Descartes did a sneaky thing that has caused the ruin of psychology now....it's doomed.

He used 'Mind' as a substitution for 'Soul' to backdoor it into scientific discussion.

I embrace Cartesianism. He was right that there is something distinct between mental states and physical states and we aren't really any closer to figuring out how the two interact today than we were when he identified the problem.

It-was-a-dis-AS-ter. --Searle

It was needed at the time. Physics as we know it was trying to be born.

Yes, indeed Descartes was primarily focused on finding a metaphysical basis for science, i.e. a metaphysics in the service of science. The question remains, however, is whether or not science actually needed this basis.

The question remains, however, is whether or not science actually needed this basis. — darthbarracuda

I guess you could outline some alternate history.

Well, I mean science developed in conjunction with Descartes. Instead of science depending on metaphysics, it would be rather that metaphysics analyzes how science is possible, diagnosing the underlying structure.

Diagnosing the underlying structure of what?

Of intelligibility, of subject matter, of joints-of-reality, etc

I think that any idea can have positive and negative influences as distorted in the minds of people. The important thing I think is to look at both view points and place them in a context. Why do people feel this is a harmful philosophy, why do they feel it is a beneficial philosophy?

Without thought and language we would truly be like any other animal living on instinct. So the cogito ergo sum saying seems to imply at least that due to our capability to think we may call ourselves "human" and set ourselves apart from other species of animals.

However, descartes philosophy is interpreted also negatively in which case it is usually referred to as cartesian dualism. Dualism is the intuitive idea that there are always two sides of a coin so to speak: body and mind, day and night, white and black, etc. And I think no one would deny that contrast gives rise to perception. However, the "I" is always inclined to choose a side. Christ for example, when proclaiming what was good, in a way created the Anti Christ: that which is "bad" or "evil".

So thinking in strict dualities may be harmful, connecting these opposites and somehow creating a unity of complementary pairs out of them seems to be the solution.

Mind and body interact in immensely complex ways, we may not understand these mechanisms, but for sure these "realms" are not separate from each other. Without a body there would be no world to sense and there would be nothing to refer to. But without the mind nothing would be able to refer, there would be no "I" and experience would probably be an incoherent primordial soup, slightly laced by instinct.

Atop that, one must always take into account the difference between the actual words and the interpretation of the words.

Mind and body interact in immensely complex ways, we may not understand these mechanisms, but for sure these "realms" are not separate from each other. Without a body there would be no world to sense and there would be nothing to refer to. But without the mind nothing would be able to refer, there would be no "I" and experience would probably be an incoherent primordial soup, slightly laced by instinct — Wilco Lensink

Good points. The "I" that pretends to think learned a language as a child bumping into objects. The "i" is passionate, too. There is something profoundly "trans-physical" about words, though. Maybe this is what the legacy offers us, a focus on to what degree reality is made of (the meanings of) words.