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Single Idea 3423

[filed under theme 17. Mind and Body / A. Mind-Body Dualism / 1. Dualism ]

Full Idea

Descartes' dualism combines substance dualism and property dualism; two disparate domains of substances, and two mutually exclusive families of properties.

Gist of Idea

Descartes is a substance AND property dualist

Source

report of René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §6.78) by Jaegwon Kim - Philosophy of Mind p.211

Book Ref

Kim,Jaegwon: 'Philosophy of Mind' [Westview 1998], p.211


A Reaction

I would have thought that substance dualism entailed property dualism. How would you distinguish two substances from one another except by their properties? There seems a merely logical possibility that God gives two substances the same properties.


The 22 ideas with the same theme [mind and matter are two quite different substances]:

Man uses his body, so must be separate from it [Anon (Plat), by Maslin]
Emotion involves the body, thinking uses the mind, imagination hovers between them [Aristotle]
If everything can be measured, try measuring the size of a man's soul [Seneca]
Our soul has the same ideal nature as the oldest god, and is honourable above the body [Plotinus]
The soul is outside of all of space, and has no connection to the bodily order [Plotinus]
The soul is bound to matter by the force of its own disposition [Porphyry]
The human intellectual soul is an incorporeal, subsistent principle [Aquinas]
The force by which we know things is spiritual, and quite distinct from the body [Descartes]
I can deny my body and the world, but not my own existence [Descartes]
Reason is universal in its responses, but a physical machine is constrained by its organs [Descartes]
The mind is a non-extended thing which thinks [Descartes]
Mind is not extended, unlike the body [Descartes]
Descartes is a substance AND property dualist [Descartes, by Kim]
The mind is utterly indivisible [Descartes]
There are two ultimate classes of existence: thinking substance and extended substance [Descartes]
Soul represents body, but soul remains unchanged, while body continuously changes [Leibniz]
Soul and body connect physically, or by harmony, or by assistance [Kant]
Geist is distinct from nature, not as a substance, but because of its normativity [Hegel, by Pinkard]
Physical and psychical laws of mind are either independent, or derived in one or other direction [Peirce]
Dualism is a category mistake [Ryle]
Descartes did not think of minds as made of a substance, because they are not divisible [Crane]
The idea that Cartesian souls are made of some ghostly 'immaterial' stuff is quite unwarranted [Lowe]