The Relationship Between The Mind And Body That I Find...

In this paper, I will examine a particular model of the relationship between the mind and body that I find especially attractive: Margaret Cavendish’s Panpsychism. In my discussion of Cavendish’s Panpsychism, I will contrast it with two other models -- namely, Descartes’s Substance Dualism and Hobbes’s Materialism -- to accentuate particular nuances of the model. Next, I will provide reasoning for why I find Cavendish’s Panpsychism so attractive. After, I will consider the strongest argument I believe one could make against my specific support of Cavendish’s Panpsychism; an objection known as the â€Å"Combination Problem.† Finally, I will provide a rebuttal to this objection; one that will render my argument in favor of Cavendish’s Panpsychism even stronger. Margaret Cavendish’s Panpsychism is similar, yet dissimilar, to Panpsychism, as it is generically defined. The generic definition of Panpsychism is the following: à ¢â‚¬Å"the doctrine that mind is a fundamental feature of the world which exists throughout the universe† (Seager). Because Panpsychism fails to provide both a detailed explanation of the nature of the mind and an explanation for how the mind and body interact, it can not be considered a substantive model of the relationship between the mind and body (Skrbina). However, Cavendish succeeds in rendering Panpsychism a substantive model (from here on the word ‘model’ will be an abbreviation for the phrase ‘model of the relationship between the mind and body’). She does so