Let’s assume
that both you and me do have minds; I guess it would be way easier to think this
post over if you had some free mind to use. Otherwise the idea of thought without
a mind might get a little bit tricky – but as you’re about to see, thought could exist without a mind. Anyway, before
I become completely incomprehensible let’s start on with our bodies.
 |
René Descartes
(1596-1650) |
You probably do not have to think much to say what your
body really is. You know that you’ve just used a hand to open this blog and you’ll
probably use it again to scroll this blog for other posts or maybe to close this
window (but please don’t do it now). You know your body is something physical –
you can touch it, you can see it, sometimes you can even smell it, and if you
were desperate enough you could try to taste it. However the problem of what
exactly made you open this blog, read it, and finally close it is more complex. I
guess most people, probably including you as well, would say that they did so
because they wanted to. They thought that this blog would be
interesting to read so they gave it a try. You may therefore argue that because
you are able to think you have also your own mind. That would mean that everyone of us has the mind and the body. In the philosophy of mind
this view is called dualism. It
means that the body and the mind (not to be confused with the brain which is a
part of the body!) are not the same and that mind is not something physical
thus it can’t be neither touched nor seen (and you can’t taste it either). One
of the most famous philosophers who believed in dualism and who is often regarded as the father of this mind-body problem is a French philosopher René
Descartes (he was the first philosopher whose works I began to read, and if you
still haven’t read any of his texts, I really recommend that you start with “Discourse
on the Method” – you can easily find it on the Internet).
