My reflection this week and next is based on a lecture I gave a number of years ago to students, studying religious experience. at what was then Lampeter University
What is known as Cartesian Dualism is a subject that has exercised philosophers for centuries, indeed, probably the earliest references go back some 500 years before the start of the common era when the great debate was to consider whether or not the mind was located within the heart or the brain.
I shall then begin this essay by very briefly summarising these very early thoughts which may, of course, have influenced the approach of Descartes, the central character in today’s reflection. After dealing very briefly with the life of Descartes I shall set out in some detail his methodology and his approach to the relationship between mind and brain, discussing in particular doubt, and the existence of God.
Then in part II (in a fortnight) after touching very briefly on the work of William James, I shall then come right up to date looking at the spectrum of thought from the materialist reductionist position through to the non-reductionist position. I will then look at some of the current work on neuroplasticity and the results that it appears to be throwing up results that bear a remarkable parallel with the age-old approach of Buddhism. We shall also see that these approaches are not inconsistent with the existence of Near-Death Experiences. Finally, I will touch on the ideas offered by quantum theory possibly to provide a link between the Cartesian dualist and the materialist.
The study of mind and brain can, as I mentioned, be traced back some 2500 years to the time of the Pythagorean School of Philosophy and in particular to Alcmaeon who is regarded by many as the founder of empirical philosophy. He proposed that conscious experience originated in the brain and furthermore believed that all sensory awareness was co-ordinated within the brain – known as the encephalic view. 50 years later Hippocrates developed these ideas further writing that the eyes, ears, tongue, hands and feet do whatever the brain determines – it is the brain that is the messenger to the understanding and the brain that interprets the understanding. At about the same time as Alcmaeon, Empedocles reasserted the idea had been developed even earlier that the mind or soul dwelt in the heart and in the blood – the view which was called the cardiovascular theory.
These two opposing views were carried through the fourth century BCE with Aristotle convinced that the location of the soul was in the heart whilst Plato placed the immortal soul in the “marrow of the head”. Aristotle’s views can be traced through the Stoics to Tertullian and the encephalic view through one of Rome’s famous physicians, Galen to fourth Century CE Bishop of Emesa called Nemesius who identified three separate mental processes – sensation and imagination, thought and judgement, and memory all of which he located in different ventricles of the brain. Thus we now had the ventricular theory. This theory fell apart in the 16th Century when it was discovered that animals’ brains had ventricles, and since animals had, according to the catholic church, no soul then the humans must have their souls located somewhere else. Those of you who are knowledgeable about the Shakespearian plays will be able to identify either the encephalic or cardiovascular theory depending upon which ever view suited the play to best effect.
But by the time we get to the 17th Century, the cardiovascular view had, following the work of Harvey, been dismissed – leaving the encephalic view standing alone – apart from one other notion: that the soul was not located within the body at all. Which brings us, of course, at the beginning of 17th Century to Rene Descartes.
Descartes was born into a fairly rich family on 31st March,1596 at La Haye, a small town near Poitiers. He was sent to school at the age of eight to the Jesuit College of La Fleche where he stayed for eight years, showing a particular aptitude for mathematics. Fairly soon after completing his formal education he resolved, in his own words “no longer to seek any other science than the knowledge of myself or of the great book of the world.” In order to see the world he followed in the tradition of his father, joined the army and travelled widely in Europe. His must have been a rather strange army life because he had plenty of time to spend studying, writing and discussing mathematics with some of the most eminent mathematicians of the day who were serving in the Engineering Branch. As a very staunch Roman Catholic he was not very happy serving in the Low Countries and joined the Army of Maximillian on the Danube where he had an experience “being full of enthusiasm and having discovered the true basis of science”. This led him to the formulation of the Cartesian method of doubt which we shall come onto in a moment. It also led him to apply Algebra to Geometry and to begin to discover how to demonstrate the generality of mathematics, work which was to lay some of the ground rules of the Calculus, a subject that was to be further developed by others.
