...In the beginning of the Meditations on First Philosophy, by René Descartes, he talks about dreams and how if we can't distinguish reality from illusion then how can we fully trust our senses. Our basic perception of the world and knowledge could be false because if we can’t differentiate our dreams from reality then how do we know that our perception of the world is true. How could we established beyond doubt the possibility of certain knowledge? If we can’t tell if we are awake or dreaming when we are asleep then our perception of the world is misleading. I agree with Descartes because many times I have woken up from a dream thinking that my dream was real. Our dreams can deceive us because the way we are able to sense in our dream and the...
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...Compare and contrast the Matrix with the readings from Plato and Descartes. What are their similarities and differences? It is important to note that Plato, the Allegory of the Cave, the Matrix, and Rene Descartes all question the validity of our sense perception. Plato, Allegory of the Cave, picture men as prisoner dwelling in cave bound with chain and can only see the shadow on the wall and not able to move” ( Plato, The Republic, Book VII, 514AI-518D8 ). Descartes, “suppose we are dreaming, that all these particulars namely, the opening of the eyes, the motion of the head, the putting fourth of the hands or merely illusion” (Descartes, Meditation on First Philosophy, 1641). The Matrix, complain that computer system has taken over the entire human race and control their minds and keep their brain connected via cable” Synopsis, The Matrix, 1999). The two with the most differences and similarities are the Matrix and Allegory of the Cave. Both Plato, allegory of the Cave and Synopsis; the Matrix both told of stories that people were being deceived about the truth. They further states that people were living in a world where they experience an illusion or some kind of dream. As the story continues, I notice that both Plato and the Matrix believe they have justified reason to support their belief. This brought me back to an encounter Jesus had with Nicodemus the teacher of Israel, who wanted to know what he must do to be saved. Nicodemus asked Jesus, can a man enter his mother’s...
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...named René Descartes (pronounced "ray-NAY day-CART") came up with a way to put these two subjects together. Rene Descartes was born on March 31, 1596, in Touraine, France. He was entered into Jesuit College at the age of eight, where he studied for about eight years. Although he studied the classics, logic and philosophy, Descartes only found mathematics to be satisfactory in reaching the truth of the science of nature. He then received a law degree in 1616. Thereafter, Descartes chose to join the army and served from 1617-1621. Descartes resigned from the army and traveled extensively for five years. During this period, he continued studying pure mathematics. Finally, in 1628, he devoted his life to seeking the truth about the science of nature. At that point, he moved to Holland and remained there for twenty years, dedicating his time to philosophy and mathematics. During this time, Descartes had his work "Meditations on First Philosophy" published. It was in this work that he introduced the famous phrase "I think, therefore I am." Descartes hoped to use this statement to find truth by the use of reason. He sought to take complex ideas and break them down into simpler ones that were clear. Descartes believed that mathematics was the only thing that is certain or true. Therefore, it could be used to reason the complex ideas of the universe into simpler ideas that were true. In 1638, La Geometrie was published. This work was responsible for making Descartes famous...
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...Name Tutor Course Date Descartes Premise for Distinguishing Body and Mind In the Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes discusses the nature of the body and mind. By drawing from three lines of thought, Descartes launches a powerful premise that the body is something distinct from the mind. He conceptualizes his argument by using the uncertainty of knowledge argument, appealing to God’s omnipotence, and describing the indivisibility of the body and mind. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to discuss and analyze Descartes’s premise for distinguishing the body and mind. In the first Meditation, Descartes begins by discussing a topic that seems far removed from the subject, yet instrumental to his argument. He questions the certainty of reality or truth of worldly opinions. In meditations 1.5, he notes that his opinions about the world are based on senses and argues that he cannot be certain that his senses deceive him. He argues that he cannot be sure that what he thinks of as his perceptions of the world are not dreams (Cress 36). Because there is no mechanism for distinguishing sleep from wake, Descartes says that he is also uncertain about the existence of the body. In addition, he argues that an evil demon may be deceiving him about the existence of the sky, air, colors, sounds, and bodies yet such things are illusions of dreams (Cress 41). By reflecting on the scenario of the evil demon and dreaming, Descartes doubts whether external things such as the body...
