Dualism, Rene Descartes, and Philosophy of the Mind

by frankiespeakin 6 Replies latest watchtower bible

• 

  frankiespeakin

  Are Mind and Matter the same if not how can they intereact? Dualism says they are different,, Who is watching in our inner theater? Who hears the sounds from the ears, who or what does that? Who smells the smells and feels the pain?

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism_(philosophy_of_mind) This will take you one more click to read article.

  In philosophy of mind, dualism is the assumption that mental phenomena are, in some respects non-physical, [ 1 ] or that the mind and body are distinct. [ 2 ] Thus, it encompasses a set of views about the relationship between mind and matter, and is contrasted with other positions, such as physicalism, in the mind–body problem . [ 1 ] [ 2 ]

  Aristotle shared Plato's view of multiple souls, (ψυχ? psychí) and further elaborated a hierarchical

  Dualism is closely associated with the philosophy of René Descartes (1641), which holds that the mind is a nonphysical substance. Descartes clearly identified the mind with consciousness and self-awareness and distinguished this from the brain as the seat of intelligence. [ 6 ] Hence, he was the first to formulate the mind–body problem in the form in which it exists today. [ 7 ] Dualism is contrasted with various kinds of monism, including phenomenalism. Substance dualism is contrasted with all forms of materialism, but property dualism may be considered a form of emergent materialism or non-reductive physicalism in some sense. This article discusses the various forms of dualism and the arguments which have been made both for and against this thesis.....

  Descartes and his disciples

  In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes embarked upon a quest in which he called all his previous beliefs into doubt, in order to find out of what he could be certain. [ 7 ] In so doing, he discovered that he could doubt whether he had a body (it could be that he was dreaming of it or that it was an illusion created by an evil demon), but he could not doubt whether he had a mind. This gave Descartes his first inkling that the mind and body were different things. The mind, according to Descartes, was a "thinking thing" (lat. res cogitans), and an immaterial substance. This "thing" was the essence of himself, that which doubts, believes, hopes, and thinks. The distinction between mind and body is argued in Meditation VI as follows: I have a clear and distinct idea of myself as a thinking, non-extended thing, and a clear and distinct idea of body as an extended and non-thinking thing. Whatever I can conceive clearly and distinctly, God can so create. So, Descartes argues, the mind, a thinking thing, can exist apart from its extended body. And therefore, the mind is a substance distinct from the body, a substance whose essence is thought. [ 7 ]

  The central claim of what is often called Cartesian dualism, in honor of Descartes, is that the immaterial mind and the material body, while being ontologically distinct substances, causally interact. This is an idea that continues to feature prominently in many non-European philosophies. Mental events cause physical events, and vice-versa. But this leads to a substantial problem for Cartesian dualism: How can an immaterial mind cause anything in a material body, and vice-versa? This has often been called the "problem of
• 

  mindseye

  I took a introductory philosophy class, and the professor structured the class around the mind/body problem. I left the class with more questions than answers (perhaps a sign of a well done philosophy class?), but left agreeing with Husserl and Heidegger's phenomenological approach rather than Descarte's dualism. I've been wrapping my head around some Mahayana Buddhist philosophy lately, and it definitely resonates. This article articulates it better than I:

  ...while consciousness is said to be primary, this is not to say that it is a kind of first cause, as that would again propose a duality between the first cause and that which is caused; and Buddhist philosophy states the reality of things to be fundamentally nondual—absent of any subject-object duality. So, while a growing number of contemporary neuroscientists adopt a material monist view that reduces all mental phenomena to brain processes, Buddhism tends to adopt a non-material monist view that sees formlessness as the ultimate substrate of inner experience. Guess it's time to tackle the Lankavatara Sutra.
• 

  frankiespeakin

  Mind, I'm starting to think it is a real posibility. Thanks for the link:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lankavatara_Sutra

  kavatara Sutra draws upon the concepts and doctrines of Yogacara and Tathagatagarbha.[1] The most important doctrine issuing from the La?kavatara Sutra is that of the primacy of consciousness (Skt. vijñana) and the teaching of consciousness as the only reality. The sutra asserts that all the objects of the world, and the names and forms of experience, are merely manifestations of the mind. The La?kavatara Sutra describes the various tiers of consciousness in the individual, culminating in the "storehouse consciousness" (Skt. Alayavijñana), which is the base of the individual's deepest awareness and his tie to the cosmic.[citation needed]
• 

  leavingwt

  I haven't quite wrapped my mind around all of this, but it's very interesting.
• 

  breakfast of champions

  Meant to post on this yesterday. . .

  Check out John Searle's Philosophy of Mind course on iTunes University. Pretty neat stuff from a legend. I'm listening to it for the second time right now.
• 

  frankiespeakin

  I think I'm leaning toward Monistic Idealism:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monistic_idealism

  Any philosophy that assigns crucial importance to the ideal or spiritual realm in its account of human existence may be termed "idealist". Metaphysical idealism is an ontological doctrine that holds that reality itself is incorporeal or experiential at its core. Beyond this, idealists disagree on which aspects of the mental are more basic. Platonic idealism affirms that abstractions are more basic to reality than the things we perceive, while subjective idealists and phenomenalists tend to privilege sensory experience over abstract reasoning. Epistemological idealism is the weaker view that reality can only be known through ideas, that only psychological experience can be apprehended by the mind. [ 2 ] [ 7 ] [ 8 ]

  Subjective idealists like George Berkeley are anti-realists about a mind-independent world, whereas transcendental idealists like Immanuel Kant are strong skeptics about such a world, affirming epistemological and not metaphysical idealism. Thus Kant defines idealism as "the assertion that we can never be certain whether all of our putative outer experience is not mere imagining". [ 9 ] However, not all idealists restrict the real or the knowable to our immediate subjective experience. Objective idealists make claims about a transempirical world, but simply deny that this world is essentially divorced from or ontologically prior to the mental. Thus Plato and Gottfried Leibniz affirm an objective and knowable reality transcending our subjective awareness—a rejection of epistemological idealism—but propose that this reality is grounded in ideal entities, a form of metaphysical idealism. Nor do all metaphysical idealists
• 

  BizzyBee

  I read Descartes Bones last year which gives a fascinating and illuminating account of his life, the French Revolution, religion vs. science and his life post-death. Highly recommended.

  http://www.amazon.com/Descartes-Bones-Skeletal-History-Conflict/dp/B004JZWLZY/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333071948&sr=1-1