The Cambridge Companion To Descartes 8 Cartesian Dualism Theology Metaphysics And Science英文电子书.pdf

JOHN COTTINGHAM 8 Cartesian dualism : theology, metaphysics, and science Throughout his life Descartes firmly believed that the mind, or soul, 1 of man (he made no distinction between the two terms) was essen- tially nonphysical . In his earliest major work, the Regulae (c.1628), he declared that th e power through which we know things in the strict sense is purely spiritual, and is no less distinct from the whole body than blood is distinct from bone, or the hand from the eye (AT X 415 : CSM I 42). In his last work, the Passions de ldme (1649), he observed that the soul, although joined or united to the whole assemblage of bodily organs during life, is of such a nature that it has no relation to extension, or to the dimensions or other properties of the matter of which the body is composed (AT XI 351 : CSM I 339). And between these chronological extremes we have the central claim of the Meditations (1641): there is a real [realis) distinction between the mind and body,- in other words, the mind is a distinct 2 and independent thing (res). The thinking thing that is me is really distinct from the body and can exist without it (AT VII 78 : CSM II 54). The message appears to be all of a piece. The thesis of the incorpo- reality of the mind seems, from first to last, a fixed point in Des- cartes thinking . Indeed the now widespread adoption of the label Cartesian dualism to refer to the incorporeality thesis has had the effect of making that thesis the very hallmark of Descartes philoso- phy. Yet though it is undeniable that Descartes did repeatedly assert the incorporeality thesis, his reasons for subscribing to it were by no mea