The Nature Of Consciousness In Leibniz's Argument

René Descartes’s interest in a piece of wax demonstrates his ideas about powers of the mind to comprehend through what the senses cannot recognise, as wax changes when melted so greatly yet is still regarded as the same wax. Images or examples can challenge this idea of sustained identity through change; such as a ship, larvae or the self. Descartes sought an indubitable idea to secure his foundations for finding certain knowledge. This idea relates to the mind or the self being the starting point for knowledge, leading to an investigation into its nature. As a rationalist, Descartes’s views clash with empiricist David Hume. Hume’s example of the self seems far truer and does not appeal to the conventional Western idea of Descartes’s self. This

In Rene Descartes’ first meditation “Concerning Those Things That Can Be Called into Doubt,” he presents the dream argument, which claims that our senses are not a trustworthy source of our knowledge of our external world because they can at times be deceitful. In this paper I will show that Descartes’ argument is successful because there is no way we can know for certain what our state is at any given time (if we are awake or if we are asleep).

The movie covers the subject of the devastating terrorism attack of America on the Twin Towers in New York City on September 11, 2001. It covers the journey two port authority police officers went through that day and what they experienced. Real life events.

The author starts the superman objection by saying that it is clearly possible for one to imagine Clark Kent existing without Superman and Superman existing without Clarke Kent, but that’s impossible. Clarke Kent doesn’t exist without superman, and vice versa because they are the exact same person. One can not exist without the other. Because one can imagine that they can exist without each other, doesn’t necessarily mean they can exist without each other. One is only imagining, and that doesn’t logically imply that it’s possible. The author uses this objection as an example to prove that Descartes’s idea of the mind and body existing without each because he imagines It, is wrong. Visualizing is not a very dependable way of proving something

Graziano, M. S. A. (2013). Consciousness and the Social Brain. New York, USA: Oxford University Press.

The Mind/Body Problem has been a topic of much discussion for many centuries, dating back to philosophers even before Aristotle. The problem addresses the question that if there is a mind that is immaterial and distinct from the material body, then how can something immaterial control something that is material? How are are the mind and body related? Common theories that arise from this problem are centered around two viewpoints: the mind and body are two distinct entities or they are a single entity. The stance of Dualism in philosophy of the mind is based on the idea that the mind and body are two fundamentally different kinds of things. Dualism includes many subcategories that work to distinguish how the mind and body relate if they are separate. Some of these include the

Rene Descartes Mediations, discusses a wide variety of topics such as the concept of God, Dualism, Deception through the senses and many more. In the Second Meditations, Descartes mentions the idea of sense perception and how we use it to understand the information we gain from our experiences. The passage selected will illustrate the idea behind sense perception and the mental processes we use to better understand it.

In the Second Meditation, what is the Cogito, and what does it tell me for certain about my own existence? What is strongest and what is weakest in Descartes’ account?

Because in this conception the mind is substantively distinct from the body it becomes plausible for us to doubt the intuitive connection between mind and body. Indeed there are many aspects of the external world that do not appear to have minds and yet appear none the less real in spite of this for example mountains, sticks or lamps, given this we can begin to rationalize that perhaps minds can exist without bodies, and we only lack the capacity to perceive them.

Philosophy of mind has a dilemma: On the one hand, much of reality is explainable with purely physical terms. This forms the foundation of modern science, one of the main pillars of the modern world. On the other hand, with human beings, there is least an appearance of a mental realm, because we seem to have features such as free will. This appearance is recognizable even to those who are committed to physicalism. The question for philosophers of mind is, if the mind is immaterial and invisible, then how can we know whether or not it exists?

In his philosophical thesis, of the ‘Mind-Body dualism’ Rene Descartes argues that the mind and the body are really distinct, one of the most deepest and long lasting legacies.

Of all the recurring questions of Man, one of the most persistent is the question of our origins. Specifically the question of what, if anything, caused us to exist. It has been argued by generations of minds, all seeking the definitive explanation of our existence. One such mind was that of Rene Descartes, a brilliant philosopher of his time, throughout and beyond ours. His ideas on geometry and metaphysics, among others, remain influential upon the thinkers of today.

Constant efforts to imagine objectively restrict us, beings able to have conscious experience, from fully comprehending the notion of consciousness, thus our incomprehension of what it is like to be a bat stems from our inability to think subjectively and objectively. Thomas Nagel attempts to both define consciousness and differentiate subjectivity from objectivity by refuting reductive ontological views. I will argue that because any theory regarding the mind cannot disregard the intractable dilemma of subjectivity that is present in the study of consciousness Nagel is definitely entitled to his assumptions which he makes in “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” to invalidate reductionism. The premises that he utilizes involves what he refers to as “the subjective character of experience,” the flaws of physicalism, the inability to alter one’s fundamental structure, and the irreducible aspect of experience.

One of the biggest fundamental questions in philosophy has to do with ourselves and what exactly makes us, us. What makes a person a person?

To try and explore the ‘mind’ it is necessary to examine if the mind and the brain are separate or if the mind and body are distinct from one another? Is the mind and body separate substance or elements of the same substance? Is consciousness the result of the mechanisms of the brain, wholly separate from the brain or inextricably linked? I will explore this question by looking at how this question has developed into two key schools of thought: Dualism and Monism. Dualism states that the mind is not physical and exists separately while Monism states that the mind and body are not separate. There are arguments for both theories and these dichotomous ideas have brought to light the mind-body problem, which I will analyse below. There are sub-forms of both schools of thought and one of the key sub-schools of thought under Dualism which I will discuss is Interactionism; that the mind and body are separate but both influence each other