Amongst the galaxy of French thinkers, philosophers and writers, Rene Descartes stands as one of the tallest luminary. Descartes was also called as the Father of Modern Western philosophy whose writings have had a profound effect in the formation of modern nation states. This essay examines Descartes’ principle ideas of the utility of doubt for arriving at truths and the concept of dualism between the mind and the body.
Descartes formulated the concept of methodical scepticism. The famous maxim Cogito Ergo Sum, or ‘I think therefore I am’ was formulated by Descartes, a theme that established western rationalism as the popular philosophical body of work that could be put to practical uses. According to Descartes, if any idea can be doubted, then it is not true knowledge that then requires further rational enquiry to arrive at the real truth. Human existence is proved by the very fact that a human thinks, with inputs from his five senses, which are not very reliable, but it is through the very act of thinking that gives him the rational conclusion that he exists. The Wax analogy used by Descartes establishes this rationale. A block of wax has certain physical characteristics that a human receives through his sense of sight, smell and touch. However, when the wax block is brought close to a heat source it melts. Going by the sense of sight, smell and touch, the wax has changed its characteristics. It no longer feels solid; it looks liquid and also gives off a certain smell that had not existed earlier. Thus the senses, in isolation arrive at a different conclusion regarding this new entity. However, the mind tells the human that the object is still wax. Hence it is the process of thinking that converts the doubt about the truth about the wax into a certainty. Hence, the doubting methodology ascertains the real truth. This system of doubting was further developed by Descartes in his Cartesian Theory of Fallacies in which the inquirer starts with a premise that a particular statement is false and then develops an argument to prove it is true. This theory has been till to date modified and used in pure maths field of mathematical analysis and analytical geometry.
In his theory of dualism, Descartes holds that the mind controls the body through the pineal gland. However, at times the body driven by human desires influences the mind. In this way dualism exists as a two-way traffic between the mind and the human body with the dominance of the mind on most occasions. Central to Descartes belief of dualism was that the pineal gland contained the human soul and was resident only in humans and not in other animals. One must remember, that Descartes was only internalising the known scientific knowledge of those times (1596-1650) and hence could be pardoned for holding such perceptions. That does not detract the essence of the mind-body connection albeit, not from the pineal gland but from the brain and cognition as modern day psychologists and neuroscientists have found.
In conclusion, it can be said that Descartes’ concept of methodical skepticism laid the foundations for scientific reasoning and spirit of rational enquiry that led to further discoveries in the field of mathematics, science as well as development of rationalism as a valid field of philosophy.