Journal of the History of the Neurosciences 0964-704X/01/1002-173$16.

00
2001, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 173±191 # Swets & Zeitlinger

Descartes' Embodied Psychology: Descartes' or

Damasio's Error?
Geir Kirkebùen
Language, Logic and Information, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

ABSTRACT

Damasio (1994) claims that Descartes imagined thinking as an activity separate from the body, and that the
effort to understand the mind in general biological terms was retarded as a consequence of Descartes'
dualism. These claims do not hold; they are ``Damasio's error''. Descartes never considered what we today
call thinking or cognition without taking the body into account. His new dualism required an embodied
understanding of cognition. The article gives an historical overview of the development of Descartes'
radically new psychology from his account of algebraic reasoning in the early Regulae (1628) to his
``neurobiology of rationality'' in the late Passions of the soul (1649). The author argues that Descartes'
dualism opens the way for mechanistic and mathematical explanations of all kinds of physiological and
psychological phenomena, including the kind of phenomena Damasio discusses in Descartes' error. The
models of understanding Damasio puts forward can be seen as advanced version of models which Descartes
introduced in the 1640s. A far better title for his book would have been Descartes' vision.

Keywords: Rene Descartes, History of psychology, Naturalistic psychology, Embodied mind, Emotions, Antonio
Damasio.

INTRODUCTION: DAMASIO'S ERROR The neurologist Antonio Damasio is one of the

many who have failed to recognize that Des-
This is Descartes' error, the abyssal separation cartes' understanding of what we now call the
between body and mind. (Damasio, 1994, mind is embodied. In Descartes' error (1994),
p. 249) Damasio presents neuroscienti®c research that he
claims shows how wrong Descartes was when he
Rene Descartes was born at La Haye (now Des- ``imagined thinking as an activity quite separate
cartes) in France on 31 March 1596 and died of from the body'' (p. 248). Damasio also claims that
pneumonia a cold morning in Stockholm, Sweden, a consequence of ``the Cartesian-based neglect of
on 11 February 1650. Every student knows that the mind in Western biology and medicine'' was
Descartes is the father of modern philosophy and that ``the effort to understand the mind in general
analytic geometry, that he proposed a dualistic biological terms has been retarded by several
view of human beings, and that he claimed that all decades'' (p. 256). I consider these two claims
kinds of living bodies, humans included, can be to be Damasio's error.
fully explained in mechanistic terms. The 350th Descartes was, without a doubt, a dualist. He
anniversary of his death is an appropriate occa- drew a sharp distinction between an immaterial
sion to give an overview of a largely neglected soul and a material body. But this was nothing
aspect of Descartes' thinking, namely his embo- new. It is hard to ®nd anyone among his con-
died psychology. temporaries who did not attribute an immaterial

Address correspondence to: Geir Kirkebùen, Language, logic and information, ILF, Pb. 1102, University of Oslo,
0317 Oslo, Norway. Tel.: ‡ 47 22857179. Fax: ‡ 47 22856919. E-mail: [email protected]
174 GEIR KIRKEBéEN

soul to man. What was radically new were the his contemporaries, Descartes does not expand on
limitations Descartes put on the human soul and it much. What he says is that pure intellection is
its functions. For his contemporaries, the soul was ``purely'' abstract thinking, i.e. essentially an
the principle of mind, nutrition, growth and loco- operation that does not involve images.2 Des-
motion, and it was the form of the body. Descartes cartes cites thinking (without images) about the
regards the soul only as the principle of mind, mind or God as examples of pure intellectual
writing, ``I consider the mind not as a part of the activity. We can safely say that pure intellection
soul but as the thinking soul in its entirety'' (Fifth is not a widespread cognitive activity today.
Set of Replies, AT VII 356, CSM II 246).1 That Precisely because the soul, in Descartes'
does not mean that Descartes considered what we view, ``has within it no diversity of parts'', all
now call thinking or cognition without taking the kinds of thinking which are not pure intellection
body into account. On the contrary, he always did. need the body and brain as a representational
His explanations of psychological phenomena are medium.
all embodied. In the ®rst part, which is a bit technical, I
Descartes' psychology is embodied in differ- show how Descartes in the early Regulae con-
ent ways. In the naturalistic psychology (of re¯ex siders even the immaterial intellect's abstract
behavior, memory, perception etc.) he develops in mathematical reasoning as a brain process. In
the early 1630s, he speculates on the bodily the second part, I explain the different ways in
processes which may underlie or correlate with which his naturalistic psychology developed
psychological phenomena without taking the soul in the early 1630s is embodied. In the third
into account at all. In the Regulae ad Directionem part, I consider the late Passions in the light of
Ingenii (c. 1628; henceforth Regulae) and Les Damasio's Descartes' error. I argue that the
Passions de l'Ame (1649; henceforth Passions), ``neurobiology of rationality'' Damasio proposes
his ®rst and his last (major) works respectively, he based on recent ®ndings within the neuro-
presents an embodied psychology in a quite sciences can be seen as advanced versions of
different sense of the term. In these works, he models of understanding introduced by
addresses ways in which the immaterial soul uses Descartes in the Passions. In the ®nal part, I
and relates to the body. brie¯y discuss some questions relating to my
Descartes' understanding of the soul makes it historical presentation of Descartes' embodied
necessary for him to take the body into account psychology. In order to indicate the Cartesian
even when the soul is engaged in abstract reason- nature of Damasio's views, I start each para-
ing and volitions. He assumes that the soul ``is graph with an excerpt from Descartes' error and
one single power'' (Regulae, AT X 415; CSM I I emphasize similarities between Descartes' and
42) and that ``this soul has within it no diversity of Damasio's views.
parts'' (Passions, Art. 47; CSM I 346). The
essence of this soul or mind is ``pure intellection.''
Probably because this conception, puzzling to us 2
The Aristotelian scholastics considered the mind as the
today, was common and uncontroversial among principle of intellectual activity. Notice that Descartes
also regards the mind or pure intellection as some
speci®c kind of intellectual activity (e.g. Rozemond,
1998). Contrary to modern considerations against the
1
All the quotations from Descartes' works are adapted corporeality of the mind, Descartes' does not (expli-
from the translations by Cottingham et al. (1984, 1985, citly) rely his concept of pure intellection on the
1991). However, I give also the Adam and Tannary existence of the phenomenological or qualitative
(AT) numbers in Oeuvres de Descartes, Ch. Adam and properties (``qualia'') of perceptual or other mental
P. Tannery, Eds., (revised edition, Paris: Vrin/C.N.R.S., states. On the other hand, Descartes is often considered
1964±76). The AT numbers are also given for the as an ancestor of the so-called ``qualia''-notion in
translations by Cottingham et al. CSM II refers to late 20th-century philosophy of mind, in particular
Cottingham et al. (1984), and CSM I and CSMK below because of his new understanding of sensation,
refer to Cottingham et al. (1985) and Cottingham et al. ``secondary qualities'' (sensible qualities in Descartes'
(1991) respectively. terms) etc.
 DESCARTES' EMBODIED PSYCHOLOGY 175

