In this essay I will discuss the following metaphors or ideas: Descartes’ “thinking thing” and Hume’s “empiricism”. I will outline the similarities and differences between these two metaphors concerning what each implies about the meaning of being human. I will also explain which of them is more relevant as a means to gain insight into my own life and/or local and contemporary life in general.
Hume was an atheist whereas Descartes believed in God. For Hume, facts of the world is meaningful when the ideas that constitute one's knowledge can be passed through Hume's fork and shown to be 'matters of fact', as opposed to 'relations of ideas'. At the same time, an understanding of the role of custom and habit reveals a truth about all knowledge – at best, knowledge is limited to causal probabilities, and human beings have no recourse to any necessary causal truths; indeed, despite your belief that the sun will rise tomorrow, it might not. Descartes argued that to be human is to be a thinking thing, a mind, not a body. To be truly human is, moreover, to be the self-conscious “measure of all things” which means that I alone am both free and responsible to be my own intellectual authority on all matters.
Hume and Descartes agree on “the self”, both assuring that it is the beginning stage of philosophy. Both philosophers argued where human knowledge is derived from. They disagreed whether knowledge was based on reason or experience. Descartes was a rationalist. Descartes argues how can anyone be sure of something and that what we believe may not be entirely true or correct. He argues that the mind and body are two different aspects entirely, the mind is thinking and the body is extending and the two aspects are completely different....
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...ves that our senses will determine our existence, how does having the ability to see or touch determine that we currently exist without thinking about it? It is the mere fact that we have thought about how we can see and touch determines our existence, because we used our minds doubting our senses as proof.
I will also explain which of them is more relevant as a means to gain insight into local and contemporary life in general. The role of Professor McLaughlin's sceptic is to introduce certain 'sceptical hypotheses', hypotheses which imply the falsity of most of what we believe about the world. Professor McLaughlin asks whether these hypotheses are coherent and thus whether they can tell us anything about what are entitled to believe, or to claim to know. He concludes that, semantic externalism notwithstanding, these hypotheses are both coherent and threatening
Comparing Knowledge in Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy and Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding,
To read Damasio's critique alongside Stephen Gaukroger's remarkably rich intellectual biography of Descartes, however, is to realize that Damasio could just as aptly have titled his book "Descartes' Vision." As Gaukroger points out, Descartes was reviled during his lifetime and for a century after his death not for his dualism but for his materialism. Only when the history of philosophy was rewritten in the nineteenth century as the story of epistemology did Descartes come to bear the double designation of being both the "father" of modern philosophy and the ranking nativist who visited upon us the catastrophic separation of mind from body and of reason from emotion. These labels are essentially caricatures that distort the actual complexity of what Descartes struggled to work out in his cognitive theory. Gaukroger reconstructs this struggle for us, sometimes on a month-by-month basis, showing how Descartes shuttled back and forth between an account of the body and the pursuit of the mind.
Rene Descartes and David Hume lived in two completely different time periods, yet they shared interest in some of the same philosophical categories. Could animals have a reason? How did humans expand their knowledge compared to animals? Questions like these were answered by both Descartes and Hume, even though they had two opposing views. Descartes was the first to address the questions about animal instincts, and later on Hume set out to refute some of his ideas.
Final Paper In the following paper I will argue upon whether the Humes’ or Descartes’ philosophical position on the existence of the external world is stronger than the other. I will first present each philosopher’s position, and then I will argue that Hume has a stronger position on the existence of the external world for the reasons in this paper. Descartes argues that we can know the external world because of God, and God is not a deceiver. Descartes’ core foundation for understanding what is important comes from three points: our thoughts about the world and the things in it could be deceptive, our power of reasoning has found ideas that are indubitable, and certainty comes by way of reasoning.
Saint Augustine explains in his work, The City of God, “... the one who lives according to God and not according to man, ought to be a lover of good, and therefore a hater of evil. And since no one is evil by nature, but whoever is evil is evil by vice, he who lives according to God ought to cherish toward evil men a perfect hatred… hate the vice and love the man” (Brown 106). The classical traditions impose meaning from what they interpreted to be good and what they interpreted to be evil. Descartes signifies a change in this tradition because he believes that meaning is not imposed on things but rather meaning is derived from things. Descartes expresses this tradition by explaining the human relationship with God. He first describes things that could not exist without human nature, “as to the thoughts which I had of many other things outside me, like the heavens, the earth, light, heat, and a thousand others, I had not so much difficulty in knowing whence they came, because, remarking nothing in them which seemed to render them superior to me” (Brown 157). He expresses that these things have the same equivalence or less of an equivalence to his existence. These ideas that are less than Descartes could be ideas that came directly from Descartes himself. He notices
Megan Darnley PHIL-283 May 5, 2014 Compatibilism and Hume. The choices an individual makes are often believed to be by their own doing; there is nothing forcing one action to be done in lieu of another, and the responsibility of one’s actions is on him alone. This idea of Free Will, supported by libertarians and is the belief one is entirely responsible for their own actions, is challenged by necessity, otherwise known as determinism. Those championing determinism argue every action and event is because of some prior cause.
