In his Meditations on First Philosophy, René Descartes writes

we should conclude from all this, that those things which we conceive clearly and distinctly as being diverse substances, as we regard mind and body to be, are really substances essentially distinct one from the other; and this is the conclusion of the Sixth Meditation… we cannot conceive of body excepting in so far as it is divisible, while the mind cannot be conceived of excepting as indivisible. For we are not able to conceive of the half of a mind as we can do of the smallest of all bodies; so that we see that not only are their natures different but even in some respects contrary to one another.

He goes on to argue for the distinct separation of body and mind, part of what has become known as Cartesian dualism. While the whole argument may appear to some as abstract philosophical theorizing, it has had an enormous influence on Western thought, not only in philosophy, but also in social sciences, arts, religion, education, medicine, political theory, gender studies, colonialism studies, and other areas. For background, see Russell Shorto’s Descartes’ Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason.

I’d like to recommend three classic, short essays that discuss the problem of Cartesian dualism and its consequence for life today.

(1) One is “Some Consequence of Four Incapacities,” by C.S. Peirce, written in 1868 for the Journal of Speculative Philosophy. Peirce directly critiques four major assumptions of Cartesianism.

(2) A second is John Dewey’s essay, “Body and Mind.” He writes,

the question of the integration of mind-body in action is the most practical of all questions we can ask of our civilization. It is not just a speculative question; it is a demand: a demand that the labor of multitudes now too predominantly physical in character be inspirited by purpose and emotion and informed by knowledge and understanding. It is a demand that what now pass for highly intellectual and spiritual functions shall be integrated with the ultimate conditions and means of all achievement, namely the physical, and thereby accomplish something beyond themselves.

(3) A third classic is by Arthur Bentley, “The Human Skin: Philosophy’s Last Line of Defense.”

All three of these make the same general point––a rejection of dualist thinking, which derives from Descartes’s attempt to reconcile science and religion, but which pervades our thinking in practically every other area, and a call for integrated approaches to complex problems.

References

Charles S. Peirce. “Some Consequences of Four Incapacities.” Journal of Speculative Philosophy 2 (1868): 140–57.

John Dewey. “Body and Mind.” In The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882-1953, edited by Jo Ann Boydston, LW 3:25-40. Carbondale & Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967.

Arthur F. Bentley. “The Human Skin: Philosophy’s Last Line of Defense.” Philosophy of Science 8 (1941): 1–19.