THE REGULAE: ALGEBRAIC REASONING Lakoff and Johnson's (1999) Philosophy in the
AND THE BRAIN ¯esh contains a critique of ``Descartes' disembo-
died mind'' (pp. 400±407). The authors express
Brains (. . .) have no mind, if they do not meet the popular view that
an essential condition: the ability to display
images internally and to order those images in Descartes created a theory of mental represen-
a process called thought. (Damasio, 1994, p. 89) tation±essentially the view inherited by ®rst
generation cognitive science. In this theory
Damasio's assumption is a very old one. ``Non
you can separate the problem of how we think
contingit intelligere sine phantasmate,''3 writes
with ideas from the problem of what the ideas
Thomas Aquinas in Summa theologiae (c. 1270).
are supposed to designate. (p. 407)
His statement is a translation of the Aristotelian
dictum ``There is no thought without phan-
Quite the reverse. In order to legitimate his new
tasms,''4 i.e. there is no thought without corporeal
mathematical approach to natural phenomena,
images in view of which the power of under-
Descartes' challenge is in fact to show how the
standing exercises its activity. Descartes repeats a
immaterial intellect's abstract mathematical ideas
version of this Aristotelian assumption in the
and operations can be identi®ed with ``the things
Regulae, ``we shall not be undertaking anything
which are outside us and quite foreign to us''
without the aid of the [corporeal] imagination''
(Regulae, AT X 398; CSM I 31).
(AT X 443; CSM I 59).
Descartes tries to show this partly by explain-
In the Regulae ad directionem ingenii, he
ing how the ingenium ``grounds'' abstract scien-
presents his new algebraic method for scienti®c
ti®c reasoning in the corporeal imagination, and
reasoning. However, his main endeavor is to
partly by proposing a mechanistic theory about
explain the ad directionem ingenii when we are
perception which ``links'' the corporeal imagina-
reasoning according to this method.5 The ingenii
tion to the external world. In addition, it is
or ingenium is not the intellect or mind as such:
important for him to demonstrate how the inge-
But when [the intellect] forms new ideas in the nium can visualize abstract scienti®c reasoning in
corporeal imagination [ phantasia], or concen- the corporeal brain so that the vis cognoscens or
trates on those already formed, the proper term ``the light of nature'' (AT X 440; CSM I 57) can
for it is [ingenium]. (AT X 416; CSM I 42; verify that every step in the reasoning process is
emphasis added) ``certain and evident (. . .) and incapable of being
doubted''. (AT X 362; CSM I 68)
So Descartes' problem in the Regulae is to Descartes' enterprise in the Regulae is, in some
explain how the ingenium mirrors the immaterial respects, a traditional one. In the Renaissance, it
intellect's algebraic reasoning in the corporeal was common to assume that the imagination
brain. served to bridge the gap between external sensa-
tion and the abstract operation of the intellect
3
Aquinas in Summa theologiae Ia, 84, 6. (Park, 1988). This assumption dates back to
Avicenna (980±1037 AD), who distinguished
4
Aristotle in De anima, 3.7, 431a 16. between the intellect and the ®ve external and
5 internal senses (the imagination or phantasia
Descartes' method is intended to be a universal
problem-solving method; in it, he de®nes a problem being one of them), and gave the internal
in general terms as ``something unknown'' (AT430) in a senses precise bodily locations in the ventricles
subject matter. In short, Descartes explains in the of the brain.6 With minor modi®cations, this
Regulae how, in a ``certain and evident'' (AT362) way,
we can abstract the quantitative aspects from all kinds
6
of subject matters, symbolize the quantities, transform Avicenna's neuropsychological theory of the inner
the relations between them into algebraic equations and senses was based on the psychology of Aristotle and the
solve the equations, i.e. express the unknown quantities anatomical discoveries of Galen (e.g. Kemp & Fletcher,
in terms of the known ones. 1993).
176 GEIR KIRKEBéEN

conceptualization dominates the Middle Ages. Descartes abandons the Regulae in 1628.
The controversial question was how the immater- Nevertheless, the importance of his enterprise is
ial intellect operates within the system of cogni- formidable. Klein (1968) writes:
tive faculties.
Vesalius' (1514±1564) anatomical ®ndings Descartes' great idea now consists of identify-
undermined the physiological basis of the neu- ing (. . .) the `general' object of this mathesis
ropsychological theory of the inner senses (e.g. universalis ± which can be represented and
Kemp & Fletcher, 1993).7 He expressed a pro- conceived only symbolically ± with the `sub-
blem raised by his anatomical studies as follows: stance' of the world, with corporeality as
``I cannot understand to my satisfaction how the `extensio'. Only by virtue of this identi®cation
brain performs its of®ce in imagination, reason- did symbolic mathematics gain that funda-
ing, cogitation and memory'' (Harvey, 1975, mental position which it has never since lost
Vesalius quoted, p. 30; emphasis added). We can (pp. 197±198)
say that Descartes, in the Regulae, attempts to
answer Vesalius' ``how-question'' in respect of Descartes' attempt at legitimating a new mathe-
algebraic reasoning. matical physics also entailed a ®rst fundamental
Only Descartes' new symbolic understanding break with Aristotelian-Scholastic psychology.
of numbers makes this attempt conceivable. He
stresses in the Regulae, ``For though a magnitude
may be termed a cube (. . .) it should never be DESCARTES' NATURALISTIC
represented (. . .) otherwise than as a line or a PSYCHOLOGY
surface'' (AT X 456; CSM I 68). For Descartes,
line lengths and rectangles are not what numbers In rule 12 in the Regulae, Descartes explains how
are; they are just a way of representing them±they it is possible to consider re¯ex behavior and sense-
are symbols. In rule 18, he shows how the basic perception, memory and perceptual cognition as a
algebraic operations (addition, subtraction, multi- result of mechanical processes in corporeal brain
plication and division) can be understood as organs. His descriptions are abstract and hypothe-
geometrical operations on such ®gure symbols. tical: ``Of course you are not obliged to believe
His ®gure-symbolic representation of numbers that things are as I suggest'' (AT X 412; CSM I 40).
and the basic algebraic operations performed on He simply outlines ``as brie¯y as possible what,
them makes it possible for him to consider the for my purposes, is the most useful way of con-
corporeal imagination as a ``symbol machine'', an ceiving everything'' (AT X 412; CSM I 40). His
organ capable of representing abstract mathema- naturalistic psychology in the Regulae is subordi-
tical operations (Kirkebùen, 2000). nate to his attempt to set up a new framework that
Descartes' next step is to demonstrate how the makes it possible for him to imagine how a mathe-
ingenium can visualize all the intellect's algebraic matical science of a mechanistic world is con-
operations in a clear and evident way on this ceivable. He assumes in rule 12 exactly what is
``symbol machine''. He fails. He writes out only necessary to explain in rules 14±21 how the inge-
the headings of rules 19, 20, and 21. The solutions nium operates and how the immaterial intellect
to the problems he poses in these headings has access to the external world (Kirkebùen, 2000).
demand complex algebraic calculations, and it is
not possible to show that such complex scienti®c The Body as Ground Reference for the Mind
cognition can be simulated in a clear and distinct
way in his concrete-logical framework. I return to the idea that the body provides a
ground reference for the mind. (Damasio,
7 1994, p. 223)
In particular, the theory of the inner senses assumed
that there was a direct connection between the anterior
ventricles and the sensory nerves. Vesalius did not ®nd In the Regulae, Descartes is ``concerned (. . .) with
any such connections. things only in so far as they are perceived by the
 DESCARTES' EMBODIED PSYCHOLOGY 177

