...Basic Structure [Paragraph 1] [First one or two sentence(s) restating the question as your thesis] [Section 1: Summary] [Say what you are going to do in this section of your paper.] *Now state each step in the philosopher’s argument in your own words.+ [Assert the reasons the philosopher gives in the text for his/her conclusion.] [Back up that assertion with a quotation or two.] [Explain why the quotation(s) you used are important.] [If you have done the above for each of the philosopher’s premises in the argument, you can now restate the conclusion of the argument.] [Section 2: Critical analysis/critique of the argument] [Analyze each premise of the argument you summarized.] [Explanation] [Is the premise true or false?] [Explain why you think so.] [Give an example to support this.] [Explain your example.] [Clarify your explanation.] [Consider possible objections the philosopher could have to particular criticisms you made above.] [Conclude with a sentence asserting that you have proved your thesis.] Detailed Explanation and Examples 1. [Paragraph 1] Explain the purpose of your paper. [This means restate the essay question]. a. [First one or two sentence(s)] For example, if you are being asked to summarize and critique Descartes’ argument for mind/body dualism, then you would say something like: i. “In...
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...Descartes’ Mind Body Dualism Rene Descartes’ main purpose is to attempt to prove that the mind that is the soul or the thinking thing is distinct and is separate from the body. This thinking thing was the core of himself, which doubts, believes, reasons, feels and thinks. Descartes considers the body to be an extended unthinking thing; therefore it is possible that one may exist without the other. This view is known as mind-body dualism. He believes that what he is thinking in his mind is what God created and instilled in him. Descartes outlines many arguments to support and prove his claims of his discoveries. He states that because he can think, his mind exists. This is known as the Cogito, which is the first existential principal of all of Descartes’ work where modern philosophy begins. Descartes also explains that it is possible that all knowledge of external objects, including his body could be false because of the deceiving actions of an evil genius. The evil genius could make him contemplate his existence of his nature as a thinking thing. Descartes further explains in his arguments, even physical objects, such as the body, are better and more distinctly known through the mind than through the body. Descartes shows this through his example of The Wax Argument, where solid wax transitions into liquid state. With all of this in mind, Descartes theories suggest the mind and body can exist separately but it can be argued, the mind needs the body in order to think and reason...
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...Karthik Keni Phil 21 Greg Antill Part A: 1. The Evil Demon Argument In Descartes’ First Meditation, he completely shatters the foundations of his previous beliefs and then uses the evil demon argument as a platform in which he can explain the source of his beliefs. Descartes proposes the evil demon argument because he wants to instill doubt not only in himself, but also in his audience that God may not be the only “Supreme Being”. He believes God to be a good being that wouldn’t deceive us and lead our thoughts astray. The evil demon argument has the purpose of casting doubt on his belief that God is the only being who has the capability of implementing thoughts into his mind, creating doubt of the existence of an external world, and aiding his pursuit of a strong and certain foundation for all his knowledge and beliefs. In this argument, Descartes doesn’t refute the reality of a God, however I believe he presents the argument as if they both exist and that if he is being deceived it could not be from God, the good being, but the evil genius providing him with false sensory material. The primary claim of this skeptical argument is to doubt the reality of an external world that has the possibility of being created by an evil demon. Deceit could be defined in such a way that our minds are being controlled by an evil demon and that our senses of an external world are mistaken. Depicting the evil demon argument of Descartes in a science fiction way like “The Matrix,” made me really...
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...“It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well, said Rene Descartes”. All throughout history there have been many remarkable minds, but as was stated by Descartes; it is not about how good the mind is, it is about how the mind is used. Descartes has always been regarded as a great philosopher; as a matter of fact, he is known as the father of modern philosophy. However, he was more than a philosopher. He was also a great mathematician and an eminent rationalist amid other things. Descartes has played as a major piece in the realms of mathematics, philosophy, and even science; therefore, he had a great impact in the course of history. Rene Descartes was born on March 31, 1596 in the small town of La Haye en Touraine, France. He was the youngest son of Joachim Descartes, his father who was a council member in the parliament, and Jeanne Brochard, his mother who sadly passed away within the first year of Descartes life. After the death of his wife; Joachim had his children live with their maternal grandmother. Joachim was very adamant about his children’s education. He wanted his children to get a good education and so he sent Rene to a boarding school. Rene was eight years old when he was sent to the boarding at the Jesuit college of Henri IV in La Fleche....
