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In Descartes’s view, the mind was made out of an ethereal substance, a fluid, that was stored in a receptacle in the brain. He called the fluid res cogitans. Mental substance. When he dissected the brain looking for the receptacle of the soul, he noticed that almost every brain structure came in pairs, one on each side. In his view, the human soul was a single, unified entity, and therefore it could not possibly be divided up and stored in two places.
Instead of proposing an explanation of consciousness, he attributed consciousness to a magic fluid. By what mechanism a fluid substance can cause the experience of consciousness, or where the fluid itself comes from, Descartes left unexplained—truly a case of pointing to a magician instead of explaining the trick.
On the subject of consciousness, therefore, Kant had a clear answer: there is no explaining the magic. It is simply supplied to us by divine act. Quite literally, the magician did it.
