To: HG who wrote (6749 ) 12/5/2000 10:12:41 PM From: HG Respond to "What then, was Descarte's Error? Or better still, which error of Descarte' do I mean to single out, unkindly and ungratefully? One might begin with a complaint and reproach him for having biologists to adopt, to this date, clockwork mechanics as a model for life processes. But perhaps that would not be quite fair and so one might continue with "I think therefore I am". The statement, perhaps one of the most famous in the history of philosophy.........taken literally, the statement illustrates precisely the opposite of what I believe to be true about the origins of mindand about the relation between the mind and the body. It suggests that thinking and the awareness of thinking are the real substrates of being. And since Descartes imagined thinking as an activity quite separate from the body, it does not celebrate the separation of mind, the thinking thing, from the nonthinking body, that which has extension and mechanical parts.
