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Today I am going to discuss about the Cartesian theory of mind, the Cartesian theory of mind
revisited. Descartes, as we know, Descartes is one of the important philosophers in the
philosophy of mind, without Descartes philosophy of mind, it is very difficult to explain the
contemporary issues in philosophy of mind and cognitions. My colleague professor Ranjan
Panda has explained on the Cartesian dualism, but I will be explaining something different
from what professor panda has explained. In these sections, I will be giving much importance
on the Cartesian concept of mind and how the Cartesian concept of mind is an important.
Because, Descartes is one of the classical founders of non-computational theory of mind.
According to him, because the thought plays vital role in the case of mind, because the
essence of mind is thought and the essence of the body is extensions and we cannot attribute
essence of thought in a body because it is opposing each other. there and There are strong
distinction between mind and body according to Rene Descartes. But Descartes is not denying
the existence of body, rather than he is accepting the existence body, but he is saying that
mind is different from the body. The way he is explaining mind which is completely non-computational
and non-mathematical even if non-mechanical. Without a proper understanding of Descartes’s
view of on the mind, it is impossible to discuss contemporary philosophy of mind.
In these sections, I will be explaining two important things namely the existence of mind
and its nature, and how Descartes’s idea of mind is non-computational.
In the first section, I shall argue that Williams, Hintikka, Malclom, and many others philosophers
philosophical arguments will not cope with Descartes notions of mind. Because the way
they are defining the notion of a mind is neglecting the existence of mind and also
its nature. Secondly, I shall argue that Descartes idea of mind is non-computational because
the way Ryle, Quine, and other functionalists or founder of cognitive scientists defined
it is completely mechanical or behavioural and to which the notion of computationally
is applicable, and the mental qualities are credible to machines. This section is to clarify
Descartes’s notion of mind from subjective point of view. I believe that Descartes’s
notion of mind cannot be explained or characterized in a computationalistic approaches, that are
the subjective mental states, which we can see for from the first-person prospective
of their proper understanding. Let us see the Cartesian mind and its nature.
According to Descartes, to know something implies that there is a mind. The existence
of a knowing subject means that there is a mind again. He tries to find out through his
cogito argument that there is at least one knowing subject that is his own self. He arrives
at this truth through his method of doubt. The method leads Descartes to argue that the
whole body of knowledge might be mistaken.
In Descartes’s words, I quote, “I will suppose then, that everything I see is spurious.
I will believe that my memory tells me lies, and that none of the things that it reports
ever happened. I have no sense. Body, shape, extension, movement and place are chimeras”.
In this context, Descartes raises fundamental questions from the possible non-existence
of the external world and our own bodies. Thus it not follows that it is possible that
we are ourself do not exist. Again he replied to above question is as follows:
I quote “No: if I conceived myself of something then I certainly existed. But there is deceiver
of supreme power and cunning who is deliberately and constantly deceiving me. In that case,
I too undoubtedly exist, if he is deceiving and let him deceive me as much as he can,
he will never bring it about that I am nothing so long as I think that I am something. So
after considering everything very thoroughly, I must finally conclude that this proposition,
I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my
mind”.
Thus to think that one does not exist, one must exist. Therefore, one’s own non-existence
is un inconceivable. If I deny my own existence, the denying itself presupposes my own existence.
For Descartes,
‘Cogito ergo sum’ is an indubitable proposition. Doubting one’s own existence presupposes
one’s existence. Now the question arises: What is the nature of the statement ‘cogito
ergo sum’? Is it a syllogistic inference like, ‘whatever thinks exists; I think;
therefore, I exist’?
For Descartes, it is not a syllogistic inference; it is rather a self-evident truth known “by
a simple intuition of the mind”. Thus scholars are divided among them themselves as to the
exact nature of the transitions from ‘cogito’ to ‘sum’.
Williams has shown, there is something unique about ‘cogito’ which cannot be replaced
by any other verb, from instance, ‘ambulo’. ‘Ambulo ergo sum’ is not as self evident
as ‘cogito ergo sum’. Moreover,
Unlike William Hintikka argues that cogito ergo sum is not an inference but a performance.
