...101 April 17, 2014 Rene Descartes writes his Meditations on First Philosophy according to God and the soul. Both of these factors are addressed in all six of his meditations. Each meditation has its own theme and main objective that contribute to its explanation. Although Descartes writing was challenging to understand, I have found sources to help clarify and back up the ideas that have been stated. I will analysis the ideas Descartes has mentioned in the first three of his meditations. The first meditation: “Of the things which may be brought within the sphere of the doubtful” In this section, Descartes states that he does not trust his senses because they are deceptive. He questions the sciences and the deceptiveness that they have within them. The only science that he believes to be truthful is arithmetic and geometry. They are based on simple objects. The other sciences are untrustworthy because they come from composite ideas. Descartes states “there is nothing in all that I formerly believed to be true” God also plays a large part in the discussion of this meditation. He believes that God is not deceptive and only speaks the truth. The journal Substance and Action in Descartes and Newton states “from Descartes's point of view, we cannot think of God as extended because God lacks geometric properties, unlike ordinary material bodies, which have shapes, and whose parts have various shapes; we also cannot have a clear and distinct idea of God through our imagination...
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...Rene Descartes Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Value Theory Asma Naheed Introduction to Philosophy Mr. Ferguson 13 May 2016 Rene Descartes (1596-1650) was a very important philosopher in the 17th century. Many regard to Descartes as the father of modern philosopher. His famous statement "Cogito ero sum" is widely known and studied. He contributed much to mathematics as well as philosophy. What does my philosopher believe is real? One thing my philosopher believes is real is the certainty of the existence of god. René Descartes has an awareness about god. And acknowledges the existence of god. One of Descartes metaphysics is his certainty about god which is examined in his Fifth Mediations “Descartes holds that the idea of God is a true and immutable nature and hence it is not something that can be rejected at all in so far as it is ultimately an innate idea”. His view is similar like mine regarding the belief of god. Though his process for believing in god is quite different then of mine, we both have a strong belief in god. My View on Rene Descartes metaphysics regarding the existence of god is disagreement. Descartes argues that god exists beyond any doubt, but I disagree. My view is not like his because, I believe his proof of good relies mostly on false premises. Descartes argues that god exists but what is the actuality of god he does not answer. An example of this can be illustrated by a student doubting whether or not they will make a good grade on the...
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...2014 Rene Descartes: Mediations on First Philosophy Rene Descartes, known as one of the most influential philosophers of his time, is famously quoted to have been proven the existence of himself with the infamous statement, Cogito ergo sum or (in English) I think, therefore I am. Rene Descartes has claimed to have proven his own existence in this world by claiming that he is in fact a thinking thing, and that therefore he must be something that exists. This raises the question, how can Descartes truly prove to us that in fact he thinks, and how can he prove that since he thinks he therefore can say that he exists? In this essay I will be explaining the reasoning’s of proof as to why Descartes says that he thinks and that therefore he exists, and I will give sufficient support as to why Rene Descartes is in fact correct about his claims that he has stated in his Philosophy of Mediations. The evidence that I will be providing in support for Descartes statement I think, therefore I am include, Descartes doubtfulness of all things he once believed to be true (which he says has been false lies to have been told to him all of his life) (A. w. Bailey, First Philosphy, Second Edition 26-28), secondly his three proofs for his skepticism mentioned in the first piece of evidence listed previously (Descartes asking if he is dreaming or if he is really awake, his painters argument of how dream like/ images arise from real things, and an evil like demon trying to trick Rene Descartes into...
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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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...“Mediation of First Philosophy’’, Rene Descartes attempts to separate the truth from false and the imaginary from reality while giving new hope to his readers. He actually tries to withdraw from his previous conclusions claiming that he could have used senses rather than thinking and therefore this round he withdraws totally from senses through a process of methodological doubt. He creates a sense of doubt in other scholars work by disputing their line of thinking with a distinguished line of logic. He sheds off any criticism directed at him and urges his readers to argue along his line of logic to get his concept and reason. HOW OR WHY THE COGITO EGO SUM IS HOPEFUL. Descartes concludes that he cannot doubt his existence. He argues that doing so would mean that even the idea of doubting would not exist and as far as it exists, then its source is him, his mind. However, the existence of the body puts him in a situation of doubt. He thinks that the idea of a mind implanted in a body is a deception and forms a basis of argument and cross psychological analysis. He goes ahead to state that this would be demons work of deceiving him or it can be that God was praying tricks on him, something he really doesn’t conquer with. God being perfect, He would not do that. ‘I think, therefore I am’ in the Discourse on method is hopeful because it brings out the picture of knowledge, that the mind can know itself better than it can do to anything else. Descartes is certain that he can only support...