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...Rene Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy Rene Descartes’ third meditation from his book Meditations on First Philosophy, examines Descartes’ arguments for the existence of God. The purpose of this essay will be to explore Descartes’ reasoning and proofs of God’s existence. In the third meditation, Descartes states two arguments attempting to prove God’s existence, the Trademark argument and the traditional Cosmological argument. Although his arguments are strong and relatively truthful, they do no prove the existence of God. At the start of the meditation, Descartes begins by rejecting all his beliefs, so that he would not be deceived by any misconceptions from reaching the truth. Descartes acknowledges himself as, “a thing that thinks: that is, a thing that doubts, affirms, denies, understands a few things, is ignorant of many things” He is certain that that he thinks and exists because his knowledge and ideas are both ‘clear and distinct’. Descartes proposes a general rule, “that whatever one perceives very clearly and very distinctly is true” Descartes discovers, “that he can doubt what he clearly and distinctly perceives is true led to the realization that his first immediate priority should be to remove the doubt” because, “no organized body of knowledge is possible unless the doubt is removed” The best probable way to remove the doubt is prove that God exists, that he is not a deceiver and “will always guarantee that any clear and distinct ideas that Descartes...
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...December 2nd, 2015 The Delusion Dilemma Rene Descartes once proposed a tedious accusation about dreaming, and how our senses that we use to perceive what is considered reality should not be trusted fully. In the Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes attempts to convey the fascinating illusion of always being in a dream without a certain ability to distinguish what is actually reality or what is a dream, or at bare minimum prove that there are no certain marks to prove otherwise. He states, “…as I think about this more carefully, I see plainly that there are never any sure signs by means of which being awake can be distinguished from being asleep. The result is that I begin to feel dazed, and this very feeling only reinforces the notion that I may be asleep” (First Meditation). In my attempts to contrast what Descartes argument was comprised of and what certain illusions made him feel this way about our perception of physical existence. I turned my attention to his famous dream argument originally brought forth in his Mediation on First Philosophy, and will be using different ideologies between a John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, two famous English philosophers who have attempted to refute Rene Descartes’s dream argument by providing useful and insightful situations to further explain against the idea, as well as provide my own insight in concluding that we are not dreaming right now. It should be noted that within the context of Meditations, which is atypical from traditional...
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...MODULE 5 – G2 – ESSAY DEGREE PROGRAM THEOLOGY/TURABIAN PRESENTED TO PROFESSOR DR. GREG SCHNEEBERGER FOR PHIL 201 – D09 BY REV. JOSEPH T. WHITAKER, III LU23755920 LIBERTY UNIVERSITY LYNCHBURG, VA SEPTEMBER 10, 2015 2 Question One Compare and contrast The Matrix with the readings from Plato and Descartes. What are some similarities and differences? The Matrix describes a fictitious possibility of a virtual existence of the world and especially the world’s human population, unbeknownst by the majority of people involved in the virtual reality known as the Matrix. Certain players in the Matrix scenario are awakened to the proposition that perhaps their life experience is an orchestrated delusion, set into motion by certain governing powers, in an attempt to obtain and maintain absolute control upon the masses. An important character in the Matrix named, Morpheus, brings the deceptive virtual reality to the attention of other participants in the Matrix, in an effort to help awaken them to the real truth of their existence. It is discovered that rather than the daily life experience and existence of the population of the world, the people are actually unconscious of the absolute reality that they are all in a clinical state of suspended animation. This virtual reality of the...
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...RENE DESCARTES’ METHODS OF DOUBT Introduction The theory of knowledge and analytical method advanced by the French philosopher Rene Descartes is often summed up in the famous phrase, Cogito ergo sum- “I think, therefore I am.” While this phrase does express the final step in his systematic process of “doubting everything,” it is a gross over-simplification of Descartes’ methods. Descartes did use systematic doubt to find the starting point for his theory of knowledge, but his other philosophical inquiries involved several different methods of doubting, from simply imagining that which is contradictory, to carrying logical postulates to absurd conclusions, to the more traditional methods of testing syllogisms and analyzing proofs. In this essay, I will examine Rene Descartes’ various methods of doubt, to show that the philosopher did not rely on the single reductio ad absurdum in his famous proof of his own existence. Descartes, as we will see, employed several different approaches to philosophical proofs, and he was not the mechanistic logician that his mathematical background might suggest. It will be the argument of this essay that Descartes applied different methods of doubt to different problems, depending upon whether the problem was epistemological, scientific or theological in nature. Existential Doubt: Do I Exist? The first and best-known method of doubt employed by Descartes involves reductionism, in the sense that he used a negative or reverse logical path...
