GCCCD Descartes Mind Body Problem Discussion

I’m working on a philosophy discussion question and need guidance to help me learn.

Descartes, taking off from a framework that Plato began centuries earlier, claims that we are both mind and body–both material and immaterial. But how does this work exactly? I can understand how things that “seem” immaterial can interact with material things, for instance, that my thoughts and emotions (seemingly immaterial but really chemical states in my brain) can effect how I move my body and make my way around in the world, but that’s because they’re not really immaterial after all. They are just smaller sized bits of matter than my body–both material things. But if, as Descartes claims, I am made of body and mind–where mind does not equal brain or it’s chemical/physical states, then I have trouble understanding how mind and body relate to one another at all.

What do you think? What’s at stake in how we answer the question of whether we are just bodies and brains–all material, or if we are bodies and minds–material and immaterial? What do we stand to lose? What do we stand to gain?