RENE DESCARTES
Rene Descartes was born in Indre-et-Loire, France in 31 March 1596. Descartes who lost his mother at an early age, went to Jesuit Colleege Royal Henry-Le Grand in 1607. He met mathematics and physics in here and he learned about Galileo’s works. Then, he completed his degree in law. After finishing the faculty, he travelled some countries. However, he spent most of his life in the Netherlands. Philosophy system that overturn the Western civilization are created by the Descartes in Netherlands. The basis of this philosophy is based on the principle to doubt everything to reach real information. Therefore, it is necessary to accept that all informations based on unrealiable basis. Doubt is the only thing that can not be suspected.
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Philosophy of mind examines the mental events and their features and explores the relationship to the body and the brain. The most important and main problem of the philosophy of mind is considered as the mind-body problem. Mind-body problem is about what kind of relationship between mental processes and physical processes and conditions.There are different approaches about this issue. Some of the most important are interactionism, paralellism, idealism, epiphenomenalism, materialism, monism and dualism. Dualism is an approach that advocates mind and body are two different things(substance) apart from each other. This approach is based on the most basic form of Descartes on Platon. Because, Descartes thinks that people have soul and body and these two things can not be reduced to each other. Mind is something that is regardful but material objects occupy a place in the space. Physical world is mechanical. It is controlled by physical laws. Whereas, mind becomes subject to other policies, such as the laws of thought. Although they are so different, mind and body affect each other. Physical world events cause to acquire certain experiences to people. Besides, thought to act on a …show more content…
He has found the basic law of reflection in optical; the incidence angle equals the departure angle. His greatest contribution to mathematics was on analytic geometry and he has worked to apply the algebra to the geometry. He created the cartesian geometry concept and classified the curves according to the equation that produces them. The importance of the history of philosophy is that removing the bottlenecks where church-oriented philosophy in the Middle Ages and moving to New Age. Descartes’s works has led to the emergence of rationalism approach. His works influenced many philosophers, primarily Spinoza and Leibniz. Descartes ' s ideas are still spoken many times in our day, including ‘’I think therefore I am(cogito ergo sum)’’. For these reasons, he is considered the father of modern philosophy. In addition, Descartes also made studies about physics and the law of the nature and these studies were the source of information for the famous physicist Isaac Newton. Besides all of these, Descartes is a philosopher and first scientific approach psychologist that tried to get into the psychology to the natural sciences. Descartes explained the relationship between behavior and the nervous system. Descartes’s book that is called the World carries an integrative structure for several disciplines. This quality has become to the World one of the first modern
Meditation II Descartes begins to analyze himself since he stripped away all of his beliefs in “Meditation I”. By stripping everything away, Descartes wills himself to doubt everything, the physical world, his senses, his body, etc. This state of mind takes its toll and Descartes understands that he must challenge his doubts even though he is uncertain how to resolve them. Descartes world gets turned upside down as he begins to face his doubts, and returns to the beginning which is allows him to doubt everything again. He continuous this course of doubt until one he is able to find real truth, or he realizes that nothing is assured.
First Descartes examined the various qualitative mathematical features regarding such objects, those that he found having existed within him already. Some of these properties were uniform when it comes to a certain object, initiating Descartes to think of them as things he must clearly acknowledge regardless of his conscious idea toward them. The existence of God was then used to prove the truth behind such objects; including even those of the senses for mathematical properties could be derived from them. Since Descartes could clearly and distinctively conceive God, which was indubitable, any clear and distinctive feature of material objects perceived would ensure their existence as well as anything else that were perceived in the same manner (Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, p.87-90). In other words, God’s existence acted as Descartes’ ultimate key that would help him achieve the perfect knowledge (Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy,
Conclusion: The mind is substantively different from the body and indeed matter in general. 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.
For example, if the brain stops working it doesn’t affect the mind because the mind continues to exist. The Body-Mind Problem is the philosophical question of how the mind and body are related and if the mind is a non-physical substance. We
However, Descartes is indeed certain of the fact that he is a thinking being, and that he exists. As a result of this argument, Descartes makes a conclusion that the things he perceives clearly and distinctly cannot be false, and are therefore true (Blanchette). This clear and distinct perception is an important component to the argument that Descartes makes in his fifth meditation for the existence of God. This paper explains Descartes ' proof of God 's existence from Descartes ' fifth meditation, Pierre Gassendi 's objection to this proof, and then offers the paper 's author 's opinion on both the proof and objection.