intellect'' (AT X 418; CSM I 44). He assumes become part of the self that owns them. How
that the intellect does not have direct access to can we explain such a process neurobiologi-
the external world. The intellect can only cally, without resorting to the convenient tale
inspect material ®gures, built up from ``simple of the homunculus perceiving the representa-
natures'', in the brain. The simple natures, a cen- tion? (Damasio, 1994, p. 161)
tral concept in the Regulae, are neither simple nor
natures. They are not natures because they do not Descartes is the ®rst to ask (a variant of) this
refer to the things in themselves, but only to what question. He poses it in his critique of ``the
the intellect or vis cognoscens can ``see'' in the philosophers''' (read: Kepler's) understanding
corporeal imagination.8 Neither are they simple in of vision in his La Dioptrique (1637; henceforth
an ontological sense. They are simple only in Optics). Kepler's (1604) theory was the most
relation to the intellect's consideration.9 advanced of its time. He demonstrates that the
Descartes' assumption that the intellect does eye can be considered as a mechanical instrument
not have direct access to the external world and and explains why an illuminated object in front
his consideration of the simple natures as funda- of the eye will result in an inverted picture of
mental starting points for human knowledge, the object on the retina. He assumes that an
constitute a fundamental break with the Aristo- object is ®rst perceived by the sense organ
telian tradition's commitment to sensible species and then transmitted as a ``sensed object'' to the
and real qualities.10 Heidegger (1967), for exam- soul. Kepler does not try to explain how this
ple, considers the introduction of the simple happens:
natures as the very beginning of modern thinking.
So when Damasio writes, ``our very organism whether [the picture on the retina] is made to
rather than some absolute external reality is used appear before the soul (. . .) by a spirit (. . .) or
as the ground reference for the construction we whether the visual faculty (. . .) goes (. . .) into
make of the world around us'' (p. xvi), he returns the optic nerve and the retina to meet this
to an understanding ®rst introduced by Descartes image (. . .) [all] this I leave to be disputed by
in the 1620s. the physicist. (Kepler quoted in Lindberg,
1976, p. 203)
The New Epistemological Hypothesis
Descartes argues in the Optics that there is no
we must discover how the (. . .) body repre- picture on the retina because that would pre-
sentations become subjective, how they suppose ``yet other eyes within our brain with
which we could perceive it'' (AT VI 130; CSM I
8
``When we consider things in the order that corre- 167). His problem then becomes precisely to
sponds to our knowledge of them, our view of them answer Damasio's question above, i.e. ``How
must be different from what it would be if we were can we explain such a process neurobiologi-
speaking of them in accordance with how they exist in
reality''. (AT X 418; CSM I 44) cally, without resorting to the convenient tale of
the homunculus perceiving the representation?''
9
``That is why, since we are concerned here with things (p. 161).
only in so far as they are perceived by the intellect, we Descartes' ``homunculus-critique'' of Kepler
term `simple' only those things that we know so clearly is also a critique of his own position in the
and distinctly that they cannot be divided by the mind
into others which are more distinctly known''. (AT X Regulae. In that work, he maintains the Aristote-
418; CSM I 44) lian-Scholastic assumption that there is a percep-
tual relation between the intellect and what the
10
In the Aristotelian-Scholastic tradition it was intellect perceives, i.e. for him the ®gures (built
assumed that we, through perception, have direct up from the material simple natures) in the
access to the world's real qualities. According to this
tradition, every sense object constantly emits sense corporeal imagination. In his writings after aban-
images or ``sensible species'', i.e. immaterial qualities doning the Regulae, Descartes replaces this
by which the object can be perceived (e.g. Park, 1988). assumption with the assumption that the relation
178 GEIR KIRKEBéEN

between brain activity and the intellect is a Theories of First Degree: Descartes'
`causal' (or occasional) one.11 He now considers Re¯exology
ideas or imaginations as consequences of In l'Homme (c. 1632), Descartes discusses the
mechanical brain movements. extent to which a human being can be understood
The reason why Descartes changes his in mechanistic terms without reference to the
assumption on the relation between the intellect soul, that is, by theories of ®rst grade. On the last
and the brain is not clear. It is possibly motivated page, he sums up what he has managed to explain
by his failure in the Regulae. Another possible mechanistically:
reason is that, at the time he abandons the Reg-
ulae, he becomes engaged in anatomical investi- digestion of food, the beating of the heart and
gations.12 He writes in a letter in 1632, ``I am arteries, the nourishment and growth of the
now dissecting the heads of various animals, so limbs, respiration, waking and sleeping, the
that I can explain what imagination, memory, reception by the external sense organs of light,
etc. consist in'' (AT I 263; CSMK 40). His anato- sounds, smells, tastes, heat and other such
mical studies may have told him that his new qualities, the imprinting of the ideas of these
epistemological hypothesis is far better in terms qualities in the organ of the `common' sense
of neuroanatomy than his ``®gure-psychology'' and the imagination, the retention or stamping
was. of these ideas in the memory, the internal
The naturalistic psychology Descartes devel- movements of the appetites and passions, and
ops in the 1630s is founded on his dualism and ®nally the external movements of all the limbs.
this radically new epistemological hypothesis. (AT XI 202; CSM I 108)
Below I categorize the different ways in which
this psychology is embodied according to his These phenomena correspond exactly to the phe-
theory of ``three grades of sensation.''13 The ®rst nomena falling within the domain of the vegetative
grade does not involve awareness at all and and sensitive soul in contemporary Aristotelian-
corresponds to what we now call re¯exes. The Scholastic thinking (e.g., Rozemond, 1998).
second grade of sense involves awareness that Descartes was not the ®rst to hypothesize that
has the body as its main cause, i.e., awareness animals and bodily processes can be understood
of what we would now call the secondary quali- ``mechanistically''. The Spanish doctor GoÂmez
ties. Descartes' grade three of sense refers to Pereira, for example, in his Antoniane Margarita
perceptions based on the soul's interpretation of (1544), largely anticipates Descartes' re¯ex
bodily data. model of behavior (BandreÂs and Llavona, 1992).
However, contrary to Pereira's and others'
11
It is still an open question whether ± or to what ± ``mechanistic'' speculations, Descartes' explana-
extent Descartes was an occasionalist in respect to mind tions are expressed in purely mechanical terms
body interaction (e.g. Garber & Wilson, 1998). Notice without any reference at all to (immaterial) spir-
also that it is somewhat anachronistic to characterize
Descartes' understanding of the relation between its, souls etc. Hall (1960) is therefore right in his
mechanical brain movements and the intellect as claim that ``the application of mechanistic philo-
``causal'' in today's (post-Humean) meaning of this sophy to biological problems was not attempted
word. before Descartes'' (p. 129).
12 In the Regulae, Descartes only sketches the
He writes in a letter in 1639, ``I have spent much time
on dissection during the last eleven years, and I doubt structure of a causal path that could realize
whether there is any doctor who has made such detailed various psychological and physiological phenom-
observations as I'' (AT II 525; CSMK 134). ena. In l'Homme, he speculates on the particular
13
realization of these causal paths based on his
Descartes explicitly presents his division of sense anatomical investigations and, not least, on his
perception into three grades ®rst in the Sixth set of
Replies (AT VII 436±8; CSM II 294±5) in 1641. imaginings! His models in l'Homme are also
However, this distinction implicitly also underlies the highly hypothetical and speculative. His intention
naturalistic psychology he develops in the 1630s. is primarily to render probable the translation of
 DESCARTES' EMBODIED PSYCHOLOGY 179

Galilean theories into mechanistic terms (e.g., tation of the picture to be a perceptual (or inten-
Hall, 1970). Nevertheless, many distinguished tional) relation. Descartes sees this traditional
neuroscientists have been impressed by Des- understanding as a hindrance to a scienti®c
cartes' sketchy explanations. Sherrington (1951) approach to the problem of perception. In his
writes, Optics, he writes,

