Assembled by Christopher Lay

Los Angeles Pierce College

Department of Philosophy & Sociology

Princess Elisabth's Argument Against Descartes' Mind/Body Dualism

from her 1643 Letter   

"I beseech you tell me how the soul of man (since it is but a thinking substance) can determine the spirits of the body to produce voluntary actions.  For it seems every determination of movement happens from an impulsion of the thing moved, according to the matter in which it is pushed by that which moves it, or else, depends on the qualification and figure of the superficies of the latter.  Contact is required for the first two conditions, and extension for the third.  You entirely exclude extension from your notion of the soul, and contact seems to be incompatible with an immaterial thing.  That is why I ask of you a definition of the soul more particular that in your Metaphysic–that is to say, for a definition of substance separate from its action, though.  (Elisabeth, qtd in Blom, 106)."  Quoted in Bruce and Barbone's (2011) Just the Arguments, p. 299-300.