Descartes’ Dualism of Mind and Body in the Development of Psychological Thought
July 30, 2020 Deborah J. Brown, B. Key
Descartes' theoretical and experimental contributions to understanding rationality, consciousness, sensation, feeling, attention, psychological self-regulation, and voluntary action were pivotal to psychology's emergence as a discipline in the 19th century. Although his dualism of mind and body and denial of animal consciousness are often criticized, the text argues that underlying the Cartesian concept of mind are two dualisms: mind-body and life-mind. These dualisms created conceptual space for the concept of mind distinct from matter and demarcated uniquely human capacities, allowing psychology to differentiate itself from evolutionary biology. The discipline owes Descartes a considerable debt for enabling psychology to emerge as a special science distinct from anatomy and the life sciences.