Cartesian dualism

Cartesian dualism holds that mind and body are distinct kinds of created substance: thinking substance and extended substance. It is associated with René Descartes and raises the problem of how these substances interact.

René Descartes: French philosopher and mathematician whose writings helped establish modern philosophy. He formulated the distinction between thinking mind and extended body.
Mind–body interaction: Causal influence between mental events and physical events. Descartes holds that mind and body affect one another despite their distinct natures.
Cartesian materialism: The view that reality consists fundamentally of material substances, associated with Descartes’s account of physical nature. It retains Descartes’s mechanical physics while rejecting immaterial minds as a separate substance.
Interactionist dualism: A form of dualism holding that mental and physical events causally influence each other. It develops the interaction Descartes attributes to mind and body.
Substance (philosophy): That which exists in itself or serves as the bearer of properties, according to a philosophical account of reality. Descartes treats mind and body as two created kinds of substance.
Pineal gland: A small endocrine gland in the brain that produces melatonin and influences circadian rhythms. Descartes proposed it as the bodily site where mind and body interact.
Property dualism: The view that mental properties are distinct from physical properties, though they belong to physical substances. It separates mental and physical properties without positing two kinds of substance.
Occam's razor: The principle that explanations should not multiply entities beyond necessity. Critics argue that two substances add complexity without explaining their interaction.
Mind–body problem: The philosophical problem of explaining how mental and physical phenomena relate. Cartesian dualism is one influential answer to this broader problem.
Occasionalism: The view that God alone causes events, while apparent creaturely causes mark occasions for divine action. It rejects direct interaction between mind and body as substances.

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