David Yandell, What Descartes Really Told Elisabeth: Mind-Body Union as a Primitive Notion

British Journal for the History of Philosophy 5/2, 1997, 249-73.

'Trialism' (p. 249, fn. 2 - vgl. Yandell 1999, p. 199.):

• Martial Gueroult, Descartes selon l'ordre des raisons, Pris 1968, vol. II, p. 20 (Inkosistenz) - vgl. auch Nancy.
• Thomas S. Vernon, Descartes' Three Substances, Southern Journal of Philosophy 3, 1965, 122-6 (finite and infinite types).
• Phillip D. Cummins, Vernon on Descartes' Three Substances, Southern Journal of Philosophy 5, 1967, 122-6.
• Materie, Ego und Gott: drei Substanzen?
• Cottingham, Descartes, Oxford 1986, pp. 127-32 (physical, thinking, sensing).
• Janet Broughton, Ruth Mattern, Reinterpreting Descartes on the Notion of the Union of Mind and Body, Journal of the History of Philosophy 16, 1978, 23-32.

(vgl. Cottingham, Cartesian Trialism.)

Descartes's primitive notion account (...) seems to me a perfectly acceptable (perhaps even unavoidable) position for a dualist to take regarding mind-body interaction (p. 251).

• soul: known through intellect,
• body: imagination and intellect (vgl. Sepper),
• union: known by the senses.

Vgl vor allem: AT VIIY 23!

Objections to the primitive notion account:

• offers no explanation of interaction
  • Dasie Radner, Descartes' Notion of the Union of Mind and Body, Journal of the History of Philosophy 9, 1971, 159-70.
  • Janet Broughton, Ruth Mattern, Reinterpreting Descartes on the Notion of the Union of Mind and Body, Journal of the History of Philosophy 16, 1978, 23-32 (Vgl. Mattern).
  • Roger Ariew, Mind-Body Interactionism in Cartesian Philosophy: A Reply to Garber, Southern Journal of Philosophy 21, 1983, Supplement: 33-7.

  Yandell: das ist auch nicht das Ziel. The dependence here is a logical (and metaphysical) one (...) not an explanatory one (p. 256).

• primitve notions not equally basic
  • Daniel Garber, Understanding Interaction: What Descartes Should Have Told Elisabeth, Southern Journal of Philosophy 21, 1983, Supplement: 15-32.
  • vgl. William Seager, Descartes on the Union of Mind and Body, History of Philosophy Quarterly 5, 1988, 119-32.

(Zu Radner, pp. 163-4:)

Suppose then that there is a most simple nature of the union of mind and body. It would follow that some proposition truly describing the basic character of that union is such that it does not follow from any other propositions that are more distinctly known (p. 261).

Zwei wichtige Resultate:

1. the union of mind and body seems to be (or very like) an essential attributem though what it is the essential attribute of remains to be seen.
2. there is more to the mind's and body's being unified than the mere aggregation of two substances (p. 262).

(union: essential attribute of the human being, p. 273.)

A mind's having a volition that a body move and that body's subsequently (or simultaneously) moving is not sufficient for that mind's having moved that body (p. 263).

We can clearly conceive of mind and body as really distinct substances [AT VII 13, Med. II und VI, AT VIIIA28-9...]. We can also conceive of them as in union, by means of reflection on the nature of our faculty of sense-perception [AT VII 78-80, VIIIA 41] (p. 268).

That is, she would have has to stop concentrating on the distinction in order to properly conceive the union. As a remedy, he proposed that she first reflect on the union, and then consider the arguments proving the distinction. This would enable her to 'return to the knowledge of the distinction between the soul and the body in spite of having conceived their union (p. 269).

D.h. die Erkenntnis des lebenden Menschen als wesentlich fühlendem Wesen geht der klaren und distinkten Erkenntnis voraus, und die Klarhei und Distinktheit der physikalischen und metaphysischen Erkenntnis läß t sich nicht so weit treiben, daß aus ihr wieder das Fühlen verständlich würde.

Descartes takes the solution to be a metter of Elisabeth's altering her strategy (p. 271).

Es geht hier um eine Frage der Methode.

When a mind and a body are in a certain (...) relaion, there are features of that relationship that cannot be described without remainder in terms of the states of the mind and those of the body (p. 272).

D.h. das Begreifen der Einheit begreift mehr als das Begreifen des reinen Körpers oder reinen Denkens (dieses 'mehr' könnte im Verhalten liegen: vgl. Arregui). Eine Psychologie kann nicht aus Physik und Metaphysik bestehen, und sie kann keine klaren, deutlichen Grundbegriffe haben. Lebende, leibliche Menschen sind keine Substanzen (warum nicht?).

David Yandell, Did Descartes abandon Dualism? The Nature of the Union of Mind and Body

British Journal for the History of Philosophy 7/2, 1999, 199- 217.

• unum quid: Nancy.

If a consistent dualist interpretation is available, one ought to adopt it (p. 199).
The failure of austere forms of materialism to account for many aspects of human experience and the problems inherent in functionalism should give us pause before we reject Descartes's conception of that experience and of the underlying ontology of the human being (p. 200).

Descartes' Hauptpunkt: we mus be careful to keep the notions of these substances distinct (p. 200, AT VIIIA 25-6).

Zu Regius Zwar könne in gewissem Sinne die Verbindung akzidentell genannt werden (AT III 460), aber für den Menschen sei die Verbindung wesentlich (III 461). Descartes' Vorschlag, die Einheit zu erklären, findet sich AT III 193.
Damit die Einheit möglich wird, müssen Körper und Geist in bestimmter Weise modifiziert sein:

1. Der Geist muß neben seinen 'wesentlichen' Tätigkeiten auch fühlen und empfinden können,
2. Der Körper muss zur Interaktion fähig sein 'in ways that are not specified here' (p. 205).

The human mind, Descartes held, would not have these several kinds of ideas of bodies without making use of a human brain (p. 205).

An drei Stellen beschreibt Descartes die Einheit von Geist und Körper als substanziell:

1. AT VII 203, 219 und 227-8,
2. AT III 493
3. AT IV 165 (im Rahmen der Abendmahlfrage)

What is involved in being unum quid? In the Sixth Meditation (...), in the case of a human quid, it seems to be a matter of being such as to have our confused modes of thought, sensations, rather than clear and accurate awareness of our bodily states. (...) For something to be a quid - a 'that' - is for it to have an essence (a quod quid esse, or 'that which is') [Thomas, ScG 4,35] (p. 211).

...union is essential to us qua human beings (p. 211).

N.b.: union is a relation, not a substance (p. 211). Der menschliche Körper (Leib) läßt sich nur als beseelter von anderen Körpern unterscheiden:

The body of a man (...) is defined as 'only that matter which is at the same time united with the soul of that man'. Under these identity conditions there can be many changes in the matter in a body that remains numerically the same (human) body (p. 212).

Rein physikalisch gibt es keinen Leib - dessen Identität ergibt sich nur durch die Begriffe der res cogitans und der union.

We are entia per accidens since it is neither essential to our minds that they be embodied nor essential to matter that parts of it be conjoined with our minds (p. 214).