The Mind-Body Duality Fallacy: A Critique of Descartes

[@japongo7954]

Superb introduction about the necessity of a specific context for some ideas to be successful, also depicting how history is a stream of could-have-beens and could-bes and not a linear process bearing unquestionable events and dynamics. Important ending as well, putting your critique of individualistic philosophy in line with a proposal for a new political framework organized around the collective. Our times deeply need videos like this one. Thank you, sir.

[@MrStranger1944]

Heidegger offers a significant critique of Descartes' mind-body duality in "Being and Time."

[@thewerepyreking]

@Paul Lammers thanks.

[@growingmelancholy8374]

Oh, if you want to understand Heidegger, just read Okakura Kakuzō. And don't forget, Heidegger was a Nazi. Anyways, if you want a better criticism of Descartes' mind-body split, read Merleau-Ponty.

[@stefanb6539]

I read Heideggers "Being and Time" and was very impressed. Until I tried to explain to someone else, what was so impressive about it and realized, that it's only a clusterfuck of self-references. Also, if you know the pecularities of Southern German dialects, the text actually loses a lot of its mystique.

[@TheeJordanRossi]

@@growingmelancholy8374 "Heidegger was a Nazi." Badass.

[@growingmelancholy8374]

@@TheeJordanRossi Fuck Nazis.

[@vin-cc9nk]

Interesting to think, in this context, about the effects of isolation over the human mind. We may perceive our minds to be completely independent from everyone else's but if you completely cut someone from all human contact (such as in solitary confinement, or people stranded by accidents or other reasons) they begin to hallucinate and gradually lose the ability to discern reality from imagination. I think there's a deep, perhaps even biological, aspect to the social being that goes unexplored due to this hard mind/body divide.

[@novahina]

I love your reading on Descartes references. My teachers weren't as deep in their readings, unfortunally, people in class mostly had a bad view on descartism.

[@geraldoarnoldo6440]

Isn't it odd that the effects of sensory deprivation the mind quickly descends into chaos followed by insanity.

[@Kormac80]

I’m not sure “odd” is the most useful work. “Telling” might work better. It’s quite telling that the mind quickly unravels (a few days) in the setting of complete sensory deprivation.

[@Kormac80]

I’m not sure “odd” is the most useful word. Telling might work better. It’s quite telling that the mind quickly unravels (a few days) in the setting of complete sensory deprivation.

[@josephpchajek2685]

Most links recommend the tanks as therapy

[@jbw6351]

Dennett's dismissal of the first-person ontology of consciousness is not convincing. The implications of the irreducibility of mind are too serious to be hand-waived away. There is still not satisfying solution to the hard problem articulated by Chalmers. Eliminative materialists are too reliant on the scientific paradigm

[@mythbusterman8541]

It’s my feeling that what’s making this problem and so many problems of modern theoretical physics so exceedingly difficult to unravel is the persistently stubborn reductionist approach to trying to solve them . The importance of emergence of characteristics and level of organisation and arrangement of matter and larger more macroscopic scales is being overlooked. Consciousness might only emerge as the result of information integration at the level of the brain .

[@user-sl6gn1ss8p]

I like that in a sense the idea that the personal and the social are not severed in nature goes against an idea that was, at least in part, a reaction to empiricism/"mechanicism" - because it's common for people to react to more socially integrated views as "less objective" or even more "idealist"

[@lizgichora6472]

Think! Communal good and shared responsibility. Renee Descarte thank you once again.

[@gidalyahbrons5780]

Empathy can never truly rival self interest, since empathy is merely a product of self interest. To live for everyone is to live for no one.

[@parsaa10]

Actually, to live for everyone, is for everyone to live. Humans CAN NOT live without one another, its literally the key to our evolution and survival

[@Heyu7her3]

@@parsaa10 but that's still self-interest

[@parsaa10]

@@Heyu7her3 without empathy we cant actually survive through self interest, doesnt actually work, a big part of therapy is realising that

[@lesprilib1]

The first person who showed this fallacy was a woman: Elisabeth, Princess of Bohemia. Give her credit.

[@roybecker492]

Yes. "I think, therefore I am." The "I" is merely asserted here.