It was a work of genius (. . .) purely a priori Since their conception of the images is con-
[he] assumed that the motor act required an ®ned to the requirement that they should
inhibitory process along with an excitatory resemble the objects they represent, the philo-
(. . .) Experimental physiology 250 years later sophers cannot possibly show how the image
con®rmed it. (p. 154) can be formed by the objects. (AT VI 112;
CSM I 165)
McCulloch (1965) ®nds the idea of (negative)
feedback in l'Homme and asserts that cybernetics By replacing the Aristotelian assumption of a
really starts with Descartes. Pavlov (1960) writes, perceptual relation with an assumption of a causal
``Our starting-point has been Descartes' idea of relation, Descartes can make progress. He sup-
the re¯ex (. . .) [which] was constantly and fruit- poses that
fully applied in these studies'' ( pp. 7±8; 4). Foster
(1903) goes even further: [t]he small gland which is the principal seat of
the soul (. . .) can be moved (. . .) in as many
a very little change in the details of Descartes' different ways as there are perceptible differ-
exposition and some of that hardly more than a ences in the objects. (Passions, art. 34, CSM I
change in terminology would convert that expo- 341)
sition into a statement of modern views. (p. 19)
This assumption presents Descartes with a ques-
All these claims are controversial to some extent, tion that can be answered scienti®cally: How do
partly because of the sketchy character of Des- the different kinds of movements in the brain
cartes' theories. What is not controversial, is that correlate with different kinds of experiences?
Descartes' ``®rst grade of sense'' theories had a This question of correlation is the ®rst research
tremendous heuristic in¯uence on the develop- program in modern (non-Aristotelian) naturalistic
ment of physiology and physiological psychology psychology. In the Meteorology14, Descartes
in the centuries that followed (e.g. Rosen®eld, explains color perception based on an assumption
1949). that the perception of different kinds of color is
due to different kinds of movements (rotations) of
Theories of Second Degree: Descartes' light globules. He assumes that these differences
Psychobiology are transferred mechanically to the pineal gland,
where they trigger perceptions of different
It is important to realize that knowing that a kinds of color. Descartes' theory is wrong in its
given chemical causes a given feeling to occur details, but his approach opens up a new ®eld
is not the same as knowing the mechanism for for empirical research, namely biological psy-
how this result is achieved (. . .) it establishes a chology.
working relationship among the substance, the
systems, the circuits, the receptors, the neu-
14
rons, and the feeling, but it does not tell you The Meteorology (Les MeÂteÂores) is the second of the
how you get from one to another (Damasio, three specimen essays published with the Discourse on
1994, pp. 160±161; emphasis in original). the Method in 1637 (see e.g. Olscamp, 1965, for a
translation in English). In ``Of the Rainbow'' (the
eighth discourse), Descartes explains color perception.
We saw that Kepler considers the relation He worked on the Meteorology at the same time as
between the soul and the physiological represen- writing the Optics, i.e. 1629±1632.
180 GEIR KIRKEBéEN

The problem Descartes' dualism creates is to Descartes' explanation of metric perception

answer how mechanical movements can cause in the Optics is a neglected highlight in the history
conscious experiences or, in Damasio's words, of science.16 Descartes does not, as he claims,
``how you get from one to another''. Damasio follow his method. In fact, he proceeds in a way
writes, which, on a detailed level, is in accordance
with how David Marr (1982) argues that complex
Perhaps we should not even talk about a information processing systems must be explained
problem at all, and speak instead of a mystery, (Kirkebùen, 1998). His theory is based on the
drawing on a distinction between questions co-ordination of two analyses, a logical analysis
that can be approached suitably by science of ``the problem'' solved in the perception process
and questions that are likely to elude science (in discourse VI) and an anatomical analysis of
forever. (p. xviii) the brain structures where he assumes that the
process of perception takes place (in discourse V).
Descartes thinks along the same lines: ``The In his logical analysis, he ®rst clari®es the (pos-
movements composing this picture (. . .) are sible) kinds of input to and output of the process.
ordained by nature to make it [the Soul] have He considers the basic task of vision as that of
such sensations'' (AT VI 130; CSM I 167; empha- mapping from two dimensions (2D) to three
sis added). dimensions (3D). In addition, he emphasizes that
By delimiting the mysterious and thorough the effect of the incoming light on the retina is
form/matter dualism in Aristotelian ontology to describable in the vocabulary of physics, and that
the mystery of how movements in the pineal vision consists in a mapping of the ``mechanical''
gland result in conscious experience or aware- information in the eye ``as if by a natural geome-
ness, Descartes, in Damasio's words, ``establishes try'' (AT VI 137; CSM I 170) onto more or less
a working relationship'' that opens the way for reliable 3D perceptions.
mechanistic and mathematical explanations of all In the Passions, Descartes states a crucial
kinds of physiological and psychological phe- principle that underlies his dualistic division
nomena, including the kind of phenomena Dama- between the mental and the bodily, namely ``any-
sio discusses in Descartes' error. thing in us which we cannot conceive in any way
as capable of belonging to a body must be
Theories of Third Degree: Descartes' attributed to our soul'' (art. 3; AT XI 329; CSM
`Cognitive' Psychology I 329). The brain structures, as he ®nds them in
the 1630s, clearly cannot give rise to mechanisms
Descartes tells us that capable of realizing a natural geometry, or any
other inferences. According to the above principle
The principal argument which induced philo- therefore, Descartes simply has to attribute to the
sophers to posit real accidents was that they intellect the inferences necessary to accomplish
thought that sense-perception could not be metric perception. Because the theory refers to
explained without them. (Sixth set of Replies, perceptions based on the soul's interpretation of
AT VII 435; CSM II 293) bodily data, it belongs to grade three of sense.
So, Descartes' knowledge of anatomy forces
Therefore, it was of tremendous importance for him to attribute part of the perception process to
him to demonstrate that perception, in particular the intellect. But notice his prediction in La
metric perception that is fundamental to Cartesian Description du corps humain in 1648:
science,15 can be explained in mechanical and
mathematical terms. 16
His mechanistic explanation presupposes both the
law of refraction, which he discovered (independently
15
Contrary to common belief, Descartes is a pioneer in of Snel) in 1625±1626 but ®rst presented in discourse II
emphasizing the necessity of empirical investigations in of his Optics, and also his new algebraic geometry (e.g.
science (e.g. Clarke, 1982). Kirkebùen, 1998).
 DESCARTES' EMBODIED PSYCHOLOGY 181

