What Connections Can You See Between The Two Theories Of Descartes That We Have Studied So Far, Namely, A) His Theory Of Knowledge, Which Is Rationalism; And B) His Theory Of Dualism, Or The Distinction Between Mind And Body?

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Connections Between Theory of Knowledge and Theory of Dualism

The connection between the theory of knowledge and the theory of dualism is that knowledge and understanding are the same, however, there has to be rationality in accepting knowledge. Gaining knowledge demands a standard and this demand can be fulfilled with the help of senses and these senses are the human body and mind according to Descartes.

Descartes set some standards for knowledge and he believed that there is only some belief that can be certain; there should not be any doubt and one should be able enough to perform functions according to these standards. Knowledge cannot be gained from books only, there has to be a logical application of reasoning and individualism to make decisions based on rationality. Limiting knowledge to books may not be encouraging for those who seek to obserce and think rationally according to nature.The thinking capacity of an individual encourages to argue according to logical thinking which is a gift to humans from God.

Knowledge gaining is a mental activity; without the mind, there is no possibility to think rationally and gain knowledge.The human body and mind are two distinctions. Our senses are tested on the basis of knowledge that we possess. Descartes believed that the ideas which humans get are inborn and have been possessed by us since birth. Discovering knowledge and rational thinking about facts and the capacities of human are objective to the reality focusing the environment ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"QrWPXWnI","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Department of Philosophy, University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria and Minimah 35)","plainCitation":"(Department of Philosophy, University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria and Minimah 35)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":718,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/F0XOCTdk/items/I95Q5EW3"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/F0XOCTdk/items/I95Q5EW3"],"itemData":{"id":718,"type":"article-journal","title":"Rationalists’ Concept of Mental Activity: The Cartesian Example","container-title":"IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social Science","page":"34-44","volume":"13","issue":"1","source":"Crossref","abstract":"The philosophical criticisms of the last two centuries have prosecuted a very searching analysis of the cognitive capacity of the human mind to know if there is a real world outside the mind. With the transition to the modern period, there was enormous transformation in the conception of thinking and knowing. Philosophers of some certain persuasions began to set the philosophical agenda to understand the objective world based on the foundations of rationalism. These philosophers have insisted that the human mind naturally possess innate ideas, principles or capacity to know things independent of sense – experience. Given these antecedence, this paper extrapolates the rationalists’ concept of mind using the Cartesian example as a case study1. It argues that for Descartes, the deliverances of external objects by the senses are deceptive and cannot lead us to the true knowledge of things. For him, the human mind possesses the modalities of thought and has at its disposal certain innate principles produced by the mechanism of reasoning that lead to our knowledge of the world. His attempt to investigate the cognitive activities of the subject as the key source of understanding the objective universe opens the door to the development of an epistemology that sees the mind as a ‘productive’ process. In this way, Descartes’ theory of mind and consciousness represents a move away from the investigation of reality (the structures, categories of reality/object) as conceived by classical philosophers to the investigation of the knowing process (the structures, categories of the knowing process/subject) as initiated by modern philosophers.","DOI":"10.9790/0837-1313444","ISSN":"22790845, 22790837","shortTitle":"Rationalists’ Concept of Mental Activity","language":"en","author":[{"literal":"Department of Philosophy, University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria"},{"family":"Minimah","given":"Francis"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2013"]]}},"locator":"35","label":"page"}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Department of Philosophy, University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria and Minimah 35). These facts and ideas which our minds develop are based on the logical and rational thinking which humans possess. False assumptions lead to meagre decisions, while rational thinking about facts and knowledge may improve qualities of Methodical experimentations. Methodical experimentations based on methods of doubt which contribute to methods of success. These wrong decisions may contradict with nature and rationality which will be leadin our mind rtowards problems ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"utMKGUlk","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Maxwell)","plainCitation":"(Maxwell)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":719,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/F0XOCTdk/items/ZJRNGFTM"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/F0XOCTdk/items/ZJRNGFTM"],"itemData":{"id":719,"type":"article-journal","title":"The Mind–Body Problem and Explanatory Dualism","container-title":"Philosophy","page":"49-71","volume":"75","source":"ResearchGate","abstract":"An important part of the mind–brain problem arises because consciousness seems inherently resistant to scientific explanation. The solution to this dilemma is to recognize, first, that scientific explanation can only render comprehensible a selected aspect of what there is, and second, that there is a mode of explanation, the personalistic, different from, irreducible to, but as viable as, scientific explanation, in terms of which consciousness can be understood. The problem of explaining why experiential or mental aspects of brain processes or things should be correlated with certain physical processes or things is a non-problem because there is no kind of explanation possible in terms of which an explanation could be couched. A physical theory, amplified to include the experiential, might be predictive but would, necessarily, cease to be explanatory; and an amplified personalistic explanation could not succeed either. There is, in short, an explanation as to why there cannot be an explanation of correlations between physical and mental aspects of processes going on inside our heads. Despite this, there are important, as yet unsolved but solvable problems of knowledge and understanding concerning such correlations. The central serious task for research is to discover how the two explanatory accounts of what goes on inside our heads, physical and personal, are inter-related.","DOI":"10.1017/S003181910000005X","journalAbbreviation":"Philosophy","author":[{"family":"Maxwell","given":"Nicholas"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2000",1,1]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Maxwell).

Works Cited:

ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"uncited":[],"omitted":[],"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY Department of Philosophy, University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria, and Francis Minimah. “Rationalists’ Concept of Mental Activity: The Cartesian Example.” IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social Science, vol. 13, no. 1, 2013, pp. 34–44. Crossref, doi:10.9790/0837-1313444.

Maxwell, Nicholas. “The Mind–Body Problem and Explanatory Dualism.” Philosophy, vol. 75, Jan. 2000, pp. 49–71. ResearchGate, doi:10.1017/S003181910000005X.