Rene Descartes: The Separation Between Mind And Body

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Today it is evident that we would not be here without our masterpiece of a brain. The organ that weighs approximately 3 pounds but manages to use up most of our oxygen supply essentially controls actions going on in our body, as well as computing our interaction with our environments. This means that this organ is solely responsible for how we act, whether or not we breathe, live, or feel. This poses the question whether or not this much responsibility in a single organ can be a good idea.
Moreover, if we have this much responsibility lying in one organ, could this not pose a threat, as we blatantly believe what our brain interprets? Would this not mean that our brain could influence us incorrectly? This essay will look at how the brain can fool us with use of specific examples within physiology such as the déjà …show more content…

Descartes derives this idea, from his research into doubting his previous theories, and concludes that the only aspect he cannot doubt is the fact that he has a mind (Berhouma, 2013). As such, he assess that we must have a separate non-being ‘mind’ which interacts with our body, to form our being. This theory is known as dualism, and still poses quite a controversy today. This definite difference between the immaterial and matter aspect of mind and body is ‘radical dualism’. As such we must question if this interaction leaves space for deception by either party. Based on the theory of Descartes, our self forms our thought, beliefs, and ideas; the processing behind data taken in from our body, our senses and our brain. As such, with the examples given above, there would be more than enough error taken in from our body to provide a wrongful interpretation from our self. Whereas vice versa, the incorrect interpretation by our self would relay in a wrongful response to the body. Neither the self nor the body can therefore be perfect within the mutual

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