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René Descartes (/ d eɪ ˈ k ɑːr t / day-KART, also UK: / ˈ d eɪ k ɑːr t / DAY-kart; French: [ʁəne dekaʁt] ⓘ; [note 3] [11] 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) [12] [13]: 58 was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science.
In the first part of his work, Descartes ponders the relationship between the thinking substance and the body. For Descartes, the only link between these two substances is the pineal gland (art. 31), the place where the soul is attached to the body. The passions that Descartes studies are in reality the actions of the body on the soul (art. 25).
Descartes believed that the mind was non-physical and permeated the entire body, but that the mind and body interacted via the pineal gland. [ 33 ] [ 34 ] This theory has changed throughout the years, and in the 20th century its main adherents were the philosopher of science Karl Popper and the neurophysiologist John Carew Eccles .
Developments in psychology, based on studies focusing on the relationship between the mind and brain make it difficult to accept Descartes' contention that the mind can exist without the body. Further, empirical and philosophical work has shown that the mind, or consciousness, develops as a result of social, linguistic, and cultural influence.
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.
[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 ...
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]
In philosophy, the Cartesian Self, or Cartesian subject, a concept developed by the philosopher René Descartes within his system of mind–body dualism, is the term provided [citation needed] for a separation between mind and body as posited by Descartes.