I will examine Descartes’s argument for dualism and evaluate Arnauld’s response. I argue in favor of Rene Descartes who represents really weighty examples demonstrating the reason for the concept of body and mind. His arguments are clear and comprehensive for every human being. He demonstrates it on the examples of wax, first of all.
We should understand that things differ and that their nature can be measured through physical and chemical properties. Also, one can suppose that things can be material and non-material. Both types of things can produce something, even though one of them is non-material. So how can non-material things produce anything? Descartes adds that it is possible when the thing is thinking.
Descartes tried not to be deceived by different opinions according to the dual nature of body and mind. Being one of the enlightened persons of his time, Descartes related one of his arguments to the triangle. The thing is that it is simple for a man to imagine a simple figure with three sides. Nonetheless, a figure with thousand sides is hard to imagine. In this respect, a man cannot only imagine a figure but knowing some properties of it, he/she can also define other properties. Here appears the triangle with the right angle. At this point, Descartes admits the difference between two concepts, namely imagination and pure understanding. One should not mix these two components.
In this respect, Descartes emphasizes that two things being different can be as one but not the same. This considers the notions of mind and body. Thus, the dualism of Descartes stands on a distinct nature of mind, as being a substance independent from the body. However, it is connected, as the philosopher admitted, by the pineal gland in the body of the brain. This assumption evaluates the nature of things, as being in the mutual essence. In fact, Descartes could even relate his ideas in Meditations toward Leibnitz and his notion of the indifference of identical things. One should realize then that things can be incorporated into other things. It concerns material and non-material ones. A thinking creature can build assumptions by means of constant imagining. However, at this point, Descartes’s arguments for dualism were criticized by Arnauld. This philosopher built up his argument around the sphere of geometry that was so close and familiar to both scientists.
With regards to the arguments of Descartes, Arnauld provided several counter-arguments. One of the main is reckoned with the right-angled triangle. In this case, if a person knows that one of the angles in a triangle is right, there is no doubt that it is a right-angled triangle. It is a constant. Also, another property is concerned with the Pythagorean Theorem. In this respect, Arnauld emphasizes the fact that the mind stays clear because one of the angles is right.
Actually, this argument contradicts the argument of Descartes that the self is distinct from one’s body and can exist without it. Thus, Arnauld promoted a really fair controversy. If two things are indivisible and exist due to some perpetual or constant relation between them, then no one, even God can provide doubts about it. On the example of the right-angled triangle, it is represented distinctively.
On the other hand, one may doubt actually denying the difference between body and mind. In this respect, Descartes really implied rather an argumentative base. It goes without saying that the concept of common sense is abstract. If some people need reasonable objections about the non-material and distinct nature of the mind, there emerges paradox and even absurd. However, these last two notions cannot comply with common sense.
It is seen that the arguments of both philosophers are strong enough. Moreover, both Descartes and Arnauld follow the pathway of reason while debating on features of mind and body. As Socrates once said Truth is sprout in discussion, thus, these two left a way for every contemporary human being whether to agree or disagree with such controversial and, at once, logical points of view.
In fact, Arnauld solely supported the standpoint that coincides with scientific argumentation by means of experimental practice. This philosopher intended an observer to look at the vortex of constant features that cannot be contradicted unless the world’s rules change. With scientific sharpness, Arnauld proved that discretion of things that are thought of as “form” and “content” or right-angled triangle and its properties is impossible.
Descartes, supposedly, knew that such opinion could arise within the vortex of his arguments in Meditations. However, in contrast to Arnauld’s arguments, Descartes corrects that such formal and content domains are presupposed with brain and mind respectively. If one denies that there is no brain and that it is the same as the body, then the body should think itself and come into polemics with a mind that is in the brain. Such reasoning makes Descartes and his theoretical grounds on dualism more convincing for me. Furthermore, his idea of the mind and its transcendent properties was then supported by Kant and other philosophers.