[@KundelX]

4:00 using outside world's logic and science to disprove the superiority of mind is completely contradictory. My thoughts are closer and more certain to me than neuroscientist's claims, so they are more truthful

[@tomio8072]

Zajęczy Kieł maybe it goes back to language; in order to articulate thoughts we need language right? And so when you have that feeling you know what you want to say but you don’t know how to phrase it, your thoughts are having to be put into words before you can properly understand them perhaps? If you use language - like Descartes used - to express your thoughts, then you are relying on that language being coherent to yourself and others to express what you mean when you say stuff. Right? So though you can have thoughts that are independent of language, maybe, you can’t express them without language, and so when Descartes said “I think therefore I am” not only was he relying on his thoughts being evidence of his existence as the thinker, he was also relying on the language he used being representative of his thoughts. Perhaps. After all, if his language didn’t express to others or even himself what he meant, then he wouldn’t have said anything we can understand, we wouldn’t know what “I think therefore I am” or any of the book meant, and so the “correctness” in accuracy of his language is a necessity in order for him to declare “i think therefore I am” and of course language is beholden to the environment you live in making Descartes’ first idea only able to be performed if also his language is correct. I may have slipped up though somewhere, but essentially he couldn’t declare that if he didn’t suppose his language was representative of his thoughts, and he misses this out, maybe, I don’t know I haven’t read any of his work truthfully. Maybe that makes sense though, if not let me know :)

[@thewerepyreking]

That's why I always have appreciated Kant's, Heidegger's, and even Descartes' perspective.

[@Franklin8491]

In 1967 and 1968, when I was a student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, I received a copy of the following limerick from a professor or teaching assistant. It was marked with the author's name as "Kenneth Brown" Descartes is the Man we must damn For Modern philosphy's jam. Said he, though I doubt What I'm thinking about I never can doubt that I am. It's a clear and distict proposition That my being implies a condition, And it's easy to show (This much I can know) That God must be real in addition. But this is important, you see; It implies a divine guarantee That in reason I must Put a rational trust When it posits a world besides me. My system is further attended By duality ever unblended, For reason has taught That no body has thought And a thinking thing's never extended. And so we must ponder in wonder A hudge philosphical blunder; When thus you've defined Both body and mind You always must leave them asunder.

[@dimitricariou]

You’re right, it’s intresting how Western philosophy places so much value on the free individual. As for example, in certain cultures, your relation to the totem of the snake is more important than the fact that you’re a free individual.

[@mythbusterman8541]

Similarly in modern physics they keep trying to reduce reality to smaller and smaller more abstract scales . If you reduced your car for example to a seething mess of atoms in the absence of infinite computational power and attempt to study those atoms would provide no information whatsoever on what it is like for an object to be like a car or anything about how a car works .

[@andystitt3887]

This assumes the existence of a physical body.

[@casteretpollux]

Sometimes I think and I am. Other times I don't think and I still am. I could think without my body. I am constantly in a state of change. What's so difficult?

[@09wrxin17]

Great video! Although I agree with you I believe perhaps the best philosopher on this topic was Merleau-Ponty through the Phenomenology of Perception.

[@olanmcevoy8581]

I recently read Sarah Bakewell's book on the history of existentialism and it made me more interested in reading some Merleau-Ponty, where do you think I should start?

[@09wrxin17]

Olan McEvoy If you are interested I’d say begin with his radio lectures. They’ve been compiled into a neat little book titled “The World of Perception”. The book is essentially the Phenomenology of Perception in a distilled form. If you end up enjoying that I’d move onto the Phenomenology of Perception. It’s a difficult read, but it’s quite enjoyable once the ideas begin to make sense! Honestly, I’m a huge fan of Sartre but Merleau-Ponty is the better writer of the two. His ideas (IMO) are far more creative and interesting! He certainly is an overlooked philosopher that I’d highly recommend if you get the chance!

[@nelsonphillips]

Merleau-Ponty is the go to precognitive science philosophers. But, the ecological thinking and pragmatic phenomenological thinkers, there are many, are better now. William James, Lacan.........

