 If we take seriously the consideration that there is no room in Descartes’ ontology for unactualized possibilities, the real distinction between mind and body does not amount to their counterfactual  separation.[43]  God has willed the series of creatures from eternity, and the claim that mind and body can exist apart might amount to the claim that when a given mind and body are separated in the series, each is ontologically independent and so continues to  exist.[44]  That is, instead of reflecting that there is anything more in Descartes’ ontology than what is contained in the series that God wills and preordains, the claim that mind and body can exist apart might amount to Descartes’ note in “Synopsis of these following six Meditations” that in the Sixth Meditation he is attempting to re-assure us that “the decay of the body does not imply the destruction of them mind” (AT 7:13, CSM 1:10).