The Real Distinction Between Mind and Body

Abstract

The emergentist reading of Descartes that I propose in this book is mainly challenged by Descartes’s real distinction argument found in the Sixth Meditation. In this argument, Descartes concludes that the mind can exist without the body. Many scholars argue that, for him, the mind does not need the brain to exist. If this separatist interpretation is true, then Descartes’s real distinction argument is not consistent with any kind of emergentism requiring a physical basis. That is why I will begin on this thought. In this section, I will provide a detailed analysis of the argument and argue that it does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that the mind can exist apart from the body. Instead, I argue that the real distinction argument proves that the mind and the body are different and opposite kinds of subjects of inherence. As we shall see, this soft substance dualism fits better with Descartes’s views of the substance and of human beings.