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Single Idea 3608

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

Full Idea

I could pretend that I had no body, and that there was no world or place that I was in, but I could not, for all that, pretend that I did not exist.

Gist of Idea

I can deny my body and the world, but not my own existence

Source

René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §4.32)

Book Ref

Descartes,René: 'Discourse on Method/The Meditations', ed/tr. Sutcliffe,F.E. [Penguin 1968], p.54

A Reaction

He makes the (in my opinion) appalling blunder of thinking that because he can pretend that he has no body, that therefore he might not have one. I can pretend that gold is an unusual form of cheese. However, "I don't exist" certainly sounds wrong.

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

3519 Man uses his body, so must be separate from it [Anon (Plat), by Maslin]
1710 Emotion involves the body, thinking uses the mind, imagination hovers between them [Aristotle]
13307 If everything can be measured, try measuring the size of a man's soul [Seneca]
21809 Our soul has the same ideal nature as the oldest god, and is honourable above the body [Plotinus]
21825 The soul is outside of all of space, and has no connection to the bodily order [Plotinus]
18458 The soul is bound to matter by the force of its own disposition [Porphyry]
22105 The human intellectual soul is an incorporeal, subsistent principle [Aquinas]
24028 The force by which we know things is spiritual, and quite distinct from the body [Descartes]
3608 I can deny my body and the world, but not my own existence [Descartes]
3613 Reason is universal in its responses, but a physical machine is constrained by its organs [Descartes]
2276 The mind is a non-extended thing which thinks [Descartes]
2298 Mind is not extended, unlike the body [Descartes]
3423 Descartes is a substance AND property dualist [Descartes, by Kim]
2303 The mind is utterly indivisible [Descartes]
5011 There are two ultimate classes of existence: thinking substance and extended substance [Descartes]
19409 Soul represents body, but soul remains unchanged, while body continuously changes [Leibniz]
5585 Soul and body connect physically, or by harmony, or by assistance [Kant]
22039 Geist is distinct from nature, not as a substance, but because of its normativity [Hegel, by Pinkard]
14802 Physical and psychical laws of mind are either independent, or derived in one or other direction [Peirce]
2620 Dualism is a category mistake [Ryle]
4069 Descartes did not think of minds as made of a substance, because they are not divisible [Crane]
8289 The idea that Cartesian souls are made of some ghostly 'immaterial' stuff is quite unwarranted [Lowe]