Descartes's Response To The Mind-Body Problem

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Mind-Body Problem Dictionary Entry
The mind-body problem is the relationship between the mind and matter, more specifically the brain, and how consciousness relates to the brain. The origin of the mind-body problem is often associated with René Descartes during the 17th century. While Descartes was the first to really formulate the mind-body problem as a problem of today’s standards, Plato and Aristotle (among various other philosophers afterwards) also offered their thoughts on the mind and how they interact with the body as well.
Cartesian dualism, or substance dualism, is Descartes’s answer to the mind-body problem and was so accepted because it fit in well with most religious views of his time. This was because he saw the mind, or consciousness, …show more content…
Just as Descartes used the idea that the mind was immortal, Plato too believed that the soul is separated from the body. The body is a part of the material world and the soul was from a world of “ideas” that was temporary until the body’s death. At this point it was believed that consciousness would depart from the body and go back to its “world of forms”. For Plato, the world of forms was true reality and was only able to be experienced by the soul. The body however was unable to understand this reality and was just a vessel for the mind until death so that the mind could pass into true …show more content…
Materialism is the view that only matter exists and all things are made of matter, thus making some external form other than matter impossible to exist. If this is true, then it would suggest that the mind cannot be separate from the physical brain and so the mind must be a part of the processes of the brain. This represents a monistic style of thinking. Thomas Hobbes was the first modern proponent of materialism as a solution to the mind-body problem. All of the mind’s processes and thoughts were subject to the motions of matter in the brain. Proponents of dualism, however, employ Leibniz’s Law and note that mental states contain characteristics that our brain states do not. Because of this, mental states are not the same as brain states and therefore minds cannot be identical to brains and must be
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