COURSE -PERSPECTIVES OF KNOWLEDGE NAME - DIVYANSHU SHARMA ROLL NUMBER – 2013034
JOURNAL ON THE MIND BODY PROBLEM EMPHASISING ON DESCARTES
Descartes believed that a person or human being such as you or me is a two-part composite, of a mind and a body or to put it simple a person is just the mind but has a body. And according to him, the mind is an entirely immaterial, nonphysical thing or simply a collection of information. What unites the mind with our body is that it causally interacts with the body.
Descartes’ main arguments were these: One can doubt that their body or any other physical thing exists, One cannot doubt that their mind exists,The mind is distinct from the body.
In this journal I will be focussing on the third …show more content…
Since new information is continuously being created by the universe, by rearranging existing matter, this is an important difference. Going back to physics; Matter and energy is conserved i.e they can neither be created nor destroyed or simply they’re a constant of the universe. Information is not conserved, we can grow our knowledge and that basically is improving our information base.
Now relating the mind body dualism with other great philosophers, I find that it coincides with Plato’s ideas that exist as pure form, although its ontology is different from that of matter. The existential status of Platonic Ideas was questioned and asked about by the ancients. On the other hand, monists see the mind-body distinction as a pure physical aspect, since the information in matter somewhat corresponds to a reorganization of the matter and we can call it sort of a subset. This was Aristotle's more practical view. For him, Plato's Ideas were just abstractions generalized from many existent …show more content…
For Descartes, the body is a system of tiny fibres causing mechanical movements in the brain, which then in reaction to the stimuli pull on other fibres to activate the muscles or nerve impulses. This is essentially the basis of stimulus and response theory in modern physiology.
Descartes was of the belief that humans are the only dualistic creature. He placed animals in purely physical, mechanistic world, acting purely on the laws of nature.
Descartes doubted all that could be doubted in the hope of arriving at an undeniable truth. And hence was led to - I think, therefore I am. Descartes could doubt the existence of the physical world and that even his own body actually existed, but he could not doubt the idea that his mind existed because doubting is a thought process. The very act of doubting one's existence proves that one actually exists; otherwise, who is doing the doubting?
Through this process of doubting, Descartes realized that, regardless of what the physical world was really like, the mind was still whole and unchanged, and therefore separate from the physical world.
I believe that the Mind is a collection of thoughts and knowledge and it is connected to the
JOURNAL ON THE MIND BODY PROBLEM EMPHASISING ON DESCARTES
Descartes believed that a person or human being such as you or me is a two-part composite, of a mind and a body or to put it simple a person is just the mind but has a body. And according to him, the mind is an entirely immaterial, nonphysical thing or simply a collection of information. What unites the mind with our body is that it causally interacts with the body.
Descartes’ main arguments were these: One can doubt that their body or any other physical thing exists, One cannot doubt that their mind exists,The mind is distinct from the body.
In this journal I will be focussing on the third …show more content…
Since new information is continuously being created by the universe, by rearranging existing matter, this is an important difference. Going back to physics; Matter and energy is conserved i.e they can neither be created nor destroyed or simply they’re a constant of the universe. Information is not conserved, we can grow our knowledge and that basically is improving our information base.
Now relating the mind body dualism with other great philosophers, I find that it coincides with Plato’s ideas that exist as pure form, although its ontology is different from that of matter. The existential status of Platonic Ideas was questioned and asked about by the ancients. On the other hand, monists see the mind-body distinction as a pure physical aspect, since the information in matter somewhat corresponds to a reorganization of the matter and we can call it sort of a subset. This was Aristotle's more practical view. For him, Plato's Ideas were just abstractions generalized from many existent …show more content…
For Descartes, the body is a system of tiny fibres causing mechanical movements in the brain, which then in reaction to the stimuli pull on other fibres to activate the muscles or nerve impulses. This is essentially the basis of stimulus and response theory in modern physiology.
Descartes was of the belief that humans are the only dualistic creature. He placed animals in purely physical, mechanistic world, acting purely on the laws of nature.
Descartes doubted all that could be doubted in the hope of arriving at an undeniable truth. And hence was led to - I think, therefore I am. Descartes could doubt the existence of the physical world and that even his own body actually existed, but he could not doubt the idea that his mind existed because doubting is a thought process. The very act of doubting one's existence proves that one actually exists; otherwise, who is doing the doubting?
Through this process of doubting, Descartes realized that, regardless of what the physical world was really like, the mind was still whole and unchanged, and therefore separate from the physical world.
I believe that the Mind is a collection of thoughts and knowledge and it is connected to the