Two Ways of Experiencing the Union with the Body

Abstractly, we can think that there is both an input side of the will and an output side. The input side of the will is its capacity to be moved by some mode of the mind, e.g. a sensation of pain. The output side of the will is its capacity to make decisions, i.e. to affirm or to deny, and to pursue or to avoid. In the first sense, the will is the patient and in the second, the agent. The same human body stands on both sides of the will. The body can act on the will via the bodily senses and prod the will towards action. Also, the

21 _{There has been a lot of discussion whether this third thing is a mode, a substance or not really a thing at}

all. See Hoffman (2009) p.78 and Wilson (1978), p. 205, as examples. My project doesn’t turn on the details whether there is a hylomorphic connection between mind and body or whether there is just a divinely instituted agreement between mind and body.

will can by decision come to initiate a sequence of motions in the body, e.g. lifting a hand off a switch that the mind deems to be dangerous.

Correspondingly, there are two factors of determining what it is for this body to be my body. The more salient experience to us is the will’s ability to move this particular body. My mind has the power to move, for example, this hand which is attached

organically to this body but not that hand attached to that human body over there. The way I’m phrasing this differs from the way we feel this difference. My decision to move my hand seems to be at one with this hand because it is an extension of this body with which my mind is united. In contrast, my will is not at one with the hand of the other body. Because of this phenomenon, we might think that the power of the mind to move a particular body tells us something essential about the union of the mind and the body. In that case being at one with the body would be a matter of the decisions of the will being united to certain motions in the body. However, Descartes doesn’t put much weight on the mind’s ability to move the body: he merely mentions it in passing.22

Descartes places a greater emphasis on the input side of the will when he talks about what it is for the mind to be at one with the body. In the 6th Meditation he writes:

There is nothing that my own nature teaches more than that I have a body, and that when I feel pain there is something wrong with the body, and that when I am hungry or thirsty the body needs food and drink, and so on.23

Descartes has the view that the mind is being passively taught that it has a body. The

22 _{AT XI:343.}

other thing that is noteworthy here is how the mind seems to be a sort of a physician of its own body: the feeling of pain is a symptom that teaches the mind that there is something that is wrong with the body and that it is needs help.

Descartes also uses the phrase “my own nature”, which doesn’t stand for the

nature of the mind. The mind doesn’t have inbuilt information about its body because the mind’s structure is fitted just to its task of being a thinking being. He tells us later24 _that the phrase signifies the totality of those things that God placed in me when he created me. Because the nature of the mind and the body are separate from one another, God had to create an additional third factor which is the union of the mind and the body. When Descartes says that his nature teaches something to him, he means that those “teachings” arise from and depend on this third notion of the mind–body union.

Our immediate task is not to explore the metaphysical status of the union but rather investigate the effects of the union, namely how in practice the mind is at one with the body. The mind must be taught about its body and it “reads” the state of the body from the signals that the body sends it. This suggests that the Cartesian mind has a potential problem of being a detached supervisor and an observer of its body.

P. F. Strawson made an interesting critique of what he calls the Cartesian view in his book Individuals.25 _{He assumes that there are mental and bodily predicates that are}

attributed to mind and body respectively. To the mind we attribute predicates like “is

24 _{AT VII:82}

thinking” and “feels pain” which do not involve this body or any other body. His critique of the Cartesian position is that since Descartes thinks of the person as possessing only mental characteristics, that mind doesn’t bear any special relation to the body it has. Rather, my body is just one body among all the bodies in the world. Because the mental predicates do not involve this body in particular, there is an issue of identifying which body among all the bodies is the body of my mind. This identification would proceed like this: I cannot be separated from this body and I attribute pain in this body—not in other bodies. Interestingly, these kinds of descriptions are similar to what Descartes gives in the passage where he talks about the special right by which the meditator believes that she is united to her body.

Strawson’s discussion has certain epistemological overtones which do not fit into the present discourse, but his overall point is clear: it better not be the case that the mind–body union theory has the outcome that understanding the mind’s relation to a particular body is a matter of identification. A successful mind–body theory should give us a substantial and understandable account of what it is for this mind to be united to this body. Consider the situation in which the best we can do to understand the union of the mind to this body is to go around the list of our cognitions and sensation and

triangulate from there which one of the bodies is our own body. While one might on a certain level of description get the answer right, the notion of there being some real ground of what it is for this mind to be united to this body would not be understandable. We would not have provided an account of the union that substantiates the fact that my mind is at one with this body.