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Annotated bibliography on critical thinking
Annotated bibliography on critical thinking
Essay on descartes views
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1- Why is Descartes certain that he exists? Has he proven that anyone else exists?
He thinks he exists because if he doesn’t exit he wouldn’t doubt or thinking about his own existence.
He has no prove of the existence of anyone he thinks and analyze so he exists.
2- Just before concluding that he himself exists, Descartes says this: "I have convinced myself that there is absolutely nothing in the world, no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies." Then he goes on to say that he exists. Has he contradicted himself? In claiming that he exists has he taken something back from his first claim? Or is there a way to reconcile these two claims?
Absolutely, if he exists and nothing else exists how can he exists? is he god? does he create the
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Problem is that later he claims that he is a thing that has sensory perceptions. He is saying that because since he is a thing that think he could be creating an imaginary world where he can have a body with sense perception. In order to solve it you need to know if what you see is real or not.
6- What does Descartes mean by ‘thinking '? Is this how you understand the term? Can you think of a case that Descartes would consider a case of thinking but you would not? Does dreaming count as a case of thinking? Does being in pain count as a case of thinking? Does listening to music turned all the way up count as a case of thinking? Compare your answer to these questions to Descartes '.
Thinking is just the capability to understand and analyze everything around you and make you capable of taking decisions. Yes, I think he is correct. Since he doesn’t believe on his senses he could consider that you don’t exist, but he exists as a thing that think. Yes, dreaming can count as a case of thinking because it could be the same as creating an imaginary world that you still need to understand.
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Yes, you must think and wish to listen music before playing a song it could be real or not but it’s part of thinking. Everything that you use to interpret your real world or create your own imaginary world is part of thinking.
7 - What is the point of Descartes ' discussion of the piece of wax? That is, why does he talk about it?
What apparent problem or difficulty or surprising fact is the discussion meant to solve or allay?
The point is that matter can change and all could be your imagination and not necessarily real.
The point of the piece of was is that you can’t be sure of anything because what you think is real about
What you can see could be wrong. Even if you can smell, see the color of things, touch it you can’t be
If it’s your imagination or an illusion. The difficulty is that he cannot be certain about his sense
Perception, and he recognize that he has sensory perception but can’t trust on it
8- At the end of ¶12 Descartes says something absolutely shocking. He says that the perception he has of the wax "is not a case of vision or touch or imagination--nor has it ever been, despite
Descartes succeeded in some parts of his proof for the existence of God, but failed in proving God’s existence from a logical point of view. Most religions prove that anybody can be right in his own description of existence of God. So, Descartes is right in his own way, but to others to accept his idea is totally up to them. No one is certain that God exists. Although there are many causes that could make one believe God is for certain, those causes which might be perceived, does not necessarily make them true.
Descartes argument for his existence came from the doubt he had about everything around him. This doubt was generated by the idea of an evil genius. Descartes invented the evil genius to be an all-powerful and all-deceitful being. By creating the possibility of an evil genius, Descartes found the doubt he needed in order to be able to doubt everything he once believed. The evil genius was able to deceive ...
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.
he comes to term with three certainties: the existence of the mind as the thing that thinks,
In earlier meditations Descartes proved that he existed through the Cogito argument. Descartes must now move on to examine and explore questions about the world around him, but instead of doing this he first stop to examine the question of whether or not God exists. Descartes wants to know that he was created by an all knowing, perfect creator that is good and wants to make sure that he was not created by an evil spirit or demon. If Descartes can prove that he was created by a perfect all knowing creator then his ideas must carry some semblance of truth, because God is not a deceiver and he must of placed these ideas in Descartes. Descartes has good reasons for searching for the answer to the question of God’s existence, now he has to come up with a good sound argument to prove it.
In this paper, I will explain how Descartes uses the existence of himself to prove the existence of God. The “idea of God is in my mind” is based on “I think, therefore I am”, so there is a question arises: “do I derive my existence? Why, from myself, or from my parents, or from whatever other things there are that are less perfect than God. For nothing more perfect than God, or even as perfect as God, can be thought or imagined.” (Descartes 32, 48) Descartes investigates his reasons to show that he, his parents and other causes cannot cause the existence of himself.
He argues that if he does not solve God’s existence, he will not be certain about anything else. Thus, Descartes says that he has an idea of God and, therefore, God exists. However, in order to be certain of His existence, Descartes provides proofs that will illustrate his reasoning. The four proofs include formal reality vs. objective reality, something can’t arise from nothing, Descartes cannot be the cause of himself, and therefore, the bigger cause is God. Now that Descartes knows God is real, he must solve another aspect, which is if God can be a deceiver.
Descartes major concern is what we can know to be actually real. This concern starts from a dream he has, in his dream he thinks he is actually awake, so when Descartes does wake up he begins to question reality. On page 75 and 76 he says “ But I had the persuasion that there was absolutely nothing in the world, that there was no sky and no earth, neither minds nor bodies; I was not, therefore, at the same time, persuaded that I did not exists? To solve this he tosses out all emotions and reasons to try to figure out what actually exists. He starts himself on this hyperbolic doubt, increasing levels of doubt, meaning he continues to doubt himself until what he is left with is Cogito Ergo Sum. . Cogito Ergo Sum is being aware of disembodied thinking. He uses this as proof of his existence, because having thought, whether wrong or right, is proof that one does exist.
All of the above examples such as the wax and excluding everything that exists go back to the intellect of being a thinking thing that stands alone and Cogito inference in which it registers the sufficient grounds. The ‘I’ that he finally answers is who he is in the end when he says he long held beliefs that cannot be put aside. This is the ‘I’ that he now knows and claims to be the one that can doubt and be deceived by himself and others that are powerful such as God that allows him to believe he truly exist with or without a body and only being a thinking
Second, Descartes raised a more systematic method for doubting the legitimacy of all sensory perception. Since my most vivid dreams are internally indistinguishible from waking experience, he argued, it is possible that everything I now "perceive" to be part of the physical world outside me is in fact nothing more than a fanciful fabrication of my own imagination. On this supposition, it is possible to doubt that any physical thing really exists, that there is an external world at all. (Med. I)
many different results. Overall, I believe that there are some areas of Descartes’ position that
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.
He has new ideas of God. He concludes he did not create the idea of God. A finite being is incapable of creating an idea of an infinite possibility. Therefore, God must have created the idea already in him when he was created. Concluding that God exists. He also touches upon the idea in which he resolves it cannot be a deceiver. For instance, deception only relies on imperfection, while that is not God, which makes God a non deceiver.
...wax for example, he gathers a better idea of what it means to be a thinking thing. Since even his perceptions are accompanied by thinking, every time he perceives, he also thinks. Thus, he concludes that he knows his mind better than he knows his body; since he both employs his mind all of the time, and since his mind is a better source of knowledge than his perceptions.
This lead to Descartes saying that he cannot use his sensory perception to interpret his belief because he is not able to tell if the senses are dreams or