Mind: What is characteristic of a mind, Descartes claims, is that it is conscious, not that it has shape or consists of physical matter. Our bodies are certainly in space, and our minds are not, in the very straightforward sense that the assignation of linear dimensions and locations to them or to their contents and activities is unintelligible.
Body: According to Descartes, matter is essentially spatial, and it has the
characteristic properties of linear dimensionality. Things in space have
a position, at least, and a height, a depth, and a length, or one or
more of these. Mental entities, on the other hand, do not have these
characteristics.
Objection to mind-body problem: The difficulty, however, is not merely that mind and body are different. It is that they are different in such a way that their interaction is impossible because it involves a contradiction. It is the nature of bodies to be in space, and the nature of minds not to be in space, Descartes claims. For the two to interact, what is not in space must act on what is in space. Action on a body takes place at a position in space, however, where the body is. Apparently Descartes did not see this problem.
- Our minds are not physically connected to our bodies! How could they be,
if they are nonphysical? That is the point whose importance Princess
Elisabeth and Gassendi saw more clearly than anyone had before them,
including Descartes himself.
Significance of the problem: That this straightforward test of physicality has survived all the
philosophical changes of opinion since Descartes, almost unscathed, is
remarkable.
Reference: Descartes and the discovery of "The Mind-Body Problem"
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