Philosophy Department
The Department of Philosophy in the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Science offers a program that leads to a bachelor of arts degree in philosophy. The study of philosophy is the reasoned pursuit of fundamental truths. It is a systematic investigation of the key assumptions that underlie our thinking and which often are taken for granted. Much of what is learned in philosophy can be applied in virtually any endeavor. This is both because philosophy touches upon so many subjects, and especially because many of its methods and forms of analysis are applicable in any field.News & Events
Prof. John Nale
Philosophy Dept. Spring Lecture Series 2013
Prof. John Nale
Descartes on Love, Blood and the Mind-Body Problem
April 8, Monday
11:45 am - 1:00 pm
Luther Bonney 402, Portland Campus
Abstract:
We are all familiar with Descartes' mind-body problem as well as his pineal gland 'solution'. Here, I argue for a reinterpretation of the problem that focuses on comments from Les passions de l’âme, where Descartes claims that at conception the soul falls in love with the blood located in the heart. Following his predecessors such as Francisco Suarez and physician Jean Fernel, Descartes believes that the mind joins with the body on the basis of certain dispositions or accommodations. Physicians such as Fernel and William Harvey believed that the body contained a divine element within it, be it spirit or the blood itself, which worked as a hinge joining the divinely created soul and the sexually reproduced body. Descartes believes that this disposition is the blood and heat located in the heart. However, Descartes’ account of the mind body union at conception runs aground when he asserts that this disposition is strictly mundane, featuring no divine element whatsoever, with the same structure as other kinds of inorganic heat. I conclude that Descartes’ mind-body problem is in fact a problem of self-love: why does the divinely created soul love this particular body? If time permits, I will discuss the importance of this interpretation in our understanding of the emergence of the idea of race in the late 1700's.
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