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...premise is that Descartes presupposes something, such as the existence of the all-perfect God, to prove that the premise is true, the existence of the all-perfect God. Many critics argue that he creates a circular argument, hence “Cartesian Circle” and with a circular argument nothing concrete is really being proven. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Descartes argument can be broken down into two main steps (Newman). The first step sheds light in the Third Meditations, where Descartes makes arguments for the existence of an all-perfect God. The second step is where Descartes takes the now established premise to argue that the all-perfect God exists. In short, Descartes is arguing that since he thinks, he exists and since he exists, an all-perfect God exists. Finally, since the all-perfect God exists, he thinks. This creates a circular argument according to his critics. One of the objections to Descartes is in reference to the atheists. Descartes argument would lead us to believe that since atheists do not believe in the existence of the all-perfect God. The example used is the sum of the angles of a triangle equating to the angles of two right angles (Second Objections, DSW, p. 139). The critic would argue that under Descartes philosophy atheists, by default do not believe in the higher being, thus would not be able to have the knowledge to comprehend the idea that two right angles equal the sum of all the angles of a triangle. Descartes somewhat concedes...
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...Descartes’ Mind Body Dualism Rene Descartes’ main purpose is to attempt to prove that the mind that is the soul or the thinking thing is distinct and is separate from the body. This thinking thing was the core of himself, which doubts, believes, reasons, feels and thinks. Descartes considers the body to be an extended unthinking thing; therefore it is possible that one may exist without the other. This view is known as mind-body dualism. He believes that what he is thinking in his mind is what God created and instilled in him. Descartes outlines many arguments to support and prove his claims of his discoveries. He states that because he can think, his mind exists. This is known as the Cogito, which is the first existential principal of all of Descartes’ work where modern philosophy begins. Descartes also explains that it is possible that all knowledge of external objects, including his body could be false because of the deceiving actions of an evil genius. The evil genius could make him contemplate his existence of his nature as a thinking thing. Descartes further explains in his arguments, even physical objects, such as the body, are better and more distinctly known through the mind than through the body. Descartes shows this through his example of The Wax Argument, where solid wax transitions into liquid state. With all of this in mind, Descartes theories suggest the mind and body can exist separately but it can be argued, the mind needs the body in order to think and reason...
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...Ahmad Compare and contrast Aristotle‘s concept of mind with that of Descartes. Introduction In this essay I attempt to show Aristotle’s concept of soul/mind*[1]. Then I compare and contrast it with Descartes’ concept of mind. In order to understand Aristotle’s concepts of mind, I shall consider Aristotle’s De Anima, in which Aristotle mostly concentrates on soul/mind discussion. I will examine the work of Kahn and Sorabji, who both considered Aristotle’s and Descartes’ philosophy in relation to soul and body problem. In order to compare Aristotle’s concept of mind with Descartes’, I am going to introduce Descartes’ most famous philosophical work which involves the question of mind directly, namely hisMeditations. …………………………. …………………………… ………………………………. If we look at Aristotle’s De Anima we can understand that pre-Aristotle thinkers were already concerned with corporeal and incorporeal problems. For example, for Plato soul was an ‘incorporeal’ and immortal thing, but body corporeal and mortal. The first impression we get from reading De Anima is that the mind and body problem was unsolved. Perhaps the resolved problem didn’t satisfy Aristotle. Aristotle claims that an incorporeal thing cannot exist without a corporeal thing. Aristotle’s new theory for solving soul and body problems makes controversial debate among most post-Aristotelian philosophers. Rene Descartes was one of them who rejected the Aristotelian concept of mind in...
