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Single Idea 2303
[filed under theme 17. Mind and Body / A. Mind-Body Dualism / 1. Dualism
]
Full Idea
There is a great difference between a mind and a body, in that a body, by its very nature, is always divisible, but the mind is utterly indivisible.
Gist of Idea
The mind is utterly indivisible
Source
René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §6.85)
Book Ref
Descartes,René: 'Discourse on Method/The Meditations', ed/tr. Sutcliffe,F.E. [Penguin 1968], p.164
A Reaction
This strikes me as being simply false. I don't just mean that surgeons can split the mind in half. We should think of the mind as a team of conscious and non-conscious processes, which are held together by a self in normal healthy people. Selves change.
The
22 ideas
with the same theme
[mind and matter are two quite different substances]:
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3519
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Man uses his body, so must be separate from it
[Anon (Plat), by Maslin]
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1710
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Emotion involves the body, thinking uses the mind, imagination hovers between them
[Aristotle]
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13307
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If everything can be measured, try measuring the size of a man's soul
[Seneca]
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21809
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Our soul has the same ideal nature as the oldest god, and is honourable above the body
[Plotinus]
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21825
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The soul is outside of all of space, and has no connection to the bodily order
[Plotinus]
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18458
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The soul is bound to matter by the force of its own disposition
[Porphyry]
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22105
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The human intellectual soul is an incorporeal, subsistent principle
[Aquinas]
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24028
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The force by which we know things is spiritual, and quite distinct from the body
[Descartes]
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3608
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I can deny my body and the world, but not my own existence
[Descartes]
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3613
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Reason is universal in its responses, but a physical machine is constrained by its organs
[Descartes]
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2276
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The mind is a non-extended thing which thinks
[Descartes]
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2298
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Mind is not extended, unlike the body
[Descartes]
|
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3423
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Descartes is a substance AND property dualist
[Descartes, by Kim]
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2303
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The mind is utterly indivisible
[Descartes]
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5011
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There are two ultimate classes of existence: thinking substance and extended substance
[Descartes]
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19409
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Soul represents body, but soul remains unchanged, while body continuously changes
[Leibniz]
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5585
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Soul and body connect physically, or by harmony, or by assistance
[Kant]
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22039
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Geist is distinct from nature, not as a substance, but because of its normativity
[Hegel, by Pinkard]
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14802
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Physical and psychical laws of mind are either independent, or derived in one or other direction
[Peirce]
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2620
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Dualism is a category mistake
[Ryle]
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4069
|
Descartes did not think of minds as made of a substance, because they are not divisible
[Crane]
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8289
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The idea that Cartesian souls are made of some ghostly 'immaterial' stuff is quite unwarranted
[Lowe]
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