Plato argued that the mind pre-existed and survived the body, going through a continual process of reincarnation or transmigration. Pythagoras on the other hands developed a school of thought that accepted the passage of the soul into another body. He opined that the soul never dies and it is destined to a cycle of rebirths until it is able to free itself from the cycle through the purity of its life 4. However, long before these philosophers' theories, the ancient scriptures taught that mankind was made in God's image and that Adam needed the spirit breathed into him before becoming a living soul 5. Dualism is of two types; property and substance dualism. Property Dualism (also sometimes known as Token Physicalism) maintains that the mind is a group of independent properties that emerge from the brain, but that it is not a distinct substance. Thus, when matter is organized in the appropriate way (i.e. in the way that living human bodies are organized), mental properties emerge. On the other hand, Substance Dualism (or Cartesian Dualism) argues that the mind is an independently existing substance the mental does not have extension in space, and the material cannot think. This is the type of Dualism most famously defended by Descartes, and it is compatible with most theologies which claim that immortal souls occupy an independent "realm" of existence distinct from that of the physical world 6. Almost 2000 years after Plato and Pythagoras reasoned that the human mind or soul could not be identified with the physical body, René Descartes reinforced this concept and gave it a name, dualism. Descartes' dualism which also known as Cartesian dualism will be examined consequently.
CARTESIAN DUALISM.
While the great philosophical distinction between mind and body in western thought can be traced to the Greeks, it is to the seminal work of René Descartes, French mathematician, philosopher, and physiologist, that we owe the first systematic account of the mind/body relationship.
