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Criticisms against Descartes' philosophy
An assignment on the first meditation of Descartes
An assignment on the first meditation of Descartes
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If you have ever heard the phrase, “I think; therefore I am.” Then you might not know who said that famous quote. The author behind those famous words is none other than Rene Descartes. He was a 17th century philosopher, mathematician, and writer. As a mathematician, he is credited with being the creator of techniques for algebraic geometry. As a philosopher, he created views of the world that is still seen as fact today. Such as how the world is made of matter and some fundamental properties for matter. Descartes is also a co-creator of the law of refraction, which is used for rainbows. In his day, Descartes was an innovative mathematician who developed many theories and properties for math and science. He was a writer who had many works that explained his ideas. His most famous work was Meditations on First Philosophy. This book was mostly about his ideas about science, but he had books about mathematics too. Descartes’ Dream: The World According to Mathematics is a collection of essays talking about his views of algebra and geometry.
Descartes was born in La Faye, France on March 31, 1596 and died in Stockholm, Sweden on February 12, 1650. He was a very smart person from birth. He was smart enough to be able to go to a college at age eight. After that he went to a college for law at twenty two. He was able to achieve a lot in his life before he hit thirty. One of his teachers was a strong influence on him and helped him see the world as a realist and apply logic to the real world. The same teacher, named Beeckman, also persuaded him to apply mathematics to the world. Descartes’ mother died in the first year of his life. After his mother died, his father and his two other siblings to live with their grandmother. It sounds ...
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.... People wanted to hear what he had to say. People respected him as a person and his knowledge so much that Queen Christina of Sweden wanted to know what he knew. Sadly she wanted the study sessions to be held at five a.m. These study sessions eventually led to his death in 1650 of pneumonia. He probably could’ve lived a lot longer and had a bigger influence of more people if he didn’t die in 1650. As a mathematician he invented and perfected analytical geometry. As a scientist he told everyone about light reflection and refraction. He also talked about space, the moon, the stars and Earth. As a philosopher he inspired people he never even knew with his wise sayings. He gave people a new view on how everything worked. He described the mind being separate from matter simply because it could think. He was truly a great thinker and a great influence to everyone today.
1- Why is Descartes certain that he exists? Has he proven that anyone else exists?
Before students can judge others ideologies they must understand the philosopher first. Rene Descartes, the father of modern western philosophy, was born in 1596 to French parents. Rene Descartes excelled in mathematics. By 1616 Descartes received his baccalaureate and became a licensed lawyer. In 1618 Descartes joined the army of Prince Maurice of Nassau. During his service Descartes never saw combat, but while in the service he was able to travel and explore the world. During his time in Germany Descartes began to inquire about life’s hardest questions regarding logic, reasoning, arithmetic, God and knowledge. By the early 1830’s Descartes continued his conquest of knowledge; he secluded himself from all temptations and began to write. Descartes
In Meditations on First Philosophy: Meditation VI, René Descartes argues for the distinction between mind and body. He asserts: “And accordingly, it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and can exist without it…” (p. 618) This argument takes place in the last of six meditations, in which Descartes attempts to prove the existence of the physical world and the distinction between mind and body (Descartes’ Dualism). In earlier Meditations, he doubts everything that is not self evidently true, including the material world. He uses doubt as method of discovering simple truths he can build upon. The first truth he establishes is “the cogito” which is Latin for I think, Descartes uses this self-evident truth to argue that the mind is better known than the body, and uses thought as a proof for it’s existence. After he establishes his archimedean point or “the cogito” he starts to build his ontology. However, before he even proves matter exists, Descartes explains the essence of matter.
In the New Merriam Webster Dictionary, sophism is defined as a plausible but fallacious argument. In Rene Descartes Meditation V, he distinguishes the existence of God, believing he must prove that god exists before he can examine any corporeal objects outside of himself. By proving that the existence of God is not a sophism, he also argues that God is therefore the Supreme Being and the omnipotent one. His conclusion that God does exist enables him to prove the existence of material things, and the difference between the soul and the body.
