Talk:Descartes' Error
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[edit] Damasio on Descartes Error
<From Descartes' Error (2nd paragraph)—This is a treatment of the controversial "mind/body" relationship, the issue of the mind/body relationship lying at the roots of psychology. René Descartes – the father of modern psychology - gave us something to ponder about the mind/body relationship when he said: "I think, therefore I am." This saying is actually from the context of a larger work, in which Descartes clarifies that he believes the mind and body to be independent entities, and that the mind can hypothetically exist without the body.>
Kindly see first Spinoza on Mind-Body.
From Antonio Damasio's Descartes' Error—Emotion, Reason, and thr Human Brain;
ISBN: 039913843 1994; pp. 249-50—Dualism (Body and Mind Separation).
- This is Descartes' error: the abyssal separation between body and mind, between the sizable, dimensional, mechanically operated, infinitely divisible body stuff, on the one hand, and the unsizable, undimensioned, un-pushpullable, nondivisible mind stuff {pineal gland}; the suggestion that reasoning, and moral judgment, and the suffering that comes from physical pain or emotional upheaval might exist separately from the body. Specifically: the separation of the most refined operations of mind from the structure and operation of a biological organism.
- Now, some may ask, why quibble with Descartes rather than with Plato, whose views on body and mind were far more exasperating, as can be discovered in the Phaedo? Why bother with this particular error of Descartes'? After all, some of his other errors sound more spectacularly wrong than this one. He believed that heat made the blood circulate, and that tiny, ever so fine particles of the blood distilled themselves into "animal spirits," which could then move muscles. Why not take him to task for either of those notions? The reason is simple: We have known for a long time that he was wrong on those particular points, and the questions of how and why the blood circulates have been answered to our complete satisfaction. That is not the case when we consider questions of mind, brain, and body, concerning which Descartes' error remains influential. For many, Descartes' views are regarded as self-evident and in no need of reexamination.
Yesselman 21:29, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Ryle on Descartes Error
<From Descartes' Error (2nd paragraph)—This is a treatment of the controversial "mind/body" relationship, the issue of the mind/body relationship lying at the roots of psychology. René Descartes – the father of modern psychology - gave us something to ponder about the mind/body relationship when he said: "I think, therefore I am." This saying is actually from the context of a larger work, in which Descartes clarifies that he believes the mind and body to be independent entities, and that the mind can hypothetically exist without the body.>
Kindly see first Spinoza on Mind-Body.
From Gilbert Ryle's Concept of Mind; ISBN: 0226732967 p. 18—Dualism (Body and Mind Separation).
- One of the chief intellectual origins of what I have yet to prove to be the Cartesian category mistake seems to be this. When Galileo showed that his methods of scientific discovery were competent to provide a mechanical theory which should cover every occupant of space, Descartes found in himself two conflicting motives {world views}. As a man of scientific genius he could not but endorse the claims of mechanics, yet as a religious and moral man he could not accept, as Hobbes accepted, the discouraging rider to those claims, namely that human nature differs only in degree of complexity from clockwork. The mental could not be just a variety of the mechanical.
Yesselman 21:29, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Stewart on Descartes' Error
<From Descartes' Error (2nd paragraph)—This is a treatment of the controversial "mind/body" relationship, the issue of the mind/body relationship lying at the roots of psychology. René Descartes – the father of modern psychology - gave us something to ponder about the mind/body relationship when he said: "I think, therefore I am." This saying is actually from the context of a larger work, in which Descartes clarifies that he believes the mind and body to be independent entities, and that the mind can hypothetically exist without the body.>
Kindly see first Spinoza on Mind-Body.
From Matthew Stewart's The Courier and the Heretic 2006; 0393058980 p.165—Dualism -
[1] The mind-body problem manifested itself in other ways that kept seventeenth-century thinkers awake at night. The strict Cartesian dualism left animals, for example, impaled on the horns of dilemma: Do dogs, say, have minds like us or are they machines? To endow a dog with a mind, according to Cartesian logic, was tantamount to giving it a place in heaven; so the Cartesians stuck to the less theologically risky position that animals are indeed machines. Their critics forced them to concede that this implied that beating a dog and thus causing it to bark, for example, is equivalent to beating a bagpipe and causing it to squeal—a philosophical howler that seemed then, as now, both repellent and obviously untrue.
[2] Babies, sleepers, and dreamers all presented similar forms of the mind-body problem. Since babies cannot say "I think therefore I am," do they lack minds? Do they acquire them later-say, on the thirteenth birthday? When we sleep, do our minds go on holiday? Can a dreamer say "I think therefore I am"? And if we should at long last fall into a very deep sleep, sans dreams, do we cease to be human for the duration?
Yesselman 21:29, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Stewart's Error
The second objection to Descartes' philosophy of mind in Stewart on Descartes' Error reflects a questionable understanding of the logic of the cogito. "Since babies cannot say 'I think therefore I am,' do they lack minds?" Stewart asks. "Do they acquire them later-say, on the thirteenth birthday? When we sleep, do our minds go on holiday? Can a dreamer say 'I think therefore I am'?" It is a rather serious mistake to conclude from Descartes' famous statement that the ability to perform this deduction, "I think, therefore I am," is in any way a necessary condition for the existence of a mind. This ability does indeed prove the existence of a mind, but it does not follow that the absence of this ability proves the absence of a mind. The logic of Descartes' cogito is not that because I can say "I think, therefore I am," I exist as a thinking thing; it is, rather, that because I think, I know that I exist as a thinking thing. Descartes does not suggest that one must be able to say "I think, therefore I am" to have a mind. He suggests, on the contrary, that anything that can think at all (i.e., perceive ideas, including sensations and dreams) has a mind.
Stewart's final question, however, ("And if we should at long last fall into a very deep sleep, sans dreams, do we cease to be human for the duration?") is not guilty of any such error. I might also add that it may be legitimate to raise questions about whether babies can have minds, according to Descartes' philosophy, but these questions must be raised on grounds unrelated to the cogito (see the discussion of the differences between rational beings and automata in the Fifth Part of the Discourse on Method).
JGWood 17:08, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Thanks JGWood for being a Descartes afficionado as I am!
Thank you JG for putting Descartes' quote in its rightful place! Indeed, I am surprised to see this mathematician and philosopher identified as a father of psychology, and equally surprised at the suggestion that he claimed separation of mind and body! Quite the contrary -- as JG puts it so clearly, the fact that he could think is undeniable proof of his existence: thought proves body! To reflect these more commonly accepted interpretations of Descartes work, i have taken the liberty to edit both his bio and the nature of his "error" in the wikipedia entry. I welcome your comments.Mgorse 13:29, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
