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I am writing in response to the recent article by Elizabeth Urban (2018) in which she discusses the influence of the seventeenth century philosopher, Rene Descartes, on modern thought and the conundrums of his mind-body dualism. Urban gives an arresting account of his thinking and of his belief in the unity of human existence underlying the ontological separation of mind and body as distinct realms of being. She mentions Descartes’ belief that the soul is a unifying factor, and discusses briefly how the enigma of mind-body integration continues to elude and intrigue us.
She briefly discusses the argument of Sperry, the neuroscientist, that the dualism is not one of entities or realms, a thinking realm and a material realm, but rather of the organizational authority of the whole, subsuming determined, material chains of events within it. Although she mentions Sperry in passing, she concludes that the dualism of Descartes remains as foundational for psychology if it is not to be reductionistic in a simple monism. Despite several readings, I must admit I am not certain that this is her position. It does seem, however, that she retains Descartes’ premises, that mind and body are ontologically distinct realms of being, and continues to wonder how they ‘interact’. Perhaps the soul helps; at least that is what Descartes thought.
I think there is a fundamental problem with Urban’s reading of Descartes and of the critique of his position. It is that, although Urban rightly traces the dualism of mind and body back to the Greeks, she does not discuss the radical shift that Descartes introduced. For the Greeks, mind and body were modes of engagement with the world: our minds engage in argument and our bodies in dancing. Mind and body were functional dimensions of an integrated human being-in-the-world. What Descartes does is to tear them apart. He jettisons the body (as res extensa) into the ‘outer world’ of matter,