Flanagan on Descartes’ Modal Argument for Dualism

I’ve just started reading through Owen Flanagan’s book The Science of the Mind and he presents Descartes’ Modal Argument as follows: 1. I cannot possibly doubt that I exist as a thinking thing. (This was established as we tried to doubt our existence and found ourselves, therefore, affirming it.) 2. I can doubt, however, that [...]

Descartes presents the replacement argument to the princess

I’ve been discussing Descartes’ version of the replacement argument with a chap here, and since I can’t find an online copy of the dialogue I’m going to type out the relevant passage from a printout. This is from a book no one will probably ever see again, but I printed off the passage from a [...]

Is male-ness a physical property?

Recall my previous discussion of Descartes’ possible version of the replacement argument. Let’s take this premise: The mind and body do not have the same essential properties. And modify it slightly to a specific property (if existence is a property at all, which we will just suppose): Possibly, I exist and my body does not. [...]