Princess Elisabeth's attack on Descartes' Dualist Theory of Mind (from 1643)

This is a video lecture about The Problem of Mental Causation. This is a problem that is at the heart of all of philosophy of mind for the last several hundred years. It was presented by Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia in a letter to Rene Descartes in the spring of 1643. Put very briefly, Princess Elisabeth's point is simply that the mind, which Descartes understands as wholly non-physical/immaterial cannot move the material body because in order for something to move a physical object the mover must itself be an extended physical object capable of physical contact. This is part of an Introduction to Philosophy course.

[auntieroach]

Jeffrey, you are fuelling my passion for philosophy as I enter my first semester of my philosophy major! Thank you!

[nucderpuck]

Princess Elizabeth makes a remarkably clear argument. Interestingly, her thinking is in the spirit of Newtonian mechanics, although the Principia were actually published more than 40 years later.

[bigjothinks]

Jeffrey, you're the man! Thank you for uploading all of this top-notch philosophy content, you're really a positive force, my friend.

[tishadearing]

I am in the middle of writing my term paper on neural dependency on the mental, arguing in favor of physicalism. Prior to stumbling on to your channel, I was having a difficult time with it. Thank you for explaining things in a simpler way. With your help, I think I will be able to turn in a pretty good paper.

[geraldharrison]

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.

[guadalupeboanrobles]

I have homework about Elizabeth and there is not a lot of information in Spanish so i'm trying to figure this out. Thank you a lot and greetings from Argentina!

[thefireman]

There is a third view often accepted within occultism, but not widely talked about in openly discussed philosophy. Which would be that reality is not dual, nor is it physical, but only mental. This is for example accepted as true within Hermeticism (The Kybalion is an excellent starter book if you are interested in this philosophy). The first principle within this body of knowledge is that "The Universe is mental" Further more we explain this view by stating that the underlying essence of the universe, that is everything that everything is made of, is consciousness. Mater would be materialised/condensed consciousness, our minds or souls fragments of the original consciousness.

[pashute]

There are 3 conditions for movement. The first is that there already was movement in the causing body. But then, there are only two types of propulsion causes in the letter: the impulse and the shape. Both depend on the body that causes the movement. In modern physics we would call the first determinant the moment which is the current speed and mass of the body, and the second determinant is it's direction due to the angle of contact which comes from its shape.

[fearitselfpinball]

Loving your videos. The last paragraph you quote seems to be attacking interactionism in both directions. Not only how can an immaterial mind raise an arm but, if I get injured, how can the material brain cause pain - 'pass on' this information if it is unable to affect an immaterial mental state? So, not only, how can non-physical mental states touch matter in order to impact it, but how can matter (the brain) be the 'type of thing' that creates or affects non-physical mental states. The latter problem, it seems to me, is really the hard problem of consciousness. How is the public, observable, material stuff (a brain) the 'kind of thing' that should cause private, unobservable (except by oneself) states of experience?

[bullhaddha]

Why Princess of Bohemia?! She was Elisabeth of the Palatinate, related to the House of Stuart from the mother's side (her grandfather was James I and VI - of England and Scotland). Her Father was the King of Bohemia for a very short time, which was the spark for the 30 Year War. Besides that episode he was Prince Elector of the Palatinate, and that's the house she was born into.

[judeevans]

This is pretty interesting. I never thought much about this kinda stuff, but after putting on one of your videos for background noise to help me sleep, I became interested. The most intriguing thing is this whole physical/mental debate. I had always assumed that uploading your mind into a computer was possible because it's all physical, it's all stuff, I never considered the dualism position.

[daelalbuquerque]

Hi. I really enjoy your lessons, and sorry being 3 years late to this one. But, sideway question: on 10:13, why where you pushing when saying pull, and pulling when saying push? By the way, I am brazilian and, in portuguese, push translates to EMPURRAR and pull translates to PUXAR. It is a known false cognate.

[ibhafidonjob]

Oftentimes magnets don't need to contact it object before exerting it's force. In a grand scale we can see it in gravitational pull. How do we explain that

[julietaroll]

I go to UC Berkeley and u are 100 times better than my philosophy professor !!!

[pujapachchigar]

Thank you for such a clear explanation. I absolutely agree with Elizabeth's attack. Unfortunately, some people from the philosophy of mind still talk like Descartes and think that the mind is different from the brain and neuronal level description can not determine the behaviour of an individual.

[fazalnajam]

that "king of something" 0:26 really threw me off on another space/time domain.

[jonathangrigg]

What if the point is that the body has to seek to connect with the mind?

[WHITEOUTbomber]

Great video, thank you for the in depth analysis!

[Alexayp]

The solution to the “problem” is understanding of the principle of polarity. The principle is based on understanding, that perception of polarity only arises in the eyes of the perceiver, when he starts comparing qualities of a particular aspect or perceived object on a specific scale, that has multiple degrees measuring that quality. For example hot and cold. There is no source of coldness, there is only source of warmth, and so, the less warmth we perceive, the more cold it seems to be. In other words, If you have a certain idea what hot is, then you will measure coldness according to your set point of hotness. In a larger cosmic spectrum of temperatures, your hot and cold means nothing. Just like Light and Darkness mutually define each other, in other words, darkness has no separate existence from light, the degree of darkness raises as he light source disappears. Two are simply the degrees of the same thing - Light.
Physicality of the mind and consciousness of matter are also no secrets. 3D physicality is an extension of the mind in the act of playful creation. The difference is only in the spectrum of frequency of vibration of these layers of reality’s our body vibrates on a lower frequency then our mind (In case of conscious alignment, however, the vibrations of mind and body start harmonizing, so that contrasts start looking more like correspondence and interdependence). There are several other layers of energy with different density (spectrum of frequencies) between body and mind, all intimately interrelated. So, there’s no question about correlation between mind and body. And there is no question about 3D spacial extension of the mind.
Both, Descartes and Princess were right, and I think that the might of known the exact meaning of the game they were playing, but that is not disclosed in their “official” personal CORRESPONDENCE.

Descartes was a visionary and he used the best available to him language to describe his insights. Princess Elizabeth was very well educated and well-versed in philosophy, held regular correspondence with many prominent European thinkers of that time, including Leibniz, and was a passionate follower of Descartes, and his theory, as it intrigued and inspired her intellectual eagerness.

The intellectual conversation did not mean an argument, it meant an expansion of the understanding through the filters of contrasts. Comparisons are dedicated the mankind, which is eager to know itself and involves all different ways to reach an understanding of the reality (including this very video and discussion).


It’s not a bad problem, it’s a very good one!
Good problems, as always, are hidden treasures of genius solutions and divine insights!

[siondafydd]

Another interesting related problem: Where is France? I think it seems that France is in the same place as Descartes’ immaterial mind. Is France just the constitution, the ink and paper sitting in Paris? Is it the people and cultural doings of those living north of the Pyrenees? Is France the electrical impulses in the minds of people? Point me towards “France”. Surely France just is.