When we were children, we were taught that ball is in a round shape; we were taught what good is or what evil is; and we were taught that the angle sum of a triangle is 180 etc. We use the knowledge listed above with confidence almost every day, however, we do not know where these concepts come from. Who gave these correct concepts to mankind? Is it from God, or simply because the folds on our brain make us think so? When we are thinking the problems like these, we have to talk about the concept of innate which
Related link: Dscartes link in study guide for final
Mind an dbody problem in second half reading
for mind and body problem on 4/6 in course documents
(http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/cartesian-dualism-faq.htm)
What is Cartesian dualism?
Dualism is an ancient concept that was deeply rooted in Greek thought. However, long before that, the ancient scriptures taught that mankind was made in God’s image and that Adam needed the spirit breathed into him before becoming a living soul. Almost 2000 years after Plato and Aristotle reasoned that the human mind or soul could not be identified with the physical body, Rene Descartes (Rene Descartes (1596-1650) marks the beginning of modern psychology. He was a remarkable individual: primarily a philosopher, he was also a scientist, physiologist, and a mathematician.) reinforced this concept and gave it a name, dualism. The word “Cartesius” is simply the Latin form of the name Descartes. Consequently, Cartesian dualism is simply Descartes concept of dualism.
The Essay on Where Does The Body Stop And The Mind Start
Where does the body stop and the mind start In the philosophy narrative since early times there were three basic theories that described relationship and connection between mind and body. These theories are as follows: dualism, materialism and phenomenalism. Dualism is based upon the ideas that the physical and mental processes of the body are not interrelated. The proponents of materialism state ...
Descartes’ famous saying epitomizes the dualism concept. He said, “cogito ergo sum,” “I reflect therefore I am.” Descartes held that the immaterial mind and the material body are two completely different types of substances and that they interact with each other. He reasoned that the body could be divided up by removing a leg or arm, but the mind or soul were indivisible.
This concept is difficult to accept for those with a secular humanist, materialist, and evolutionist worldview because accepting it is accepting supernaturalism. Consequently, Bible believers accept dualism and people with the opposite worldview find themselves obligated to reject it.
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Plato and Aristotle had touched on the mind-body link. They pointed out that the human mind or soul could not be part of the physical body. But it was Rene Descartes that discussed this concept in detail. In his arguments and explanations, he called this mind-body link dualism.
Rene Descartes argued that the mind and body are distinct and separate. This is the first point of Cartesian Dualism. According to Cartesian thought, man looks upon his world as a direct reflection of him, his values, beliefs, experiences, conditions and development. Being a rationalist, Descartes believes that clarity of perceptions of intellect is the best way to gain knowledge. The information derived from the senses merely helps us to live in a practical manner.
In Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes explored his beliefs by starting with doubting or questioning his own beliefs so he could arrive at what he thought is certain. In this experiment, he pointed out the fact that he could doubt if he had a body by convincing himself and thinking that he could either be dreaming of it or it is an illusion created by evil, but he could never question the reality of his mind.
This served as the first basis for his theory that mind and body are totally different. The mind is conscious and self-aware unlike the brain, which is the seat of intelligence. The brain is part of the physical body but the mind or the spirit is not. The mind interacts with the physical body through the brain, more specifically, through the pineal gland in the middle of the two hemispheres of the brain.
The Essay on Mind Body Problem
... the mind/body problem within Philosophy of Mind and Consciousness studies indeed a problem? Well the mind body problem is a metaphysical issue ... Dualism proposes this idea of interactionism in which the mind and body are separate yet they causally interact was first proposed by Rene Descartes ... a fMRI to scan the brain as people are thinking gives evidence of thoughts occurring as similar brain states ...
In Meditation VI Descartes stated: “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.”
The body could be divided up by removing a leg or arm, but the mind or soul is indivisible. The mind is not only indivisible but also invisible and immortal. The body is the exact opposite being visible, mortal and divisible. The mind in Descartes explanation is a “thinking thing” (lat. res cogitans) and immaterial. This “thing” is capable of doubting, believing, hoping and thinking on its own.
