Think back to someone, studying from, talking with or even reading whom has been of an intense influence on you. If it weren’t for that one professor, that one book or someone who through the means of conversing with you shook your point of view, you would be a very different person than you are today.

Today, we are going to talk about such a man who in his movement, affected the course of philosophy from thereafter. He is of course, René Descartes. A man whose philosophical revolution is listed amongst the likes of Galileo and Newton’s. His impact can not only be seen on the topics he mostly tackled but all throughout philosophy. He was primarily someone referred to as a Rationalist (one who believes that all knowledge can be built purely on the basis of reason).

Descartes was if you will, an extremist reincarnation of Socrates. As Socrates had set out to discard of all the beliefs unsupported by sound argumentation, Descartes thought a practical way to go about this would be to remove all the apples from the basket and then only put the fresh ones in while checking each one so that no rotten apples enter the basket again! In this allegory, the rotten apples are those beliefs on the validity of which one may have even a shred of doubt, and the good-to-go apples are beliefs which one is completely certain of while the process of sorting is the system of Cartesian Doubt. Descartes lived by this system and noted his discoveries in his Meditations. Notice how active of a process Philosophy actually is! It’s almost as if going on your own personal adventure.

So what does all this history have to do with the meme? One of Descartes' most famous works is probably his work on what philosophers like to call the mind-body problem, which I would like to explain:

In his Meditations 6, after proving the existence of the external world and a non-deceptive God, Descartes enters a new realm when he talks about the distinction between the Soul and the Body. In the context of this discussion, we would consider Soul and Mind to be interchangeable terms. It is not difficult to realise that this idea is not radically new. It is an idea central to almost all the modern monotheistic religions today. What is new in the context of Descartes is his attempt to rationally argue for his beliefs.

Perhaps the most popular argument presented by Descartes is that the Body possess the characteristic of extension (occupying physical space = res extensa) whereas the characteristic of Thought is central to the Mind (= res cogitans). On the basis of this, it is clear to Descartes that the Body can be divided indefinitely whereas the Mind cannot. Descartes held a belief of Corpuscularism, which was rather popular at that time among great thinkers like Newton, Hobbes and Locke. It was a belief that physical matter in indefinitely divisible which goes against our current understanding of Atomism. Based on the distinction that Mind cannot be divided while Body can, Descartes proposed that the Mind must be made of a mental substance while the Body must be made up of a physical substance and thus, the dualist view of Mind and Body was born.

Where is the Mind located?

Descartes believed that the mind was located in the Pineal gland in the brain and that through the means of Animal Spirits, it interacted with the rest of the brain.

Princess Elizabeth and Ryle's Ghost in the Machine:

Princess Elizabeth was a pen pal of Descartes and was someone who wasn’t going to let Descartes have an easy time. Her letter to Descartes is credited with pointing out a major flaw in Cartesian Dualism. The central argument goes like this, “If the Mind and Body are made up of different materials and as you (Descartes) say that the Mind does not have extension, how can the Mind and Body ever interact?” (Imagine a Badminton Racket hitting a shuttle which has no length!)

This problem was raised again by Gilbert Ryle in the 20th Century (almost 300 years later!) stating 2 arguments which we will cover against the “Official Doctrine”, as he likes to mockingly call Descartes’ Dualism. He also likes to call it “The Dogma of the Ghost in the Machine”. While a “Dogma” is something that one is supposed to just take for granted, Ryle does not do that but
seeks to refute it. The 1st argument is quite similar to Princess Elizabeth’s: “… the actual transactions between the episodes of the private history and those of the public history remain mysterious since by definition they can belong to neither series.”

Let me break it down – Ryle makes up the term private history for the mind as it is something private only to yourself and public history for the body as it is something whose extension can be sensed by everyone. Now, the interactions or transactions between these cannot be of either nature. Think about it, if the interactions are of mental nature then they cannot move the body and if they are of physical nature, they cannot affect the mind.

Ryle's 2nd argument is best understood by the story of the time I visited the University of Helsinki with my little sister. I had told her that we are going to visit the university and in her excitement, we walked through the campuses, the library, the department of philosophy, and even the student centre. After the entire tour, she asked me “…but where is the university?”. She had thought that the university is a separate entity in itself along with all that it contains!

Ryle calls this a category mistake (mistakenly lumping up something into a category it doesn’t belong in). Even though my sister is too young to understand this just yet, this will help us understand what Ryle believes is wrong with Cartesian Dualism. Ryle believes that Descartes makes a similar mistake when talks of the mind as being a separate thing than the body.

In Ryle’s view, the Mind belongs to a separate category just like the university and that listing it together along with Hands, Feet, and the Brain would be mistake. Quite simply, in his views, the Mind is nothing distinct but just certain interactions in between the physical stuff and that listing it separately by creating this unnecessary divide is quite analogous to a Ghost in a Machine. A Ghost in a Machine just like a Mind (Soul) in a Body is an out-of-place visualisation and poses more problems like the interactions between these seemingly separate types of matter.

A recommended reading would be: MITx's 24.09x Minds and Machines - Gilbert Ryle, “Descartes’ myth”- Excerpts from Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (Hutchinson, 1949). These are selected sections of the original text which introduce interesting ideas such as the Knowledge of Other Minds. If you can, you should definitely venture on to read the complete book along with the accompanying Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy entry.

An advanced recommended reading would be “Neuroscience & Philosophy – Brain, Mind & Language” by Bennett, Dennett, Hacker, and Searle. This is an amazing book and a great way to connect your knowledge about Philosophy of Mind to Neuroscience and Psychology. It is also a well-presented debate so it gives you insight into how Philosophical debates function.

This article was written by our guest author Sarthak Dhole. If you would like to ask questions, discuss anything related to philosophy or want more personalised recommendations, you are free to email him at [email protected] or connect with him on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarthak-dhole-12a1b52b4)

So, you've just finished reading the funniest and most enlightening blog article ever written (we simply like exaggerations). Your mind is blown, your sides ache from laughing, and you would like to enjoy this experience regularly. Here's the kicker: you can simply subscribe to our free memesletter to get just such memes and their explanation delivered to your inbox on a weekly basis. Simply sign up at the bottom of this page!

Additionally you realize that you absolutely need some merch to commemorate this momentous occasion. Well, lucky for you, we've got the perfect selection of witty t-shirts, hilarious mugs, and sassy stickers that will forever remind you of that time you read that incredible blog post. And here's the cherry on top - use the promo code "BLOGREADER" at checkout to get a whopping 15% off your entire order! It's like getting a discount on instant joy and everlasting awesomeness. So go ahead and snag some swag, my friend. You deserve it.