@geraldharrison5787

1 week ago

It was GASSENDI, not Princess Elizabeth who first raised the 'problem' of interaction (and with which Descartes was thoroughly unimpressed). The Meditations, including Gassendi's objections and Descartes' scathing replies to them, was published in 1641. Princess Elizabeth would have read these and was doing no more than repeating Gassendi's objection. And this was in a private communication with a friend. Elizabeth, unlike Gassendi, was someone Descartes liked. What Descartes said in response to Elizabeth is not, then, fairly taken to represent his view. She wasn't putting him on the ropes at all. His actual view of this kind of objection was that it's just based on a false premise. What was Descartes actual response to the problem of interaction? That is, what did he say to Gassendi about it? This (quote) "Finally, it just isn’t true that the mind couldn’t move a body without itself being a body." And later "[this is]a ‘problem’that doesn’t exist because it· assumes something that is false and can’t in any way be defended, namely that two substances whose natures are different (like the soul and the body) can’t act on each other" There. And he's quite right to be so dismissive. There is no problem of interaction. There doesn't begin to be a problem. It is only if one just assumes at the outset that the only kind of thing that can causally interact with an extended thing is another extended thing that one might think there's a problem....but why think such a thing? Perhaps one might assume, no less arbitrarily, that only things of the same kind can causally interact. But as well as having no basis in reason - again, why think such a thing? - this, if true, would imply not that the mind is material, but that the material is mental! For the mind and events concerning it exist more surely than material substances and events. Thus if it really is true that the mind could not causally interact with extended stuff, the conclusion to draw is that the stuff with which the mind clearly interacts is itself mental too. That is, at absolute best - so, assuming the truth of a principle that is in no way self-evident to reason and that appears to be false - the problem of interaction implies not materialism about the mind, but immaterialism about the sensible world. Something else should be noted. You do not have to be able to explain 'how' something is happening before you can have good evidence 'that' it is occurring. For instance, I haven't the faintest idea how my computer works. But it's working. Or at least, appears to be. I would be reasoning badly if I concluded that my computer cannot really be working given I don't know how to explain the appearances. So, we do not have to be able to explain 'how' an immaterial mind could interact with a material body before we can have good evidence 'that' they are interacting. And we do have good evidence they are interacting: they appear to be. My mind appears to be an immaterial thing. My body appears to be an extended thing. My mind appears to be interacting with it. There. That's excellent evidence that there is causal interaction between the immaterial and the material. I don't have to explain how and nor does Descartes.

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