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...Descartes' Methodic Doubt René Descartes (1596-1650) is an example of a rationalist. According to Descartes, before we can describe the nature of reality (as is done in metaphysics) or say what it means for something to be or exist (which is the focus of ontology), we must first consider what we mean when we say we know what reality, being, or existence is. He suggests that it is pointless to claim that something is real or exists unless we first know how such a claim could be known as a justified true belief. But to say that our beliefs are justified, we have to be able to base them ultimately on a belief that is itself indubitable. Such a belief could then provide a firm foundation on which all subsequent beliefs are grounded and could thus be known as true. This way of thinking about knowledge is called foundationalism. In his Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), Descartes indicates how we are able to guarantee our beliefs about reality by limiting what we believe to what is indubitable or is based on what is indubitable. That involves him in a series of six "meditations" (of which we will focus on only the first two) about the proper method of philosophical reflection and the conclusions that can be drawn from using that method. Throughout these Meditations Descartes insists that (1) we should claim to know only that for which we have justification, (2) we cannot appeal to anything outside of our ideas for such justification, and (3) we judge our ideas using a method...
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...named Rene Descartes. Descartes was born in 1596 in France and died later in Sweden in 1650. Descartes was known as the father of modern philosophy and he gave many notable contributions to modern philosophy that we still use today. “I think, therefore I am”, might seem like a very simple quote but if you take a deeper look into it, it has a lot more meaning than you think. To begin to understand this quote, you must first have a firm grasp of the term skepticism. This is the idea that all ideas and beliefs can be doubted. Having a method of doubt or skepticism is something that a lot of people have trouble wrapping their minds around. For example, I have a body and I have a pair of hands, so why would I doubt these things? Descartes finds skepticism very puzzling and it intrigues him to find out why someone would think this way. In an effort to understand why some people thought like this, Descartes tries to break everything down into its bare bones. He thinks that you cannot build a body of knowledge unless you have firm foundation first. This makes sense because if you’re trying to build theory’s and ideas of things without knowing where these ideas came from, or even if those ideas are truthful or not, then you are just fooling yourself and wasting your own time. Your superstructure of knowledge must have some sort of structural integrity to it. You can’t build your knowledge upwards or expand your structure without sure support beams to follow it up. Descartes then goes...
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...the proof of God necessary? Proofs are used to prove, using a deductive method, that a given necessarily exists. Proof is often like geometry there are given and certain rules is used to arrive at a conclusion of why that given is true. The proof for the existence of ‘God’ has an ultimate goal to prove that God logically and ‘necessarily exists’. If the proof is successful, any rational person cannot find fault in the claim that God does exist. Within the proofs ‘god’ must necessarily exist not just contingently exist. An example of contingent existing would be a balloon is in my hand; prior to making this balloon the balloon did not exist and after the balloon pops and disintegrates it too will not exist. This balloon has contingent existence and it is not necessary. The proof that God exists must be a necessity and should be stronger than evidence that ‘God’ does exist. Something had to create the universe because it did not always exist, therefore God must exist. Many people dispute, thus saying that there is not actual proof that God does exist but that is where faith comes in the picture. Which argument for the existence of God is strongest and why? There are a few strong arguments for the existence of God. First there is the ontological argument which states that it is quite likely that a flawless being does exist. In theory a being such as that couldn’t be perfect unless it in essence did in fact exist. Therefore a perfect being must exist, which is one...
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...shell for our very soul. The question, “what am I?” could also be “who are you?” What constitutes an individual’s identity? I believe between the two options of physical and mental realities that my prolonged mental consciousness gives me my identity. My memories are who I am. Without my memories I am just a body a tabula rasa all over again. This idea of memory serving as our identity can be seen with the example of Alzheimer’s patients. Alzheimer’s is an autoimmune disease that even with today’s modern medicine is still misunderstood. The patient suffering AD experiences a slow wipe out of their memory. Even though, still unclear to how or why this happens to millions of people worldwide we are able to see first hand years of life disappear into nowhere and how destructive this is to families, loved ones, and an individuals identity. They exist physically as a shell and nothing more. Their connection and relationship to the physical world is of no use without the mind. For the record I am by no means stating that an AD patient’s life is of lesser significance. Now, what if we were able to transfer someone’s brain and memories into someone else’s body, what would happen? The most realistic idea I came up with is the idea of brainwashing. Feeding your thoughts to reconstruct another person’s way of thinking and perceiving the world. By seeding your thoughts into someone else’s mind...
