Cartesian dualism,Descartes - Essay Example

But this trend has not been without reason. The different experiences of a person, as each of us experience, makes for the bona fide interest in the topic. There remain consistent scholarly productions because it is, as the most riveting philosophical ideas go, a thought provoking notion that invites and generates the infinite diaspora of the study. The first person (tending in the narrative tone) that Descartes opted to write in made his propositions appear stronger and many philosophers have taken a literal interpretation to his uttered premise and just as many dissections possible.

The Cartesian dualism may seem like a strong declaration of an absolutist idea that the mind could exist distinct from the body but this is merely an aspect of an entire argument that has many other elements to it. There is truth that by knowing our minds we find that the body is separate from it. There are many things that we will through our minds which our body then perform, in the same way that what the mind may want the body cannot perform. This finds example in common impediments pertaining to physical incapacities.

Stephen Hawking for example is physically disabled but he is still considered as one of the greatest minds in our generation. This is the simplistic notion but this does not make it untrue. In the regard, the brain then comes into the picture as something separate from the body. The brain is that part of the body which compels our body to do what our mind wants it to. The interplay between the body and the mind does not necessarily make them mutually exclusive from each other but on the contrary they work together to complete a whole being which makes for the conclusive evidence of the human existence.

Ryle and the ‘mind or body’ contention Gilber Ryle, in deference to Descartes’ duality of the mind and the body proposes that they are not co-existent but instead one must be either one, that is he is a body or a mind but he cannot be both. Ryle writes, “I am not for example, denying that there occur mental processes. Doing long division is a mental process and so is making a joke. But I am saying that the phrase ‘there occur mental processes’ does not mean the same as ‘there occur physical processes’…” (as cited by Steven 159).

His opposition lies in the argument that Descartes made a category mistake by associating mental life to logical category when there should only be one. In this sense, the French philosopher is responsible for inventing the mind. The mind is just another substance to correlate and give credence to his case and refuted by Ryle who tends more towards reductive materialism “where human mind is reduced to the brain” (ibid 160). In this notion, the mind and the brain are the same thing and mental and brain processes are the same thus the suggestion that a person is one or another but not both at the same time.

The brain is the central moving force which envelops the mind. Wiredu’s Akan Another position in the mind-body problem can be credited to Kwasi Wiredu who wrote ‘Akan Concept of Mind.’ This is not directly within the realm of a direct rebuttal of Descartes but the same contains interesting insights that Samuel Olusegun Steven found notable in understanding a different perspective to the problem.