Meditation of Rene Descartes-Rene Descartes, a French philosopher, and mathematician, developed a philosophical system that emphasized the separation between mind and body. His work on the mind and body relationship is discussed in his Meditations on First Philosophy. In the Sixth Meditation, Descartes explores the existence of external objects and the distinction between the mind and the body.
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In the previous meditations, Descartes doubts everything he has previously believed to find indubitable knowledge. He concludes that he exists as a thinking thing (res cogitans) because he is aware of his thoughts and doubts. However, Descartes recognizes that he has a clear and distinct perception of physical objects, such as bodies and the external world. This raises the question of how the mind, which is a thinking thing, interacts with the physical world.
Descartes acknowledges that the senses can sometimes deceive us, as in the case of optical illusions, but he argues that the senses are generally reliable. He suggests that the senses provide a rough and imperfect representation of the external world, and it is the mind’s interpretation that leads to errors. Despite these errors, Descartes asserts that there are objective qualities, such as size, shape, and motion, that can be perceived accurately.
Regarding the mind-body relationship, Descartes distinguishes between the mind (or soul) and the body. He argues that the mind is a non-extended substance, while the body is an extended substance. These two substances interact through the pineal gland, which Descartes believed to be the point of contact between the immaterial mind and the material body.
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