Our mind and our body are undoubtedly separate from each other. A mind can survive without a body, and, likewise, a body is just house for the mind. In The Meditations, Descartes describes this concept in his dualist theory in the second of multiple Meditations. We can reach this conclusion by first understanding that the mind can survive any destruction of the body, and then realizing that you are identical to your mind and not your body. In other words, you are your thoughts and experiences – not your physical body. Finally, you cannot doubt your own existence, because the act of doubting is, itself, and act of thinking, and to think is to exist as a “thinking thing,” or Res Cogitans.
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.
Descartes’ “evil genius scenario” provides the possibility for the existence of an evil genius that is in control of our world in place on an omnipotent god. By in control, I mean that he would in some magical way compose our lives by his own will, thus making any certain knowledge about material objects impossible. This scenario presents some real questions with Descartes’ argument because it basically completely rules out the possibility of any god.
“Cogito ergo sum - I think therefore I am.” A mathematician, scientific thinker, and metaphysician Rene Descartes used this term in his “Meditation on First Philosophy.” This term has become famous especially in western philosophy. However, this term was not Descartes only legacy. His legacies include the development of the Cartesian coordinates, philosophical books, and theories. Even though the distinction between mind and body can be traced to the Greeks, Descartes account of the mind and body relationship has been considered the first and the most influential. Descartes was born in 1596 in France, from 1628 to 1649 Descartes remained in Holland, during this time he composed multiple works that set the scene for all later philosophical study of mind and body. (René Descartes and the legacy of mind/body dualism) “Meditation on First Philosophy,” is one of Descartes famous treatises. First published in the 17th century, it consists of six meditations. In the first meditation Descartes eliminates all belief in things that are not certain, basically he removes everything from the table. Then one by one he examines each belief and determines whether any of these beliefs can be known for sure. Meditations three and five focus on the existence of God. This ontological argument is both fascinating and poorly understood in the philosophical community. Descartes tries to prove God’s existence by using simple but influential foundations. (Nolan). Descartes innate ideas proof and ontological proof of the existence of God is going to be assessed through the summarization of meditation thee and meditation five, while his work is also going to be compared to Anselm’s ontological argument on the existence of God.
Descartes is a philosopher who wrote the Meditations establishing the existence of mind, matter, and God. He considers the problems of the sources and nature of knowledge; the validity of truth; the nature and destiny of man; the existence of god, and the creation of the universe. In his time conventional ideas were often being questioned and Descartes was eager to come across a new method for accessing the truth.
René Descartes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (n.d.). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved February 10, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descartes
Descartes’ summarizes positive Meditations in the Fourth Meditation. Yet, he discovers a new problem, one that he has not discussed. Going back to the Third Meditation the conclusion is that "I" and "God" both exist but than it leads to another problem. Now, in the Fourth Meditation Descartes’ attempts to answer the question on Truth and Falsity. The question is: “If God is perfectly good and the source of all that is, how is there room for error or falsehood?” One solution Descartes’ tries to solve for this problem is that he thinks about if he has got everything from God and He hasn’t given him the capability to make errors, it doesn’t appear possible for him to ever make any error. Descartes’ arguments center on the “Great Chain of Being”,
Rene Descartes was born in the 1500s; 1596 to be exact. He was a French man who came from a wealthy family. For this time period, Descartes was a very well educated man. He was a Catholic man, who found interest in theology. People say he had the mind of a mathematician, but the heart of a theologian. At first, Descartes didn’t enjoy philosophy because it did not have a straight answer like math did. Although he died in 1650, Rene Descartes brought about many different questions within philosophy.
"Cogito Ergo Sum," "I think, therefore I am," the epitome of Rene Descartes' logic. Born in 1596 in La Haye, France, Descartes studied at a Jesuit College, where his acquaintance with the rector and childhood frailty allowed him to lead a leisurely lifestyle. This opulence and lack of daily responsibility gave him the liberty to offer his discontentment with both contrived scholasticism, philosophy of the church during the Middle Ages, as well as extreme skepticism, the doctrine that absolute knowledge is impossible. Through the most innovative logic since Aristotle's death, as well as application of the sciences, he pursued a lifelong quest for scientific truth.
“Cogito ego sum” - this is a famous quote from Rene Descartes. This quote means," I think, therefore, I am." His beliefs are considered to be epistemological and he is also considered as the father of modern philosophy. In his letter of meditation, he writes about what he believes to be true and what is not true. He writes about starting a new foundation. This meant that he was going to figure out what is true and what is false.