Lecture 7-8

Descartes Philosophy of Mind

About the Lecture: In this lecture we discuss the concept of dualism in Descartes philosophy. Rene Descartes scientific inquiry about the nature of substance and foundation of epistemology show that the mind and the body are two substances and ‘thinking’ or the cogito (I think) which is essentially the characteristics of the mental substance is the founding principle of all epistemological discourses.

Keywords: Substance Dualism, Mind-Body Problem, Substance, Cogito, Understanding, Res cogitans, Res extensa

Descartes formulated the mechanistic explanation of the phenomena of nature by introducing the hypothetical model. For him, hypothesis needs to be formulated to explain the imperceptible causal properties of the perceptible body. The causal properties of the matter include both the material and the sufficient causes. And the combination of the imperceptible particles together would be able to constitute the perceptible body. The imperceptible particles are the micro states of matter and the perceptible particles are the macro states of matter, which could be explained through the basic properties called shape, size, and motion. And the formulation of mechanistic hypothesis for the explanation of natural phenomena is to bridge the gap between our sensory experiences of matter and their causal capacity. As Clarke mentions, “The distinction between our subjective experiences or sensations and their objective causes, between primary and secondary qualities, opens up an epistemic gap that can only be bridged by some other strategy apart from the assumption of resemblance. This strategy is hypothesis, or guesswork. Our guesswork may turn out to be secure and there may eventually be many reasons for thinking that they are as certain as one can hope for ….”1 Secondary qualities are mostly subjective in their appearances whereas primary qualities are objective. Here the primary qualities of the matter are the basic properties of it, such as its shape, size and motion through which matter can be explained.

1 Desmond M. Clarke, “Descartes Philosophy of Science and the Scientific Revolution,” Cambridge Companion to Descartes, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p.261. (Henceforth, CCD) 1

Now one may ask, how do we have the ideas of these imperceptible properties of matter? Descartes elaborates it in his famous example of wax. Wax in its original state (fresh from the hive) possesses qualities such as sweetness, fragrance of honey, colour, size, etc. If the same piece of wax is heated, then its size expands, its sweetness disappears, and the colour changes. That is, a certain transformation takes place between the time period before heating and after heating. However, we still have the common notion of wax. And during the course of transformation, we know that heat operates in the composite structure of the wax. We don’t perceive the movement of the minute parts of the wax during the period of transformation. Still the conception of wax remains because some essential qualities persist and they help us in identifying the wax as wax after its transformation. For Descartes, this notion of wax could be comprehended neither by perception nor by imagination that physics deals with. Rather, the comprehension of this idea is possible by understanding. Understanding deals with “pure intellect”. As Wood describes, “After the exclusion of sensation and imagination there remains one possibility, namely, that understanding, exercising its powers of conception and judgment for the synthesizing and unifying function which constitutes the self identity of the piece of wax.”2 Understanding is a special mode for formulating such ideas as ascribed to the function of the intellect. The intellect has a unique way of judging the observable facts. It is through its intellect alone that material bodies are comprehended.

Descartes’ philosophy of mind emerges from his reflections on nature as a mechanistic system. He locates the beginning of this philosophy in our subjective experiences. As Clarke cites, “where the metaphysics is concerned, we begin with such everyday experiences as the experience of thinking, feeling, moving, etc. Among these experiences, Descartes favors the most accessible and widely available experiences because he hopes thereby to find indubitable foundation.” 3 Among these experiences thinking is considered as the most indubitable and simply accessible feature of our knowledge. Thinking or cogito is easily comprehensible, because it is directly accessible to me – the self. Descartes does not conceptualize the notion of self as representation to itself, rather is a self-evident truth. It is perceived by inner sense of the mind. The perception of the mind is also known as introspection which provides certainty to the

2 Ledger Wood, “Descartes Philosophy of Mind”, Philosophical Review, Vol.XLI, (41) No.5, 1932 p475 3 Clarke, op.cit., p.272. 2

existence of the self. Thus the knowledge of the existence of the self is an indubitable truth. The self evident nature of the experience of this indubitable truth about the existence of the self puts an end to Descartes search for the foundation of knowledge. This is indubitable because doubting presupposes thinking. From doubting we cannot obtain certainty. And, Descartes used doubting as a kind of method to establish truth.

Thinking is a conscious activity. To say that I think is to claim that I am conscious of this very activity called thinking. Thus thinking is a self-conscious activity. It is an immediate knowledge to me that I am thinking. It is different from bodily activities. The bodily activities are performed with the self being conscious of them. Consciousness includes all mental activities, like thoughts, sensations, imaginations, and experiences. Hence, the mind exists as an independent substance – res cogitans. “The certainty of my own existence obtains only when I am thinking, when I am conscious, I am, I exist, that is certain.” (Copleston, 1994: 91) The Cartesian metaphysics is based on the principle of cogito (I think) which is most indubitable and certain. As Descartes claims, “I am nothing so long as I think that I am something. So after considering everything very thoroughly, I must finally conclude that proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me and conceived in my mind.”4 Thus thinking or cogito lays down the foundation for any sort of knowledge claims, including the mechanistic explanation of the universe.

