Cartesian dualism was Descartes's principle of the separation of mind and matter and mind and body. The mind, according to Descartes, was a "thinking thing", and an immaterial substance. This "thing" was the essence of himself, the part that doubts, believes, hopes, and so on. The body is a material substance. René Descartes René Descartes (IPA: , March 31, 1596 – February 11, 1650), also known as Cartesius, worked as a philosopher and mathematician. ... The mind is the term most commonly used to describe the higher functions of the human brain, particularly those of which humans are subjectivel // holaMedia:Example. ... Matter is commonly referred to as the substance of which physical objects are composed. ... With regard to living things, a body is the integral physical material of an individual, and contrasts with soul, personality and behavior. ...

The central claim of Cartesian dualism is that the immaterial mind and the material body causally interact, a point which is featured prominently in non-European philosophies. Mental events cause physical events, and vice versa. This leads to the most substantial claim against Cartesian dualism - the Cartesian gap. How can an immaterial mind cause anything in a material body, and vice versa? This is called the "problem of interactionism." Descartes himself struggled to come up with a feasible explanation for the problem - in his letter to Queen Elizabeth, he suggested that animal spirits interacted in the pineal gland. But this explanation still does not solve his problem. How can an immaterial mind interact with the physical pineal gland? This article does not cite any references or sources. ...

For this reason and others, most professional philosophers and scientists have abandoned this view and prefer other accounts of the mental. For example, other accounts of the mind-body problem present competing philosophical positions and cognitive science is the generally accepted way of understanding the mental, which is based on the assumption that the mind is matter: the material brain. Most modern philosophers are materialists, and assume that the mind is made of matter. An example of a materialist theory would be of correspondence between 'propositional attitudes' (hoping, doubting, affirming,etc.) and physical 'goings-on' in the brain (i.e, c-fibres firing). The mind-body problem is the problem of determining the relationship between the human body and the human mind. ... Rendering of human brain based on MRI data Cognitive science is usually defined as the scientific study either of mind or of intelligence (e. ...

See also

• Dualism
• Dualism (philosophy of mind)
• Monism
• Pluralism
• Cartesian materialism