Descartes states in AT 33 "From this I knew that I was a substance whose whole essence or nature is only to think, and that does not need any place or depend on any material thing in order to be ."
If the soul is not anchored to any physical land, why is our entire conception of the soul attributed to the physical anchor of our bodies? Descartes claims that dreaming one is in another body is proof of the soul's transcendence, but if the soul transcends the physical realm, why does our memory and experience not? Why does everything that we associate with our-selves derive its existence from this world? Moreover, our 'soul' is fixed to our body in a powerful manner, and to me dreams appear insufficient to end the reliance of thought on the body.
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Mr. Smith, will you cite the passage in which you find that "Descartes claims that dreaming one is in another body is proof of the soul's transcendence"? Thanks.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure that Mr. Smith will have an actual account of Descartes claiming the soul's transcendence in this way. He seems to have derived the idea from the fact that Descartes holds that the soul needs no place nor does it depend on any material thing. To be able to imagine one's self without a body while not being able to imagine one's self without thinking is Descartes' reasoning for asserting the soul's transcendence (AT33).
ReplyDeleteWhat is most problematic for me with regards to Descartes' notion of the soul is that he claims that thinking does not need any place or depend on any material thing in order to be (also AT33, as stated above). But it's pretty obvious to us that thinking does depend on some material thing: the human brain. However, Descartes may be correct to assert that some part of human consciousness may not be constituted by a physical substance, but such a claim is far from being well defended.
In AT 38 of the Discourse Descartes says
ReplyDelete"for we notice that one can imagine in the same way while sleeping that one has a body and that one sees other stars and another earth, without such things existing. For what is the source of our knowledge that the thoughts which come while dreaming are false, rather than the others, seeing that often they are no less lively and distinct? And if the best minds study this matter as much as they please, I do not think that they will be able to give any reason which will be sufficient to remove this doubt unless they presuppose the existence of God. First of all, the very principle which I have so often taken as a rule—only to recognize as true all those things which we conceive very clearly and very distinctly—is guaranteed only because of the fact that God is or exists, that He is a perfect being, and that everything which is in us comes from Him. From that it follows that our ideas or notions, being real things which come from God, to the extent that they are clear and distinct, in that respect cannot be anything but true."
Just before, in AT 35 Descartes says "the intelligent nature is distinct from the corporeal."
From dreams Descartes proves that God must exist if we are to distinguish our dreams from valid thoughts, and thereby have true thoughts at all- these true thoughts as such are distinguished from corporeal nature.
In any case, the point is that reiterated by Mr. Gibson: Could everything we attribute to the soul in reality be contained within our physical bodies and brains holistically? Could the conception of the soul arise from nothing more than the difficulty on using the intellect to reflect on what the intellect is itself? Like using a mirror to gain a clear picture of itself?
A nice thread. I wonder why D. concludes contrary to common sense on the soul, though. If we have the power to consider infinite objects truly, it seems we must have a power in the soul which is itself infinite - thus immortal and immaterial. That is, given a certain account of human reason, we must explain how it could come about out of sense experience and material cogs and wheels in the brain. But intellect or reason seems to be so different in kind that its origin must be elsewhere. Maybe the problem is that D. sells the power of nature to transcend itself short - he sees material accumulation, not emergent properties.
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