Consciousness is the basic metaphysical reality in Descartes’ philosophy. For him, the very nature of understanding consciousness is different from the understanding of the nature of the body. The body or matter is usually defined as something extended in space that can be perceived, and also has movement in connection with other bodies. It is different from the mind which is neither perceived no is extended in space. Descartes says, “For according to my judgement, power of self-movement, like the power of sensation or of thought was quite foreign to the nature of the body; indeed it was a source of wonder to me that certain bodies were found to contain faculties of this nature.”5 The self-movement describes the independent function of consciousness. It is not dependent upon the other mechanical functions of the body. Thereby

4 Rene Descartes, Second Meditation, “The Nature of Human Mind is better known than the Body”, Meditations on First Philosophy, trns. John Cottingham, CUP, Cambridge, 1986 pp.17-18. 5 Ibid., p.18 3

consciousness is characterized as a unique feature of human organism. The human organism is not just sensitive to the external world nature but also intelligent enough to think and describe it.

Descartes’ metaphysics of mind goes beyond the boundaries of physics and physiology. It situates the mind beyond the finites of mechanism. The physiological structures of a living body, especially of human beings are organized in a certain way so that they bear certain mechanical functions. These functions include digestion, blood circulation and palpitation of the heart, various movements of limbs, etc. Beyond the functions the conscious behaviour of the body is described by the presence of the soul in the living organism. The soul is placed in the small gland in the middle of the brain. The brain is taken as the vital part of the body connected with all other parts of the body through the nerve fibers to carry out the sensations. It is the pineal gland that converts the blood into animal spirits. The sprits are kept in the cavities and further they enter into the muscles through the nerve fibers. The flow of spirits varies depending upon the impressions that are carried to the soul. Descartes also says, “And conversely, the mechanism of the body is so constructed that simply by this gland’s being moved in any way by the soul or by any other cause, it drives the surrounding spirits towards the pores of the brain, which direct them through the nerves of the muscles; and in this way the gland makes the spirit move the limbs.”6 This mechanical composition of the body no doubt has a certain biological capacity to generate the movement. All these movements of the body are not derived from the soul and do not have any necessary relationship with consciousness. The heat generated by the natural composition of the body, for instance, is unique to the function of the body. Descartes says, “it has been believed, without justification, that our natural heat and all the movements of our bodies depend on the soul; whereas we ought to hold, on the contrary, that the soul takes its leave when we die only because the heat ceases and the organs which bring about bodily movement decay.” 7 The decomposition of the physiological feature of the body is a natural phenomenon in biology. The body is unable to generate heat or other physiological functions like digestion, palpitation, etc. because it loses certain biological capacities. Now the question arises regarding the interaction of the consciousness with the body or of the soul with the body. Soul

6 The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Vol.1, Trans. J. Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1955, The Passion of the Soul, p.341. 7 Ibid., p.329. 4

has two parts; the rational and the sensitive. The rational part of the soul includes thought processing. It is the higher level having other features like, willing, imagining, and having sensory perception. The sensitive level is only related to the bodily function. It is a lower level function because there is no willingness or volition present in this level of consciousness. The body being sensitive to nature is related to this lower level function. Thus, it is the soul or consciousness which acts on the body.

However, the existence of a person is defined by his being conscious. Consciousness signifies the higher order function of thinking, not just being sensitive. The higher order function of consciousness designates self-movement of the soul. This higher order function is not dependent on the function of the bodily movement whereas “thinking is inseparable from me.” Descartes points out, “I am, then, in a strict sense only a thing that thinks, that is, I am a mind or intelligence, or intellect, or reasonwords whose meaning I have been ignorant of until now.”8 Thinking entails the real existence.

Thus, in Descartes, consciousness or thinking is not associated with the physical or the biological function of the body. Therefore it cannot be reduced to the physical properties of the body. The biological function of the body remains different from the function of consciousness. On the other hand, the outer behaviour or movement of the body is manifested due to the active participation of the soul. The active participation reveals the basic features of the soul. Moreover the interaction remains a mystery. The mystery of the body is being conscious or the body as having a conscious mind is not explicable by the mechanistic model. Consciousness is objectively ‘real’. It is autonomous. This is asserted from the first person point of view. I am only aware of my being conscious. I can only realize my acting consciously or thinking consciously. The moment I cease to think, I am unable to comprehend my existence any more. Hence consciousness plays a necessary role for my understanding the world and representing it. Consciousness has to be understood as an irreducible and independent principle of knowledge. It is because neither can it be reduced to a bodily function nor can it be explained sufficiently by bodily function. Consciousness, thus, is metaphysically distinct from the material body. This is the source of the Cartesian mind-body dualism.

8 Descartes, Second Meditation, p.18. 5