Exam 5: René Descartes Mind and Body

Conway says, "if spirit and body are so contrary one to another, so that a spirit is only life, or a living and sensible substance, but a body a certain mass merely dead; a spirit penetrable and indiscerpible [having no separate parts], but a body impenetrable and discerpible [having separate parts], which are all contrary attributes." Conway then asks the following question: What is that which joins or unites them together?

Conway says that if the substance dualists are correct, then how does the mind, which is a non-physical substance, feel pain. Do you think that this is a strong argument against substance dualism? Explain your answer.

According to Churchland, "problems such as the nature of short-term memory, long-term memory, autobiographical memory, the nature of representation, the nature of sensory-motor integration, top-down effects in perception-not to mention such capacities as attention, depth perception, intelligent eye movement, skill acquisition, planning, decision-making, and so forth," are the so-called ...

Shapiro argues that in Elisabeth's correspondence with Descartes, Elisabeth's main challenge is to move Descartes to think more carefully about what issue?

Do you agree with Churchland when she asserts that "The only thing you can conclude from the fact that attention is mysterious, or sensorimotor integration is mysterious, or that consciousness is mysterious, is that we do not understand the mechanisms"?

What does Velmans mean when he says, "we can say that when consciousness is present, phenomenal content (consciousness of something) is present"?

According to Locke, "When we see, hear, smell, taste, feel, meditate, or will anything, we know that we do so. Thus it is always as to our present sensations and perceptions: and by this every one is to himself that which he calls self."

Descartes suggests that Elisabeth use the power of her mind to help her get over a physical ailment. However, as with an earlier discussion with Descartes, Elisabeth seems to imply that there are certain limits to or conditions on the soul's autonomy.

According to Cavendish, "sensitive perception" pertains to the ...

Descartes asserts that corporeal objects exist, but that they are not independent of my mind.

According to Shapiro, "Perhaps the most well-known part of Elisabeth's correspondence with Descartes is that in which she wonders how it is possible, given Descartes's dualist commitments, for him to still maintain that soul and body are both eternal.

Nagel claims that "If we acknowledge that a physical theory of mind must account for the subjective character of experience, we must admit that no presently available conception gives us a clue how this could be done." What reasons does Nagel give for this claim?

Hume says, "I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but ____________________________________________, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement."

James says, "So far, all seems plain sailing, but my thesis will probably grow less plausible to the reader when I pass from dualism to monism, or from the case of things presented to that of things remote."

Churchland says, "What drives the left-out hypothesis? Essentially, a thought-experiment, which roughly goes as follows: we can conceive of a person, like us in all the aforementioned Easy-to-explain capacities (attention, short term memory, etc.), but lacking ..."

According to Hume, "The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations."

Locke says, "This may show us wherein personal identity consists: not in the identity of substance, but, as I have said, in the identity of consciousness."

According to Churchland, "There is a vast psychological literature, and a nontrivial neuroscientific literature, on this topic. Some of it powerfully suggests that attention and awareness are pretty closely connected. The approach might of course be wrong, for it is ..."

Hume questions the idea of "self" when he asks, "Unluckily all these positive assertions are contrary to that very experience, which is pleaded for them, nor have we any idea of self, after the manner it is here explained. For from what ..."

Descartes's position regarding the separate existence of mind and body leaves him with a serious problem: Why did God create two different substances?