory of innate knowledge and that all humans were born with knowledge through the higher power of God. It was this theory of innate knowledge that was later combated by philosopher [[John Locke]] (1632–1704), an empiricist.<ref>{{Cite journal |jstor=27532614 |title=John Locke's Contributions to Education |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/27532614.pdf |last=Baldwin |first=Bird T. |date=April 1913 |publisher=[[The Johns Hopkins University Press]] |journal=[[The Sewanee Review]] |volume=21 |issue=2 |pages=177–87 |access-date=22 September 2020 |archive-date=26 September 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220926153940/https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/27532614.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref> [[Empiricism]] holds that all knowledge is acquired through experience.