Rene Descartes

Essay # 2

Rene Descartes was a French philosopher. His theory is that reality consists of mind and matter. Descartes answers the question or attempts to answer the question of "what is real?" using dualism. Dualism is defined as the view that reality is composed of two different substances, so that neither one can be related to the other. Such examples being; spirit/matter, mind/body, good/evil. Descartes feels that the human can be broken down into two separate substances; a mind having no physical attributes and a body having a shape. He was committed to saying he was a thinking thing that possessed a body to which he was in fact "conjoined", but he can exist with out his body.

Richard Taylor, a materialist believing there are no mental entities (which is basically the definition of materialism, that only physical entities are real or exist). Taylor makes his replies against some arguments, one argument being something to the nature of, "a personÐ'...can reason deliberate about ends and means, plan for the future, drawing inferencesÐ'... (Etc.)" Taylor's reply to this is that men can do all those things and more and since all men are visible palpable beings that men, not minds do all these things. "There is no thing that is nonmaterial and there are no images composed of this or anything else." His (Taylor's) thought on your mind/soul/spirit surviving the death of the body, is that it's not going to happen while many may argue against that.

These two totally different philosophies are trying to convince me of one thing or the other, now I am honestly inclined to choose one over the other. What I still haven't figured out exactlyÐ'... I guess I understand the mind as your thoughts, your emotions, and things like that, but no one has really explained it in their arguments. The body & mind are separate yet connected? The mind is a material thing? Anyone else confused? How can the mind be a material thing when you can not see or feel it. You can only assume that it is.

So, after carefully analyzing the information available, I am inclined to say that yes, there is the similar problem as the Euthyphro issue; no one is really answering the question. How do you know? Who decided what the mind is? Who knows what happens to you "mind" when you die, because if someone knew, there would be no