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some control over our bodies; feelings of anxiety can lead to an increased heartbeat and embarrassment can lead to blushing. This is where there seems to be a real weakness in Cartesian dualism. Descartes himself was aware of this weakness and attempted, fairly arbitrarily and unconvincingly, to attribute a gland in the brain, the pineal gland, with soul contacting powers. He suggested that this unexplained gland was the "seat of the soul", the touchstone, the causal interaction that allowed the mind to move matter. Cartesian dualism is dualism at its most extreme and has been largely discredited both philosophically and scientifically. On the other hand from the theist perspective known as Occasionalism, the causal link between the soul and the body could be said to be God. Every time a decision is made whether it be to give money to the poor or simply to stand up it is God that transfers these thoughts to our bodies.

Another way of explaining our experience of thought, as being on some kind of higher plain than the mere physical, is the theory of Parallelism. This is the idea - an exponent of which was Gottfried Leibniz - that the body and soul are entirely different but simply run parallel to one another. There is no actual causal link but the thoughts we have are in sync with the actions of our bodies. This depends on a theist point of view in that it is dependant on God ensuring our thoughts and bodies are working in harmony. It can be likened to a film and its soundtrack they are two separate things but they are clearly interrelated. Leibniz felt that the primary reality was our mentality and despite having physicality it is not important and is finite as opposed to the soul's immortality. There is also a theory - known as Subjective Idealism - that not only are our minds and bodies separate but it is the mental world that is the truth and the physical world that is an illusion without reality.
A Dualist viewpoint can seem at times a little fanciful, with some kind of spirit or soul within which our personality is contained, but the alternatives on the other hand, can appear too reductionist . Thomas Hobbes took the materialist view that the universe is "matter in motion, nothing else." He felt that thought and the working of our brains, are one and the same thing. The chemical processes and the firing of the synapses in our brains are the same as the thoughts we think. He claimed that "that which thinks is something corporeal" and therefore that without

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