The Great Divide

The subject of psychology is something that is extremely interesting as it is not definite. There is no one perception of the mind that is accepted throughout the world. There are several theories in psychology that have been developed over centuries; new theories are contradictions to old ones or extensions of old ones. The approaches that are present today are not just one person’s understanding of the mind. They are ideas that have travelled centuries and have been changed and adjusted by several people according to their understanding. Dualism is one of these ideas that tries to interpret the mind. In simple terms Dualism says that the whole world is divided into two parts: body and spirit; and these two parts are not interdependent in their existence. This mirrors the division of the brain into:

the body (physical part) and the mind(soul).

Dualism is a really old concept originally brought up by the Greeks. Socrates believed that death was not the end of existence – that the soul was immortal. His disciple, Aristotle, also believed that the soul does not come into existence with the body; the soul exits before the body exists and continues to exist beyond the life of the body.

But one of the greatest minds who pioneered this idea was Rene Descartes. He argued that the nature of the body is completely different from the nature of the mind, allowing them to exist without each other. Descartes’s whole theory was based on “real distinction”.

Real distinction was a technical term which Descartes used to describe a substance that does not require anything else to exist except the will and help of God. He states that both our mind and body are substances. These objects can exist separately, if God wants them to. But this does not imply that these substances do exist separately.

One may wonder, what is the point of arguing that mind and body should exist independently of one another? What is the reward for going through all of the hassle and dealing with all of the issues that it causes? The payoff for Descartes is twofold. The first is religious in nature, since it offers a logical foundation for believing in the immortality of the soul (according to Descartes the soul and the mind were the same thing). The second is more scientifically focused, since Descartes' version of the modern, mechanistic physics relies on the total absence of mentality from the essence of physical objects.

Descartes notes in his Letter to the Sorbonne, which appears at the start of his seminal work, Meditations on First Philosophy, that his aim in demonstrating that the human soul is truly distinct from the body is to refute those "irreligious people" who only have faith in mathematics and would not believe in the immortality of the soul without a mathematical demonstration. Descartes goes on to say that without the promise of an afterlife of rewards for good and penalties for vices, these people would not seek moral virtue. However, since all of the points in the Meditations—including the actual distinction arguments—are as certain as geometrical demonstrations for Descartes, he assumes that these people would be forced to embrace them. As a result, nonbelievers would be compelled to believe in the possibility of an afterlife. However, keep in mind that Descartes's conclusion is that the mind or soul will exist independently of the body. He doesn't go so far as to prove that the soul is immortal. Indeed, in the Synopsis to the Mediations, Descartes claims only to

have shown that the deterioration of the body does not logically or metaphysically mean the destruction of the mind: further argumentation is needed for the inference that the mind actually survives the body’s destruction.

The famous mind-body dilemma is rooted in the true distinction of mind and body based on their entirely different natures: how can these two substances of completely different natures causally interact to give rise to a human being capable of voluntary bodily motions and sensations? Although there have been many versions of this problem over the years, this section will focus solely on the version faced by Descartes, as articulated by Pierre Gassendi, author of the Fifth Objections, and Descartes' correspondent, Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia. Their concern arises from the claim at the heart of the real distinction argument that mind and body are completely different or opposite

things.

The power of the mind to induce movement in the body will be discussed first. Consider the choice, or willingness, to lift one's hand in class to pose a question. The upward movement of the arm is the result, while the decision to lift it is the trigger. The crux of their concern was that in order for one thing to trigger motion in another, it had to come into contact with it, as in the game of pool, where the cue ball had to be in motion and come into contact with the eight-ball for the latter to be set in motion The problem is that, due to the mind's non-extended existence, communication between mind and body will be unlikely in the case of voluntary bodily movements. This is because, as explained in Principles of Philosophy part II, section 15, contact must be made between two surfaces, but surface is a mode of body. As a result, the mind lacks a surface on which it can make contact with the body and cause it to move. As a result, it seems that there is no discernible difference between mind and body. But, since willing is a mode of the non-extended mind, and arm motion is a mode of the extended body, how can the non-extended mind produce this extended effect? Gassendi and Elizabeth were troubled by the issue of voluntary bodily motion, or the so-called "mind to body causation."

Approval of Dualism is declining day by day as theological reasons are not being accepted, but at the time it was the most accepted theory and was well respected.