Article Analysis

    In about 300 words (no more than 400 words), quote a passage or passages directly from the excerpt from Descartes below and use it/them to describe how Descartes means to defend substance dualism. What is a criticism of Descartes' argument? Here is the excerpt: "I thought carefully about what I was, and since I noticed that I could suppose that I didn't have a body, and that there was neither a world nor any other place that I was in: but that I could not therefore suppose that I didn't exist: and that, on the contrary, from the very fact that I doubted the truth of other things, it followed clearly and certainly that I existed: while, on the other hand, if I just stopped thinking, I would have had no reason to believe that I existed, even if all the other things which I had ever imagined had really existed: I concluded that I was a substance whose...whole nature consists only in thinking, and which needs no place in which to exist and is not dependent on any material thing; so that this "I"...the mind which makes me what I am, is totally distinct from my body...is more easily known than my body and...would still continue to be all that it is, even if my body did not exist." (Discourse on Method)