Minds and Machines

1) Briefly describe Descartes view of the relation between mind and body. What, if anything, is wrong with this view? Rene Descartes view of the relation between the mind and body, is a very complicated one. However if one was to put it simply, Descartes view is that the mind and the body are separate substances (Grayling 2001 p, 1). This idea of the mind and body being separate entities is known as “Dualism”. Descartes claimed that because …

…the mind is a internal substance and the body is external, as Descartes proposed, how then is it possible for an internal substance to interact with an external substance, as seen in these examples? Whilst problems with the Dualist theory, such as the one mentioned above do exist, it is widely accepted that Rene Descartes played a pivotal role in beginning to answer the question of how the mind and body are related (Grayling 2001 p,1).