ABSTRACT
In the western philosophical tradition, there is a very prevalent tendency to equate the mind with the conscious self. This tendency is exemplified in the framework of Descartes' Meditations, which, not withstanding the abundant criticism this text has received over the centuries, in some sense still provides the most definitive and well articulated expression of the presuppositions underlying the modern western conception of mind. Descartes unhesitatingly identifies the referent of the indexical expression ‘I’ with res cogitans, the thinking substance, and thereby conceives the mind and self as one. For Descartes, thinking substance is of course metaphysically independent of extended substance, which engenders his familiar (and surprisingly resilient) dualism between mind and matter. Also without hesitation, Descartes takes conscious thought and subjective experience to be unqualified constituents of mental substance, and this particular mode of classification has become so much a part of our conceptual heritage that the dividing line he draws (even if not the attendant metaphysical commitment) seems almost self-evident. Surely, if a dualism with matter is to be entertained, then thoughts and subjective presentations belong on the non-material side of the dividing line.
