Descartes - hero or villain?
I refer to mind-body dualism, usually attributed to Descartes.
On the one hand, the holistic-perspective enthusiasts (I include myself here) see the separation of mind and body as a nonsense. If you try to treat the two as though they are genuinely independent, you can miss more than you observe. Much of what makes a human being is the inter-relationships between the embodied mind and the mindful body.
On the other hand, if you can avoid the trap of forgetting that they don't exist in isolation, the mind-body split can offer a useful and worthwhile perspective.
+ The physical world, which we could call the 'bodyworld', comprises all of space-time, specifically excluding minds, souls, spirits, gods and supernatural creatures of all sorts. The bodyworld is what we conventionally see as being 'outside' of ourselves.
+ Similarly, the mindworld is all those things that are real, but not part of the bodyworld. These are conventionally seen as being 'inside' ourselves. [Although much of the mindworld is actually outside of our individual selves. I think this is because the mindworld exists within time, but not in three-dimensional space. Besides time, it has one or more 'dimensions' within which it exists.]
My concepts of bodyworld and mindworld are not exactly the 'mind' and 'body' that Descartes wrote about. I prefer them mainly because they offer a human perspective. [I look outside myself and see the world of the body, of physical things, so I call it the bodyworld. Similarly with the 'mindworld', the world of non-physical (but mostly real) things.] I don't think I've made changes that would significantly affect Descartes' reasoning.
|
