Abstract

This dissertation considers Descartes's conception of the mind in relation to Aristotelian Scholasticism. ;According to Descartes various traditional functions of the soul can be explained mechanistically. In chapter 1 I argue that Descartes regarded the resulting change in the conception of the soul as an important contribution to the case for the incorporeity of the soul or mind. Furthermore Descartes's main argument for the incorporeity of the mind, like the Thomistic argument, relies on the intellect and not on sensation and imagination. ;In chapter 2 I reject certain types of modal understanding of the real distinction between mind and body and the argument for it. I contend that the argument is meant to show that mind and body are two different kinds of substances, and that it relies on Descartes's view that each substance has one principal attribute that constitutes its nature and that is presupposed by all the modes of the substance. ;In chapter 3 I discuss the role of the doubt in Descartes's argument for the view that sensation and imagination belong to the mind, and reject two kinds of interpretations of this role. First, I propose that Descartes does not rely on the claim that our judgment about our mental states are infallible, and that he did not adhere to this claim. Second, I argue that Descartes did not rely on a version of the so-called argument from doubt, or on arguments from epistemic possibility or conceivability. ;In chapter 4 I discuss the question how Descartes does argue in the Meditations that sensation and imagination belong to the mind. Descartes relied on the Scholastic notion of cogitatio which included sensation and imagination, on the observation that he is the subject of the various mental operations, and on the idea that all mental operations are conscious states. ;Chapter 5 deals with the relationship between imagination and the mind-body problem. I consider the difference between imagination and intellection, and the question whether Descartes's view that intellection is independent of imagination is important to the argument for dualism. Finally, I discuss the fact that for Descartes the phenomenology of imagination seems to provide arguments, albeit inconclusive ones, in favor of the existence of body