[@HxH2011DRA]

"What rules the body? The Mind. What's The Mind's greatest weapon? The Body. What is the connection between The Mind and The Body? The Mind controls The Body, The Body controls our enemies, our enemies control jack shit when we're done with them." RIP netflix daredevil

[@StatickShoot95]

one thing that really kinda throws away anything you said about the split between body and mind being an illusion, is that scientist found out that the heart has a neuronal net, it thinks and feels for itself, and its the only organ that sends much more information to the brain than it receives. The problem with Descartes was that he was born into Western Culture (and if you think about Existentialism vs Structuralism) he wont be able to surpass the barrier of its own culture, if he was more exposed to, lets say, buddism (with a mere philosophical approach) his line would have been (we exist within this system, therefore we are indivisible from it). Wich makes sense if you think about the perceptual incapacity of quantum particles to become sentient humans.

[@Liliquan]

I guess the early bird gets the rotten worm.

[@poorpartyblackburn5978]

Great stuff boss

[@dragoncrash1234]

Ridiculous lines like mind-body dualism have single handedly bogged down philosophical discourse for over a century and makes metaphysics so much more tedious than necessary.

[@nelsonphillips]

Ah yes, the countenance to the pataphysical by introducing the notions of social beings. Wiener did something similar in Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. A bit off beat but in the same line, Lacans umwelt is a topic that I wished to put some more work on only to have read The Allure of the Machinic Life by John Johnston. Quote from p106-7, " This theory (machinic desire) extends Lacan's notion of the in-mixing of the machine beyond the boundaries of the individual subject and relocates both subjects and machines on an expansive surface they designate as the socius, or "body without organs.""

[@exlauslegale8534]

Dear Nelson P. If you would allow me a couple of remarks... Deleuzo-Guattarian concept of the machinic desire, which mr. Johnston is borrowing, relates to a desire which is behaving in a machinic manner, and not to a machine that desires. Next, Lacan is (was) before anything else a money making machine. Third, a cybernetic expansive surface (of the socius or something else) can not be a "body without organs" since it's main organ is κυβερνάω, a navigator or the man behind the wheel. Here, a much more suitable concept would be that of the assemblage of annunciation. Maybe you should, before anything else, first read Gilbert Simondon's "On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects" where you can find that the main incompatibility between a man and a machine is that men deal with sense and machines deal with forms...and much more other stuff on the subject of technicity, Wiener and cybernetics.

[@nelsonphillips]

@@exlauslegale8534 Firstly thanks for the reference I'm always looking for book on Wiener and/or cybernetics. Yes that is the way Johnson was using the concept, the new AI. Not a pure Lacanist, so........ That is a literal interpretation of cybernetics that I wouldn't use. If machinic desire has any relationship to cybernetics then this manner of use would, "body without organs", seem plausible as there is no distinction between machine and control. Finally, not really sure many machines deal with form. I'm guessing that's a specific argument and if that is the case you may find the Johnson book compelling.

[@exlauslegale8534]

@@nelsonphillips This is the difference between Kubrik's 2001 where a man dismantles a machine, and the movie Ex-machina where a machine dismantles men. I would call the second example the elonmuskian aporia. This is from the III chapter of part 2 of the Simondon's book, chapter with the title "Limits of the technological notion of information in order to account for the relation between man and the technical object. The margin of indeterminacy in technical individuals. Automatism": "But it is very difficult to construct transducers comparable to the living thing. Indeed the living thing is not exactly a transducer like those that can be found in machines; it is that and something more; mechan­ical transducers are systems with a margin of indeterminacy; information is that which adds determinacy. But this information must be given to the transducer; it cannot invent it; it is given to it by a mechanism that is analogous to that of perception in the living, for instance by a signal coming from the manner in which the effector functions (the gauge on the output shaft of a heat engine). On the contrary, the living thing has the capacity to give itself information, even in the absence of all perception, because it possesses the capacity to modify the forms of the problems to be resolved; for the machine, there are no problems, only data that modulate the transducers; several transducers that act upon one another according to commutable schemas, such as Ashby’s homeostat, do not constitute a problem solving machine: the transducers in a reciprocal relation of causality are all within the same time; they condition one another in actuality [dans I’actuel]; they are never confronted with a problem, something thrown down before them, something that is in front of them and that they will have to step or leap over. To solve a problem is to be able to step over it, to be capable of recasting the forms that are given within the problem and in which it consists. The solution of real problems is a vital function presupposing a recurrent mode of action that cannot exist in the machine: the recurrence of the future with respect to the present, of the virtual with respect to the actual. There is no true virtuality in a machine; the machine cannot reform its forms in order to solve a problem. " I apologise for the nerdiness.

