During the seventeenth century, the French philosopher René Descartes laid the foundations for the beginnings of Cartesian dualism. In contrast, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes opposed dualism in favor of materialism. Recently, Cartesian dualism, and dualism in general, have fallen out of favor as materialism has emerged as a more plausible and explanatory theory regarding the interrelationships between body and mind. Translation Descartes' writing in the Meditations is much more cryptic than Hobbes' writing in Leviathan. Making Hobbes' claims much easier to understand. Hobbes provides a reasonable explanation against dualism in his objections to Descartes, and in his Leviathan he provides context on his reasoning in those objections. Dualism may be less popular than materialism in current philosophy, but that may simply be because dualism has more or less reached a kind of block as far as its further development is concerned, and has nothing to do with the writings of Descartes or Hobbes . Descartes and Hobbes may have influenced many of the early arguments between philosophers of mind on the topic of mind-body interaction, as Hobbes was probably the first objector to Descartes' dualism. René Descartes laid the foundations for Cartesian dualism in his Meditations on First Philosophy. Descartes provides most of his dualist vision in the second and sixth meditations. Dualism is the belief, or school, within the philosophy of mind that the mind and body are separate. Cartesian dualism, in particular, is essentially substance dualism, which holds that the mind and body are separate substances—in Descartes' case, the mind is spiritual and the body is physical. This view was common during Hobbe... middle of paper... with respect to body-borne detections of particular bodies during their particular movements. Descartes tries to distance things from the body; Descartes' focus on certainty leads him towards dualism, as he argues that the senses deceive. For Cartesian dualism, this is perfectly operable; the deception of the senses to the mind can occur due to some disconnection. Furthermore, Hobbes and materialism might be correct in this case, since all thought refers to sense. In the seventeenth century, dualism may have been the most viable theory; however, nowadays, materialism offers a simpler explanation regarding the problems of mind-body interaction and thought. Hobbes clearly outlines a very basic idea of ​​materialism before modern materialist theories such as functionalism become reality. Works Cited Thomas Hobbes Leviathan, Meditations by René Descartes