Rethinking Descartes’s Substance Dualism

160 Pages·2021·2.179 MB·English

by  Lynda Gaudemard

Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind 29
Lynda Gaudemard
Rethinking
Descartes’s
Substance
Dualism
Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind
Volume 29
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Lynda Gaudemard
Rethinking Descartes’s
Substance Dualism
Lynda Gaudemard
Department of Philosophy, Institute of History of Philosophy
Aix-Marseille University
Aix-en-Provence, France
ISSN 1573-5834 ISSN 2542-9922 (electronic)
Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind
ISBN 978-3-030-75413-6 ISBN 978-3-030-75414-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75414-3
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FOR MATHIS
An extraordinary emergent self
Preface
As a graduate student in philosophy at Aix-Marseille university, I wished to work on
the mind-body problem. Jean-Maurice Monnoyer gave me an opportunity to study
early modern philosophy, a period that I was not particularly interested in. I did not
realise at the time the wonderful opportunity he had given to me. The topic of my
first Master’s thesis was the role of Descartes’s account of birthmarks for his defense
of ‘substance dualism’. I began to discover this fascinating period which was the
beginning of a long love story.
At 21, I received a PhD fellowship from the French Ministry of Research to write
a dissertation on Descartes’s conception of imagination, under the supervision of
Jean-Maurice Monnoyer.
After having completed my PhD, I moved to Switzerland to work at the University
of Geneva and at the University of Lausanne. My philosophical itinerary took
another direction and I became more interested in contemporary philosophy of
mind and bioethics. However, I always came back to Descartes because my early
fascination with his work never left me. I am convinced that there is still much to
learn from a careful reading of his texts. Much has been written on Descartes’s con-
ception of the mind and there have been many illuminating studies devoted to his
substance dualism. These studies mostly criticise the widespread Anglo-Saxon
interpretation of Descartes’s substance dualism according to which the mind exists
or can exist independently from the body. The main aim of this book is to provide
another interpretation of Descartes, opposed to Ryle’s ‘Descartes’s myth’ (1949). I
attribute to Descartes the view that the mind (or the soul) is a nonphysical substance
created by God, which emerges through a certain configuration of bodily parts: the
mind, created by God, cannot begin to think without the body (although it can con-
tinue to exist without it). Emergent creationist substance dualism may be worth of
interest for contemporary philosophy: by reconciling creationism with emergentism,
it provides a new option in the origin of the mind debate and enables to avoid some
objections commonly addressed to emergentism. I hope that this book will also suc-
ceed in cultivating a strong interaction between contemporary and early modern
concerns about the nature of the mind.
vii
viii Preface
This book could not have been written without a lot of people for whom I am
grateful and who have offered helpful feedback on earlier versions of the ideas con-
tained in this book: Lilli Alanen, Vlad Alexandrescu, Jean-Pascal Anfray, Delphine
Antoine-Mahut, Giulia Belgioioso, Debra Bergoffen, Annie Bitbol-H espériès,
François Clementz, Michele Corradi, Pierre Guenancia, Vincent Jullien, Denis
Kambouchner, Jean-Maurice Monnoyer, Jacques Morizot, Christine Noël-L emaître,
Bertrand Nouailles, Alison Simmons and Rebecca Wilkin. I would thank my editors
at Springer, the very helpful anonymous referees chosen by Springer and, my friend,
Adele Brookes, for having revised my English. Any remaining errors are my own.
Finally, I would thank my mother Aline for her support.
In chapter 3, I re-use materials from my article ‘Descartes’s Conception of Mind
through the Prism of Imagination: Cartesian Dualism Questioned’, Archiv für
Geschichte der Philosophie, 100, 2, 2018, pp. 146–171. The chapter 4.3 is partially
reproduced from my article ‘Disposition and Latent Teleology in Descartes’s
Philosophy’, published in American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 89, 2, 2015,
pp. 293–308. Some portions of the chapter 4.3 are partly reproduced from my
French article ‘L’omniprésence de Dieu: Descartes face à More 1648–1649’,
Journal of Early Modern Studies, 3, 2, 2014, pp. 32–54.
‘Car, y ayant deux choses en l’âme humaine, desquelles depend toute la connais-
sance que nous pouvons avoir de sa nature, l’une desquelles est qu’elle pense,
l’autre, qu’étant unie au corps, elle peut agir et pâtir avec lui; je n’ai quasi rien dit
de cette dernière, et me suis seulement étudié à faire bien entendre la première, à
cause que mon principal dessein était de prouver la distinction qui est entre l’âme
et le corps; à quoi celle-ci seulement a pu servir, et l’autre y aurait été nuisible’,
René DESCARTES.1
Aix-en-Provence, France Lynda Gaudemard

1 Descartes to Elisabeth 21 May 1643, AT III, 664, 23-665, 4/CSMK, 218.
Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Descartes’s Shadow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 The Relevance of the Cartesian Passionate Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2 The Real Distinction Between Mind and Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.1 The Puzzle of Descartes’s Argument for Real Distinction . . . . . . . 15
2.2 Descartes’s Concept of Substance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.3 The Unity of the Human Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.4 The Mind Without the Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3 Challenging the Cartesian Mind Paradigm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
3.1 Descartes’s Account of Imagination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
3.2 A Special Mode of Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
3.3 The Nature of the Embodied Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
3.4 The Mind’s Power of Extension. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
3.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
4 The Emergence of the Cartesian Self . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
4.1 Emergent Substance Dualism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
4.2 Descartes’s View of the Origin of the Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
4.3 A ‘Well-Disposed’ Human Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
4.4 Advantages of Descartes’s Emergent Creationism . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
4.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
ix
x Contents
5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
5.1 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
5.2 Descartes’s Legacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
5.3 Why Mind-Body Substance Dualism Is Not Over. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149