Anyway, a couple of years after joining Maximillian, he quit the Army to spend, after a short period travelling, the remainder of his life (from 1629-49) in Holland. In 1649 at the request of the Queen of Sweden, he moved to the Swedish Court at Stockholm where one of his duties was to rise at 5am to educate a Royal Pupil. All his life, Descartes had been inclined to lie in bed and study until late in the morning; the change of regime did not suit him and he died in February 1650 of “inflammation of the lungs”.
In those 20 years in Holland, Descartes made a tremendous contribution to philosophy both at the time and in leaving us with a legacy such that he is regarded as the Father of Modern Philosophy. However, we must remember that at this time, the time of the Reformation, there was a great conflict between those who thought that with the advent of scientific method all the problems involved in understanding nature could be solved and those, in the hands of an authoritarian Church who were convinced that the key to that understanding was in the interpretation of the ancient authorities. Such was the power of the Church that in 1633 Galileo was denounced with the book setting out his correct discoveries being burnt. Descartes was much more careful – he was of course strongly influenced by his Jesuit training as well as being much more diplomatic dedicating his Meditations on the First Philosophy to the Dean and Doctors of the Faculty of Theology in Paris. So, with that brief biographical introduction, let us have a look at Descartes work itself.
I think it true to say that the question that had occupied Descartes more than any other involved the search for truth which itself involved the pursuit of certainty. Descartes was very clear that the two were separate (truth perhaps being a state of mind whilst certainty was the establishment of properties relating to things in the external world), but he believed that the correct way of searching for the truth was to begin by searching for certainty.
This search was set out by Descartes in the form of six meditations – dealing with doubt, with the nature of mind, with the existence of God, with truth and error, with the essence of material things and finally with the real distinction between the mind and body of man.
Descartes was ultimately looking for certainty and he begun this quest by trying to empty his mind of anything about which he could perceive the slightest doubt. Bernard Williams identifies three stages in this process.
First, lay aside those things which on any commonsensical basis you could find doubtful.
Secondly, he doubted that at any given moment that he was awake. We all probably have experienced dreams that are very real and perhaps were very pleased on waking to find out that all that we had just experienced was all illusion. So, Descartes asked himself how can I be sure that I am not dreaming and that all that I am experiencing at present is an illusion?
Thirdly, he posited the idea of a malign influence or demon, whose objective was to deceive Descartes. This led to another question – if there is such a spirit, then is there anything about which this spirit could not deceive me?
The answer that Descartes came to was: this demon can never make me believe that I am thinking when I am not. Even if he is under the malign influence of this spirit, is deceived and thinking false thoughts, then Descartes is still thinking. Since he was able to think, Descartes believed that he must exist which of course led to his first statement that: I am thinking, therefore I exist. This is often referred to in its Latin form: Cogito ego sum, otherwise known as the Cogito. Bryan Magee makes a very useful contribution to understanding exactly what Descartes was driving at when he translated the Cogito as: “I am consciously aware, therefore I know that I exist”. This of course makes the point that by the word thinking, Descartes is referring to not only conceptual thought but all forms of conscious experience.
