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Descartes personal identity and soul
An essay about Rene Descartes life and concept of self
An essay about Rene Descartes life and concept of self
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What is Descartes searching for in Meditations I and II? Descartes is searching for new opinions because he discovered that his fundamental beliefs were false. Therefore, Descartes decide to raze his old beliefs from the foundations if he wants to discover anything scientific.
Explain each stage of the process of doubt in Descartes’ Meditation I? Because he will need to show that all of his opinions were false, if Descartes finds a reason to doubt his opinions, he will. And because it would take forever to questions every single opinion, Descartes will start to pick apart his foundations from his sense first. Why can the senses be doubted? Descartes suggests that majority of his initial truths came from or through his senses. However, Descartes
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According to Descartes, it is impossible to prove that body, shape, extension, movement, and location exist. Also it is impossible to prove or even name a god. Descartes finally comes upon the conclusion; I am, I exist. However, from this, Descartes struggles to understand that what he is. Instead, Descartes begins to categorize himself using words like body, and soul. Using these definitions, Descartes comes to the conclusion that, thought exist, though it cannot be separated from the …show more content…
Descartes demonstrates that something will always be understood the same even if it has a different material figure by wrapping a ball of wax. Descartes states that when he first believed the wax to exist in an external sense. However, while the senses can be used to antiquely recognize an object, Descartes illustrates that the senses are unable to perceive the object. What is the essence of mental substance? Descartes argues that even if the wax is imaginary, it can still be perceived by the mind? Descartes argues this by explain that perceiving is not a function of the senses or the imagination, but rather an inspection of the mind alone. Why does Descartes think that the mind is distinct from the body? Descartes explains that people cannot normally see this because of attempting to perceive the wax from their senses through their language. Because bodies are nothing but the intellect of the mind, Descartes illustrates that the mind is the only function of the body able to
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 enter our minds will be true.” Descartes must remove the threat of an invisible demon that inserts ideas and doubts into our minds to fool us , in order to rely on his ‘clear and distinct’ rule.
Baird and Kaufmann, the editors of our text, explain in their outline of Descartes' epistemology that the method by which the thinker carried out his philosophical work involved first discovering and being sure of a certainty, and then, from that certainty, reasoning what else it meant one could be sure of. He would admit nothing without being absolutely satisfied on his own (i.e., without being told so by others) that it was incontrovertible truth. This system was unique, according to the editors, in part because Descartes was not afraid to face doubt. Despite the fact that it was precisely doubt of which he was endeavoring to rid himself, he nonetheless allowed it the full reign it deserved and demanded over his intellectual labors. "Although uncertainty and doubt were the enemies," say Baird and Kaufmann (p.16), "Descartes hit upon the idea of using doubt as a tool or as a weapon. . . . He would use doubt as an acid to pour over every 'truth' to see if there was anything that could not be dissolved . . . ." This test, they explain, resulted for Descartes in the conclusion that, if he doubted everything in the world there was to doubt, it was still then certain that he was doubting; further, that in order to doubt, he had to exist. His own existence, therefore, was the first truth he could admit to with certainty, and it became the basis for the remainder of his epistemology.
Descartes, René. "Meditation Three." Descartes, René. Meditations on First Philosophy. Trans. Donald A. Cress. Third Edition. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1993. 24-35. Paperback.
In conjunction with this theory, any matter is known through the mind. This reasoning was used as a basis toward the dualism of the mind and body. The mind is a thinking entity. It has the ability to imagine, dream, and ultimately encompass the aspects that are not fundamentally matter. The body exists outside the mind. It is the connection to the external world based on the scientific properties of mass, size, shape, and motion. Descartes argues that the mind is distinct from the body. The mind thinks and does not have scientific properties. One’s body is a non-thinking thing. This distinction leads Descartes to conclude that the mind is not the same as the body. There is no characteristic that is categorized as both mind and body; the body can be changed, the mind cannot. In continuation, the mind can exist without the body and the body can exist without the mind since each thing is distinct. Descartes later explains how the brain is not the same as the mind. The brain is the connection between the mind and body in a human being. Descartes argues that matter cannot be the same as anything mental. The mind is affected by the brain, providing one with insight into the external world. Also, the mind can influence the brain, hence one’s body being controlled by the mind. However, it is possible for the brain to cease functionally and the mind to still operate. Essentially, one can conclude that the
In the second meditation, Descartes is searching for an Archimedian point on which to seed a pearl of certainty. By doubting everything in his first meditation, Descartes consequently doubts his own existence. It is here that a certainty is unearthed: “If I convinced myself of something then I certainly existed”(17). However, Descartes “does not deduce existence from thought by means of syllogism, but recognizes it as something self-evident by a simple intuition of the mind,” or in other words, by natural light (Second Replies:68).
Moving up the tower of certainty, he focuses on those ideas that can be supported by his original foundation. In such a way, Descartes’s goal is to establish all human knowledge on firm foundations. Thus, Descartes gains this knowledge from the natural light by using it to reference his main claims, specifically the existence of God in Meditation III, and provide an explanation to his radical thoughts. In Meditation III “The existence of God,” Descartes builds his foundation of certainty in the natural light through the examination of God’s existence.
