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Descartes

             Descartes" mind/body problem that he left the world has been greatly criticized over the years. His distinction between the mental and physical properties has gotten great scrutiny and has been of late gone the opposite way of Descartes thinking. J.J. Smart theorized that mental states where nothing more than brain states. This paper is going to show that even though Descartes theory may be wrong, J.J. Smarts" theory is further off than Descartes and really that the relationship of the mind and the body is that the mind and the body do react.
             J.J. Smart concluded that the mind can be broken down into brain states. This makes the mental states no more than physical states. This is because brain states are that of neurons firing and chemicals being released to cause different things to happen in the body. That makes the mental properties or sensations nothing more than physical properties because the firing of neurons and chemical reactions are physical properties, according to the scientific world. This means that there are no sensations or mental states. Smart rationalizes this out through the denial of nomological danglers and the use of raw feelings such as pain. Nomological danglers are those things that do not fit into the laws of science, such as the conscious or falling in love. To Smart these "nomological danglers smell queer", for some reason he could not make himself believe that there are things in this world that just do not fit into the laws of science. What he fails to realize here is that we created these laws we made them real. So it is possible for things in this world to not fit into the laws that we created. We did not created the world but we have been discovering (creating) the laws that we use to understand the world. Therefore of course there are things that will not fit into our laws and maybe never will. Smart also uses the sensation of "pain" as his defense for his Identity theory.


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1. Descartes

... in the third person since only "I" can know that "I" in fact exist. One cannot say for certain that anyone other than oneself exists. At times Descartes" argument is very mathematical in the formulation of his arguments, using logic as in the recurrent example "I think therefore I am." While he never actually states ... one can only make statements for ones own mind, it would not be possible to prove the meditator's existence without writing in the first person. Descartes addresses this, " is it perhaps the case that these very things I take to be nothing, because they are unknown to me...

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2. To Doubt Rene Descartes

... are based on. He agrees to only assume ideas that are clear and distinct; so self-evident that they cannot logically be doubted. Descartes reasons through his opinions of what he believes to be true, doubting any belief that could possibly admit of being false. This doubt ... his idea of an infinite substance like God must come from some substance that is itself infinite. Therefore, God must exist as the source of Descartes' idea. Descartes also imagines that God exists as a perfect being. His idea of God is a substance that is "infinite, eternal, unchangeable, independent, ... supreme...

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3. Descartes, Hume and the Existence of God

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4. Descartes Discourse and Meditions Final (Cogito)

... demonstrates that he clearly does not understand thinking in the narrow sense "of being simply a cognitive act devoid of creative thought. When Descartes states that it is necessary to doubt, to understand, etc. he is essentially referring to the ability to be sentient of these functions rather ... His point is that the conclusion he has arrived at is based on what is self-evident from what he has perceived in himself. Indeed Descartes does seem to believe that there is an association between thinking and existing. However, rather than assert, "Everything that thinks, exists-, he assert...

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5. Descartes

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6. Descartes

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9. Descartes and External Objects

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... from nothing, but likewise that what is more perfect-that is to say, which has more reality within itself-cannot proceed from the less perfect." (Descartes 118) There must be a creator and therefore an infinite perfect being and therefore a God. Also God cannot be a deceiver because if God were ... and by Himself, nor yet by the intervention of some creature in which their reality is not formally, but only eminently, contained." (Descartes 131) Corporeal things exist because God has given us no reason to doubt him and therefor our perceptions of these things must come from the ... all t...

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