What is Cartesian Dualism

*Rene Descartes forwarded the idea that the mind and body are separate and distinct. The mind is capable of thinking while the body is not.

The concept of dualism is not new in psychology. It is an accepted concept in ancient Greece. Its relevance goes beyond ancient Greece as this concept was in the Bible, thousands of years before Greece came to exist. The ancient scriptures in the first book Genesis say that mankind was created in God’s image and Adam was breathed with the spirit before he became alive.

Biblical Basis of Dualism

From this line in Genesis, one can conclude that Adam was not totally made of a physical body but more importantly, a spirit breathed by God to him. That without this spirit, Adam would not be alive. This is the basic premise held by religious believers behind their belief that the body merely housed the spirit.

Plato and Aristotle had touched on the mind-body link. They pointed out that the human mind or soul could not be part of the physical body. But it was Rene Descartes that discussed this concept in detail. In his arguments and explanations, he called this mind-body link dualism.

Descartes’ famous saying summed up the dualism concept “cogito ergo sum,” “I reflect therefore I am.” Descartes believed that the immaterial mind and the material body are two completely different things. They are not one. That is why they function differently. They can only interact with each other but not be one.

Mind and Body as Distinct and Separate

Rene Descartes argued that the mind and body are distinct and separate. This is the first point of Cartesian Dualism. According to Cartesian thought, man looks upon his world as a direct reflection of him, his values, beliefs, experiences, conditions and development. Being a rationalist, Descartes believes that clarity of perceptions of intellect is the best way to gain knowledge. The information derived from the senses merely helps us to live in a practical manner.

In Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes explored his beliefs by starting with doubting or questioning his own beliefs so he could arrive at what he thought is certain. In this experiment, he pointed out the fact that he could doubt if he had a body by convincing himself and thinking that he could either be dreaming of it or it is an illusion created by evil, but he could never question the reality of his mind.

This served as the first basis for his theory that mind and body are totally different. The mind is conscious and self-aware unlike the brain, which is the seat of intelligence. The brain is part of the physical body but the mind or the spirit is not. The mind interacts with the physical body through the brain, more specifically, through the pineal gland in the middle of the two hemispheres of the brain.

In Meditation VI Descartes stated: “I have a clear and distinct idea of myself as a thinking, non-extended thing, and a clear and distinct idea of body as an extended and non-thinking thing. Whatever I can conceive clearly and distinctly, God can so create.”

The body could be divided up by removing a leg or arm, but the mind or soul is indivisible. The mind is not only indivisible but also invisible and immortal. The body is the exact opposite being visible, mortal and divisible. The mind in Descartes explanation is a “thinking thing” (lat. res cogitans) and immaterial. This “thing” is capable of doubting, believing, hoping and thinking on its own.