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...Descartes’ Meditation 3 is a proof which attempts to provide evidence for the existence of God. Descartes gives this evidence through reasoning, starting out by describing how he comes to this conclusion of the existence of God. He does this by closing himself off mentally from the outside world, ignoring sight, hearing, and his other senses and looking deeply in himself (Cahn 496). This allows him to make an introspective look at God’s existence without the influences of another person. From this state, he organizes his thoughts and from his collective thoughts and reasoning, he deduces that God does exist due to his finite existence, a mere substance that is “not sufficient to explain my [Descartes] having the idea of an infinite substance, since I am finite, unless this idea proceeded from some substance which really was infinite” (Cahn 500) and the understanding that God is a substance that “is infinite, independent, supremely intelligent and supremely powerful” (Cahn 500). This basically means that since he should not be able to have the ability to think the way he does without either being an infinite being or having an infinite being put the thoughts into his head. This explanation appears to be extremely logical, but once it is analyzed several flaws in reasoning are picked up from the reading. I agree with most of Descartes reasoning on the existence of God, which I will clarify further, along with an explanation of the biggest...
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...“Mediation of First Philosophy’’, Rene Descartes attempts to separate the truth from false and the imaginary from reality while giving new hope to his readers. He actually tries to withdraw from his previous conclusions claiming that he could have used senses rather than thinking and therefore this round he withdraws totally from senses through a process of methodological doubt. He creates a sense of doubt in other scholars work by disputing their line of thinking with a distinguished line of logic. He sheds off any criticism directed at him and urges his readers to argue along his line of logic to get his concept and reason. HOW OR WHY THE COGITO EGO SUM IS HOPEFUL. Descartes concludes that he cannot doubt his existence. He argues that doing so would mean that even the idea of doubting would not exist and as far as it exists, then its source is him, his mind. However, the existence of the body puts him in a situation of doubt. He thinks that the idea of a mind implanted in a body is a deception and forms a basis of argument and cross psychological analysis. He goes ahead to state that this would be demons work of deceiving him or it can be that God was praying tricks on him, something he really doesn’t conquer with. God being perfect, He would not do that. ‘I think, therefore I am’ in the Discourse on method is hopeful because it brings out the picture of knowledge, that the mind can know itself better than it can do to anything else. Descartes is certain that he can only support...
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...Does God Exist? Descartes’ Arguments and Proofs Rene Descartes considers what he can be sure to be true in his Meditations on First Philosophy. His meditations cover a vast variety of areas: the nature of the mind and body, the senses, the essence and existence of material things; but of all of these topics, one of his most thought-provoking and fascinating meditations is that on the existence of God. His argument is fairly well stated, but it is not flawless in its reasoning and logic. Through explanation and analysis of his position, this paper will set out his belief on the existence of God, the importance of this argument to his overall position, and to discuss several of the problems in his reasoning. The first proof at which Descartes considers God is the in the third meditation. By this point, Descartes has already concluded that the only thing thus far that he can be sure of is that he exists as some sort of thinking thing. He has considered the existence of a malevolent spirit that has set out specifically to deceive him at every turn, which has the effect of rendering any other belief spurious at best. In the face of the possibility that something is deliberately setting out to deceive him, he is left only with the knowledge that he is a thinking thing. From there, we get into the third meditation, wherein Descartes considers the possibility of the existence of God, and what precisely that would entail. (Beyssade) Descartes starts by pointing out that in order...