D vs hobbes
有趣的是笛卡尔的同时代人霍布斯认为笛卡尔在第二沉思中推出这样一个观点：“我”仅仅是一个意识的存在。霍布斯在批评笛卡尔的文章中只是如此假设而没有证明。艾耶尔（A.J.Ayer）也是这么认为的，他说：
笛卡尔相信他能从心灵实体的存在（existence of a mental entity），即思想中，演绎出他自身的存在（his own existence），而不需要假设任何物质（身体的，physical）实体的存在，这一点使他相信他的心灵是可以独立于任何物质事物（身体）的实体。
笛卡尔强调科学的目的在于造福人类，使人成为自然界的主人和统治者。他反对经院哲学和神学，提出怀疑一切的“系统怀疑的方法”。但他还提出了“我思故我在”的原则，强调不能怀疑以思维为其属性的独立的精神实体的存在，并论证以广延为其属性的独立物质实体的存在。他认为上述两实体都是有限实体，把它们并列起来，这说明了在形而上学或本体论上，他是典型的二元论者。笛卡儿还企图证明无限实体，即上帝的存在。他认为上帝是有限实体的创造者和终极的原因。笛卡儿的认识论基本上是唯心主义的。他主张唯理论，把几何学的推理方法和演绎法应用于哲学上，认为清晰明白的概念就是真理，提出“天赋观念”。
笛卡尔的自然哲学观同亚里士多德的学说是完全对立的。他认为，所有物质的东西，都是为同一机械规律所支配的机器，甚至人体也是如此。同时他又认为，除了机械的世界外，还有一个精神世界存在，这种二元论的观点后来成了欧洲人的根本思想方法。
最著名的思想就是“我思故我在”。意思是：“当我怀疑一切事物的存在时，我却不用怀疑我本身的思想，因为此时我唯一可以确定的事就是我自己思想的存在”。这句被笛卡儿当作自己的哲学体系的出发点的名言，在过去的东欧和现在的中国学界都被认为是极端主观唯心主义的总代表，而遭到严厉的批判。很多人甚至以“存在必先于意识”、“没有肉体便不能有思想”等为论据，认为笛卡儿是“本末倒置”、“荒唐可笑”。笛卡尔的怀疑不是对某些具体事物、具体原理的怀疑，而是对人类、对世界、对上帝的绝对的怀疑。从这个绝对的怀疑，笛卡儿要引导出不容置疑的哲学的原则。
“The universe is corporeal; all that is real is material, and what is not material is not real.” –The Leviathan
588 April 5, born in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, England.
The philosophy of Thomas Hobbes is perhaps the most complete materialist philosophy of the 17th century. Hobbes rejects Cartesian dualism and believes in the mortality of the soul. He rejects free will in favor of determinism, a determinism which treats freedom as being able to do what one desires. He rejects Aristotelian and scholastic philosophy in favor of the “new” philosophy of Galileo and Gassendi, which largely treats the world as matter in motion. Hobbes is perhaps most famous for his political philosophy. Men in a state of nature, that is a state without civil government, are in a war of all against all in which life is hardly worth living. The way out of this desperate state is to make a social contract and establish the state to keep peace and order. Because of his view of how nasty life is without the state, Hobbes subscribes to a very authoritarian version of the social contract.
The Essay on The body-mind health connection
Our health is directly related to our attitudes. Our thoughts, emotions, and beliefs form the way we view everything in life, including ourselves and our health. This is because the mind and body are closely linked and constantly communicate with each other. This communication is called the body-mind connection. Many people believe that by nurturing the body-mind connection, we can sometimes ...
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) was very much on the other side. According to Hobbes, only matter exists and the very notion of there being something immaterial was nonsense. Hobbes insisted that even God is a material reality.
http://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/30664.html
Several notions explain Hobbes thoughts about the mind and body. Hobbes believes that imagination is nothing but a decaying sense. He says that memory of different things is experience, that the train of thoughts or mental discourse comes in two sorts. First the unguided, or without design thoughts and the other is regulated or designed thoughts. He believes that there are two sorts of motion, one called vital or involuntary motion and the other being voluntary motion.
