Response Paper for Session 2

Denis Telofy Drescher

April 22, 2014
estion 1
Clearly, Descartes installs a separation between a mental substance (res
cogitans) and a corporeal one (res extensa), but can you also nd passages
in which he speaks about the interrelations or interactions between the
two? How separate are body and mind really in Descartess philosophy,
and what are some phenomena that show that they have to be connected
in some way?
e interrelations are most clearly described in e Passions of the Soul, where he
theorizes that a gland in the brain is the principle seat (Descartes and Voss art. 32) of
the soul. ere it interacts with animal spirits, which in turn control bodily functions.
e interaction, however, is bidirectional, as the slightest movements by [the gland]
can greatly alter the course of the nearby spirits passing through the brain, and con-
versely any lile change in the course of those spirits can greatly alter the movements
of the gland. (art. 31)
Although the repeated use of seat seems to indicate that the soul is indeed located
in this gland, this would contradict Descartess assertion that the soul is entirely in-
dependent of the body. Hence, what he might have intended to convey is rather that
the gland serves as a conduit for the interactions between the body and an otherwise
disjointed immortal soul.
e phenomena that Descartes aributes to interactions of soul and body (via the
animal spirits moving through nerves and pores) include emotions such as fear or
courage (Descartes and Voss e.g., art. 36, 3840) that may be caused or necessitated by
events we perceive through the body but that are eventually felt in the soul, according
On the other hand, when one knows how dierent [animals] are, one understands much beer the
arguments which prove that our soul is of a nature entirely independent of the body, and conse-
quently that it is not subject to die with it. (Descartes and Cress 33)
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to his theory, where the soul can exercise power over them if it is not too weak or ill
directed (art. 4850).
He also engages in speciesist apologism by giving two kinds of observable phenom-
ena whose ostensible absence is supposed to show that nonhuman animals lack a soul
and thus lack reason, intelligence, and possibly feeling (Descartes and Cress 32 f.),
namely the ability to use language and to acquire new skills. He says that reason is
a universal instrument (32) and should enable them to perform these tasks if they
possessed it.
Unless he mentions it in a part that I have not read, it seems that he elides that
animals such as dogs oen communicate their desires and fears via nonverbal signs
and sometimes particular sounds. Although he does accept human sign languages as
languages, these animals forms of communication seem to fall below an unspecied
threshold of sophistication that disqualies them as language. Similarly he disregards
many animals aptitude at adapting to new situations and acquiring new skills when
he argues that such is a uniquely human ability.
I can in part follow this reasoning on the premise that the diversity of our opinions
does not arise from the fact that some people are more reasonable than others, but
solely from the fact that we lead our thoughts along dierent paths (emphasis mine
Descartes and Cress 1). If one views intelligence as something that is either present or
absent with no graduations, then the observable graduations of intelligence have to be
rounded up or down to t the model. Later, however, he does observe these dierences
in humans: For it is rather remarkable that there are no men so dull and so stupid
(excluding not even the insane), that they are incapable of arranging various words
together (32).
estion 2
What were your problems with the text? What passages, ideas or concepts
did you nd unclear, unconvincing or otherwise problematic?
I have lile experience in reading recent philosophical papers, but from my experi-
ence with papers on topics of computer science and occasionally of gender and society,
it is interesting to read a paper that no only presents motivations, methods, and results,
but also the meandering paths on which the philosopher arrived at them.
Although impersonal language is sometimes used to veil subjectivity, I prefer the
modern style for its economy. Especially the excerpts from Discourse on the Method
seemed to be weighted down by autobiographical information, which may be interest-
ing in itself but did not add greatly to the argumentor so it seemed to me.
ese excerpts also read to me as if they were much more linearly wrien than those
form Meditations on First Philosophy. e ideals of his method impressed me, but the
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description of his application and his results had me stumble over what seemed to me
like non sequiturs several times.
Meditations on First Philosophy seemed similar at rst until I learned that yesterday
(Descartes and Cress e.g., 63) ought to be read as an indication of diegetic time, and
that he really wrote the book over the course of approximately two years. en the
planning that had gone into it became more evident too, for example, in the six-day
process, which parallels to a degree the story from Genesis that has the biblical god
create the world within six days.
Nonetheless, the text remained conversational rather than clearly delineating the
course of the argument, so that I never knew whether a seeming non sequitur was
merely setup for a rebual of the position or a gap that would be lled in later, possibly
in one of the chapters (or meditations) that I did not read.
estion 3
What did you nd interesting about the text? What aspects of the text
would you like to know more about?
e method that Descartes describes in Discourse on the Method is one that has taken
him decades to discover. He writes, for example that I should not try to accomplish
that objective until I had reached a much more mature age than that of merely twenty-
three, which I was then (Descartes and Cress 13). He was 23 in 1619, so by the time
of the publication of Discourse on the Method in 1637, 18 more years had passed.
Given this long period of time, it would be interesting to be able to contrast his
condensed description of his process with its actual course. He writes, for example,
that if, among the occupations of men purely as men, there is one that is solidly good
and important, I dare to believe that it is the one I have chosen. (Descartes and Cress
2) is sentence led me to suspect that he had worried that the time he invested into
his thought experiment (which is probably an anachronistic term for it) might never be
repaid in any novel insight, worried that he should have rather invested the time into
an occupation with more immediate benet to the world, worried that he may only
be continuing down his path due to the sunk cost fallacy, and worried that he might
never escape the all-pervasive uncertainty that he discovered as a student.
Furthermore, he may have feared the feeling of sinfulness or alternately inadequacy
had he been unable to rationalize to himself his belief in the biblical god. Finally, I
wonder how much of his arguments was the result of these worries rather than the
methodology he describes in Discourse on the Method. at is something that I would
like to learn more about, as it would give me some beer insight into human psychol-
ogy and help me understand biases in my own thinking.
And though this may be slightly beside the point, the editors description of It must
be observed and Next we should take notice as throat-clearings was also hilarious.
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Works Cited
Descartes, R. and D.A. Cress. Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy
(Fourth Edition): Hacke, 1998. Print.
Descartes, R. and S. Voss. e Passions of the Soul. Hacke Publishing Company, 1989.
Print. HPC Classics Series.
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