Rene Descartes and David Hume both have had a profound effect on the philosophical world. Both these philosophers are associated explicitly with two separate schools of philosophy which are Rationalism and Empiricism. It is this division between Rationalism and Empiricism that allows for Descartes and Hume to present differing accounts of the mind and mentality.
Descartes is widely recognized as the father of modern philosophy, he is a rationalist, who considers knowledge of the metaphysical as existing separate from physical reality believing that truth cannot be acquired through the senses but through the intellect in the form of deductive reasoning. Rationalism does not involve the overcoming of religious thought. Descartes began with the basic epistemological premise of "the prior certainty of consciousness," which is the belief that the existence of an external world is not self-evident but needed to be proved by deduction from the contents of one's consciousness.
Descartes asserted that what is true knowledge is literally inborn with us. He had an attitude of doubt toward certain beliefs and that knowledge is limited. This attitude and methodology of thinking led him to doubt the existence of God and whether our own human existence was real or not. Descartes used the deductive method where he labeled all that was doubtful as false until nothing remained but that which was not doubtful as the truth. Descartes concluded that if one doubts, the doubting itself proves that one is thinking and therefore one exists.
By using the process of reason in geometry, Descartes found that the three angles of a triangle makes two right angles but that this same process of reasoning could not prove its presence. With this in mind, he went ...
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...agination to picture a pig fly.
Descartes on the other hand assumes that the "I think therefore I am" argument is the correct way to go about things. He assumes our thoughts are correct thoughts only when they appear to be correct. How do we know that we exist, because we think? How do we know for sure those two ideas correlate? He ignored the certainty of existence, proven by the contents of his mind, and instead opted for the belief that only his mind existed until he could prove otherwise. “How can I know I exist?”, or “How do I prove I exist?”
Maybe we should refer to an old classic: Star Trek the Next Generation. When the android, Lieutenant Data, asks if he is human, Descartes’ answer would be “yes” solely because he thinks. Yet Hume would probably disagree because he has no feelings therefore he cannot experience life. So the question remains; is Data human?
Descartes is a prime example of a rationalist. Descartes begins his Meditations on First Philosophy by doubting his senses in the first meditation. “From time to time I [Descartes] have found that the senses deceive, and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once”(Descartes: 12). In the second meditation, Descartes begins to rebuild the world he broke down in the first meditation by establishing cogito ergo sum with the aid of natural light. It is with this intuition that the cogito is established, from the cogito, intellect, from the intellect, knowledge; thus knowledge has been defined in this world that Descartes is constructing from scratch. Descartes uses the fact that he is a thinking thing to establish the existence of other things in the world with the cosmological and ontological arguments, as well as a meditation on truth and falsity. “So now I seem to be able to lay it down as a general rule that whatever I perceive very clearly and distinctly is true” (Descartes: 24). Descartes only utilizes his perceptions to establish ideas of the things t...
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.
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
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 reason? How did humans expand their knowledge compared to animals? Questions like these were answered both by 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.
In the “Mediations of First Philosophy” Descartes tries to prove the existence of God in the third meditation. He does this by coming up with several premises that eventually add up to a solid argument. First, I will explain why Descartes ask the question, does god exist? And why does Descartes think he needs such and argument at this point in the text. Secondly, I will explain, in detail, the arguments that Descartes makes and how he comes to the conclusion that God does exist. Next, I will debate some of Descartes premises that make his argument an unsound one, including circular reasoning. Finally, I will see if his unsound argument has diminished and undermined his principal goals and the incorrigible foundation of knowledge.
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.
In his work, Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes narrates the search for certainty in order to recreate all knowledge. He begins with “radical doubt.” He asks a simple question “Is there any one thing of which we can be absolutely certain?” that provides the main question of his analysis. Proceeding forward, he states that the ground of his foundation is the self – evident knowledge of the “thinking thing,” which he himself is.