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...Thought “Cogito ergo sum” uttered by the man who is referred to as the “Father of Modern Philosophy” translates to “I think, therefore I am.” Rene Descartes authored Discourse on the Method as well as Meditations on First Philosophy, a narrative that explores the concepts of the ideas he employs. Descartes regards the power of reasoning and concrete sensations as more rational than that of gathering knowledge based on faith. After meditating upon this philosophical notion, Descartes’ argument has the power to provide hypothetical evidence towards the existence of a higher being, a.k.a. God. By observing the patterns of Descartes’ arguments regarding the method of gathering knowledge, one...
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...In the film The Matrix, the question being asked is whether or not anything in this world that we experience every day, from the trees that are growing outside, to the people we encounter on a daily basis, truly exists. In The Matrix film, this question is answered with a resounding “No,” that nothing is real and that the true nature around us is a harsh and cruel reality, one where the entirety of the Earth’s population is enslaved to a race of “machines.” The main character, Neo, is at first scared about everything he is now experiencing, questioning whether or not if he’s actually dreaming. However, he does come to terms with the fact that he is in fact living in the real world, and his new mission in life is to save as many people as possible from the lies of the machines. The Wachowski siblings, the two people who created the trilogy weren’t the first people to experiment with the concept of a “real” world outside of our “fake” reality. Philosophers dating back to the time of Rene Descartes, and even further back to the age of Plato, have toyed and pondered with this concept. Even though their concepts are all generally the same, the way they perceive it is very different. For example, the Greek philosopher Plato had this concept of a man who was trapped in a cavern his entire life and was physically restrained with tethers, so that he could not move. The only thing available to him was a fire that would cast shadows on the walls and he would only know these shadows for...
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...Final Paper The Proof that God Exists The greatest question that man has ever asked is “Why”, as philosophers it is the only question that one asks. Since the birth of man kind, the question has been asked “where do we come from”; and since the birth of man kind the answer was simple, someone put us here, a person of higher being, a person often referred to as God. As a philosopher and thinker one can not simply believe in the existence of God, but ask the question why; why does God exist. There are many philosophers who dare to answer the “Why” including Rene Descartes, Immanuel Kant, and Thomas Aquinas. In answering this question there has developed three main arguments that focus on the proof for the existence of God; the Teleological, Cosmological, and Ontological arguments. The most difficult of the three arguments to understand is the Ontological argument, for it is purely logical proof; it attempts to argue from the idea of God to His necessary existence. Simply put the ontological argument attempts to prove the existence of God by stating God exists because he must. “While from the fact that I cannot conceive God without existence, it follows that existence is inseparable from Him, and hence that He really exists. For it is not within my power to think of God without existence.”(Descartes 135) Simply put, in the entire world there is a greatest, a number one, in every aspect of competition there is someone in which never loses. God must exist because there has to be a...
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...Basic Beliefs Must Exist The root of knowledge has always been a great question of philosophy. What do we know? Or do we really know what we think we know? What justifies our beliefs as knowledge? It all comes down to the same question, same question asked in cosmology, biology and many others: How did it all begin? Where scientific data is inadequate, epistemology tried to find answers and possibilities and asked their version of the question: Are there any epistemically basic beliefs? In other words, how does knowing begin? Or to some, does knowledge exist at all? Foundationalism suggested that after all there must be an epistemically basic belief at the root of the rest of them, a starting point that doesn’t need justification because it justifies itself. In this essay I will explain that there are epistemically basic beliefs, which has been proven and exemplified by various philosophers of Foundationalism. First I will explain Foundationalism and give examples to epistemically basic beliefs, then I will explain how coherentism refutes the idea of a basic belief and lastly I will examine how both stand in front of the regress argument, proving the existence of basic belief for the existence of knowledge. If there is knowledge it must have a starting point. Foundationalism is an epistemological view that suggests that the chain of justification of beliefs has a starting point, which is called basic belief. All our beliefs are justified by these basic or foundational...
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...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 which corporeal and incorporeal things exist together...
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...Merriam Webster Dictionary defines Philosophy as: the study of ideas about knowledge, truth, the nature and meaning of life, etc. A Little History of Philosophy discusses questions, which intrigued humanity from the beginning of time. Those questions include, “How should we live our lives?”, “What is reality?”, and “Whether or not God exists?”. These timeless ideas are discussed in depth throughout the chapters of Warburton’s A Little History of Philosophy. The discussions are kept brief, as he introduces readers to the philosophical reasoning, from the ancient Socrates to the more contemporary philosophers such as Peter Singer. As we journey through the chapters, we contemplate; we formulate new ideas and plant the seeds of inquiry. These...
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