Philosophical context: I shall use Descartes’ Meditations 1 and Blackburn 's “Think” to discuss the question and my initial answer. In Meditations 1, Descartes sets out to destroy all preconceived notions from his childhood and establish a new foundation for the sciences -- a lasting foundation and explores methods of doubt to his own senses and how to deal with them properly.
Descartes makes a careful examination of what is involved in the recognition of a specific physical object, like a piece of wax. By first describing the wax in a manner such that “everything is present in the wax that appears needed to enable a body to be known as distinctly as possible” (67), he shows how easily our senses help to conceive our perception of the body. But even if such attributes are modified or removed, we still recognize the changed form, as the same piece of wax. This validates Descartes’ claim that “wax itself never really is the sweetness of the honey, nor the fragrance of the flowers, nor the whiteness, nor the shape, nor the sound” (67), and the only certain knowledge we gain of the wax is that “it is something extended, flexible, and mutable” (67). This conclusion forces us to realize that it is difficult to understand the true nature of the wax, and its identity is indistinguishable from other things that have the same qualities as the wax. After confirming the nature of a human mind is “a thinking thing” (65), Descartes continues that the nature of human mind is better known than the nature of the body.
One of the ways in which Descartes attempts to prove that the mind is distinct from the body is through his claim that the mind occupies no physical space and is an entity with which people think, while the body is a physical entity and cannot serve as a mechanism for thought. [1]
Rene Descartes decision to shatter the molds of traditional thinking is still talked about today. He is regarded as an influential abstract thinker; and some of his main ideas are still talked about by philosophers all over the world. While he wrote the "Meditations", he secluded himself from the outside world for a length of time, basically tore up his conventional thinking; and tried to come to some conclusion as to what was actually true and existing. In order to show that the sciences rest on firm foundations and that these foundations lay in the mind and not the senses, Descartes must begin by bringing into doubt all the beliefs that come to him by the senses. This is done in the first of six different steps that he named "Meditations" because of the state of mind he was in while he was contemplating all these different ideas. His six meditations are "One:Concerning those things that can be called into doubt", "Two:Concerning the Nature of the Human mind: that it is better known than the Body", "Three: Concerning God, that he exists", "Four: Concerning the True and the False", "Five: Concerning the Essence of Material things, and again concerning God, that he exists" and finally "Six: Concerning the Existence of Material things, and the real distinction between Mind and Body". Although all of these meditations are relevant and necessary to understand the complete work as a whole, the focus of this paper will be the first meditation.
Next, in the fourth meditation, which leads into Descartes’ thoughts on himself in God’s view. It is important to compare the third meditation. A second point of view of not just an idea, but now Descartes himself. He asks why a perfect being such as God does not make a perfect being like Descartes himself. He questions why he is not perfect in that sense.
In the Sixth Meditation, Descartes makes a point that there is a distinction between mind and body. It is in Meditation Two when Descartes believes he has shown the mind to be better known than the body. In Meditation Six, however, he goes on to claim that, as he knows his mind and knows clearly and distinctly that its essence consists purely of thought. Also, that bodies' essences consist purely of extension, and that he can conceive of his mind and body as existing separately. By the power of God, anything that can be clearly and distinctly conceived of as existing separately from something else can be created as existing separately.
Descartes once said, “I think, therefore I am.” He believed this to be true whenever put forth in our own mind because of the fact that in order to think or doubt, our mind must be doing the thinking or doubting. This idea gives us enough reason that we cannot doubt our own mind. Descartes also believed and studied the idea of mind-body dualism. This is the idea that the mind and brain are two distinct things. He came up with this idea by stating that the brain is made of matter, and the mind is not physically real. The mind is not a physical property in the world, but the brain is a physical object. From this, he determined that the brain and mind are two distinct things. I agree with this statement because the mind is not dependent on information from the body. I believe that Descartes would favor the side of mental phenomena not being able to be explained by reference to physical phenomena because he believes that the mind can live without a body, and he doubts the existence of the minds of other people. I disagree with Descartes about this idea because I believe that the mind needs a body to work, but I agree that the mind is still separate from the body. This idea states that the mind and body are separate, and if they are separate, mental phenomena cannot be explained by physical
The first meditation focuses on doubt. As it starts Descartes’s is having doubts on all of his opinions, knowledge, wisdom etc. He ends up deciding that instead of doubting opinion by opinion, it will be easier to doubt the foundation from which the opinions have been built on. Then he says that not to trust, ones senses because they can be wrong. Descartes provides examples like dreaming, god or painting a mermaid (based on the senses, but not proven to be true referring to mermaid). At first he thinks only complex things can be questioned not simple things. But, upon further examination he realizes that he can doubt simple things. So he uses examples to show why he can doubt things.
In Meditation Six entitled “Concerning the Existence of Material Things, and Real Distinction between the Mind and Body”, one important thing Descartes explores is the relationship between the mind and body. Descartes believes the mind and body are separated and they are two difference substances. He believes this to be clearly and distinctly true which is a Cartesian quality for true knowledge. I, on the other hand, disagree that the mind and body are separate and that the mind can exist without the body. First, I will present Descartes position on mind/body dualism and his proof for such ideas. Secondly, I will discuss why I think his argument is weak and offer my own ideas that dispute his reasoning while I keep in mind how he might dispute my argument.