Rene Descartes’ greatest work, Meditations on First Philosophy, attempts to build the base of knowledge through a skeptical point of view. In the First Meditation, Descartes argues that his knowledge has been built on reason and his senses, yet how does he know that those concepts are not deceiving him? He begins to doubt that his body exists, and compares himself to an insane person. What if he is delusional about his social ranking, or confused about the color of his clothes, or even unaware of the material that his head is made of? This is all because the senses are deceiving, even in our dreams we experience realistic visions and feelings. Finally, Descartes comes to the conclusion that everything must be doubted, and begins to build his
Rationalism and empiricism have always been on opposite sides of the philosophic spectrum, Rene Descartes and David Hume are the best representative of each school of thought. Descartes’ rationalism posits that deduction, reason and thus innate ideas are the only way to get to true knowledge. Empiricism on the other hand, posits that by induction, and sense perception, we may find that there are in fact no innate ideas, but that truths must be carefully observed to be true.
There was one thing that Descartes knew for certain, he existed. If Descartes was able to think, then he existed, which comes from one of his most famous quotes, “I think; therefore I am.” He knew that since he existed, he could not have created himself, so something else had to have created his existence. He believed that one could go down the line and keep asking what caused that person to exist and so on until eventually ending with an infinite self-causing being, which is God. He used this notion of an existing God to prove his distinction of ideas.
Although philosophy rarely alters its direction and mood with sudden swings, there are times when its new concerns and emphases clearly separate it from its immediate past. Such was the case with seventeenth-century Continental rationalism, whose founder was Rene Descartes and whose new program initiated what is called modern philosophy. In a sense, much of what the Continental rationalists set out to do had already been attempted by the medieval philosophers and by Bacon and Hobbes. But Descartes and Leibniz fashioned a new ideal for philosophy. Influenced by the progress and success of science and mathematics, their new program was an attempt to provide philosophy with the exactness of mathematics. They set out to formulate clear and rational principles that could be organized into a system of truths from which accurate information about the world could be deduced. Their emphasis was upon the rational ability of the human mind, which they now considered the source of truth both about man and about the world. Even though they did not reject the claims of religion, they did consider philosophical reasoning something different than supernatural revelation. They saw little value in feeling and enthusiasm as means for discovering truth, but they did believe that the mind of an individual is structured in such a way that simply by operating according to the appropriate method it can discover the nature of the universe. The rationalists assumed that what they could think clearly with their minds did in fact exist in the world outside their minds. Descartes and Leibniz even argued that certain ideas are innate in the human mind, that, given the proper occasion, experience would cause...
Descartes was incorrect and made mistakes in his philosophical analysis concerning understanding the Soul and the foundation of knowledge. Yes, he coined the famous phrase, “I think therefore I am,” but the rest of his philosophical conclusions fail to be as solid (Meditation 4; 32). Descartes knew that if he has a mind and is thinking thoughts then he must be something that has the ability to think. While he did prove that he is a thinking thing that thinks (Meditation 3; 28), he was unable to formulate correct and true philosophical arguments and claims. For instance, his argument for faith that a non-deceiving God exists and allows us to clearly reason and perceive was a circular argument. Another issue with Descartes' philosophy is that he wanted to reconcile scientific and religious views, which is wrong since the two maintain completely different foundational beliefs and they should exist exclusively- without relation to the other. Thirdly, he believed that the mind was the Self and the Soul, failing to recognize that humans have bodies and the outside world exists, and through which we gain our knowledgeable. Lastly, Descartes argues that ideas are all innate while they actually are not- we gain knowledge through experience.
In Meditations on First Philosophy, it is the self-imposed task of Descartes to cast doubt upon all which he knows in order to build a solid foundation of knowledge out of irrefutable truths. Borrowing an idea from Archimedes, that with one firm and immovable point the earth could be moved, Descartes sought one immovable truth. Descartes' immovable truth, a truth on which he would lay down his foundation of knowledge and define all that which he knows, was the simple line "Cogito ergo sum": I think, therefore I am. This allowed for his existence.
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
Rene Descartes, a 17th century French philosopher believed that the origin of knowledge comes from within the mind, a single indisputable fact to build on that can be gained through individual reflection. His Discourse on Method (1637) and Meditations (1641) contain his important philosophical theories. Intending to extend mathematical method to all areas of human knowledge, Descartes discarded the authoritarian systems of the scholastic philosophers and began with universal doubt. Only one thing cannot be doubted: doubt itself. Therefore, the doubter must exist. This is the kernel of his famous assertion Cogito, ergo sum (I am thinking, therefore I am existing). From this certainty Descartes expanded knowledge, step by step, to admit the existence of God (as the first cause) and the reality of the physical world, which he held to be mechanistic and entirely divorced from the mind; the only connection between the two is the intervention of God.