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DESCARTES - Coggle Diagram
DESCARTES
Dualist
- Believes that mind and body are separate
Descartes
- Body = spatial not conscious
- Mind = not spatial,is conscious
- The state of the mind will affect the body + the state of the body will affect the mind
- When people die, their body is left behind although their soul is able to continue with God
- Believes in substance dualism
Substance Dualism
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- Body = spatial not conscious
- Mind = not spatial, is conscious + immaterial with feelings + thoughts
- He was skeptical about the physical world + argued that we cannot trust our senses
- However, we couldn't be convinced to deny his existence as a thinking being - 'Cogito Ergo Sum' ('I think, therefore I am) - he argues that if he is thinking he has to be existing
- He argues that as our identity comes from our ability to think + reason, then it was conceivable that we could survive without our bodies + remain the same person - he believed mind could survive death of the body
- Even if we undergo a radical physical transformation, we could still be able to recognise the person by reference to his/her character + memories - 'the soul is of a nature entirely independent of the body...it is not bound to die with it'
- The possibility of the existence of an Evil Genius that is powerful enough to deceive us, so much that everything we think we know to be true/correct is in fact false/incorrect
- Descartes argues that there is 1 thing that the Evil Genius cannot deceive about him - that he is existing as long as he is thinking
- When he considers what the 'thing that exists' that is doing the thinking he concludes it is the soul which for him would be the same as the mind
- He believes that his essential nature is the mind - a thinking thing that exists in its own right + is distinct from anything else in reality, including the body (material thing)
Wax Analogy
- Wax = something more extended, such as space
- Objects are made of an essence/material substance which consists of properties - e.g. hard, smells, taste, shape, size + he knows these properties through his senses
- When max is near heat - these properties change
- Wax melts + is soft + expands + different taste/smell
- All the properties of the wax has changed yet we still knows it is the same piece of wax
- He states that we know objects through our intellect + knowing of the wax proves his existence
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Premise 1: I cannot doubt the existence of my own mind
Premise 2: I can doubt the existence of my body
Premise 3: Therefore, my mind is something distinct from my body
- Thought must have a different/higher kind of reality