'The fact that I can conceive of a mind as existing separately to a body is enough to prove that the mind and body are distinct substances’ 25 marks

Firstly we cannot conceive of a mind without a body. Descartes claims that he can conceive of the mind and body being distinct from one another. However, this is not the case, when we attempt to conceive of the mind without a body we may think of ourselves as floating above our bodies or perhaps just ourselves in blackness with no physical substances around us. Both of these are wrong however, to truly conceive of a mind without a body then we would have to be able to conceive of an existence without senses. Our body contains our sense which we use to form an image of the world. If we were just a mind then we would have no senses. To try and conceive of an existence without sense is impossible. This is because even if we think of existing in a black space with no physical objects we are still being constrained by our senses, we are still perceiving the black. Therefore since we cannot conceive of an existence without senses we cannot conceive of mind without body. This is a strong claim as it shows how the main supposition of the statement given is incorrect, if we cannot conceive of mind without body then we cannot conceive of substance dualism being true because that is what the theory posits. So, this criticism has effectively weakened the substance dualist position greatly. This is supported by Ryle’s assertion that dualism makes a category mistake. Ryle claims that the language we use to refer to the mind makes a category mistake in its application. This is the same instance taking place, we are making a category mistake by describing what our existence as a mind may be like by using our senses. How can we describe an existence without sense using senses? We cannot it is a category mistake. This solidifies the criticism further as it shows that other philosophers have had similar critiques of dualism. Meaning that the position maintained by the substance dualist is also extremely weak as we cannot conceive of a mind without a body which contradict the substance dualists main claim.