Mind and body · Quiz question 34/35
Descartes' Conceivability Argument for Dualism
Could consciousness carry on without a body — does that at least make logical sense? Descartes's argument in Meditation VI and its critics.
Think about whether something — consciousness — could carry on after the body is completely gone.
Consciousness continuing without a body at least makes logical sense.
René Descartes made this argument in Meditation VI of his Meditations on First Philosophy (1641): I can clearly and distinctly conceive of myself as a thinking thing without a body, and God can make separately anything I clearly and distinctly conceive — so mind and body are really distinct substances. This question asks about the first step: is a bodiless mind at least not contradictory?
If you agreed, you think mind and body are at least conceptually separable. That's the starting point of substance dualism, and it connects with many religious ideas of surviving death. The modern zombie argument (see The Philosophical Zombie) is the same kind of conceivability argument, just run in reverse.
There were objections right away. Antoine Arnauld noted that you can think of a right triangle without knowing one of its properties, but that doesn't mean it lacks the property — so being able to think of the mind without the body doesn't show it can exist without one. In 1643 letters, Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia asked how an unextended mind could move a body at all; this "interaction problem" is still dualism's core headache. Meanwhile the Buddha and Hume doubted that there's any single self distinct from the body in the first place.
The mind is a substance distinct from the body and can exist without it.
Key names: Descartes, Plato, Richard SwinburneConsciousness doesn't reduce to physics — but that doesn't mean bodiless minds actually exist.
Key names: David Chalmers, Thomas NagelYou're a thinking animal. Consciousness without a body is an illusion or a contradiction.
Key names: Paul Churchland, Eric Olson, Daniel Dennett