Position
Substance Dualism
Mind and body are fundamentally distinct substances, and the mind is not reducible to the physical body.
Classification
- Position level
- specific
- Domains
- Philosophy of Mind
Overview
Descartes argued that mind and body can be clearly conceived apart — the thinking self survives every doubt that unseats the body — and that what can exist apart are distinct substances. Mind is essentially thinking and unextended, body essentially extended and unthinking, and neither is made out of the other.
The problem is what remains once they are separated: how an unextended thinking substance and an extended physical one act on each other at all. Elisabeth of Bohemia put the objection to Descartes in his own lifetime and never received a satisfying answer, and it remains the position's central liability, because causal traffic between the two is precisely what the theory has to preserve.
Position on
Broader position
Incompatible positions
- Physicalism
Question scope: The Mind–Body Problem