Descartes’ Dualism

• Descartes began his philosophical career by

trying to set forth the basic principles of the
new scientific method that Galileo had
introduced and which had proved so
successful. At the same time he wished to
show that this new scientific methodology was
consistent with Christianity and provided no
threat to it.

03/04/2023 2
 Lecture Structure
• Thus, Descartes had two main aims in the Meditations:
• 1. To provide a sound basis for scientific method. He
aimed to show that the real source of scientific
knowledge lay in the mind and not in the senses.
• 2. To show how science and religion could be
compatible. He will do this by splitting the world up
into two different types of substances: mind and body.
Science will be completely true of body, extended
matter; religious truths will deal with the soul or mind.
• (Compare Kant)
03/04/2023 3
 Lecture Structure
• Doubt and Certainty
• The Arguments for Universal Doubt:
• In order to show that science rested on firm foundations and that these
foundations lay in the mind and
• not the senses, Descartes began by bringing into doubt all the beliefs that
come to us from the senses.
• His aim in these arguments is not really to prove that nothing exists or that it is
impossible for us to know if anything exists (he will prove that we can know
external objects later), but to show that all our knowledge of these things
through the senses is open to doubt. If our scientific knowledge came to us
through the senses, we could not even be sure that anything outside of us
existed.
• The obvious implication is that, since we do know that external objects exist,
this knowledge cannot come to us through the senses, but through the mind.

03/04/2023 4
• Since sense experience never puts us in contact
with the objects themselves, but only with
mental images, sense perception provides no
certainty that there is anything in the external
world that corresponds to the images we have
in our mind.
• Descartes introduces dreams, a deceiving God,
and an evil demon as ways of motivating this
doubt in the veracity of our sense experience.
03/04/2023 5
 The dream argument

• 1. I often have perceptions very much like the ones I

usually have in sensation while I am dreaming.
• 2. There are no definite signs to distinguish dream
experience from waking experience. therefore,
• 3. It is possible that I am dreaming right now and
that all of my perceptions are false Descartes realizes
that someone may not accept that all of the
elements of our dreams may be illusory, so he
introduces another mechanism to increase the scope
of our doubt.
03/04/2023 6
 The deceiving God argument

• 1. We believe that there is an all powerful God who has

created us and who is all powerful.
• 2. He has it in his power to make us be deceived even about
matters of mathematical knowledge which we seem to see
clearly. therefore,
• 3. It is possible that we are deceived even in our
mathematical knowledge of the basic structure of the world.
• For those who would hold (as Descartes himself will later)
that God would not deceive us, Descartes introduces an evil
demon instead.

03/04/2023 7
 The evil demon argument:
1. Instead of assuming that God is the source of our deceptions,
we will assume that there exists an evil demon, who is capable
of deceiving us in the same way we supposed God to be able.
• Therefore, I have reason to doubt the totality of what my
senses tell me as well as the mathematical knowledge that it
seems I have.
• Since the source of our knowledge cannot lie in the sense,
Descartes must find a way to rebuild the edifice of knowledge
upon material he can find within the contents of his own mind.
The first thing he can be sure of on the basis of this alone is his
own existence.

03/04/2023 8
 The "Cogito" argument
• II. The argument for his existence
• 1. Even if we assume that there is a deceiver, from the very fact that I am
deceived it follows that I exist.
• 2. In general it will follow from any state of thinking (e.g., imagining, sensing,
feeling, reasoning) that I exist. While I can be deceived about the objective
content of any thought, I cannot be deceived about the fact that I exist and
that I seem to perceive objects with certain characteristics. (The famous
statement of this from D.'s Discourse on Method is "Cogito ergo sum." or "I
think, therefore I am.")
• 3. Since I only can be certain of the existence of myself insofar as I am
thinking, I have knowledge of my existence only as a thinking thing (res
cogitans).
• This shows that the contents of the mind are more easily known than the
body:

03/04/2023 9
The Argument that the Mind is More Certainly known than the Body

• It is possible that all knowledge of external objects, including my

body, could be false as the result of the actions of an evil demon.
It is not, however, possible that I could be deceived about my
existence or my nature as a thinking thing.
• Therefore, our mind is much more clearly and distinctly known to
us than our body.
• Descartes still has no knowledge of anything outside of his mind.
He still has to make the crucial leap to the existence of an object
outside of his mind. He must do this, however, strictly on the
basis of the contents of his own mind. It is the idea of God that
he finds in his mind that allows him to make this leap, and which
forms the basis for his knowledge of all other external objects.

03/04/2023 10
 III. The argument for the existence of God from the
fact that I have an idea of Him. (simplified version)

• 1. I have an idea of God, a perfect being.

• 2. There must be as much reality or perfection in the cause of any thing as
in the effect.
• a. This applies not only to the existence of ideas, but also to the reality of
what they represent. Not only
• must the existence of the idea be explained, but also what it represents.
• 3. The idea of God represents something so perfect that I could not have
been the cause of this idea.
• Therefore, God must exist as the only possible cause of the perfection
found in my idea of Him.
• With the knowledge that God exists and that he is not a deceiver,
Descartes can move on to explain how we know material objects to exist.

03/04/2023 11
 IV. The argument that material objects exist.

• 1. God is no deceiver.
• 2. He created me and gave me reason which
tells me that my ideas come from external
corporeal things.
• 3. If they do not come from external objects,
then God must be a deceiver. But this is an
absurdity. Therefore,
• 4. Material objects

03/04/2023 12
• Having put our scientific knowledge on a firm
foundation and having shown that it comes from
our mind, not our senses, Descartes needs to show
how this new type of knowledge is compatible with
religion. He has done this, partially by showing how
it leads to knowledge of the existence of God. He
still has to reconcile the seeming incompatibility in
the objective and subjective views we can take of
ourselves. He does this by spitting us up into two
distinct substances: mind and body.
03/04/2023 13
 The argument for the distinction of mind and body.

• Each of these arguments depends on Leibniz's

law, which says:
• Leibniz's law: If two things are the same thing,
they must share all the same properties.
• Descartes shows two ways in which mind and
body seem to have different properties, and
how, hence, they must be different things.

03/04/2023 14
A. The argument from knowledge.
• 1. I can be certain that my mind exists.
• 2. I cannot be sure that my body exists.
• --------------------------------
• Mind and body are not the same thing.

03/04/2023 15
 The argument from extension.

• 1. My mind is unextended.
• 2. My body is extended.
• Mind and body are not the same thing.

03/04/2023 16
Problems with Descartes radical split between the mind and the body:

• If mind and body are radically different types of stuff, it is hard to see
how they can interact with each other. In particular, it is hard to see
how an unextended substance can interact with an extended one.
• Yet mind and body do seem to interact in both directions:
• 1. The mind affects the body: This seems to happen whenever we act.
The mind decides to do somethingand the body does it.
• 2. The body affects the mind:
• a. In sense perception, our sense organs seem to affect and produce
images in our mind.
• b. Damage to our brain or the influence of drugs on our body often
affects our mind.
• Why problem of interaction

03/04/2023 17
• Cogito, ergo, Sum
• Definition of thought: awareness of what goes on in my mind
• Cognition and volition
• Self-evident Truth
• Incorrigibility
• Transparency Thesis
• Introduction
• Inference or Performance
• Mind-body Distinction
– Conceivability Argument

03/04/2023 18
• Minds:
• • Transparent to itself (privileged access)
• • Indivisible
• • Rational
• • Private
• • Indubitable
• • Conscious
• • Mass-less and colour-less
• • Constituted by beliefs and desires
03/04/2023 19
• Bodies:
• • Divisible
• • Public
• • Dubitable
• • Non-conscious
• • Situated in space
• Have mass, colour, etc.
• • Exist in a network of causal chains
03/04/2023 20