I believe that we would have been able to ®nd In the 1640s, he works out his understanding of
many very reliable rules (. . .) if only we had what ``constitute[s] a real human being'', an
spent enough effort on getting to know the understanding which strongly emphasizes the
nature of our body, instead of attributing to the body and the affective dimension of man. His
soul functions which depend solely on the efforts culminate in the Passions, a work that can
body and on the disposition of its organs be read as a completion of what he began in the
(. . .) Our ignorance of anatomy and mechanics Regulae.
has also played a major role here. (AT XI 223- In the Regulae, we saw that Descartes explains
4; CSM I 314) how the intellect uses and relates to the body
when engaged in abstract scienti®c reasoning. In
In a much-quoted and often misinterpreted the Passions, he addresses himself primarily to
excerpt from Discours, Descartes writes, the origin and purposes of the passions, and he
analyses the interplay between the body, emotions
It is for all practical purposes impossible and the intellect in human activities in general. I
[moralement impossible] for a machine to have show that he, like Damasio, stresses that ``Emo-
enough different organs to make it act in all the tion, feeling, and biological regulation all play a
contingencies of life in the way in which our role in human reason'' and that Descartes is also
reason makes us act. (AT VI 57; CSM I 140) at pains to explain how ``The lowly orders of our
organism are in the loop of high reason'' (Dama-
``Moralement impossible'' in the 1630s means sio, 1994, xiii).
``highly unlikely'' in today's language. So in this
statement too, Descartes does not exclude the Physiological Approach
possibility of inferences or calculations being
realized by mechanisms or brain processes. What worries me is the acceptance of the
Whether or not cognition was beyond the powers importance of feelings without any effort to
of a corporeal machine seems to be an empirical understand their complex biological (. . .)
and scienti®c question for him (e.g., Cottingham, machinery. (Damasio, 1994, p. 246)
1992).
Descartes had similar worries in the 1640s. In a
prefatory letter to the Passions, he writes,
THE PASSIONS: EMOTION, REASON AND
THE HUMAN BRAIN My intention was to explain the passions only
as a natural philosopher [ physicien], and not as
Emotion, feeling, and biological regulation all a rhetorician or even as a moral philosopher.
play a role in human reason. The lowly orders (AT XI 326; CSM I 327)
of our organism are in the loop of high reason.
(Damasio, 1994, p. xiii) Descartes emphasizes the physiological condi-
tions of the passions. However, this was nothing
Descartes anticipates the kind of critique which new. A traditional idea, going back to Aristotle,
Damasio and others direct against a ``Cartesian'' was that the passions involved a complex mixture
understanding of man. For example, he writes in of both physiological and psychological aspects,
Discours, and at Descartes' time it was commonly under-
stood that the passions are both in the body and
It is not suf®cient for [the rational soul] to be the mind (e.g. James, 1997). Descartes' rejection
lodged in the human body like a helmsman in of his predecessors' accounts of the passions is
his ship (. . .) but that it must be more closely similar to his rejection of their understanding of
joined and united with the body in order to perception. Their mistake was that their
(. . .) constitute a real human being. (AT VI 59; approaches are not based on a true understanding
CSM I 141) and systematic analysis of human physiology.
182 GEIR KIRKEBéEN

In accordance with his approach ``as a physi- body or to certain of its parts'' or ``our soul''
cist'', Descartes presents early in the Passions (the respectively (art. 22, CSM I 336-7). All kinds of
articles 7 to 16) a summary of his mechanistic (external) sense perception belong to the ®rst
physiology in the (then unpublished) l'Homme. category of passions; hunger, thirst, pain, heat,
``Having thus considered all the functions belong- etc. fall in the second; and the third category
ing solely to the body'' (Passions, art. 17, CSM I contains the ``feelings of joy, anger and the like''
335), he asserts, (art. 25; CSM I 337), or generally ``those percep-
tions, sensations or emotions of the soul which we
It is easy to recognize that there is nothing in us refer particularly to it, which'', and this is impor-
which we must attribute to the soul except our tant, ``are caused, maintained and strengthened by
thoughts. These are of two principal kinds, some movement of the [animal] spirits'' (art. 27;
some being actions of the soul and the others CSM I 339).17 Descartes calls the last category
its passions. Those I call its actions are all our the ``passions of the soul'' or the ``emotions (. . .)
volitions (. . .) the various perceptions (. . .) because, of all the kinds of thought which the soul
present in us may be called its passions. (art. may have, there are none that agitate and disturb it
17, CSM I 335) so strongly.'' (art. 28; CSM I 339)18

Descartes' discussions of the passions and the The Passions as Dispositions to Act
actions (or volitions) of the soul in the Passions,
are all based on his strictly mechanical conception William James (. . .) produced a truly startling
of the human body. Descartes, in fact, is the ®rst hypothesis on the nature of emotion and feel-
to attempt what Damasio demands, i.e. a systema- ing (. . .) stripping emotion down to a process
tic effort to understand the complex biological that involved the body (. . .) shocking as that
machinery which underlies the emotions. must have been to his critics. (Damasio, 1994,
p. 129)
The Passions as Perceptions of the
Bodily Landscape Damasio contrasts Williams James' brilliant
insights with Descartes' mistakes. He substanti-
A second idea in this book, then, is that the ates his colleague LeDoux' (1986) claim: ``It
essence of a feeling may not be an elusive is not generally acknowledged that [James±
mental quality attached to an object, but rather Lange's] well-known hypothesis was essentially
the direct perception of a speci®c landscape: the view proposed by Descartes.'' (p. 303)
that of the body. (Damasio, 1994, p. xiv) In the article entitled ``Examples of move-
ments of the body which accompany the passions
Descartes is clearly the ®rst to consider a passion
as ``the [soul's] direct perception of a speci®c 17
Contrary to his predecessors, Descartes also under-
landscape: that of the body.'' He understands the stands the animal spirits in purely mechanical terms:
passions in analogy to sense perception. In gen- ``These very ®ne parts of the blood make up the animal
eral, he considers the passions or the perceptions spirits (. . .) For what I am calling `spirits' here are
(these words are interchangeable for him) as merely bodies: they have no property other than that of
relational properties explainable by the motions being extremely small bodies which move very
quickly'' (Passions, art. 10; AT XI 335; CSM-I 331-2).
of external and human bodies interacting with the
soul. They belong to the second grade of sense, 18
Damasio's concept of emotion is (of course) not
that is, the grade of sense which involves aware- identical with Descartes' concept of emotion or passion
ness with the body as its main cause. of the soul. Damasio distinguishes, for example,
Descartes assorts the passions in three cate- between `emotion', `feeling', `feeling of emotion',
`feeling without emotions', etc. However, all the details
gories according to whether they are referred to and differences in their use of these concepts do not
(i.e. spontaneously judged to be caused by) matter with respect to one of my aims in the article,
``external objects which strike our senses'', ``our indicating that Damasio is a true Cartesian.
 DESCARTES' EMBODIED PSYCHOLOGY 183

and do not depend on the soul'' (Passions, art. 38; color perceptions. We also saw that Descartes
CSM I 342), Descartes writes, understands emotions in analogy to sense percep-
tions. However, an obvious difference is that two
Just as the course which the spirits take to the persons (normally) perceive an object in approxi-
nerves of the heart suf®ces to induce a move- mately the same way, while their emotional reac-
ment in the gland through which fear enters the tions to the same object can be very different.
soul, so too the mere fact that some spirits at Even the same person's emotional reaction to a
the same time proceed to the nerves which certain object or situation can change consider-
serve to move the legs in ¯ight causes another ably over time. Descartes notices,
movement in the gland through which the soul
feels and perceives this action. In this way, Although nature seems to have joined every
then, the body may be moved to take ¯ight by movement of the gland to certain of our
the mere dispositions of the organs, without thoughts from the beginning of our life, yet
any contribution from the soul. (art. 38; we may join them to others through habit.
emphasis added) Experience shows this. (art. 50; CSM I 348)