He says the function of the word ‘cogoto’ in Descartes’s dictum is to refer to the
thought act through which the existence existential self verifiability of ‘I exist’ manifests
itself. For him, the relation of ‘cogito’ to ‘sum’ is similar to the relation of
a process to its product. But truth of ‘I exist’ is revealed to one only when one
actively thinks just as there is illumination only when there is source of light exist.
The truth of ‘I exist’ cannot be revealed by any arbitrary human activity such as breathing,
etcetera but only by thinking. An attempt to think one’s own non-existence amounts
to persuading oneself to the belief that one does not exist. Though each thought include
the thought of one’s own non-existence, the truth of sum is very fact. The self is
come in to know its own existence and it is revealed in the act of thought.
According to Descartes, the thought act is due to the thinking thing, which is the self
for him. Again the thinking or the self is that which, but what then I am I a thing that
thinks, what is that a thing that doubt, understands, affirms, denies is willing, is unwilling,
and also imagines and has sensory perceptions. The existence of the thinking thing is the
same as the existence of the knowing thing. From this statement, it follows that there
is a mind, which has the power of knowing something and if there exists at least one
mind, it is logically and even if empirically possible that there are other minds. Now the
question is: if there is there is or there are minds, what is the nature or essence?
According to Ryle and Descartes, thought is the essence of the mind. The essence of a
thing is defined as that which is necessarily for its existence and if it has a non-necessary
relationship then we cannot accept it is existence. Therefore, thought is the essence of mind.
The similar way, extension is the essence of the body. Without extensions, we cannot
imagine a body. If we imagine some kind of extended things is existing in this space
and time, then we have to predict that something is existing. We cannot think that something
is existing which has the properties of extensions, but it is not existing in the space which
is one of the contradictory statements. Therefore Descartes claims that he has clear and distinct
perceptions or awareness that is a thinking thing and nothing other than thought belongs
to his nature. But on the on the other hand, Malcolm argues
that in identifying thought as mind’s essence Descartes employs the following principles:
“X is my essence if it is the case that (a) if I am aware of X, then (necessarily)
I am aware of myself and (b) if I am aware of I am aware of myself then (necessarily)
I am aware of aware to X, thinking satisfies these conditions. Ergo, thinking is my essence”.
Malcolm illustrates how thought along satisfy the single principle that any act of thought
for Descartes is identical with the act of consciousness. Consequently, if I am aware
of anything then I am thinking, and so if I am aware of thinking then I am thinking,
and if I am thinking I am aware of thinking. In Malcolm’s view, though Descartes does
not explicitly maintain that whatever I think. Therefore, I am aware of myself. He would
be drawn to accept it partly because the base support for his principle, “I think ergo,
I exist” is at the same time a support for the principle, “I think ergo, I am aware
that I exist”. So, thought satisfies the conditions (a) of the above principles. It
also satisfies the condition (b) as they has every act of awareness of myself is also an
act of my awareness of something other than myself. Since acts of thoughts are identified
with acts of consciousness. It follows that cognitive acts are conscious acts.
So far as Descartes concept of mind is concerned, because Descartes mind is one of the important
aspects of cognitive states and process is their phenomenolity. Our perceptions, understanding,
judgement, and many other mental faculties can be defined and explain only in relation
to consciousness. According to Descartes, the mind is a thinking substance in downed
with various faculties such as sensory perceptions, understanding, willing, etcetera. For him,
it is one and the same mind which will understand and has sensory perceptions.
Moreover, Descartes grant that the mind is associative with body and mind provides metaphysical
support with the body. These derived him to the examination of the nature of the body
in its metaphysical aspects that is body in the most general sense of the term. The most
general concept of mind attains through a clear and distinct perception of the intellect
is that it is an extended substance, a continuum with three dimension of length, breadth, and
height. As in the case of the mental substance, the extended substance through its known,
through its acts or modes which, according to Descartes as shape, size, position, motion,
rest, etcetera. Therefore, this shows that Descartes idea of mind is something non-computational.