Hobbes has two sorts of thoughts; first unguided or undesigned thoughts; the second is regulated or designed thoughts. says there are two ways of thinking of things for mind and body. An example is when someone thinks their someone else because they were reading a book or from a movie. If it’s not there you can’t feel it. He said the soul occupied the whole body in all parts, but the reduction of the body in any way did not reduce the soul. There are two kinds of motion that Hobbes discusses; voluntary and involuntary motions. If you had to think about reacting without instinctly reacting you would get hit. What he means by this is that things that are certain will always occur. I do not agree with what Descartes’ says about the body. The imagination is the first internal beginning of all voluntary motions. The unguided or undesigned thoughts are thoughts that wander, and seem irrelevant to one another as in a dream.
The Term Paper on Bentham and Hobbes: Two Theories of Legislation
Thomas Hobbes and Jeremy Bentham were both legal positivists. In an attempt to solve the problem of interpretation, legal positivists conclude that there is only one way to interpret a law. According to Hobbes’ theory of legislation, it is the people who enforce the law that decide what it means. On the other hand, Bentham argues that promulgating the reasons for a law solves the ...
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080214105356AArGZ3p
Hobbes was familiar with the Meditations of Descartes and was very much impressed by the Cartesian dualism theory.
Of the two Cartesian substances, Hobbes accepts extended material substance or philosophy of matter, where the universe is explained solely in terms of motion. Where the only method for an universal object’s existence was motion. However Hobbes was stringly opposed to Descartes philosophy of mind.
Descartes viewed God as a supremely wise creator, who created the universe and then let it run by itself like a machine. In other words, after creating matter, he gave it a certain amount of motion and allowed the universe to unfold on its own accord. God was not needed to supervise every step, instead he was a watchmaker. Descartes did maintain that God preserves the universe at every moment, implying that the conservation of matter and motion would cease instantly if God did not maintain it. Thus Descartes left himself open to the charge that, God having created the world was no longer necessary.
In contrast Hobbes maintained that the universe consists of matter in motion and nothing else. and this motion came from within. Even God was a material being rather than spiritual. He denied the absolutes such as good, evil, justice etc. In his mechanical universe they existed only through human definition.
Thus for Hobbes there are two metaphysical elements: matter and motion, which can be reduced to one, dynamic matter. The intrinsic motion of matter has given origin to the diversity of the inorganic and organic world. Life is thus a product of matter and motion, and the human soul is a composite of very subtle atoms, even thinking was just matter in motion.
http://history.wisc.edu/sommerville/351/351-192.htm
Hobbes rejected Cartesian dualism and argued that nothing but matter exists. Even thought is simply matter in motion. He mocked the idea that human bodies were “possessed” by ‘incorporeal spirits”. Hobbes’ materialism led to him being accused of atheism, particularly as free will (like the soul) disappeared from
The Essay on Political theories of Hobbes and Locke
The Political Theories of Hobbes and Locke In the sixteenth century, the rise of the state and decline of the feudal system brought about the question of authority, whose is absolute, God or man? Should the state have power over its subjects or the subjects over the state? Soon after the theory of sovereignty and the theory of social contract were developed, but even these still drew debate. ...
“He that holds there is a God, and that God is really somewhat, (for body is doubtlessly a real substance), is as far from being an atheist, as it is possible to be. But he that says God is an incorporeal substance, no man can be sure whether he be an atheist or not. For no man living can tell whether there be any substance at all, that is not also corporeal. For neither the word incorporeal, nor immaterial, nor any word equivalent to it, is to be found in Scripture, or in reason”.
Hobbes, Reply
Hobbes’ utterly deterministic world. Hobbes simply responded that Scripture did not require any belief in spirits and that his determinism was no different from Calvin’s predestination. Hobbes’ protestations that he was no atheist convinced few of his contemporaries and he was denied membership in the Royal Society in part because of his materialism.
