Cartesianism is the name given to the philosophical doctrine (or school) of René Descartes.

Cartesians view the mind as being wholly separate from the corporeal body. Sensation and the perception of reality are thought to be the source of untruth and illusions, with the only reliable truths to be had in the existence of a metaphysical mind. Such a mind can perhaps interact with a physical body, but it does not exist in the body, nor even in the same physical plane as the body. In general the Cartesian divides the world into three areas of existence: that inhabited by the physical body (matter), that inhabited by the mind, and that inhabited by God.

In Holland, where Descartes had lived for a long time, Cartesianism was a doctrine popular mainly among university professors and lecturers. In Germany the influence of this doctrine was not relevant and followers of Cartesianism in the German-speaking border regions between these countries (e.g., the iatromathematician Yvo Gaukes from East Frisia) frequently chose to publish their works in Holland. In France, it was very popular, and gained influence also among Jansenists such as Antoine Arnauld, though there also, as in Italy, it became opposed by the church. In Italy, the doctrine failed to make inroads, probably since Descartes' works were placed on the Index in 1663.

Vincent Colapietro is a Liberal Arts Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University (University Park Campus). His education includes a bachelors degree from Saint Anselm College, a masters degree from Marquette University and a Ph.D. from Marquette University. While his principal area of historical research is classical American pragmatism (especially Peirce, James, and Dewey), he has wide and varied scholarly interests. They range from such literature, film, and music (above all, jazz) to semiotics, poststructuralism, and psychoanalysis, from social and political philosophy to philosophical and experimental psychology. He is the author of Peirce’s Approach to the Self, A Glossary of Semiotics, and Fateful Shapes of Human Freedom as well as scores of articles. The main focus of his current research is the intersections between pragmatism and psychoanalysis. His writings have been translated into a variety of languages, including French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Bulgarian, and Japanese. Chair of the Advisory Board of the Peirce Edition Project (the Project is responsible for producing a critical edition of Peirce’s voluminous scientific and philosophical writings). Co-editor of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy. He is past president of the Metaphysical Society of America, the Semiotic Society of America, and the Charles S. Peirce Society.

Lynne Rudder Baker (b. 14 February 1944) is an American philosopher and author, currently a "Distinguished Professor" at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is a native of Atlanta. She got her Ph.D. in 1972 from Vanderbilt University. She was a fellow of the National Humanities Center (1983–1984) and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (1988–1989). She joined the faculty of UMass Amherst in 1989. She is the author of several books, notably Saving Belief: A Critique of Physicalism (1987), Explaining Attitudes: A Practical Approach to the Mind (1995), Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View (2000), and The Metaphysics of Everyday Life: An Essay in Practical Realism (2007). Along with several other scholars, Baker delivered the 2001 Gifford Lectures in Natural Theology at the University of Glasgow, published as The Nature and Limits of Human Understanding (ed. Anthony Sanford, T & T Clark, 2003). She is a member of the Amherst Grace Episcopal Church.

Baker imputes to scientists generally the view that human beings are just another species rather than a special creation of God:

Raymond Tallis F.Med.Sci., F.R.C.P., F.R.S.A. (born 1946 in Liverpool) is a British philosopher, secular humanist, poet, novelist, cultural critic and retired medical doctor.

On leaving Liverpool College, Tallis gained an Open Scholarship to Keble College, Oxford where he completed a degree in animal physiology in 1967. He completed his medical degree in 1970 at the University of Oxford and St Thomas' Hospital in London. From 1996 to 2000, he was Consultant Adviser in Care of the Elderly to the Chief Medical Officer. In 1999-2000, he was Vice-Chairman of the Stroke Task Force of the Advisory Group developing the National Service Framework for Older People. He has been on the Standing Medical Advisory Committee and the Council of the Royal College of Physicians and was secretary of the Joint Specialist Committee of the Royal College on Health Care of the Elderly between 1995 and 2003. He was a member of the Joint Task Force on Partnership in Medicine Taking, established by Alan Milburn, the Secretary of State for Health, in 2001. For three years he was a member of one of the appraisal panels of the National Institute of Clinical Excellence. He retired in 2006 as Emeritus Professor of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Manchester.

Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (French pronunciation: [ʒak lakɑ̃]; April 13, 1901 – September 9, 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's intellectuals in the 1960s and the 1970s, especially the post-structuralist philosophers. His interdisciplinary work was as a "self-proclaimed Freudian....'It is up to you to be Lacanians if you wish. I am a Freudian'"; and featured the unconscious, the castration complex, the ego, identification, and language as subjective perception. His ideas have had a significant impact on critical theory, literary theory, 20th-century French philosophy, sociology, feminist theory, film theory and clinical psychoanalysis.

Lacan was born in Paris, the eldest of Emilie and Alfred Lacan's three children. His father was a successful soap and oils salesman. His mother was ardently Catholic—his younger brother went to a monastery in 1929 and Lacan attended the Jesuit Collège Stanislas. During the early 1920s, Lacan attended right-wing Action Française political meetings and met the founder, Charles Maurras. By the mid-1920s, Lacan had become dissatisfied with religion and quarrelled with his family over it.