Let us see how the cartesian mind is non-computational.
Till now we have discussed the cartesian mind and its nature. In the Cartesian scheme of
mind, there is no place of for computationality, because the thought act is due to the subjective
thinking thing, which is the self again. This subjective thinking thing or the self is that
which “doubts, understands, affirms, denies, is willing, is unwilling and also imagines
and has sensory perceptions. The existence of the thinking thing is same as the existence
of the subjective thinking thing,
because it is the subject who thinks all these subjective activities are non-computational
because the subjective activity is not mechanical. If it is a mechanical then we can defined
it objectively. Therefore, cartesian mind is subjective mind and which we can able to
explain from the first- person perspective. The mental processes, for Descartes, are intentional
and are the free acts of the thinking subject. Hence they cannot be mapped mechanically in
an algorithmic way or algorithmic system. Descartes concept of ‘I think’ presupposes
subjective experience, because it is ‘I’ who experiences the world. Descartes notion
of ‘I’ negates the notion of computationality in the mind. The essence of mind is thought,
and the acts of thoughts are identified with acts of consciousness. Therefore, it follows
that cognitive acts are conscious acts, but not computational acts.
Thus for Descartes, one of the most important aspect of cognitive states and processes is
their phenomenality, because our judgements, understanding, etcetera can be defined and
explained in relation to the consciousness not in relation to computationality. We can
only find computationality in machines and not in the mind, which will understand and
judge.
Descartes’ dictum, “I think, therefore, I am” not only establishes the existence
of the self which thinks and acts but also its freedom from mechanistic laws, to which
the human body is subject. Moreover, when Descartes makes the distinction between mind
and body, he did not say that the idea of the mind is that of a ghost, rather than or
ascribing that there is a ghost in the mind, or there is a ghost in the machines, or there
is a ghost in the body, although he did not say, but although Descartes did not say that
the idea of the body is that of a machine.
Ryle in his book, ‘The Concept Of Mind’ says that Descartes’s distinction between
mind and body is a myth. He argues, “I shall often speak of it, with deliberate abusiveness,
as ‘the dogma of the ghost in the machine’. I hope to prove that it is entirely false,
and false not in details, but in principles”. According to Ryle, Descartes’s distinction
between mind and body commits a category-mistakes, because Descartes is categorizing, dividing
both mind and body and that division making one kind of categorical methods.
As Ryle said, my descriptive purpose is to show that a family of radical category-mistake
is the source of the double life theory. The representation of a person as a ghost mysteriously
encoded in a machines and which derives from this argument because as it is true that a
person’s thinking, feeling, and purpose of doing cannot be described solely in the
idea of physics, chemistry, and physiology. Therefore, they must be described in computer
counterpart idioms, as the human body is a complex organized unity. So, the human mind
must be another complex organized unity. Though one made of a different sort of stuff and
with a different sort of structure or again as the human body like any other parcel of
matter is a field of causes and effects. So, the mind must be another filed of causes and
effects, though not evenly placed mechanical causes and mechanical effects.
In Ryle’s understanding of mind becomes as much mechanical as the body and is therefore
non-different from the body; however, Descartes refuse the mechanistic reading of mind as
you have seen. Descartes is a dualist rather than a mentalist. Descartes argument for the
mind which is distinct from body needs to be understood as an argument for the logical
possibility of their separate existence and not for the fact that they exist independent
of each other. The separability argument is as follows: firstly,
I know that everything which clearly and distinctively understand is capable of being created by
God are so as to correspond exactly with my understanding of it. Hence the fact that I
can clearly and distinctly understand and one thing apart from another is enough to
make certain that two things are distinct, since they are capable of being separated
at least by God according to Rene Descartes. The question of what kind of power is required
to bring about such as a person does not affect the judgement that the two things are distinct?