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...computer. Sense information is imputed to the brain from the computer by a computer network administrator. For example, information telling the brain, “You are running in Italy, and you smell pizza.” The brain perceives this information as reality. The movie The Matrix is based on the Brain in the Vat. The Matrix, Rene Descartes, Meditation I Of The Things Of Which We May Doubt and Plato’s, “The Allegory of the Cave,” all hold similarities to the Brain in the Vat; therefore they hold similarities to each other. Although they hold similarities to each other there are also some differences between these three reasons. The similarities between the movie The Matrix, Plato’s cave analogy and Descartes’ Meditation I are that they questioned what they knew to be their world—whether it was reality or a dream; they each wanted to leave what they knew to be their world or reality to discover what they individually sensed to be a true reality. They are equivalent in that their perception of the real world started during each ones childhood. In The Matrix, Neo is controlled by a simulated computer system. In Plato’s cave the prisoners are controlled by mankind. Descartes is controlled by his false perceptions of evil demons. In The Matrix, the movie ends with Neo declaring his determination to share with the people the truth about The Matrix and them living in a true world on their own apart from control. Plato deliberates on the effect the cave leaves on one...
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...Rene Descartes When the term modern philosophy is mentioned, it is usually to make a distinction from ancient and medieval philosophy therefore it does not only mean the philosophy of the 21st century, it means, the philosopher Rene Descartes. Therefore in practice what the term, modern philosophy means is, philosophy from Descartes onwards. He was best known for his quote, ‘Cogito ergo sum’ (I think, therefore I am). Descartes was born on March 31st 1596, in La Haye, a small town in France. He was educated in classics, logic and the philosophy of Aristotle at the Jesuit college of Henri IV in La Fleche. After he graduated he studied at the University of Poitiers, obtaining his law license in 1616. He then joined the army and during his spare time he studied mathematics (Gaukroger and Hall, 1995). In 1619, he experienced the series of powerful dreams, which influenced him greatly in his pursuit of science and knowledge, and he acknowledged this ass his focal point of his life (Gaukroger and Hall, 1995). Descartes spent time in various parts of Europe before he settled in Dutch Republic. He maintained his studies and lived in various places throughout the Republic. During this time, he began his writing career, and he started to publish his new works that would revolutionize mathematics and philosophy, these works included the world, meditation of first philosophy, principles of philosophy and passions of the soul. His mathematical theories provided the basis for the...
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...No Minds for Computers In this paper I will argue why computers can’t have a mind. In order to prove my argument, I will focus on two reasons. First I’ll argue how computers are created and controlled by humans. Then I will explain why computers don’t have the ability to think on their own. These two arguments will demonstrate why computers aren't able to have a mind. First let me elaborate what I mean by computers being created and controlled by humans. Computers are created to perform one or multiple tasks that make human life easier. Humans initiate very complicated programs in modern computers that allows the machines to fulfill millions of different tasks. The key here is that humans program these computers to complete tasks, giving the hardware only one duty which is given only by the human. So am I saying that programming is what makes a computer? Well lets take a deeper look at programming. Programming is simply providing a computer with coded instructions for the automatic performance of a particular task. Lets take an example of how a program works in a computer. In a paper written by John R. Searle, Minds, Brains, And Programming, John talks about how he pretends to be a program in a computer. In this program he is locked in a room and is given the task of answering questions in Chinese symbols. John has never spoken, written or understood any Chinese before. Outside the room will be Chinese natives asking and receiving Johns answers. John is given a manual...
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... 1. Compare and contrast The Matrix with the readings from Plato and Descartes. What are some similarities and differences? All three; “The Matrix”, “The Allegory of the Cave” the more eloquent “Meditation 1 of the Things of Which We May Doubt” all seem to center on the same metaphysical question of; what is real? The Matrix is much like a modern version of The Allegory of the Cave in which both the perception based reality is explored with their costs and limitations involved. It seems to me that Rene’ Descartes “Meditations on first philosophy 1641 is simply better articulated, perhaps making the same point of doubt. Whenever reading Descartes's writings “I think therefore I am” (p36 Dew & Foreman) as a rather stable foundation is always on my mind. I am not sure if this is an affinity for the strong foundation or my personal aversion to allegories but I find it quite amazing that Descartes’s century’s old writings are so relevant and understandable. Contextual similar with each other it seems the differences are mainly with presentation only. The most apparent contrast to me is that while addressing the same sort of questions that The Matrix and The allegory of the cave share the connection between the characters Neo and Plato’s prisoner while Descartes story is on a more personal level with his concern with doubt of his senses causing reservations for any and all topics of belief. I think Descartes way of dealing with skepticism is a good perspective to look at questionable...
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