The Distinction between Mind and Body

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Recommended: Describes ideas of the mind and body

René Descartes is known for being the ultimate doubter. He believes that nothing we experience is trustworthy, because our senses do not show us the truth, and we don’t have the physical traits to observe the truth. From this he concludes that everything he experiences is inaccurate. Yet, he finds that there must be existence within him. This is because he sees a distinction between the physical world, and the non-physical world.
Within Descartes Meditations, he explains the fundamental differences between the mind and the physical world. The distinction is that matter is an unthinking, doubtable, and extended substance, meaning it extends in space. Whereas the soul is a thinking and unextended substance that cannot be doubted. My thoughts do not take up space, do not have a mass, and cannot be divided, unlike matter. Descartes concludes that mind and body are two distinct things, as the mind could exist without a body, and a body without a mind. Even if my body were to be only a product of my senses alone, I know for a fact that my mind, or soul, must exist in this universe.
This leads to Descartes’s belief that he must exist. Because he has the ability to think he exists, that proves he has something of existence in at least the non-physical world. “I have convinced myself that there is nothing in the world – no sky, no earth, no minds, and no bodies. Doesn’t it follow that I don’t exist? No, surely I exist if it’s me who is convinced of something,” (Norman 341). This existence in the non-physical world is accessed through his mind. Furthermore, because he has the capacity to be deceived by his senses, he therefore must exist. Thought is the only factor necessary for existence. If I am a thing that “doubts, understands, affi...

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... as screen brightness, I still have the understanding that it is the same computer with the same form. Even though my mind, which is thinking of these words, is independent of the fingers typing them up, they are still interacting in order to write this paper. With this physical essay, I can then share the realities happening in my mind across the physical world, and into the mind of another person, the reader. Because of this interaction between extended and unextended substances, humans can influence each other’s thoughts and exist together in both realities. Without this interaction, we would not have the beauty of what we call a “human”, a being that can exist in both realities share our ideas in order to make progress towards the understanding of the truth.

Works Cited
Melchert, Norman. The Great Conversation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Print.

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