Descartes declares he has to determine if there is a God and if he does exist, whether he can be a deceiver. The reason he has to determine the existence of God and what he is, rests in his theories of ideas. This is because we do not know if there is an outside world and we can almost imagine everything, so all depends on God’s existence and if he is a deceiver. “To prove that this non-deceiving God exists, Descartes finds in his mind a few principles he regards as necessary truths which are evident by the “natural light” which is the power or cognitive faculty for clear and distinct perception.” If arguments is presented in logical trains of thought, people could not help but to be swayed and to understand those arguments.
Descartes and Hume. Rationalism and empiricism. Two of the most iconic philosophers who are both credited with polarizing theories, both claiming they knew the answer to the origin of knowledge and the way people comprehend knowledge. Yet, despite the many differences that conflict each other’s ideologies, they’re strikingly similar as well. In this essay I will attempt to find an understanding of both rationalism and empiricism, show the ideologies of both philosophers all whilst evaluating why one is more theory is potentially true than the other.
One of Descartes’ many critiques was that of fellow philosopher John Locke. Using Locke I will argue that many of Descartes claims in his meditations on innate knowledge and reality show problematic. I do not totally agree with his proposition that only the mind can produce certain knowledge and that our senses are always under the attack of the devil that deceives us. I do however agree with Locke’s argument which opposes Descartes concerning doubt in the first meditation. During Descartes first meditation the focus was placed on doubt and how knowledge is innate in each of us.
He borrows from other scholastic views about the universe and God. Most of his understanding of personal identity immensely contributed to Locke's theory later. Descartes early views on philosophy helped in trying to explain the concept of mind, consciousness, and self. His argument is because thought is the foundation of all knowledge, which contradicts scholastic understanding on the
Rodrigues 1 Izabella Rodrigues Dr. Efron Honors Physics November 20, 2017 René Descartes was born in La Haye en Touraine, France on March 31, 1596. His mother passed away shortly after she gave birth to him. The death of Jeanne Brochard, the mother, left René’s father, Joachim Descartes, as the primary caretaker for his three children. Joachim worked full time, one might even say over time, as a Jurist in the Parliament of Brittany. This demanding job left little time to be a single parent, so he sent his three children off to his parents house (René’s grandparents).
In the realm of Philosophy, different views about the definition of the mind and its interactions exist. Among the many, Dualism stands as one of the most debatable, thanks to its position about the relationship of the mind and body, and its repercussions. This assignment discusses the dualist relationship between the mind and the body, as well as its impact on the individual free will. It asserts Interventionism as an extension of Dualism, as well as an alternative to Determinism. The objective of this endeavor is to present the Dualist approach to Mind and Body as an alternative or possible solution to the dilemma of Determinism.
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. Perhaps the strongest argument that Descartes gives for his claim is that the non extended thinking thing like the Mind cannot exist without the extended non thinking thing like the Body. Since they both are substances, and are completely different from each other. This paper will present his thesis in detail and also how his claim is critiqued by two of his successors concluding with a personal stand.
Although Descartes’s birth place was La Haye, which is now named Descartes, his family connections lie south across the Creuse River in Poitou (3). His father, Joachim, owned farms and houses in Châtellerault and Poitiers, France. Because Joachim was a councillor in the Parlement of Brittany in Rennes, Descartes inherited a modest rank of nobility. After Descartes’s mother, Jeanne Brochard, passed away when “The Father of Modern Philosophy” was only one, his father remarried in Rennes, leaving him in La Haye to be raised by his maternal grandmother, and after his grandma passed away his great-uncle in Châtellerault (2). Traveling around the country was Descartes’s life and education
Two important ideas of Descartes which are 1) perception, reproduction and attention as function of body and 2) animal do not possess soul helped who follow him to study on animals and understand to human behavior. Descartes provide testable hypotheses about relationships between behavior and physiology. He believed in concept of consciousness that was the distinction between human beings and animals. From his influential work, Spinoza and Leibnitz contribute to early development of science of psychology.
As such, this period can be seen as an ongoing battle between two opposing principles that is between Rationalism and Empiricism. This revolution in philosophical thought was sparked by the French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes, the first figure in the movement known as Rationalism, and much of subsequent Western philosophy can be seen as a response or a reaction to his ideas. His method was to get rid of everything about which there could be even a suspicion of doubt to arrive at the single unquestionable principle that he possessed consciousness and was able to think "I think, therefore I am" in Latin "Cogito ergo sum" When François Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694–1778) was visiting London, he found that philosophy like many other things there had changed significantly. He had left the world a plenum, and now he now found it was a vacuum. At Paris the universe was seen composed of vortices of subtle matter but nothing