René Descartes was a French philosopher from around 1596 to 1650 and is commonly known as the father of modern philosophy. He was also a mathematic and scientist along with being a philosopher. One of his main points happened to be his view on the reliability on what the mind tells one versus how reliable the senses are.
Descartes argument on the reliability of the senses was that one can’t trust what the senses tell them. He was a rationalist in his way of thinking, for he valued the mind and its thoughts more than the body and its senses. This is shown by Descartes’ idea of a separate mind and body. He argued that the body ages while the mind remains ageless and remains to live on forever. This concept is a portrayal of his tendency to acknowledge the mind over the body, or rationalism over empiricism.
Descartes’ also
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He uses that example of wax in order to portray the uncertainty of our senses. The wax in its normal state is solid, and Descartes states that once one attempts to put their finger through it, there was be a noise indicating that it is solid, as does the knocking on wood result in a noise. However, when you put this wax near the fire, it becomes more flexible, the color alters, it turns into liquid, and one’s finger can go right through it. Yet it is still the same piece of wax, and it cannot be argued otherwise. We determined that it is wax with our mind. We couldn’t have considered it a piece of wax simply with the senses because every sensual aspect of the wax changed. Therefore, Descartes’ point was that we sense with our mind, not through what we see, hear, feel, and taste. Within his work, Mediations on First Philosophy, he wrote, “[P]erception ... is neither a seeing, nor a touching, nor an imagining. ... [R]ather it is an inspection on the part of the mind alone” (Section
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.
This is a change from ancient and medieval traditions, like Aristotle, because Descartes does not focus externally on a soul or on an external thing that is using the human body; rather Descartes believes that the body is used to give us perceptions but that we cannot always trust these perceptions while seeking the truth (Brown 156). Descartes explains that “... our senses sometimes deceive us, I wish to suppose that nothing is just as they cause us to imagine it to be… I resolved to assume that everything that ever entered into my mind was no more than the illusions of my dreams” (Brown 156). Descartes also mentions that he does not believe all things are false because of his existence, he thought “... remarking that this truth ‘I think, therefore I am’ was so certain… if I only ceased from thinking, even if all the rest of what I ever imagined had really existed, I should have no reason for thinking that I had existed. From that I knew I was a substance the whole essence or nature if which is to think” (Brown
He uses this argument to enforce how complex the mind is. It goes beyond what is usually known. He says “It is hard and cold; it is easy to touch.” (pg. 67) This is the state that comes to mind when one thinks of raw wax. However, the argument gets broken down further when he says “I am bringing it close to the fire… the original shaped is disappearing, it is becoming liquid and hot; you can hardly touch it.. For whatever came under the senses… has changed yet the wax still remains.”(pg. 67) One asks themselves, what allows us to still say the wax is still itself even though the familiar shape has changed? Descartes says the answer is intellect. These points all help guide to the conclusion that senses are not where human minds
Rene Descartes was a philosopher credited as the “Father of Modern Philosophy.” He was given this title because of his impeccable ideas he continuously came up with. He is well-known for his many famous pieces such including his very own Descartes Mediations 1 and 2. In these pieces he discusses how he came about his ideas of “I think, therefore I am.” His way of thinking is incredible and far from a normal humans perspective.
One primary concern is our perceptions of physical objects, which according to Descartes, exist in the immaterial. He reasons that all knowledge or experience of the world exists first in the mind, and that all physical experiences prove the mind’s existence. While an experience may have been false, such as a dream, the experience of the mind did surely exist, further proving the existence of the mind, separate of the physical world. (Descartes, 1983, p. 7) Descartes reasons that all things other than one’s own mind can be doubted, even God, and that thinking is the only thing that can be known to
1. "RENÉ DESCARTES AND THE LEGACY OF MIND/BODY DUALISM." Rene Descartes and the Legacy of Mind/Body Dualism. Web. . .
...rity and distinction, but we can conclude what Descartes means. He is saying that we can be sure that these primary qualities exist in bodies in the same way that they do in our ideas of bodies. This cannot be claimed for qualities such as heat, color, taste and smell, of which our ideas are so confused and vague that we must always reserve judgment. This can be seen in the wax example.
The teaching of Descartes has influenced many minds since his writings. Descartes' belief that clear and distinct perceptions come from the intellect and not the senses was critical to his ultimate goal in Meditations on First Philosophy, for now he has successfully created a foundation of true and certain facts on which to base a sold, scientific belief structure. He has proven himself to exist in some form, to think and therefore feel, and explains how he knows objects or concepts to be real.
Descartes first meditation included a few arguments that Descartes studied and analyze. The one I choose to analyze was his argument of sense deception. The actually argument is the following: (1) My senses sometimes deceive me. (2) If my senses sometimes deceive me, then they might always deceive me. (3) If my senses might always deceive me, then I cannot be certain about any beliefs acquired through my senses. (4) If I cannot be certain about any beliefs acquired through my senses, then I must suspend judgment on those beliefs. (5) Therefore I must suspend my judgment of those beliefs. To put this is premise conclusion argument form, it would look like this:
The purpose of the wax argument is designed to provide a clear and distinct knowledge of “I”, which is the mind, while corporeal things, “whose images are framed by thought, and which the senses themselves imagine are much more distinctly known than this mysterious ‘I’ which does not fall within the imagination” (66). Through the wax argument, Descartes’ demonstrates that corporeal things are perceived neither through our senses nor imagination, but through our intellect alone. In this argument, you will see that there is cause to doubt Descartes’ analysis of the wax and his method of philosophical reasoning.
Descartian dualism is one of the most long lasting legacies of Rene Descartes’ philosophy. He argues that the mind and body operate as separate entities able to exist without one another. That is, the mind is a thinking, non-extended entity and the body is non-thinking and extended. His belief elicited a debate over the nature of the mind and body that has spanned centuries, a debate that is still vociferously argued today. In this essay, I will try and tackle Descartes claim and come to some conclusion as to whether Descartes is correct to say that the mind and body are distinct.
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
But his habitual ideas and opinions are still present no matter how hard he tries not to present them, to solve this problem he decides that all of his opinions are false. Descartes finds himself certain about one thing that nothing is certain. Resorting back to the idea that his senses are the only way he is able to obtain the truth in life, he believes that his senses are apart of his mind and body. He uses a honeycomb to examine this topic that the body and mind are one. The wax changes shape therefore he uses imagination to understand it
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.
Descartes is a very well-known philosopher and has influenced much of modern philosophy. He is also commonly held as the father of the mind-body problem, thus any paper covering the major answers of the problem would not be complete without covering his argument. It is in Descartes’ most famous work, Meditations, that he gives his view for dualism. Descartes holds that mind and body are com...