Cogito: I Think Therefore I Am
In this blog, we will discuss mind-body dualism, especially cartesian dualism. Human beings consist of physical body parts such as hands and head which could be seen through human eyes. However, dualists believe that humans have something additional to mere material substances which make us human. This immaterial substance can be referred to as the mind. This compels us to think about the nature of the relationship between mind and body. Are they completely distinct?. Is it possible for one to exist without the other?.
Mary’s Room
Mary is a scientist who is confined to a room and her life inside this room is black and white. If she cut her hand, she is able to see the red blood only in greyscale. The color of a red tomato is also unknown to her. Despite all of this, she aims to learn everything about the colors. Therefore, she rigorously studies and learns all the physical facts about the colors. Now the question is if she leaves the room one day, does she learn anything new upon seeing the actual colors?
Dualists argue that if she learns anything new after experiencing the colors then this epistemic gap could only be explained if we consider this world as having immaterial substances in addition to material and physical properties. This thought experiment goes against functionalism which posits that all that exists is physical matter.
René Descartes and Cogito
Cartesian Dualism
René Descartes, a 17th-century philosopher, argues that mind and body are completely different but they can interact with each other(cartesian dualism). For instance, When you have a thought in your mind to pick up your phone, your body act reacts to that thought and you manage to accomplish the task. This raises the question that if both are completely distinct then how can the mind can cause the body to do something without any physical interaction.
The belief that one thing can not cause an effect on another thing without physical interaction is fallacious. The Newton law of universal gravitation has shown us that every particle in the universe is attracting every other particle without any physical interaction. German polymath Leibniz also tried to explain the mind-body interaction by giving an example of synchronized clocks. The clocks will show the same time even though they are not physically linked with each other.
Systematic Doubt
Rene Descartes was a rationalist. Rationalists believe in a priori knowledge which is knowledge before any experience. Additionally, this innate knowledge can be accessed using reason. The opposing school of thought is empiricism which relies on a posteriori knowledge that is obtained after the experience using five senses.
Descartes wanted to reduce his beliefs to only absolutely certain beliefs. If you know your absolutely certain axiomatic beliefs then your worldview could be (re)built upon those beliefs. In order to achieve this, he adopted a method of systematic doubt that is identical to the method adopted by the 12th-century Muslim philosopher Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali. If there is even a pinch of doubt about something then it should be rejected.
If we talk about empirical knowledge then it can not be trusted because senses can deceive people. In summer, the vision gives us an illusion of water on the road when actually there is no water. The mirage in the deserts deceives our sense of vision. We will discuss more on this in subsequent blogs.
Why do you think that this world is real?. The world in your dream is as real and tangible as this world. The only reason you think this world is real is that you get affirmation from other people about this world being real. Normally when you win a football match during your dream(replace with your favorite dream) nobody knows about it until you tell them. But just imagine, If you win a football match and when you wake up, your brother congratulates you on winning the match. And for each of your subsequent dreams, your brother already knows about it and responds accordingly. Now because we are getting affirmation for our dreams, they seem to be the so-called real world.
Dualism: I think therefore I am
Descartes went down this route of systematically doubting the surroundings and the result of this was cogito i.e I think therefore I am. He realized that everything in this world is doubt-able. The only thing that you can not doubt is your existence. Because if you doubt your existence then who is the one doing the doubting. In other words, you are proving the cogito by doubting it. Moreover, doubting is a form of thinking which implies that if you are doubting, then you are thinking which is the confirmation of your existence. Additionally, he arrived at cogito without the need for any empirical senses. The only thing he needed was thinking which means that the mind and the body should be distinct.
References
Montero, Barbara Gail (2018) Philosophy of Mind: A Very Short Introduction
Londoniyyah - Part 2 - Naturalism, Materialism Mohammed Hijab