Descartes Mind-Body Dualism

[@julianchavez1796]

Thank you for this. Descartes’ writing is so hard for me to understand. Reading the meditations has been the hardest part of learning the philosophy of Descartes…

[@lynndickerson8577]

This helps with my homework!

[@youruler11]

I’m not sure that the argument given to Descartes premise “I think therefore I am” and the preposition I am not certain I am a physical thing, with its conclusion being that I am not a physical thing has been fairly portrayed. It’s my belief that Descartes is talking about the ‘I’ (self) when he says I. I being the incorporeal self and not the corporeal self which is of course the physical self. The I Descartes referring to is the spiritual self so when he says “I am not a physical thing” I believe he means the nonphysical (incorporeal self) entity of the human being. In summary I believe the human to be physical (mater) and the being to be the energy, consciousness or the mind (spiritual) in the meaning human being. If we were more spiritual than physical then maybe we would start being human. Then Descartes would have written “I is not a physical thing, it is a thinking thing” I think therefore I am being human and not a human being.

[@youruler11]

Sorry that was my attempt at making a joke with the last sentence. Anyway this is what I meant to write. - Then Descartes would have written “I is not a physical thing, I is a thinking thing”. I think therefore I is an incorporeal (entity) “being” human and not just a corporeal human (entity) being only.

[@delec9665]

Hi ! I’ve been interested in logic in quite a time and I’ve been wanting to dive deeper for a while. I’ve tried to find logic classification/taxonomy but helplessly. The best I found was a list of logics on the outline of logic Wikipedia page, but I struggle making sense out of that. Could make a video of that subject please 🙏🙏🙏

[@AtticPhilosophy]

Hi! If you're starting out in logic, you don't want to worry about lots of different logics. Start with classical propositional logic. Use a good modern textbook to guide you - best online option is ForAllX: forallx.openlogicproject.org

[@RedLeo-pf9yo]

This makes my brain hurt.

[@Contribute_TakeCare_Learn_Play]

I'm sorry to go completely off-topic. I don't have social media and I tried to find an email address to contact you. I didn't find one. Could you consider making a video (which as far as I found does not exist yet anywhere properly) of chat gpt / different versions vs Gemini different versions or any other such potentially better AI and if they can detect properly logical fallacies. (As of now it seems they can't. But I didn't try the paid versions) So for example making the AI give a test of 20 statement/arguments that are to have some fallacy in it (a list for which fallacies that can be given to it in the instruction) leaving open the answer for us to give it back to it and to see if it correctly replies whether our answers are correct. Basically I'm dreaming of a self study AI general tutor/study help

[@johnward5102]

Really good presentation, thank you. The deeper mystery for me is why did Descartes, clearly a very smart man, get into all this nonsense? Is there an older tradition of dualism, by which he was influenced?

[@dominiks5068]

I find that "if I had a different body I'd obviously be a different person" mentality very strange and I think one reason why people think like that is because they are constantly bombarded by Physicalism in academia. Whenever laypeople (who haven't got the slightest idea what "Physicalism" means) dream of being in the body a sheep, they say "What a strange dream! Tonight I dreamt I was [in the body of] a sheep!" and not "What a strange dream! Tonight I dreamt I was someone else than I actually am!". But still, even under the academic hegemony of Physicalism, most philosophers - according to the latest PhilSurvey - think that our body is irrelevant to personal identity, so the Cartesian intuition seems to be very widespread, even among people who grew up with Physicalism

[@dmitriy4708]

If the sheep brain could support the same neural networks as human brain - why not? Physicalism does not necessarily say that brain and mind are identical, mind is a process in the brain, so having a different "bodysuit" for the same mind is not paradoxical. We cannot dream we are somebody else inside because of our self-identification, it does not mean I am the same person I was 20 years ago, I am entirely different now. Only memories and similar general traits tie me to the past me 20 year ago, nothing more.

[@rugbybeef]

If nothing else wouldn't the personified concepts of Justice, Nature, or God, an argument for the idea of non-physical thinkers. Even the idiom, "X has a mind of its own" implying intentionality or will beyond the physical subject itself suggests a deep seated belief in the existence of an agent or thinker. Also, where personifications of these take on the linguistic characteristics such as receiving the "iru", "aru", "desu" variants of "to be" in a language like Japanese which has differing verb forms for animate things, inanimate things, and a more objective copular form of the verb. It seems where "Life finds a way" or "Nature abhors a vacuum" these concepts if nothing else have a state of mind beyond their physical substance in that "find" and "abhor" are subjective verbs of intention not physical actions.