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)