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...Course title Date Every culture tends to vary from a different period. However, many philosophers have different arguments on culture in various time periods. This term paper will explain the life, times, and critical theories of Rene Descartes who is one of the most significant thinkers who ever inquired into the connection between mind and body. It will also explain how culture and period influenced his ideas. Also, it will identify and evaluate the key concepts and analyzes that comprised Descartes' theories. Furthermore, it will detect and describe Descartes' contributions to the field of philosophy as discussed below. The key concepts and analysis that comprises his theories that include the theory of sense perception and the theory of ideas which he mostly concentrates on. According to Descartes' ontology, there are three levels of being which are mode attribute and substance.. The levels of being are agreed regarding ontological requirement, Modes rely on attributes of their being in a way that those same attributes do not depend on methods used and but to rely on the substances for their being in a way that elements do not depend on characteristics. The spirit or nature of a mind, Descartes says, is to think. If a thing does not have faith in, it is not a mind. In his analytical, this very feature of Descartes' theory of ideas, Vere Chappell introduced the terminology of “counterparts” (Chappell, 1986). The sun as symbolized in an approach...
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...The Cosmological argument argues for the existence of God a posteriori based on the apparent order in the universe. For Aristotle, the existence of the universe needs an explanation, a cause, as it could not have come from nothing. Nothing comes from nothing so since there is something, there must have been some other thing that is its cause. Aristotle rules out an infinite progression of causes, so, that led to the conclusion that there must be a First Cause. Likewise with motion, there must have been a first cause; Aristotle calls this the ‘Prime Mover’. There is a God, says Aristotle -for how else does motion begin? Whilst this argument does generally offer some support for the existence of God, it does not prove his existence. Aquinas believed that, since the universe is God's creation, evidence of God's existence can be found in his creation using intellect and reason, as such a concept of God is beyond all direct human experience. Hence, he devised his 'Five Ways,' 5 a posteriori arguments for the existence of God, based on our empirical experience of the universe. The Cosmological argument rests on the first three of Aquinas' Five Ways. The first way is called the argument from motion or ‘change’. It is in this first way that Aquinas follows Aristotle’s ‘prime mover’ thesis. The first way (The 'Kalam' argument) follows as: • Everything in the world is moving or changing • Nothing can move or change by itself • There cannot be an infinite regress of things changing other...
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...RENE DESCARTES’ METHODS OF DOUBT Introduction The theory of knowledge and analytical method advanced by the French philosopher Rene Descartes is often summed up in the famous phrase, Cogito ergo sum- “I think, therefore I am.” While this phrase does express the final step in his systematic process of “doubting everything,” it is a gross over-simplification of Descartes’ methods. Descartes did use systematic doubt to find the starting point for his theory of knowledge, but his other philosophical inquiries involved several different methods of doubting, from simply imagining that which is contradictory, to carrying logical postulates to absurd conclusions, to the more traditional methods of testing syllogisms and analyzing proofs. In this essay, I will examine Rene Descartes’ various methods of doubt, to show that the philosopher did not rely on the single reductio ad absurdum in his famous proof of his own existence. Descartes, as we will see, employed several different approaches to philosophical proofs, and he was not the mechanistic logician that his mathematical background might suggest. It will be the argument of this essay that Descartes applied different methods of doubt to different problems, depending upon whether the problem was epistemological, scientific or theological in nature. Existential Doubt: Do I Exist? The first and best-known method of doubt employed by Descartes involves reductionism, in the sense that he used a negative or reverse logical path...
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...The correspondence between philosopher René Descartes and the Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia from 1643 to 1649 give incredible insight not only into the person of René Descartes but the intricacies of his philosophical views, particularly as a critical review of his substance dualism. The core tenants of Cartesian dualism are (in brief) that; 1) There exists only two distinct types of substance; material substances (of the body and the physical realm – that is extended spatially) and immaterial substances (that make up the mind, rationality and the soul.) 2) In relation to the body – Descartes is a mechanist; such that the body operates like a machine, according to internal laws, reactivity to external stimuli. The soul or mind is capable of diverting these automated principles; such that we see the distinction between human reason and action, and the behaviour of animals....