Thus simply by knowing that ‘I exist’ and seeing at the same time that absolutely
nothing else belongs to my nature or essence exactly that I am a thinking thing. I can
empower correctly that my essence consists slowly in the fact that I am a thinking thing.
It is true that I may have or I may anticipate that I have certainly have a body that is
very closely joined to me. But nevertheless on the one hand, I have a clear and distinct
idea of myself, in so far as I am simply think that non extended thing and on the other hand,
I have a distinct idea of a body in so far as, this is simply and extended non-thinking
thing. Accordingly it is certainly that I am really distinct from my body and can exist
without it.
Descartes has already proved in the Second Meditation, the existence of a thinking being
who has a clear and distinct perception of mind as a thinking, non-extended thing. This
is a proof of the non-mechanical mind which is different from the body subject to mechanical
laws.
Similarly, in the Fifth Meditation, he has shown that he has a clear and distinct idea
of a body as extended and a non-thinking substance. This is to suggest that the mechanically existing
body is ontologically distinct from the non-computational mind. The above distinction between mind and
body supposes that there is no ‘ghost’ in the human body or ‘ghost in the machine’.
Descartes did not admit the existence of a ghost in the machines. Had Descartes admitted
that there was a ghost in the human body, then the mind itself would become computational,
and there would be no necessary distinction between mind and body? Because the ghost itself
is a body. But Descartes admits the distinction between mind and body and this shows that
the mind is non-computational. It is mind, which has the capacity of intelligence, and
understanding.
The Cartesian way of understanding of the concept of intelligence is anti-physicalistic
and anti-behaviouristic and hence is anti-computational. The human mind is beyond the sphere of computationality,
because the human mind has innate ideas, which are embedded as the innate dispositions of
the human mind. These ideas are a priori in the human mind and are the basic in-born propensities.
Descartes objects my understanding of what a thing is what thing, what truth is, what
thought is, seems to derive simply from my own nature. But my hearing and noise as I
do now are seeing the some of some or feeling the fire, comes from thing which are located
outside me or show I have just. The above observation of Descartes shows that
innate ideas are not produced in ours by senses. If the ideas are conveyed to ours by the senses
like heat, sound, etc, we will not have to refer to anything outside ourselves, they
too would be innate. For Descartes, the ideas of pain, colours, sounds, and the light must
be all the more innate, if on the occasion of the certain corporeal motions. Our mind
is to be capable of representing them itself or there is no similarity between these ideas
and corporeal motions. Here it follows that there is a distinction between innate and
adventures ideas and that innate ideas are universal ideas whereas, adventures ideas
are particular ideas. As Descartes points out that hearing a noise,
seeing the scenes, and feeling the fire, are all particular ideas. Again it must noted
that the procession of the particular is not possible without the universal. Innate universal
ideas are necessarily required for the cognition of the particular objects in the world.
The following Descartes, Chomsky established that language too is an innate faculty of
the human species. Language becomes the essence that defines what it is to be human. Language
is purely a syntactic system, according to Chomsky and it therefore has a logical form
which is universal and innate world.
Language must also have been an essence; something that makes language what it is and inheres
in all languages. That essence is called ‘universal grammar’. Language does not arise from anything
bodily. Studying the brain and body can give us no additional insight into language. The
basic tenets of Chomsky’s linguistic are taken directly from Descartes. The only major
tenet of Descartes and Chomsky rejects is the instance of the mental substance different
from the human brain. Chomsky accepts that the human brain embodies the innate grammatical
structure.
Like Chomsky, Quine also affirms that there can be no philosophical study of mind outside
psychology: progress in philosophical understanding of the mind is inseparable from progress in
psychology, because psychology is a natural science studying a natural phenomena that
is a physical human subject. Quine argued a dualism of mind and body is an idle redundancy.
