Assignment: (1) select a cogent passage from a part of a work we’re reading [in philosophy of mind, PHIL 520]; (2) accurately explain what this passage says; and (3) explain how it fits with the gist of the entire article.
Engagement Paper 1: Descartes’ The Passions of the Soul
(1) “But … I have clearly established that the part of the body in which the soul directly exercises its functions is not the heart at all, or the whole of the brain. It is rather the innermost part of the brain, which is a certain very small gland situated in the middle of the brain’s substance and suspended above the passage through which the spirits in the brain’s anterior cavities communicate with those in its posterior cavities.”
(2) The gland to which Descartes is so famously referring here is the pineal gland, a very small part of the brain which he thought was responsible for the connection of the soul to the body. It was, for Descartes, of particular significance that the pineal gland was not only located in the middle of the “brain’s substance,” but that it also had no double in the rest of the body or, specifically, in the brain. Whereas the other parts of the brain had their left and right halves, and the body its left and right halves, the pineal gland to Descartes’ thinking was utterly unique in that there was not a left and right side to the little gland. It was through this little node of flesh in the brain, thought Descartes, that the soul commanded the body and the body relayed its impulses to the soul, or mind (for Descartes, the two were synonymous). This was directed against the common notions of his day that the body was directed by the brain (or more accurately, perhaps, the mind which was identical with the brain), or by the heart, “because we feel the passions in it,” as he says.
(3) Descartes believed, quite famously, that the body and the mind were two distinct elements of a human being, each of which is “conjointly united” to the other in a direct one-to-one ratio. The comparison has been drawn that make the soul and the body two independent clocks keeping exactly the same time, but which are not connected to each other in any interdependent or substantially meaningful way. In The Passions of the Soul, Descartes is trying to prove that the passions are communicated to and felt in the body because of the soul, but that the soul and body were absolutely disconnected from one another except through the small cerebral appendage called the pineal gland. “Animal spirits” inside of our bodies functioned for Descartes in the same way that we understand neurons, synapses, and electro-chemical impulses acting within our bodies in our current psychophysiological understanding. The pineal gland is, according to Descartes, the channel to which the spirits that conveyed our sensory impressions could flow. When, for instance, an object was presented to us, two images—one from each of our eyes—would be conveyed by the animal spirits within our bodies up to the pineal gland, which would then transmit a direct image of our impression to the soul, which would comprehend it as whatever the object was. There was, of course, no explanation for how the pineal gland itself conveyed notions to the soul, per se. To Descartes, the important part was that the soul felt passions, that is, emotions and so forth, and then sent the body signals (through the pineal gland) to act on those passions. Certain pores in the pineal gland could be stimulated only by the soul itself, such that depending on the prior actions taken by the individual as a whole when the soul had previously been presented with such-and-such a passion, it would choose this or that course of action. It should be noted that the now-ridiculous elements of his theorizing, the animal spirits and the pores of varying sizes of the pineal gland and even of the pineal gland being the center of the mind-body interaction perhaps only seem so to us because they come so very close to the truth: if we replace the notions of the “animal spirits” with electrochemical synaptic signals, for instance, and if we replace the theoretical underpinnings of the pores of the pineal gland widening or narrowing depending on experience, we can almost see hints of an explanation for neurotransmitters and behavioral learning. Now that we know that the pineal gland itself is not solely responsible for the connection between mind and body, it seems we are humbled by how close we still are to Descartes: the arguments still rage about how the mind and the body are connected, even though we now understand neurotransmitters, synaptic clefts, and neuron interconnectivity.