Compare with James' (1884/1969) statement, He incorporates these observations into his ``prin-
ciple of habituation'', i.e.
My theory (. . .) is that the bodily changes that
follow directly the perception of the exciting the principle which underlies everything I have
fact, and that our feeling of the same changes written about [the different causes and the
as they occur IS the emotion. (p 247; emphasis different effects of the passions]±namely that
in original) our soul and body are so linked that once we
have joined some bodily action with a certain
So both Descartes and James consider conscious thought, the one does not occur thereafter
emotional experience as a consequence rather without the other occurring too; but we do
than a cause of emotional expressions. Descartes' not always join the same actions to the same
understanding of the emotions of the soul as thoughts. (art. 136; CSM I 375)
``dispositions to act'' is his ``®rst grade of sense''
understanding of them. In a letter in 1647, he provides an example from
his personal experience:
The Passions and Personal Experiences
When I was a child, I loved a girl of my own
I propose calling ``early'' emotions primary, age who had a slight squint. The impression
and ``adult'' emotions secondary (. . .) I believe made by sight in my brain when I looked at her
that in terms of an individual's development cross-eyes became so closely connected to the
[the mechanism of primary emotions] are fol- simultaneous impression which aroused in me
lowed by mechanisms of secondary emotions, the passion of love that for a long time after-
which occur once we begin experiencing feel- wards when I saw persons with a squint I felt a
ings and forming systematic connections special inclination to love them simply because
between categories of objects and situations, they had that defect; yet I had no idea myself
on the one hand, and primary emotions of the that this was why it was. (AT V 57; CSMK 323)
other. (Damasio, 1994, pp. 131 and pp. 134;
emphasis in original) Descartes, of course, was not the ®rst to make
such observations.19 What is radically new is that
In his treatment of sense perception, we saw that
Descartes assumes that there are some ®xed rela- 19
In the Passions, he refers to similar observations
tions ``instituted by nature'' between certain made by, for example, Juan Luis Vives (1493±1540)
movements in the brain and, for example, certain (art. 127).
184 GEIR KIRKEBéEN

he in the 1640s also explains in mechanical terms, call `sensitive', and the higher or `rational' part
``as a physicist'', how our emotions and emotional of the soul (art. 47; CSM I 346).
reactions can vary and change. In the letter quoted
above, he writes, This idea con¯icts with Descartes' assumption
that the ``soul has within it no diversity of parts''
The objects which strike our senses by mean (art. 47). It follows that ``It is in the body alone
of the nerves move certain parts of our that we should attribute everything that can be
brain and there make certain folds (. . .) the observed in us to oppose our reason'' (art. 47). So,
place where the folds were made has a ten- an implication of Descartes' dualism is that the
dency to be folded again in the same manner term ``disease of the mind'' loses its meaning.
by another object resembling even incomple- Damasio is glad that ``the fact that psycholo-
tely the original (. . .) So when we are inclined gical disturbances, mild or strong, can cause
to love someone without knowing the reason, diseases of the body proper is ®nally beginning
we may believe that this is because they have to be accepted'' (p. 256). Descartes takes a strong
some similarity to something in an earlier interest in such a connection in the 1640s. Up to
object of our love, though we may not be able then, he has mainly focused on the different ways
to identify it. (AT V 57; CSMK 323) ``the mind depends (. . .) on the temperament and
dispositions of the bodily organs'' (Discours, AT
Damasio (1994) proposes similar explanations, VI 62; CSM I 143). In the mid-1640s, we ®nd a
which are of course far more impressive in their shift in his interest from this type of somatop-
details of how, for example, a sychic account to a psychosomatic one, in which
he stresses the effects of the emotions (of the soul)
prefrontal response (. . .) embod[ies] knowl- on the body (e.g. Gaukroger, 1995). For example,
edge pertaining to how certain types of situa- in a letter (to Elisabeth) in 1645, Descartes
tions usually have been paired with certain assumes that ``The most common cause of a slow
emotional responses, in your individual experi- fever is sadness'' (AT IV 201; not in CSMK).
ence. (p. 136) Descartes' psychosomatic understandings are
based on his assumption that there are certain
However, Damasio's explanations of the mechan- regular connections between emotions and bodily
ism which underlies our acquired (or secondary) motions. In the Passions, he also gives several
emotions can easily be considered as advanced examples of how this principle can explain dif-
versions of Descartes' pioneering explanations of ferent kinds of psychopathology, e.g. phobias:
how emotions vary and change.
the strange aversions of certain people that
Psychosomatic make them unable to bear the smell of roses,
the presence of a cat, or the like, can readily be
The distinction between diseases of ``brain'' recognized as resulting simply from their hav-
and ``mind'' (. . .) is an unfortunate cultural ing been greatly upset by some object in the
inheritance that permeates society and medi- early years of their life. (Art. 136)
cine. It re¯ects a basic ignorance of the relation
between brain and mind. (Damasio, 1994, p. 40) Lindeboom (1979) observes,

A central point in the Passions is Descartes' The conception of the continued connection of
rejection of the idea that there are con¯icts within special thoughts and special phenomena of the
the mind or soul. A traditional view at his time body as well as that of conditioned re¯exes
was that represent, together with the in¯uence of
unconscious memories, the Cartesian basis of
All the con¯ict [is] usually supposed to occur psychosomatics. It can scarcely be denied that
between the lower part of the soul, which we these notions essentially constitute, to a con-
 DESCARTES' EMBODIED PSYCHOLOGY 185

siderable extent, the underlying model of mod- sion-making and irrational behavior in real-life
ern psychosomatics. (p. 91) settings. Damasio, therefore, assumes that the
somatic marker mechanism, the essence of his
It is hard to disagree.
``neurobiology of rationality,'' is localized in a
The Passions and Practical Reasoning particular area of the prefrontal cortex. He asks
triumphantly, ``What would Descartes have
I suggest only that certain aspects of the thought had he known about Gage and had he
process of emotion and feeling are indispen- had the knowledge of neurobiology we now
sable for rationality. At their best, feelings have?'' (p. 19).
point us in the proper direction, take us to the It is hard to see that the somatic marker
appropriate place in a decision-making space, hypothesis in any way contradicts Descartes'
where we may put instruments of logic to good understanding of the relations between ``emotion,
use. (Damasio, 1994, p. xiii) reason, and the human brain''. The somatic mar-
kers are a special kind of secondary emotion, and
In particular, Damasio discusses the role of the are therefore, as I argue above, in accordance with
emotions in practical reasoning and decision- Descartes' general principle of habituation.
making in Descartes' error. He criticizes the ``tra- In the Regulae, we saw that Descartes con-
ditional ``high-reason'' view'' of Descartes (and siders the body (or the corporeal imagination) as a
others) who, according to Damasio, asserts that medium of representation necessary for certain
``to obtain the best results, emotions must be kept scienti®c reasoning. But for him, the emotions and
out. Rational processing must be unencumbered by the bodily process that underlies them, also play an
passion'' (p. 171). Damasio considers situations essential role in reasoning and rationality. He as-
which call for a choice, and he argues that a purely sumes that streams of (material) animal spirits
rational approach, e.g. to maximize the ``subjec- against the pineal gland cause the passions. How-
tive expected utility'' of each actual option, will ever, our thoughts (the soul's actions) also cause (or
not work. It is too complex and demanding. Since correlate with) changed movements of the animal
``our brains can often decide well, in seconds (. . .) spirits in the brain and this change may again
they must do the marvelous job with more than trigger somewhat different passions and so on. In
just pure reason'' (pp. 172±173), he concludes. this respect, even abstract thinking is in general
Damasio's alternative to the ``high reason'' passionate, and closely and continuously linked to
view is his so-called ``somatic-marker hypoth- the brain and the body also in Descartes' view.
esis''. He understands somatic markers as ``feel- Damasio stresses that ``on occasion somatic
ings generated from secondary emotions. Those markers may operate covertly (without coming to
emotions and feelings have been connected, by consciousness)'' (p. 174). Descartes' understand-
learning, to predicted future outcomes of certain ing of his own emotional reaction to girls with
scenarios'' (p. 174), and he believes that when we squints indicates the degree of importance, often
face a situation, the somatic marker ``allows us to neglected, that the rationalist Descartes attaches
discover rapidly whether a given option or out- to unconscious motives (e.g. acquired emotional
come is likely to be advantageous'' (p. 197). mechanisms) as determinants of behavior and
Damasio begins Descartes' error with a pre- decision-making20 (e.g. Cottingham, 1996).
sentation of Phineas Gage, a famous nineteenth-
century case of behavioral change. Gage suffered 20
Descartes does not, of course, discuss explicitly
prefrontal brain damage that caused strange decision making. However, he probably would have
impairments of judgment and decision-making. agreed with Damasio (1994): ``It is plausible that a
Damasio ®nds similar changes in his own patients system geared to produce markers and signposts to
with brain damage in the same area. Their general guide ``personal'' and ``social'' responses would have
been co-opted to assist with ``other'' decision making.
intelligence seems intact but they have greatly The machinery that helps you decide whom to befriend
diminished affective responses and this lack of would also help you design a house in which the
emotion seems to be responsible for their deci- basement will not ¯ood'' (p. 190).
186 GEIR KIRKEBéEN

