Did Descartes believe that souls wonder like ghosts?

Question:I was curious if René Descartes would agree that a disembodied soul is kinda like ghosts that are seen in movies?
I guess another way of asking this question would be: would Descartes think that a soul has a certain size, shape, & appearance with the ability to travel from room to room (like in a haunted mansion)?
Thanks.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: I was curious if René Descartes would agree that a disembodied soul is kinda like ghosts that are seen in movies?
I guess another way of asking this question would be: would Descartes think that a soul has a certain size, shape, & appearance with the ability to travel from room to room (like in a haunted mansion)?
Thanks.

No.

Cartesian dualism is all about atonement.

Shape and/or Size?

No, there was no way of justifying that state or form of the mind beyond "Cogito ergo sum".

No, he did not. Descartes was much more intelligent than that. Ghosts do not exist. They are products of superstitious imaginations.

I don't know what he says or thinks but The ancient Vedas say that if a soul dies abruptly such as accident, murder, and alos suicide, they will remain as a disembodied soul or ghost. The soul is described as one tenth the size of the tip of a hair and can not be measured by any instrument. But a conditioned soul in a subtle ghost body thinks they are thier previous body they where in. They don't realize they are dead. (left their body)So they project the image of their body within thier mind and they can also project that image to other beings. So that is why some people can somewhat see them. It is a blury view of a subtle body. But some only can hear them and some can just percieve their energy. But they are no more their body than you are your body. We are not these mortal bodie, we are all eternal spirit souls, part and Parcel of the Suprme Soul. We never die, only this mortal body dies. It is only due to bodily and mental attachment that one remains a ghost and houvers within this material world after death. They suffer incessently in their mind the misery the experienced at the time of death and they have no senses to enjoy, so they always look for other living beings to disturb. IT is a hellish condition of life. It is also said that those whos bodies are not creamated will houver here due to attachment to their body and also those very attached to family, friends, or a place will stay after death in a ghost body. They are everywhere. Some can percieve them, some can not. Cats, some dogs, hourses and some other animals can percieve them. What ever ones consciousness is at the time of death one will then attain in their next existence. That is why self realization (Bhakti Yoga) is so important, so not to have any material attachment, so at the end of ones life they can return to the eternal kingdom and be completely happy.

The time he lived in was the awakening. It was normal to try and explain everything. He was courageous enough to tackle the "ether" layer that was whispered/spoken about. This was all about explaining ghostly apparitions which no doubt existed then like they still still do now. No one did. He was not able to explain it philosophically but no other philosopher had the balls to speculate on the subject matter.

From:http://www.rod.beavon.clara.net/leonardo...

Mid-seventeenth-century Europe was a veritable market-place of competing philosophies of nature in the wake of the confusion that followed the eclipse of Aristotelianism. Though historians of science generally speak of the rise of the 'mechanical philosophy' at this period, one should remember that this is a portmanteau designation for several quite distinct 'systems' that shared the speculative premise that energy was transmitted by particulate collision. The most uncompromising of mechanists was Thomas Hobbes (better known today as a political philosopher) who argued that matter and the laws of motion could be made to explain everything, from celestial mechanics to the appearance of ghosts. Rene Descartes saw all physical, but not spiritual, phenomena as occasioned by an endlessly agitated aether, the vortices and swirls of which carried along the particles that produced physical motion. Pierre

Gassendi revived the once-called Godless doctrine of atomism, and conceived of matter in terms of the geometrical arrangement of fundamental particles guided by the hand of God. And especially popular in England were the ideas of Francis Bacon, which were concerned less with the inner-most structures of matter in motion and more with developing the correct experimental method and arranging the results into taxonomic schemes.

Robert Boyle, in his chemical investigations, was drawn to a Christianized version of the atomic theory, where the geometrical arrangement of the atoms defined the chemical characteristics of the substance. And as a Baconian, Boyle devised meticulous courses of experiments by which he hoped to test these ideas. As Boyle's assistant, one can expect Robert Hooke to have been influenced by his master's ideas, though there are important points of divergence.