Quine posts that corresponding to every mental state; however, fitting or remotely intellectual,
the dualist is down to admit the existence of a body state that obtains Quine and only
Quine mental one obtains. The bodily state is trivially specifiable
in the dualist own terms is simply as the state of occupying a mind. That is the mental
state, listed of ascribing the one state to the mind, then we may equivalently ascribe
the other to the body. The mind goes by the bound and we will not be in list. Quine’s
position is that there are irreducible psychological properties, but all explanation is ultimately
physical and his account of mental concept emerges as he examines, how we acquire them
and how we learn. He explains such terms are applied in the light of a publicly observable
symptoms, bodily symptoms strictly of a bodily states and the mind is as may be.
Someone observes my joyful or anxious expression, or perhaps observes my gratifying, or threatening
situation itself or hears mental about it. See, then applies the word joy, or anxious,
or anxiety. After another such lessons are to find myself applying those who are to some
of my subsequent states in the in case, where no outward signs have to be observed beyond
my report itself. Without the outward sign, to begin with mentalistic terms, could not
be learned at all. Quine opposes the Cartesian dualism and therefore,
arrives at a behaviourist and funcionalistic concepts of mind. He reduces the mental states
like beliefs and other propositional activities to functional states. If both Chomsky and
Quine right about the nature of mind, then Descartes view of mind is wrong; that is if
that human brain is the cause of the mental states then we cannot, but arrive at the conclusion
that the mental states are causally computable within a physical system. Chomsky and Quine
define the mental qualities in terms of physical qualities. Therefore, they define mind in
terms of the computational functions of the brain. But in the case of Descartes’s claim,
but Descartes is claiming that all ideas in the mind are mental representational.
In the third meditation, Descartes gives an extensive account of ideas. He says that “thus
when I will, or am afraid, or affirm, or deny, there is always a particular thing which I
take as the subject of my thought, but my thought includes something more than the likeness
of that thing. Some thoughts in this category are called volitions or emotions, which others
are called judgments”. The above quotation shows that some thoughts are images of things.
For example, they retanant things in the world that is they have an object or content by
which they are individuated as an idea of this particular thing or being.
Descartes also considers an idea to the refer to form of the any thought. Descartes said
that I understand this term to mean the form of any given thought, the immediate perception
of which makes me aware of the thought. Hence, whenever I express something in words and
I understand what I am saying. This benefit makes it certain that there is within me an
idea of what is signifies by the what question. The ideas for Descartes are those representational
and intentional in character, because any ideas whatever we say, we express. It represents
about the facts about the world which are mental as well as physical and in the terms
of physical, when we actualize the things. Suppose I am feeling hungry and there is someone
intentional activities to the concept of hungriness and when I get my food, when I satisfy my
hungriness and here it is completely intentional and representational.
But Descartes, unlike Hobbes and Gassendi, is not a naturalist and keeps the thought
content free from naturalization to which Hobbes and Gassendi are committed. For them,
thoughts are mechanical processes in the brain. In reply to Gassendi, Descartes says that
I realize none of things that the imagination enable me to grasp is at all relevant to this
knowledge of myself which I possesses and that the mind most there could be most carefully
be diverted from such things, if it is to perceive its own nature as distinctly as possible
and the contrary, Descartes hold that individual acts of machine is as much as they are experiences
are relevant to grasping the nature of the mind. Because the mind is a thinking thing
free from the mechanistic process of the brain.
What separates Descartes’ dualism from the contemporary functionalism and identity theories
is not so much his distinction between an immaterial mind and extended material body
as his notion of the human being as a unity of mind and body, with the properties not
reducible to either mind or body, but dependent precisely on their ‘substantial’ union.
Descartes holds that thinking cannot be explained mechanically. His argument that brutes cannot
think is equivalent to an argument that machines cannot think. He thinks that no machine could
have the capacity of using the linguistic and other signs to express thoughts, the appropriate
irresponsive to meaningful speech and the capacity of intelligently or rationally in
all sort of situation. But what is shows special about him and language in which about to what
does it show that the Babier of any mechanism face to show.
A machine could be constructed to at are vast corresponding to bodily change in its origin.
