OPPapers.com

Change The Venue

Change the Venue:
Spinoza's Solution to the Mind/Body Problem
In what way is our mind different from our body? What relationships exist between the physical world and the mental? These are questions that philosophers have struggled to answer since the time of the ancient Greeks. In his work Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes directly addresses these issues by claiming that the mind and body are distinct from one another. Descartes articulation of the dualist position gave rise to the way philosophers have approached these questions ever since.
The most challenging difficulty facing the dualist is finding an answer to the mind/body problem. In other words, the duelist's dilemma is explaining the connection between the mental and the physical if these two are assumed to be distinct. One solution is offered by Spinoza in IIP7 of his work The Ethics. Since much of Spinoza's work stems straight from Descartes it is difficult to understand on its own. To fully grasp Spinoza's proposal it is helpful to understand the difference between Descartes and Spinoza. In this paper I will explain Descartes' dualism and his attempt to answer the mind/body problem. Then by comparison I will be able to more clearly explicate how Spinoza' Ethics IIP7 essentially amounts to a response to the mind/body problem.
Descartes derives dualism from the premise that if he can "clearly and distinctly understand one thing apart from another (54)," then it is sufficient evidence that the two are distinct. He applies this rule to the separation of mind and body in his sixth meditation. Descartes writes, "I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, in so far as I am simply a thinking, non-extended thing; and on the other hand I have a distinct idea of body, in so far as this is simply an extended, non-thinking thing. And accordingly, it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and can exist without it (54)." The division between mind and body is unique...