Michael Lacewing enquiries@alevelphilosophy.co.uk Descartes on the mind Michael Lacewing enquiries@alevelphilosophy.co.uk

The cogito ‘I think’ cannot be doubted. What am I? I am a thing that thinks. I cannot doubt this, yet I can doubt whether I have a body. So I can be separated from a body. The mind is a separate substance from the body.

Objection 1: thinking thing ‘I think’ - is there an ‘I’? What does this mean? If I exist - as a substance - from one thought to the next, Descartes has not shown this; only that ‘there are thoughts’. If I exist as that which thinks this thought, Descartes has not shown I exist for more than one thought.

Objection 2: minds without bodies Just because Descartes can think of his mind existing without his body, this doesn’t mean that his mind really can exist without his body. Perhaps there is some metaphysical connection between his mind and body that would make this impossible that Descartes doesn’t know about. Cp. I think the Masked Man robbed the bank; I don’t think my father robbed the bank; Therefore, my father isn’t the Masked Man.

On bodies So far, Descartes is an idealist, not a dualist. He does not assert that the body exists until Meditation VI. The body - if it exists - has parts, the mind has no parts. These are essential properties of mind and body. So they are different kinds of thing. Is this right?

Mental causation If the mind is just thought, not in space, and matter is just extension, in space, how could one possibly causally affect the other? All physical effects have a sufficient physical cause. Nothing happens needs a non-physical explanation. Mental causes would violate the laws of physics, e.g. law of conservation of energy.

Mind and personal identity Am I this mind (substance) or this set of psychological properties? Locke: Even if there are minds as separate things, I am not a mind: If all the psychological properties, my memories, beliefs, desires, emotions, were swapped with yours - would I be my original soul or your original soul? Locke: identity depends on connections, esp. memories

What am I? Narrow: ‘I’ am essentially a soul, a thing that thinks that can be separated from a body. (Meditation II) ‘I am not only lodged in my body as a pilot in a vessel, but…I am very closely united with it, and so to speak so intermingled with it that I seem to compose with it one whole.’ (Meditation VI) I am a person - an embodied soul. the soul takes on bodily experiences as its own, i.e. we refer our sensations, emotions, etc. to our selves

Confused? ‘It does not seem to me that the human mind is capable of forming a very distinct conception both of the distinction between the soul and the body and of their union; for to do this it is necessary to conceive of them as a single thing and, at the same time, to conceive of them as two things; and the two conceptions are mutually opposed.’

Other topics That the mind is known better than body (Meditation II) That mind is essentially thought (on intentionality) The relationship between thought and consciousness Introspection, immediate access, privacy Problem of other minds