Still, as noted, many philosophies and religions attempt to answer the question of mind and body by simply subordinating one side to the other. For example, it would seem that many, but not all

religions privilege the mind over the body, perhaps given its apparent nature as an immaterial substan

Descartes sets the immaterial mind in opposition to the body, again believing that we are essentially thinking things and not material things. The body, for its part, is extended into space; it is like a machine that can be measured or quantified. But the mind has no weight, no shape, no physicality; it cannot be measured in the same way. So again, it seems reasonable to suggest that the mind and body are not of the same substance, are not responsive to the same laws, and are not of the same order. Therefore Descartes may be right to divide these phenomena.

So, in the end, both philosophies fail to convince me of their value, and both because they lay too much emphasis on the mind, at the expense of the body. But even if neither position is completely defensible, the mind-body connection, as a general theory, seems to have real value and staying power for the human imagination. The goal, in the future, will be to create a philosophy, and world view, that gives equal weight to both substances, mind and body, whatever those substances actually are.

Descartes’ division between mind and body, on the one hand, might seem to have value. We are, in fact, sentient things, somehow different from rocks and rain water. What makes us different? We know things; we think things, expect things, invent things, comprehend things. We have a self-consciousness that lets us know God, as Descartes proves. The body can’t know God in and of itself-material things lack that sort of awareness-so something radically different, innate within us, must be at work in our knowledge of God. Again, we have minds that think, that interpret, that receive the idea of God. Our bodies seem not to perform those functions, rather they simply move; they act; they respond to stimuli.

In the history of ideas, no one would bring greater prominence to the question of mind and body than Descartes. In his Meditations, Descartes set out to prove that in fact he was a thinking thing, and this fact alone guaranteed his existence. In effect, Descartes said: ‘I think, therefore I am; if nothing else, I am a thing that thinks, a thing that doubts, and these facts cannot be disputed.’

Some topics in this essay:
God Descartes, Mind-Body Issue, Republic Plato, Meditation VI, Meditations Descartes, Justice Beauty, mind body, Truth Morality, Mind Plato, physical matter, substances mind body, mind body remain, question mind body, mind body attempt, privilege mind, body remain, remain separate, bodies physical, mind access, substances mind, body attempt, body remain separate, question mind,