[@nelsonphillips]

@@exlauslegale8534 I will match that nerdiness and raise it. Yes. This is getting at the nature of intelligence and the question as to machines can possess it. Hofstadter book I Am A Strange Loop, an ok book, easy to read, directly tries to address this idea of a machine being able to produce its "own" information. Complementary, Wetware is the biological equivalent to a computational device that is able to process information through sense and also regulate itself. This suggests a bridging of the machinic and living by a possibility of mechanistic processes without the need for some sort of vital force, or whatever that produces the Cartesian duality. The problem now is do you look at the problem with respect to creating a machine can be representational or interpret a nonrepresentational living form. My tendency is the later, because it is easier technically, but it slaughters some sacred cows on the way. Advancements that will make this problem more solvable is to develop a better understanding of information, extending it beyond Shannon's base of informational content into something more general. A pop science book by Paul Davies, The Demon in the Machine, brushes over this topic a light and unfulfilling way. However, it aspects that information is the difference between a machine living and not living is pointed. It is relevant here as it because at the margins is where information, energy and matter interact and where life starts to differ from the machine as your above quote suggests with some amount of accuracy. Apologies for the rough sentences.

[@exlauslegale8534]

@@nelsonphillips Google wetware definition starts with the parenthesis "chiefly in the science fiction". A bot won't be the Overman, and the Overman won't be a bot, because a bot lacks conatus, a bot is a technical individual, or even the technical individual. Frankenstein's Monster had conatus, but only in the science fiction. Assemblage is not an individual, it's an assemblage.

[@meltingpoint97]

Does an object orientated ontology somewhat ‘debunk’ mind-body dualism

[@thewerepyreking]

Great Proust quote.

[@growingmelancholy8374]

Fascinating that in discussing the fallacy of the mind-body split, not once mention of Merleau-Ponty or any gender/feminist thinkers.

[@Sonny_McMacsson]

Reeeee

[@absolutellienot5424]

starting this video as a dualist. even though being so makes me miserable. hopefully your video can talk me out of the ideology edit: uhhhh i’m still not getting it. i still feel that mind and body are separate due to the unique meta cognitive capabilities of human consciousness (which i would define as the mind) consciousness does not act on the world only the body does and the world cannot spill into the range of human consciousness

[@Heyu7her3]

Why does being a dualist make you miserable? I have dualist leanings because Descartes was the first philosopher I read and because my own mind and body fight each other. I'm neurodivergent and so I do get how Descartes used disability to get to his conclusion because that's my life experience. I also want to do my own thing (free will) yet also believe in collective power.

[@nicolasgabriel7639]

I think you misunderstand Descartes. He doesn't speak of the mind but of himself as a thinking soul. He doesn't speak of his autobiography, but of his universal autobiography. The soul he is speaking about is not what makes him particular but what makes him human.

[@Etalexander1]

Unfortunately very little substance here. Essentially an invitation away from individualism.

[@LibsRockU]

We may be individuals but we also profoundly create each other.

[@nmvhr]

i don’t get why you’re just stating that an external is required to precede the mind/“i”? it could very well be true and i think it is, but you just stated it. no explanation.

[@nmvhr]

it’s bc the thought needed to prove the ego exists necessitates comparison to that which exists elsewhere and so on in order for recognition. this is why being able to divy up the rest of being is an important tool.

[@nmvhr]

good vid tho.

[@sabrewolf479]

"I think therefore I am." Firstly, "we" can be certain that "we" do not know what "we" are. We do not know what "I"/"We" means. Secondly, do we have/produce/express/exhibit thoughts? Or do thoughts have/produce/express/exhibit us? Perhaps "we" are like tuning forks that resonate with thoughts that overtake us like harmonic frequencies at which we resonate? Descartes found the rabbit hole and promptly plugged it instead of venturing further. Nietzsche uncovered the hole and thrust us (perhaps screaming and kicking) down it. And so here we are looking to neuroscience for answers.

[@Rico-Suave_]

Watched all of it 9:53

[@hyacinth1320]

Buddhist no self be like oh really. lol

[@cathyUtube1]

Lots of ideas were unheard of because women were never allowed to speak.

[@jbw6351]

cat09 such as?

[@STARBOY-ko4kb]

😅👍

[@123sLb123]

ye what kind of bread to use so we can get the best SANDWISH

[@stefanb6539]

Consciousness is best understood as a legal term, with Free Will as aggravating circumstance. It's highly doubtful, that there is more to it.

