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Cartesian Dualism Essay

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Cartesian Dualism Essay
Embodiment of the act of transplantation in cosmopolitan medicine:

Embodiment theory can encompass many different facets of cosmopolitan medicine. Embodiment commences with the somatic existence, but is more than just a state of physically being. It is a culmination of the physiological body and the psychological mind (Cahill and Farley 1995). "The body, or the embodiment of the subject ... is to be understood as neither a biological nor a sociological category, but rather as a point of overlapping [among] the physical, the symbolic, and the sociologicaI" (Braidotti, 1993; 7). A person is a reflection of the embodied social, cultural, and symbolic values they encounter within society. A dialectic therefore exists between the physicality …show more content…
In organ transplantation the idea of embodiment is really challenged by biomedicine as the integrity of the body is violated by a …show more content…
There is strong support in academic circles for the concept of Cartesian dualism as a model to explain the understanding of the human form. Defined by Descartes, Cartesian dualism is the philosophy of the mind-body duality that is believed to exist within the human form. It separates the “mind from the body, spirit from matter, and real (i.e., visible, palpable) from unreal” (Scheper-Hughes and Lock, 1987; 208). Cartesian dualism identifies the separation that exists between the mind and the body. The concept of Cartesian dualism is troubled in a global context as each locality has a contradictory understanding of the mind body separation. The normalization of the body can be culturally specific based on the knowledge reproduction of the area as a result of historical, political and social contexts, which have informed the process (Lock and Nguyen, 2010). A primary example would of the variations in knowledge reproduction put forward by Lock (2002) surrounding the Japanese interpretation of brain death in heart transplant donor patients. Here she highlights the troubled understanding of the meaning of death by the Japanese people. They have
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