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...independent and if so, is society’s perceptions of independence even plausible? Well, in chapter 2 of “Philosophy”, Descartes and Charles Taylor discuss their opposing sides on this very issue. Descartes believes in “The Atomic Self”, meaning he believes that one is the only person who can truly label oneself. This also means that one’s self-being can be established separately from...
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...and Hague. He was always poor and withdrawn and he earned his living by polishing lenses. He was still young when he died in 1677. He was a rationalist, determinist and a pantheist. Spinoza’s philosophy was profoundly influenced by Descartes. His writings were mainly in Latin with few in Dutch. The most important of his works include the brief treatise of God, Man and his happiness, the tractacus theologico-politico, the cogitata metaphysica and, above all, his masterwork, published after his death: the ethica ordine geometric demonstrate. In our presentation, we will discuss his metaphysics and on his metaphysics we look at what is substance, substance-monism, God and the world, and communication between substances. We will look at his ethics and on his ethics we will consider his work on Man. We will discuss his epistemology and on his epistemology we will look at levels of knowledge. We will then proceed to criticize his philosophy and finally make our conclusion. METAPHYSICS Spinoza follows in the path established by Descartes. He adopts Descartes’ situation as his starting point. For Descartes, substance was understood as that which has need of nothing else in order to exist; strictly speaking, only God could be substance. Afterward Descartes came across other substances which did not need other creatures in order to exist, although they did need God; these were the res cogitans and res extansa. Spinoza accepts this quite rigorously, and defines substance in this way:...
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...Reason and Experience DAA March 09 I. Mind as Tabula Rasa The Specification: - The strengths and weaknesses of the view that all ideas are derived from sense experience - The strengths and weaknesses of the view that claims about what exists must ultimately be grounded in and justified by sense experience. This is an analysis of the "empiricist" view: both Hume and Locke are empiricists as they argue that all knowledge depends on experience. Note that the first item asks us to evaluate empiricism as an explanation of the origin of ideas, and the second asks us to evaluate the claim that knowledge must be justified with reference to experience. Locke on the origin of Ideas AO1 Position and its implications: The mind is a tabula rasa or "blank slate" at birth, empty of all ideas and knowledge; it is gradually filled through experience AO1 Detail, Illustration: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding II.1 Locke's definition of "idea" = "the object of thinking" He gives examples: "such as are those expressed by the words whiteness, hardness, sweetness, thinking, motion, man, elephant, army, drunkenness, and others" We might say concepts rather than ideas, the basic mental building blocks of propositions or declarative sentences Ideas are acquired through two processes, sensation or reflection; each is a type of perception, the first of external objects, the second an inward perception of mental processes. Sensation ...
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...Descartes' Methodic Doubt René Descartes (1596-1650) is an example of a rationalist. According to Descartes, before we can describe the nature of reality (as is done in metaphysics) or say what it means for something to be or exist (which is the focus of ontology), we must first consider what we mean when we say we know what reality, being, or existence is. He suggests that it is pointless to claim that something is real or exists unless we first know how such a claim could be known as a justified true belief. But to say that our beliefs are justified, we have to be able to base them ultimately on a belief that is itself indubitable. Such a belief could then provide a firm foundation on which all subsequent beliefs are grounded and could thus be known as true. This way of thinking about knowledge is called foundationalism. In his Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), Descartes indicates how we are able to guarantee our beliefs about reality by limiting what we believe to what is indubitable or is based on what is indubitable. That involves him in a series of six "meditations" (of which we will focus on only the first two) about the proper method of philosophical reflection and the conclusions that can be drawn from using that method. Throughout these Meditations Descartes insists that (1) we should claim to know only that for which we have justification, (2) we cannot appeal to anything outside of our ideas for such justification, and (3) we judge our ideas using a method...
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