6- What does Descartes mean by ‘thinking '? Is this how you understand the term? Can you think of a
In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes states “I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, in as far as I am only a thinking and unextended thing, and as, on the other hand, I possess a distinct idea of body, in as far as it is only an extended and unthinking thing”. [1] The concept that the mind is an intangible, thinking entity while the body is a tangible entity not capable of thought is known as Cartesian Dualism. The purpose of this essay is to examine how Descartes tries to prove that the mind or soul is, in its essential nature, entirely distinct from the
Cause and effect is a tool used to link happenings together and create some sort of explanation. Hume lists the “three principles of connexion among ideas” to show the different ways ideas can be associated with one another (14). The principles are resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect. The focus of much of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding falls upon the third listed principle. In Section I, Hume emphasizes the need to uncover the truths about the human mind, even though the process may be strenuous and fatiguing. While the principle of cause and effect is something utilized so often, Hume claims that what we conclude through this process cannot be attributed to reason or understanding and instead must be attributed to custom of habit.
Once Descartes recognizes the indubitable truth that he exists, he then attempts to further his knowledge by discovering the type of thing that he is. Trying to understand what he is, Descartes recalls Aristotle's definition of a human as a rational animal. This is unsatisfactory since this requires investigation into the notions of "rational" and "animal". Continuing his quest for identity, he recalls a more general view he previously had of his identity, which is that he is composed of both body and soul. According to classical philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, the key attributes of the soul involve eating, movement, and sensation. He can't claim to h...
In Appendix I., Concerning Moral Sentiment, David Hume looks to find a place in morality for reason, and sentiment. Through, five principles he ultimately concludes that reason has no place within the concept of morality, but rather is something that can only assist sentiment in matters concerning morality. And while reason can be true or false, those truths or falsities apply to facts, not to morality. He then argues morals are the direct result of sentiment, or the inner feeling within a human being. These sentiments are what intrinsically drive and thus create morality within a being. Sentiments such as beauty, revenge, pleasure, pain, create moral motivation, and action, and are immune to falsity and truth. They are the foundation for which morals are built, and exist themselves apart from any reasoning. Thesis: In moral motivation, the role of sentiment is to drive an intrinsically instilled presence within us to examine what we would deem a moral act or an immoral act, and act accordingly, and accurately upon the sentiments that apply. These sentiments may be assisted by reasons, but the reason alone does not drive us to do what we would feel necessary. They can only guide us towards the final result of moral motivation which (by now it’s painfully clear) is sentiment.
In efforts to find truth, Descartes used only his logic to identify his existence. He also proved that there is some type of knowledge that we are born with. “Some of our ideas seem to be “born with me,” some “invented” by me, whereas others “come from without” (Descartes, 2008, p. 211). Which means Descartes believed that we enter this world with some innate ideas that overtime helps us to develop understanding of our sense (invented by me) and through our experiences (comes from without). Descartes was a dualist; he stated that there existed something outside of our bodies. Descartes suggested that at the “ghost in the machine” theory developed by Gilbert Ryle, which states that there is some mystical being, which we understand is the mind, that is primary to the machine (or the body). Which leads me to believe, innate ideas are active within our minds.
In conclusion, Descartes and Hume believe that one finds the truth through the use of one’s senses. Even though they may be perceived differently and used in memory in different forms. Hume believes that there is no such thing as self. One is ever changing and different in each individual moment in time. While Descartes argues that one is built off of the past and the body and the mind are one. That the body and mind act in sync with one another, whatever the body does the mind directs or understands the task at
Empiricism (en- peiran; to try something for yourself): The doctrine that all knowledge must come through the senses; there are no innate ideas born within us that only require to be remembered (ie, Plato). All knowledge is reducible to sensation, that is, our concepts are only sense images. In short, there is no knowledge other than that obtained by sense observation.
...have struggled with the nature of human beings, especially with the concept of “self”. What Plato called “soul, Descartes named the “mind”, while Hume used the term “self”. This self, often visible during hardships, is what one can be certain of, whose existence is undoubtable. Descartes’s “I think, therefore I am” concept of transcendental self with just the conscious mind is too simplistic to capture the whole of one’s self. Similarly, the empirical self’s idea of brain in charge of one’s self also shows a narrow perspective. Hume’s bundle theory seeks to provide the distinction by claiming that a self is merely a habitual way of discussing certain perceptions. Although the idea of self is well established, philosophical insight still sees that there is no clear presentation of essential self and thus fails to prove that the true, essential self really exists.