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Descartes and the Algebra of Soul
Review of Descartes: An Intellectual Biography and Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain
Paul Miers
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Stephen Gaukroger, Descartes: An Intellectual Biography. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995. 499 pages.
Antonio R. Damasio, Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Putnam, 1995. 312 pages.
Descartes' error, Antonio Damasio tells us, was his belief in "the abyssal separation between body and mind . . . " (250). As Damasio notes, there are certainly many specific "errors" in Descartes' writings--that heat causes the circulation of the blood, for example, or that movement is translated instantaneously through the plenum from one object to another--but all these notions have been "corrected" by subsequent theory in ways that we can imagine Descartes himself might easily accept. The......
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Approximate Word Count: 733
Approximate Pages: 3 (260 words per double-spaced page) |