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In the philosophy of mind, mind–body dualism denotes either that mental phenomena are non-physical, [1] or that the mind and body are distinct and separable. [2] Thus, it encompasses a set of views about the relationship between mind and matter, as well as between subject and object, and is contrasted with other positions, such as physicalism and enactivism, in the mind–body problem.
Interactionism was propounded by the French rationalist philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650), and continues to be associated with him. Descartes posited that the body, being physical matter, was characterized by spatial extension but not by thought and feeling, while the mind, being a separate substance, had no spatial extension but could think and feel. [2]
Illustration of mind–body dualism by René Descartes.Inputs are passed by the sensory organs to the pineal gland, and from there to the immaterial spirit.. The mind–body problem is a philosophical problem concerning the relationship between thought and consciousness in the human mind and body.
Property dualism posits the existence of one material substance with essentially two different kinds of property: physical properties and mental properties. [5] It argues that there are different kinds of properties that pertain to the only type of substance, the material substance: there are physical properties such as having colour or shape and there are mental properties like having certain ...
[29] [30] However, the best-known version of dualism is due to René Descartes (1641), and holds that the mind is a non-extended, non-physical substance, a "res cogitans". [4] Descartes was the first to clearly identify the mind with consciousness and self-awareness, and to distinguish this from the brain, which was the seat of intelligence. He ...
In Descartes' substance–attribute–mode ontology, extension is the primary attribute of corporeal substance. He describes a piece of wax in the Second Meditation (see Wax argument). A solid piece of wax has certain sensory qualities. However, when the wax is melted, it loses every single apparent quality it had in its solid form.
Descartes's dualism provided the philosophical rationale for the latter by expelling the final cause from the physical universe (or res extensa) in favor of the mind (or res cogitans). Therefore, while Cartesian dualism paved the way for modern physics, it also held the door open for religious beliefs about the immortality of the soul. [105]
This is Descartes' substance dualism. Baruch Spinoza denied Descartes' "real distinction" between mind and matter. Substance, according to Spinoza, is one and indivisible, but has multiple "attributes". He regards an attribute, though, as "what we conceive as constituting the [single] essence of substance".