According to Damasio, the somatic-marker according to Descartes' Passions of the Soul. I

mechanism is not suf®cient to construct a neuro- agree with his formulation, except that where
biology of rationality. Two other conditions must he speci®ed a control achieved by a nonphysi-
be met: cal agent I envision a biological operation
structured within the human organism and
First, one must be able to draw on mechanisms not one bit less complex, admirable, or sub-
of basic attention, which permit the mainte- lime. (Damasio, 1994, p. 124)
nance of a mental image in consciousness to
the relative exclusion of others (. . .) Second, In l'Homme, Descartes' overriding ambition is to
one must have a mechanism of basic working explain how man moves as a automaton, and at
memory, which holds separate images for a the beginning of the Passions he repeats what he
relatively `extended' period. (p. 197) considers as a crucial misunderstanding of his
predecessors, ``It is an error to believe that the
Descartes agrees. Also he assumes that ``without soul gives movement and heat to the body'' (art.
basic attention and working memory there is no 5; CSM I 329). Throughout his last work, he
prospect of coherent mental activity'' (Damasio, provides examples to substantiate his claim that
1994, p. 197). A main function of the emotions man's soul or will does not have any direct control
and the bodily mechanisms that underlie them, of the body or the emotions.
according to Descartes, is precisely that ``they Descartes assumes (actually as the ®rst one in
strengthen and prolong thoughts in the soul (. . .) his Optics) that the lens changes shape according
which otherwise might easily be erased from it'' to the distance of the objects: ``if we want to
(Passions, Art. 74, CSM 354). The passion of adjust our eyes to look at a far-distant object, this
wonder in particular is important for intellectual volition causes the pupils to grow larger'' (Pas-
activity. Descartes writes, ``Wonder is a sudden sions, Art. 44, CSM I 344). He then analyzes what
surprise of the soul which brings it to consider it means to say that our ``volition causes'' a
with attention the objects that seem to it unusual change in the size of the pupil. Is the will or the
and extraordinary'' (Art. 70). The idea that soul able to control the pupil? Clearly not,
philosophy begins with wonder goes back to because ``if we think only of enlarging the pupils,
Plato and Aristotle. Descartes, however, also we may indeed have such a volition, but we do not
approaches the passion of wonder ``as a physi- thereby enlarge them'' (art. 44).
cist''. He provides an explanation in mechanical Descartes' ``explanation'' of how our wish to
terms of the bodily processes underlying attention look at an object further away leads to the enlar-
(art. 70; CSM I 353). ging of the pupils is similar to his ``explanation''
So, for Descartes too, the body and the emo- of how certain movements in the brain produce
tions energize and give direction to all kinds of certain perceptions. He writes,
thinking, even abstract reasoning (e.g. Rorty,
1992). The fact that a particular type of brain For the movement of the gland, whereby the
damage can produce the kind of strange effects on spirits are driven to the optic nerve in the
thinking that Damasio ®nds in his patients is in way required for enlarging or contracting
accordance with Descartes' embodied under- the pupils, has been joined by nature with the
standing of the emotions and their functions. He volition to look at distant or nearby objects,
could have considered the case of Gage as a rather than with the volition to enlarge
con®rmation of his own speculations on the role or contract the pupils. (art. 44; emphasis
of emotions in intellectual activity. added)

Passions, Body and Volition Descartes, like most of his contemporaries, con-
siders the passions as the creation of a benevolent
The control of animal inclination by thought, God (e.g. art. 174). However, he clearly agrees
reason, and the will was what made us human, with Damasio that,
 DESCARTES' EMBODIED PSYCHOLOGY 187

Although I believe a body-based mechanism is highly complex concept of causation and partly
needed to assist ``cool'' reason, it is also true because he is often vague and cryptical when he
that some of those body-based signals can discusses the power of the will over the body. For
impair the quality of reasoning. (p. 191) example,

The passions may sometimes lead us astray Those I call [the soul's] actions are all our
or even paralyze us. It is of pivotal importance volitions, for we experience them as proceed-
for Descartes to explain how we ``through effort ing directly from our soul and as seeming to
(. . .) may join [each volition] to others [move- depend on it alone. (Passions, Art. 17; empha-
ments of the gland]'' (art. 44). This possibility is sis added)
crucial for his major purpose in the Passions,
namely to explain how we can achieve a better This and similar statements, together with
life through careful training and control of our Descartes' embodied analyses of different kinds
bodily emotional mechanisms which may cause of volitions in the Passions, have led some scho-
destructive fear, overwhelming sadness, etc. in lars to consider Descartes' view as close to
our soul. modern behaviorism. For example, Carter
In the article entitled ``The power of the soul (1983), in his fascinating interpretation of Des-
with respect to its passions'' (art. 45), Descartes cartes' medical thinking, argues that, according to
®rst underlines that ``Our passions, too, cannot be Descartes,
directly aroused or suppressed by the action of our
will'', and he continues, If we were to know about a given man's
experience, then, because he is entirely con-
Only indirectly through the representation of strained by nature to choose what he naturally
things which are usually joined with the pas- knows to be the better for himself, we can
sions we wish to have and opposed to the exactly predict his volition in any given situa-
passions we wish to reject. For example, in tion. (p.130)
order to have the volition to arouse boldness
and suppress fear in ourselves, it is not suf®- The extent to which Descartes assumes our voli-
cient to have the volition to do so. We must tions are determined by our bodily represented
apply ourselves to consider the reasons, innate dispositions and personal experiences is
objects, or precedents which persuade us that controversial (e.g. Sleigh, Chappel, & Della
the danger is not great; that there is Rocca, 1998). What is clear is that Descartes'
always more security in defense than in ¯ight. analyses of different kinds of volitions show that
(art. 45) he also de®nitely understands our volitions as
depending on complex ``operation structured
Contrary to today's cognitive therapists, Des- within the human organism.''
cartes also provides (in art. 46) an embodied
explanation in mechanistic terms of why his
``cognitive therapy'' works. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
In general statements, Descartes often declares
that the soul or will is free.21 However, in his In my outline of Descartes' embodied psychol-
analysis of concrete volitions he often gives the ogy, I point to parallels between some of his
opposite impression. His discussions of this topic speculative ideas in the early seventeenth century
are complex, partly because they presuppose his and psychological theories worked out 200±300
years later. My presentation raises several proble-
21 matic questions. For example, are there any con-
For example, ``That there is freedom in our will (. . .)
is so evident that it must be counted among the ®rst and tinuities or connections between Descartes'
most common notions that are innate in us'' (Les embodied psychology and later naturalistic scien-
Principes de la Philosophie, AT IXB 19; CSM I 205-6). ti®c psychology?
188 GEIR KIRKEBéEN