It could never use spoken wires or the signs composing them as we do to declare our thoughts
to others because it is not considerable that the machines should produce different arrangements
of words. So as to give an appropriately mechanical answer to whatever is said in its presence
as the dualist for men can do. Secondly, if though such machines might do
something as well as we do them or perhaps it is better they would invitable pale in
others, which could revealed that they were acting not through understanding, but only
from the disposition of their organs whereas, region is an universal instrument which can
be used in all kind of situations. Their organs need some particular disposition for each
particular actions. Hence, it is moral impossible to have enough different one’s in a machine
to make it act in all contingencies of like in the way in which our region make us at
a
Descartes is drawing attention here is that firstly, no machine could have the capacity
to use linguistic and other signs to express thoughts and to give appropriate responses
to meaningful speech. Secondly, machine could not have the capacity to act intelligently
in all sorts of situations. Here and the moral communications have not afford in counter
evidence to Descartes assumption because human language is based on an entirely distinct
to his field nor has modern linguistic dealt with his observation in various ways. For
Chomsky, the main lesson to learn from the Cartesian tradition in linguistic are the
ideas of an innate universal grammar and the ideas that are study of structure of this
argument will reveal the structure of thought or mind. Descartes argument that brute or
machine cannot think in the light of the genuine postings what makes an utterance very symbolic
structure is meaningful. The kind of automatic, rule governed computations
or symbol processing that a Turing machine instantiates and that can be performed by
electronic computers would not count as thinking in Descartes sense: nor would the mechanical
operations of a computer or robot, no matter how ingenious or intelligent, count as rational
behavior as he understands it. Not only is much a view of if thinking to narrow. It is
based on the precise, the kind of category mistake that Ryle attributes to do Cartesians,
which I have already discussed, but Descartes initials is not guilty of explaining thought
in terms of extensions.
As Predawn clarifies that Descartes is not a reductionist as he feels that mind cannot
be reduced to anything else and it must have an autonomous existence alongside the existence
of the material body. Though I think of the mental reality does not deny its ‘I exist’
character in the world, rather it is an affirmation of it. In that sense, we cannot say that Descartes
subjectivized the mental one and thus made in it into a private world. He made a brief
for to keep an objectimic constraints on the subjective mind and thus he explains that
there is a mind and which is distinct from the mind and he has categorically attributes
the essence of mind is thought, and the essence of body is extensions and this is because
Cartesian of the mind and its inner experience does not assume that we know other minds as
much as we know our own. That is the reason why Descartes call the
‘I think’ the absolute basis of all our knowledge claims about all those and the also
external one. Thus the self or the mind is irreducible not explainable in terms of the
body or machines whenever mind or another another’s. In view of this, we can say that
the Cartesian philosophy of mind not based on a mistake and that it has shown the right
way to understand of the mind. Of course, Descartes would not have accepted
the idea of mechanical or computational or artificial intelligence model of mind. He
may still be considered and important for owner of cognitivist and computational view
of mind because the essence of mind is rational thinking and that rational thought or cognition
can be studied independently of the other phenomena like sensation and emotions that
Descartes stated that body depends on mental phenomena to which mind is a positive consciousness.
Although, Descartes did not identify mental thought with consciousness emotions awareness,
but regarded that all those conditions of thought while arguing the existence of mind,
Descartes talk about that the mind acting in some particular location in the brain to
contemporarily trially talk about mental processes as computational activity in the brain. But
Descartes would not have accepted the mechanical application of rule on syntactic structure
as a sufficient concern for a rational symbolic manipulation.
The kind of automatic, the rule-governed computation or symbol processing that a Turing machine
instantiates and that can be performed by electronic computers would not count thinking
of the Cartesian point of view. Because thinking is neither a reducible nor understand in the
mechanistic way and he has clearly mentioned that consciousness is a necessary condition
for the thought and without consciousness is very difficult to explain thought and mind,
and it is consciousness which is belongs to the self and it is because of that mind is
different from them body and it gives one kind of metaphysical explanation on the mind
not a metaphorical explanation on the mind. Cartesian mind is able to explain mind different
from the body. Thank you.