[@bernardliu8526]

The Buddha taught the self does not exist.

[@Liliquan]

I'm 360p early.

[@Novalarke]

Interesting. I don't put that much effort into dispensing with Descartes, as I think there's an easier angle - "I think therefore I am" is the same as saying "I think therefore I exist". Thus if you don't exist, it doesn't matter - you can't think because you don't exist. So, that's one direction. Then there's the development from that - if you are existing and thinking and then you suddenly stop existing, and then you suddenly exist again, thinking obviously had nothing to do with it, therefore, "I think therefore I am" fails. Much easier argument.

[@dimitricariou]

Well your argument is intresting but it doesn’t work because there is no link of causality between the “I Think” and the “I am”. In french Descartes wrote “Je pense, je suis” (I think, I am). Thinking is not the necessary condition to being. However, the fact that I’m thinking is making me realize that I must be to think. A best way to write it would be to put it :”I think therefore I must be (in order to be able to think)”.

[@lastsaiyan8461]

Descartes proves the existince of the self through thinking, by the relation that thinking and existing have with each other (Existence is a condition in order to think, and when one is thinking, one must be).

[@Novalarke]

@@lastsaiyan8461 - nope. If you cease to exist and then you exist again, thinking has nothing to do with it.

[@avoidbeing]

nonphilosophy

[@WebHandle]

This video is useless. Cartesian thinking makes stuff work extremely quickly by breaking it down top to bottom and getting the whole picture fast. ''Refutations'' of it are stupid and miss the point that the systems there so that you can analyse the world around you without having to come up with names for every single corpuscle and element comprising an object or being.

[@nelsonphillips]

Except that when dealing with complexities of the mind where the system is extremely parallel. In this case there is a need to increase the number of dimension to such an extent a simple cartesian system become unworkable/uncomputational.

[@alsara2k]

​@@nelsonphillips I disagree, the mind's the result of a much larger process which should be the focal. The mind complements a body that first has to develop (gestate, grow from a child into an adult etc) to facilitate the mind in the first place. The self is defined by actions taken and subject to the world and others. So, the self cannot exist without time for it to realize that self exists, the body is dependent on time for existance. So time is a big factor and so is growth/life. 'Complexities of the mind' become meaningless because now we have a frame of reference for why the mind exists and it's to accommodate a human body and we need to figure out why this relationship exists and how it pertains to our religious, literary and scientific texts. Descartes really is the ultimate enlightenment figure because the tools he provides us, observe and it's true, is insanely powerful in this world of noise and rationalization. Key being, observe, and if you treat your observations as observations, your observations will be observations and thus true.

[@teachmetelugu7320]

1:19

[@ericm9495]

What exactly is the "fallacy" here? A fallacy is a pattern of invalid argument. When you argue for something you have premises and conclusions. When you commit a fallacy your premises don't support your conclusions. But you seem to mostly argue in this video is that D's premises and conclusions are false and not so much that he has committed some kind of error in inferring his conclusions from his premises. If D argues: p1. the mind is singular and the body is not p2. if the mind is singular and the body is not then the mind is differen from the body C. the mind is different from the body, this isn't a falacious argument just in virtue of the premises or conclusions being false. If Proust comes along and says "hey p1 is false the mind isn't singular after all. just consider these experiences where my mind isn't singular" then Proust isn't claiming that D is committing a fallacy, just that he has a false premise. Calling it an "error" like damasio is more apropos.

[@oioi9372]

So consciousness being an occupator of biological body with head, limbs, organs etc. is a fallacy? 😂😂

[@John-lf3xf]

Criticism is not the same thing as critique

[@StopFear]

When I started listening to this video I realized this is actually your (the director of the video) thoughts. Maybe you could introduce yourself and at least explain why anyone should care about what you think. I mean, nobody knows who you are and if you have any qualifications to comment on life at all. There are many people who have history and wisdom but for whom we can't have time to listen to or to read their works. I don't mean to necessarily dismiss whatever is said in the video. I am strictly asking the question I wrote above.

[@Sazi_de_Afrikan]

I don't think he "ought" to make "you" care about what he thinks. He posts because he loves it, not solely for your approval or admiration.

[@sirtheodorefranciswindsor]

salty looooser 🤣🤣🤣