Gilbert Ryle:
http://marklindner.info/writings/RyleEssay.htm
In The Concept of Mind, Gilbert Ryle argues that Descartes makes a category-mistake by thinking that there is something called ‘mind’ over and above a person’s behavioral dispositions.
http://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/ryle.html
The Concept of Mind (1949) is a critique of the notion that the mind is distinct from the body, and it is a rejection of the theory that mental states are searable from physical states. According to Ryle, the classical theory of mind, as represented by Cartesian ratioanlism, asserts that there is a basic distinction between mind and matter. However, the classical theory makes a basic “category-mistake,” because it attempts to analyze the relation betwen “mind” and “body” as if they were terms of the same logical category. This confusion of logical categories may be seen in other theories of the relation between mind and matter. For example, the idealist theory of mind makes a basic category-mistake by attempting to reduce physical reality to the same status as mental reality, while the materialist theory of mind makes a basic category-mistake by attempting to reduce mental reality to the same status as physical reality.
The Essay on Exploring Love Through Minding Theory and Triangular Theory of Love
My bestfriend and I have been together for more than a year. However, there are times when we feel that our relationship as friends would never last. But on the deepest part of our hearts, we do hope that our friendship would last until the last day of our lives. Having known the Minding Theory of Love gives me an idea of how we could strengthen our relationship as best of friends. The Minding ...
Ryle rejects Descartes’ theory of the relation between mind and body, on the grounds that it approaches the investigation of mental processes as if they could be isolated from physical processes. Ryle criticizes the theory that the mind is a place where mental images are apprehended, perceived, or remembered. he criticizes both Cartesian theory and behaviorist theory for being overly mechanistic. While Cartesian theory may insist that hidden mental events produce the behavioral responses of the conscious individual, behaviorism may insist that stimulus-response mechanisms produce the behavioral responses of the conscious individual. Ryle concludes that both Cartesian theory and behaviorist theory may be too rigid and mechanistic to provide us with an adequate understanding of the concept of mind.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/
But, although dualism has been out of fashion in psychology since the advent of behaviourism (Watson (1913)) and in philosophy since Ryle (1949), the argument is by no means over. Some distinguished neurologists, such as Sherrington (1940) and Eccles (Popper and Eccles (1977)) have contined to defend dualism as the only theory that can preserve the data of consciousness. Amongst mainstream philosophers, discontent with physicalism led to a modest revival of property dualism in the last decade of the twentieth century. At least some of the reasons for this should become clear below.
http://www.amazon.com/Descartess-Concept-Mind-Lilli-Alanen/dp/0674010434
Review
Descartes’s Concept of Mind is a book of high quality. The main point of the project is to detail Descartes’s theory of the embodiment of the human mind. This is a neglected side of his thought, and Alanen treats it in an illuminating way. The exposition is clear and remarkably well informed. And she persuasively shows that Descartes had a complicated and interesting view of this matter.
–John Carriero, Professor of Philosophy, UCLA
Alanen takes the embodied Cartesian mind as her central topic, and it is refreshing to read an account of Descartes’ psychology that treats his famous argument for the real distinction between mind and body only in passing…Alanen’s account of how notions of will and agency become internalized in Descates, and the important differences between the Cartesian account of the will as agent and Aristotelian accounts of the will as that in virtue of which a human being is an agent, is interesting and illuminating.
–Antonia Lolordo (Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences )
Product Description
Descartes’s concept of the mind, as distinct from the body with which it forms a union, set the agenda for much of Western philosophy’s subsequent reflection on human nature and thought. This is the first book to give an analysis of Descartes’s pivotal concept that deals with all the functions of the mind, cognitive as well as volitional, theoretical as well as practical and moral. Focusing on Descartes’s view of the mind as intimately united to and intermingled with the body, and exploring its implications for his philosophy of mind and moral psychology, Lilli Alanen argues that the epistemological and methodological consequences of this view have been largely misconstrued in the modern debate.
Informed by both the French tradition of Descartes scholarship and recent Anglo-American research, Alanen’s book combines historical-contextual analysis with a philosophical problem-oriented approach. It seeks to relate Descartes’s views on mind and intentionality both to contemporary debates and to the problems Descartes confronted in their historical context. By drawing out the historical antecedents and the intellectual evolution of Descartes’s thinking about the mind, the book shows how his emphasis on the embodiment of the mind has implications far more complex and interesting than the usual dualist account suggests.
