In the second meditation of Meditations on the First Philosophy, Descartes addresses the question of identity: “I am, I exist… But this “I” which must exist – I still don't quite understand what it is. (Descartes 4) The only circumstance that helps establish identity is that Descartes thinks – in fact, that is the only thing he can guarantee. Therefore, it can be concluded that by establishing that it is essentially a thinking thing, Descartes also establishes that identity depends on the mind and not the body. This distinctive attribution of what a person actually is paves the way for Descartes' ideas of mind-body dualism, in which the mind and body exist essentially as separate entities. Descartes' argument takes two main forms – divisibility, dubitability, and conceivability – each of which can be deconstructed into deductive arguments to prove the difference between mind and body. However, there are logical errors and discrepancies in premises and conclusions that call into question the validity of Descartes' dualist position. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay The logical argument for divisibility in support of dualism is this: All extended things are divisible. No mind is divisible. No mind is extended things. .On initial reflection, the first premise appears to be true. In the extended world, matter is constantly changing shape, reshaping itself or breaking apart. It is simple to conceptualize physical things divided. Take an apple, for example: cut it in half, remove the core, cut it into quarters. But what would happen if we went further? We divided it into smaller and smaller sections, until the piece of apple was so small that it could no longer be cut with a knife. However, the apple exists and is a physical and extended thing. And so we can divide it further, into a single piece of matter, into a single atom, into its atomic components – the electrons and the quarks. But then what? We started with an apple, which is undoubtedly an extended thing, so the matter we are left with is surely also an extended thing, produced by the division of a physical object. Yet, by continuing to divide the apple into its simplest components, we ultimately end up with pieces of an extended thing that is in its purest form and is no longer divisible. So the first premise that all physical things are divisible cannot be true. If the first premise is false, the second premise becomes useless. Whether the mind is divisible or not tells us nothing; there is no correlation between extended things and divisibility. Even if the second premise were assumed to be true, there would be no way to conclude that “no mind is an extended thing,” because the quality of indivisibility tells us nothing about the physicality of an object. The second premise by itself is not entirely valid, because in some senses the mind is actually divisible. Although the divisibility in question with the first premise concerns spatial divisibility, it can be argued that the mind exhibits temporal divisibility. Everyone, at one time or another, has experienced a “blank moment” or dreamless sleep, during which no images or thoughts remain in the mind. In these cases, the continuity of the mind is broken. Descartes declares in the Second Meditation: “I conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, must be true each time I affirm it or think it. » (Descartes 4) After rejecting the secondpremise of the divisibility argument, Descartes' identification of himself solely as an essentially thinking thing is no longer reasonable, because if Descartes ceased to think, he would also cease to exist. There are moments in everyday life, like the cases mentioned above, during which consciousness takes a respite. The Second Meditation also introduces the argument of doubt, which can be summarized as follows: I can doubt that my body exists. I cannot doubt that I exist as a thinking being. As a thinking being, I am not identical to my body. When considering the argument itself, the conclusion does not follow from the premises. The problems of justification lie in deciding what determines identity. The following is a modification of the dubious argument, which "uses Leibniz's law of identity... x is identical to y if, and only if, for every property p possessed by x at time t, there is also p to t, and vice versa” (Calef) by adding another premise. My body has the property of being such that I can doubt its existence. I, a thinking thing, do not have the property of being such that I can doubt my existence. two things are identical, then they have exactly the same properties. I, as a thinking being, am not identical to my body. By applying Leibniz's law, Descartes establishes that the mind and the body are different entities because they do not have the same property. of dubitability. Although the modification makes the argument logically sound, the question lies in whether or not dubitability is a property that can even be used for the identity of an object – “doubt… is a property of me , not of [the object in question]”. (Calef) In other words, to doubt is to be without conviction or to believe that something is uncertain. Objects do not inherently possess the quality of being doubtful; it is applied to them