Descartes' naturalistic psychology is founded called cognitive revolution in the middle of the
on his dualism and his radical new assumption twentieth century (e.g. Kirkebùen, 1998).
that ideas or imaginations are consequences of What about the connection between Descartes
mechanical brain movements. Reed (1982) shows and Damasio's project? Damasio considers the
the historical continuity between this new episte- somatic marker hypothesis, his own main con-
mological hypothesis, or ``the corporeal ideas tribution, as an elaboration of William James'
hypothesis'' as he calls it, and later scienti®c (and Lange's) idea described above. One of
psychology. He demonstrates how the two ``fun- James' contemporaries had already recognized
damental laws'' of psychophysiology, the Bell- that ``The position [Descartes] maintained is
Magendie law and MuÈller's law of ``speci®c nerve similar to that now held by professor James''
energies'', are (unintentional) restatements of this (Irons, 1895, p. 291). Thus Damasio's main con-
Cartesian hypothesis. tribution is an elaboration of an old Cartesian
Pavlov, as we have seen, recognized his own idea.
enterprise as a restatement and continuation of Descartes' (substance-mode) metaphysics, his
Descartes' re¯exology or ``®rst grade of sense'' idea of an immaterial intellect, his concept of
psychology. Similarly, Fechner's agenda for a causation, the role of God in his system, etc. are
new psychophysics in Elemente der Psychophysik very different assumptions indeed from those on
(1850) can very well be considered as a New- the basis of which modern scienti®c psychology
tonian and empirical version of Descartes' has been developed since the late nineteenth
psychobiology or ``theories of second grade'' century. Several historians therefore claim that it
psychology. The agenda is precisely to show is a misunderstanding to consider Descartes in
how psychological entities (or awareness) can any respect as a ``modern'' psychologist (e.g.
be correlated empirically or compared with Danziger, 1997; Richards, 1992). Richards
physiological activity. (1992), for example, in his work on the origin
In the second half of the nineteenth century, we of psychological ideas, asserts that ``no single tap-
also ®nd an unintentional rediscovery of Des- root of psychology is present in the seventeenth
cartes' ``third grade of sense'' psychology. Helm- century'' (p. 92). In respect of naturalistic psy-
holtz's theory of metric perception has striking chology, I disagree with Richards' claim (Kirke-
similarities to Descartes' theory in the Optics bùen, 2000).
(Kirkebùen, 1998). In fact, the very structure of In spite of the enormous difference in intellec-
Helmholtz's three-volume Handbuch der physio- tual context, why do we so easily ®nd in Des-
logischen Optik (1856, 1860, 1867) corresponds cartes, and not in his predecessors, models of
fairly precisely to Descartes' three grades of understanding which we recognize as anti-
sense. Helmholtz's important distinction between cipations of central ideas of much later natu-
sensation and perception, a distinction usually ralistic scienti®c psychology? What makes it
assumed to have been introduced by Thomas Reid possible for him to anticipate crucial scienti®c
(1710±1796), reinstates Descartes' distinction ideas three hundred years in advance? The
between passions of the soul caused mainly by way in which we approach and understand psy-
the body, i.e. sensations, and those caused mainly chological phenomena naturalistically depends
by the soul, i.e. perceptions (e.g. Reed, 1982). to a large extent on our view of what belongs
We saw that Descartes, in his explanation of to the mental world and on our conception of
metric perception, was forced to consider infer- the physical world. The simple answer to the
ences as a mentalistic concept, simply because it last question is that the way in which so-
is impossible for him to imagine how any called scienti®c psychology divides things up
mechanism, including the human brain, can rea- ®nds its ®rst major expression in Descartes'
lize them. For the same reason, ``unconscious dualism.
inferences'', the central new concept in Helm- Why do central Cartesian ideas not reappear
holtz's ``third grade of sense'' theory, was not until the second part of the nineteenth century? A
accepted in scienti®c psychology until the so- main motivation for Descartes' dualism was to
 DESCARTES' EMBODIED PSYCHOLOGY 189

undermine the vitalistic and animistic theories that similar ``symbol machine±existence proof'' way
¯ourished in the Renaissance (e.g. Gaukroger, (Kirkebùen, 2000).23
1995).22 Mainly for that reason, Descartes An important difference between Descartes
postulated that matter is `inert', a view that and Turing's thought experiments is that Turing's
dominated mechanistic theories until Newton symbols, contrary to Descartes', are inherently
reintroduced `forces' into matter. Newton's non-perceptual, disembodied and `amodal'. Tur-
success legitimated the introduction of vital- ing's paper and his successful ``existence proof''
istic forces within physiology as well (Hall, are often considered as an indirect cause of the
1968). ``cognitive revolution'' and a seminal work in the
Vitalism dominated science and philosophy in new cognitive science that was a result of this
the eighteenth century and the early decades of ``revolution.'' The ``®rst-generation'' theories of
the nineteenth century (Moravia, 1978). In the cognitive science are the main target of Damasio
middle of the nineteenth century, there was a (1994), Lakoff and Johnson (1999) and others in
move from vitalism to mechanism in physio- their critique of ``disembodied'' cognitivism.
logy, and the second part of the century was However, they wrongly associate this `amodal'
dominated by a strong mechanical conception of cognitivism with Descartes' dualism.24 In fact, it
man. So the reason why a naturalistic psycho- is not until today's second-generation cognitive
logy similar to Descartes' ``three grades of science, an enterprise strongly favored by these
sense'' research agendas were reinvented in the ``anti-Cartesians'', that we ®nd attempts to unify
late nineteenth century is that his dualism and perception and symbolic cognition similar to
nineteenth-century materialism, in spite of all the Descartes' hypothetical thought experiment in
differences between those two world-views, the Regulae (Kirkebùen, 2000), i.e. attempts to
require all kinds of (worldly) psychological phe- give ``existence proof that one can develop a fully
nomena, in principle, to be described in mechan- functional symbolic system that is inherently
istic terms. perceptual'' (Goldstone & Barsalou, 1998, p. 236).
Finally, let us return to the beginning, Des-
cartes' thought experiment in the Regulae. We 23
Although more than three hundred years separate
saw that he uses his new abstract understanding of Descartes' and Turing's (1936) thought experiments,
numbers to demonstrate how the brain can be there is a kind of connection between their endeavors.
considered as a symbol machine and how the Both are linked to the development of an algebraic
intellect's algebraic reasoning can be mirrored mode of thought in modern mathematics, a mode of
thought that has three main characteristics: the use of an
as operations on this machine. In fact, Descartes operative symbolism, dealing with mathematical rela-
launches in the Regulae two traditions±mechan- tions rather than objects and freedom from ontological
istic philosophy of mind and abstract mathematics commitment. To a large extent, Descartes' thought
that, after he abandoned the Regulae in 1628, experiment and his mathematical contributions, in
would diverge until Turing (1936) answers ``the particular his new understanding of numbers, initiate
this development. Turing's thought experiment com-
real question at issue (. . .) `What are the possible pletes it. Descartes' and Turing's thought experiments,
processes which can be carried out [by a human which mark the beginning of modern psychology and
computer] in computing a number?''' (p. 135) in a cognitive science respectively, indicate how important
the development of mathematics has been for the
constitution of the science of mind (Kirkebùen, 2000).
22 24
In order to defend a sharp distinction between the The distinction that the new symbol system psychol-
natural, on the one hand, and the human soul/intellect ogy of ``®rst generation'' cognitive science makes
and the supernatural, on the other, it is necessary for between conception and perception is a novelty in the
Descartes to demonstrate that all natural phenomena history of psychology. Throughout recorded history,
can be accounted for by mechanistic theories. Thus, the from Aristotle's dictum ``no thoughts without phan-
demonstration in ``the noblest example of all'' that an tasms'' until well into the present century, cognition
inert and passive body and brain might give rise to had been considered and understood as being grounded
perception and perceptual cognition probably also has a in perception and imaginations (e.g. Goldstone and
religious motivation. Barsalou, 1998; Kirkebùen, 2000).
190 GEIR KIRKEBéEN

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