Descartes on the Mind and Body

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A substance is a philosophical term that defines what a philosopher believes the world to be composed of. Descartes states that the world is composed of two substances: matter and mind. He states that he knows that matter and mind are distinct substances since he can distinctly think of each one separately and since matter is divisible while mind is not. These attempts at proving the distinctness of matter and mind from one another are both incorrect. As a result Descartes has not proved that there are two distinct substances in the world and thus his understanding of substances is incorrect.
According to Descartes the two substances the world is made of are matter and the mind. He states that matter is defined by its ability to be extended in space, thus anything that takes up space can be considered matter . He states that the mind is the ability to think, this means that intellectual activity is the defining feature of the mind. He states that we are able to know that the two are different since he can distinctly perceive of matter and minds separately. Also minds are indivisible while matter is dividable so they can also not be the same thing .
Descartes believes the mind and body to be distinct since matter can be divided while the mind is undividable. He states that this is because aspects of the mind are indistinguishable from one another while the matter is distinguishable . Thus the memory and the intellect would not be able to be divided since you can’t distinguish them. But by naming something than have we not already distinguished it? It appears that the memory and the intellect are already distinguished since they do different tasks inside of the mind. If they do different tasks then they must be different things si...

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If the two distinctions between matter and mind are false than Descartes’ understanding of substances must be false. He himself states that we must be sure that something is different from something else to be sure that it exists separately. If his two distinctions are false then, how can we be sure that mind and matter are in fact different things? If we cannot distinguish or the distinction is illogical then it is not a real distinction. Thus since both of his distinctions between mind and matter are incorrect we cannot claim that Descartes is correct in his theory of substances.

Works Cited

Descartes, Rene. Meditations of First Philosophy with Selections firm the Objections and Replies. 1986. Reprint. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Aquinas, Thomas. The Treatise on Human Nature. Indianapolis: Hacett Publishing Company, 2002.

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