by the skeptic. Therefore, because Descartes doubts the existence of his body but does not doubt the existence of his mind, it does not follow that the two things are essentially different. While Descartes explains why he doubts the external world and why he believes the mind exists without doubt, one could just as easily hold exactly opposite opinions, and the premises would remain true based on the conclusions. This proves that doubt, in itself, no matter how strong it may be, is not a good measure of identity comparison. Descartes' argument about conceivability, as introduced in the Sixth Meditation, falls within a similar margin of error: I can conceive that I, a thinking thing, exists without my extended body existing. Everything I can conceive is logically possible. If it is logically possible for X to exist without Y, then X is not identical to YI, as a thinking thing I am not identical to my extended body. Just as dubitability is not a possessive property belonging to an object that makes it a certain way, conceivability, as used in the first premise, neither confirms nor denies anything on the nature of the spirit separated from the body. We could just as easily imagine a world in which the mind and the body are mutually necessary. Ex nihilo nihil fit – a phrase first coined by the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides, meaning that nothing comes from nothing – is the main principle on which the second premise is based. “All that I can conceive,” or ideas, are attached to what Descartes considered to be an objective reality, which consists only of representations. What they represent are elements of formal reality, which are things only of the external world, things which are “logically possible”. Despite this link,they always take distinct and separate forms. However, to what extent should these ideas within objective reality correlate with their formal reality counterparts? Take, for example, the fantastic beasts mentioned in the First Meditation: "For even when painters attempt to represent mermaids and satyrs with the most extraordinary bodies, they are content to mix the limbs of different species of real animals, instead of inventing natures that are entirely new. » (Descartes 2) Satyrs and mermaids are things that only exist in objective reality. Their formal connections are not actual satyrs and mermaids themselves, but rather physical figures of humans, goats, and fish, the formal elements that make up the mythical beasts. Accordingly, the second premise does not seem entirely valid. A design derives from things that are logically possible, but it is not true that everything conceivable is logically possible. If that were the case, fiction would not exist. Descartes offers several explanations in support of mind-body dualism, each with its own form of merit and novelty – an obvious fact, as Descartes argued. has stood the test of time and has been a major source of controversial themes within the philosophical community. However, when we take it out of educational philosophy and place it in the context of everyday life, we see some gaps in the development of what follows from dualism and what it means for the common man. For Descartes' dualism argument to be relevant and convincing, three elements must be successfully addressed: what, where, and how. The sixth meditation deals with the question of the unity of the distinct parts of the mind and body. It is indisputable that, even though established as separate entities, the mind and body are very closely linked – so much so that for the common man, the dualistic phenomenon may never come to fruition. spirit. Descartes identifies the what as such: “I (a thinking thing) am not simply in my body as a sailor is in a ship. On the contrary, I am closely related to him – mixed with him, so to speak – so that he and I form a unit. (Descartes 30). The mind and body, although separate, act as one. The where is approached in a very scientific way, with Descartes using anatomical knowledge to identify a specific location in the brain in which mind-body interaction occurs. In The Passions of the Soul, Descartes identifies “a certain part of the body where it exercises its functions more particularly than in all the others” (Descartes 9). The pineal gland, he decides, is the only place where “the soul can directly exercise its functions” in a single unified place (Descartes 9). In this work, he further develops the idea of ​​"sense organs" – eyes, hands, ears – within the human anatomy, which help to connect the mind-body relationship and translate the external world into a way perceptible to the mind. The question of how this relationship comes about, however, is not detailed in either the Meditations on the First Philosophy or the Passions of the Soul. As Scott Calef, professor of philosophy at Ohio Wesleyan University, explains: “If the dualist doesn't know or can't say how minds and bodies interact, what's the matter with dualism? Not much." (Calef) This is a question that cannot be addressed purely conceptually, like what, because it remains too broad and imprecise. Science, a field that covers only the structures of the physical world, was likely to answer where, but not enough to explain the story :