But perhaps we should at this stage go to Descartes himself who said “But what then am I? A thinking thing, it has been said. But what is a thinking thing? It is a thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, refuses, that imagines also and perceives. Am I not that very being who now doubts of almost everything; who for all that, understands and conceives certain things, who affirms one alone as true, and denies the others; who desires to know more of them and does not wish to be deceived; who imagines many things, sometimes even despite his will; and is likewise percipient of many as if through the medium of the senses. Is there nothing of all this as true as that …I am… Is there any one of these attributes that can be properly distinguished from my thought? After carrying on in this vein for another page or two in his meditation no.2 on the human mind, he considers the possible existence of some entity that we can touch, feel, smell and so on. The example that he uses is a piece of wax – he imagines it has just come from the beehive – you could taste the honey it contains – its colour, size, and shape are obvious to seen,- it still has the scent of the flowers from which it was made,- to the touch it is cool and if you tap it with the finger it is solid enough. So, on the face of it, it has all the features which one might think are necessary to affirm its existence. But what happens if you warm it up by placing near the fire? In Descartes’ words: what remained of the taste exhales, the smell evaporates, the colour changes, its figure is destroyed, its size increases, it becomes liquid and as it grows hot it can hardly be handled. So what then was that which I knew with so much distinctness in the piece of wax? None of those things detected by the senses has remained the same, but surely the object is still that same piece of wax. I must therefore admit that I cannot even comprehend by imagination what the piece of wax is, and that it is the mind alone which perceives it. You might well ask what does this all prove and you might well ask because many have wondered what Descartes was really driving at. Turning to Bernard Williams for a definitive answer, he believes that Descartes was endeavouring to prove that a material thing is just something that occupies space – which is something that the wax does whether or not it is in its solid or liquid state. Descartes also used this example of wax to develop his ideas on mathematical physics a subject which is outside the scope of today’s reflection.
So let me return to Descartes example which he concludes by saying that as he is aware of the existence of the wax through his various senses it must follow that he himself exists and “if I determine that my imagination persuades me of the existence of the wax, I will still draw the same conclusion (that I am).” His conclusion to this meditation on the mind is that bodies themselves are not perceived by the senses nor by the faculty of the imagination, but by the intellect alone which leads him to say that there is nothing more easily apprehended than my own mind.
But with this thought Descartes seems to have finished up in a cul-de-sac. So far all he has achieved is that doubt ends with the realisation of his own existence.
He has reached a point where he recognises nothing except the content of his consciousness and somehow or other he needs to devise a method of regaining contact with the external world using only the contents of his consciousness. Here, I believe the strong catholic education that he received at the Jesuit College retains a very strong influence upon him because his way out of this dead end is to discover within the contents of his mind the conception of God. He uses in his third meditation two arguments for the existence of God the well known ontological argument and one which he developed himself.
As I have mentioned previously, the ontological argument first put forward by Anselm defines God as “a being than which nothing greater or more perfect can be conceived.”
Descartes’ argument is that since the lesser cannot give rise to the greater, and since Descartes has an idea of God that is infinite, that idea could only have been planted in his mind by God. Or, as Descartes himself summarises his argument: I perceive I could not possibly be of such a nature as I am and yet have in my mind the idea of a God, if God did not in reality exist – this same God, I say, whose idea is in my mind…
Or, in other words, since the lesser cannot give rise to the greater, and since he has this idea of God it can only be because there actually is a God who created him.
Having then introduced us to the existence of God and having previously proved that since he thinks he himself exists he then gets out of the cul-de-sac in a way which has been brilliantly summarised by Bernard Williams: I find that however much criticism I make of my ideas, however carefully I think out what is involved in my beliefs about the physical world, although I can suspend judgement in the doubt, I do have a very strong tendency to believe there is a material world there. And since I have this disposition and I have done everything in my power to make sure that my beliefs are not founded on error, then God will at the end make sure that I am not fundamentally and systematically mistaken. It is essential to Descartes that his arguments for the existence of God – both Anslem’s original proposal and his own development of that proposal – are totally convincing. Descartes then believed that if you are in good faith and think about the existence of God conscientiously then you will see the truth that the external world does indeed exist.
From this it follows that there are two realities in the world. First I cannot conceive of me existing without conscious awareness. Secondly there is the existence of the external world given to me by God. This external world is observed by the thinking me.
This leads on then to the view of the world as split between subjects which are pure thought and objects which occupy space – in other words the division of nature between mind and matter. We have at last arrived at Cartesian Dualism which is a good point at which to leave the subject until the next reflection in a fortnight’s time.
Dr David Greenwood d.greenwood@uwtsd.ac.uk July 2022
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