This idea, known as dualism, was later taken up by later philosophical systems such as determinism and materialism.
Descartes also believes that each part of the mind has its own existence and its own nature. For this reason, he opposed pantheism and called the one indivisible God mind. Descartes believed that the mind is not a material substance like a body, but, on the contrary, the possibility of realization.
Descartes’s views were based on the writings of his predecessor, Scotus Eriugena, but also required a lot of research on the part of Descartes. His decision to limit his research to the psychic life led to the development of Cartesianism. To explain reason, Descartes developed a set of «requirements for incompatibility between mind and matter» (rational thinking and concrete objects). The basis for this disagreement is that Descartes and some of his predecessors considered matter to be a universal substance, while others thought that mind was a universal substance.
Intelligence
Descartes believed that what people experience is based on what is happening in their brain. He believed that when people think something, the thought moves through the nerves and muscles of the head until it reaches the conscious mind. For this reason, he believed that there is a mind and a body, and that each of them has its own existence, since he believed that the soul is both material and immaterial. As a result, the concept of dualism plays a vital role in his thinking, and he argued that matter is the only substance, while matter and spirit are separate and not completely complementary. In the Third Meditation, Descartes describes how if someone looks at their hand and thinks it is a hand, then they perceive the subjective impression of the hand. This led him to believe that mind and body are not one but two parts of the mind, so that the mind cannot cause the body to appear, but the body can cause the mind to appear. Descartes believed that the ability of the body to cause the emergence of mind is the basis of the idea of free will. Descartes wrote that he still believed in free will. Descartes argued that the mind can determine the will. And this decision to do something is made freely, because the mind in its «logical and systematic procedure» generates a logical conclusion based on the premises of the situation. Descartes wrote that the mind has the power to make will because of its ability to generate a logical conclusion based on the facts of the present. The ability to form a will depends on intelligence and reason. The mind determines what it considers to be good reasons for decisions. Moreover, the mind can distinguish between different criteria and is not able to make decisions based only on knowledge. Descartes’ reflections on free will have been quoted in the debate on libertarianism.
According to many readers of his work, Descartes adhered to Aristotelian epistemology. He viewed the mind as a form of thinking in which physical objects are different, mental qualities are either definite or indefinite, and what seems real is necessarily related to what is possible. Descartes suggested that the object is a separate body, consisting of atoms of an undefined nature. Descartes rejected the monistic doctrine that mind and body are one because, in his opinion, two bodies without mind were not enough to explain the relationship between two people.
Descartes also believed that all entities, whether physical, mental, or both, are bound by «definite and implacable laws». He believed that no entity is completely independent, because the mind is not immune from the laws of the world. Body and mind are inseparable. Descartes believed that one can become aware of something that is not aware of itself. He suggested that one day the conscious mind will become aware of its true nature.
Without direct access to «other minds», we must, based on the behavior of others, conclude that their personal mental life is similar to ours. This conclusion became a kind of epistemic reflex. According to the philosopher John Searle, this has led to one of the most enduring beliefs in modern intellectual life: after all, we are not limited in our consciousness only by ourselves. This may not be the case. We have minds that are capable of performing truly intelligent reasoning and seeing things in truly mysterious ways, and they are probably superior to our own, and they too can be used to understand and improve our lives. They may not be as effective as we are. The only reasonable position on this issue is that our minds are as smart as possible, and in some ways better.
Take intelligence, for example. The fact that we, by and large, have minds equal in general capacity to our own is clearly not a good sign that these minds are similar enough to ours that we can have similar experiences or understand each other. As Searle put it, «To say that we are essentially ’the same animal’ in a certain respect means nothing at all». He has a simple answer to the seemingly outrageous assertion that we can know ourselves in relation to another human being, namely: «As for the assertion that we can know one human being in relation to another human being, I’m quite prepared to say, that such knowledge is absolutely useless».
You may not find this point of view entirely clear, but it is nonetheless an important finding, even if Searle is to qualify it with the remark that he is willing to discard it on the grounds that, being «similar enough», really useless, that is, it actually does not contribute to the accumulation of knowledge. You and I may be perfectly capable of doing intelligent things such as reading or listening, or making decisions on difficult, vague, and potentially conflicting issues, but our special abilities can never justify us, even in relation to someone who, in their queue, as smart as we are. Anyone who wants to claim that we are really equal or «are the same animals», after long and persistent reflection, had to come to the conclusion that our minds are radically different and simply fundamentally incomparable.
But here another interesting question arises. It would be easy to view this differentiation as proof that the human mind has abilities that we do not share with any animal. But Searle sees that is not the point.
It may seem that I have a little roughly characterized Searl ’s position as a position that is in the spirit of utilitarianism, as a determination to maximize the overall well-being of humanity. But he truly believes that this «sane maxim» should guide the thinking of everyone involved in a project to improve the well-being of people, from the highest courts to ordinary citizens, with the goal of building a future that will be as rich and interesting as the one we can imagine now. According to him, all those who followed Searle’s example and supported the project of theorizing about «collective unconscious» and «symbolic thinking» were forced to do so because they are convinced that they are looking for ways to expand human power. But it also means that they have to be willing to say no to certain things when they are faced with the opportunity to make humans more and more superior to other animals. It is an area of research that, he says, is not related to the question of whether we are «better» than other animals, but rather to how we should avoid «all possible threats to our own growth and the growth of our offspring, including threats our intellectual achievements».
Indeed, as Searle has often pointed out, there is not a single animal that knows why it exists. And we, who truly know why we exist, he argues, must pay the price for being so smart and capable. He says we should not allow ourselves to fall in love with our powers and our tendency to regard our minds as unique. We must remember that what sets us apart from other animals is simply our mind.
Discussing man as a «rational animal», Descartes said: «A rational animal does not in any way correspond to the conditions of man, since it is as superior and independent of him as his imagination is independent of him». Descartes considered the mind above the body and in such a way that it could exist without the body, although he did not want to make a specific distinction between mind and soul, as well as mind and body. In Discourse on Method, Descartes gave an example of such a way of thinking. He argued that the process of creating an object is essentially the same for creating an object in the mind and creating in the physical world. Descartes said that we should not think of the mind as a separate substance, as Plato would like us to do, but we should not
