Cleanthes Vs Philo

Divine nature of the Universe is a highly controversial topic engrossing the minds of philosophers since the Antiquity up to nowadays. Mostly these controversies arise from the inconsistency of theological explanations on the nature of religion. Another topic under debates is on the subject on Human nature. In the given paper, I am going to compare Cleanthes’ and Philo’s views on Deity and reflect upon their disagreements on the inductive argumentation, and provide the explanation of deductive reasoning in Descartes’ “Meditations of first philosophy”. The key concept of a worldview promoted by Cleanthes states that God can be beheld via one’s observations and the process of thinking. He is an advocate of a so-called “natural religion”. …show more content…
Philo is ready to provide hundreds of examples that will be applicable to Cleanthes’ logic, but fully absurd. This brings Philo to the point, when he concludes that there is no arguing about things, which are beyond human experience. There is a fundamental difference between the inductive and the deductive, and the results of both ways of reasoning. Transferring from one to another, one can trace a reversed process. If observation is the initial step in induction, in deduction it is a long way from theory to checking it on practice. Descartes’ way of self-knowledge is significantly different from those of his predecessors. The notion of clear conscience is used as a tool to get to the root of questions. No matter how well-established the visions are, there are ways to think of them from completely clear perspective. According to Descartes, any common knowledge can and should be questioned. Questioning the credibility of notions and things is what makes us – humans – thinking beings. Every philosophical mind is full of doubts. As long as it is so, the mind exists. “Cogito ergo sum” – is the core principle underlying in this theory. If one takes a closer look at this formula, “cogito” might be translated, as “I doubt”. This is the method Descartes uses to reset his knowledge. He believes that by consciously overthinking and over excepting old truths, …show more content…
Starting from the first and moving up to the last meditation, Descartes filters away things that are not under doubt from those that are, as well as from the unfiltered ones. Both inductive and deductive types of argumentations found their place in public minds. Although the first one proved to be less valid than the second, as not all specific characteristics can be generalized. It can be seen from the example of Cleanthes, that no matter how big the resemblance seems to appear, there is no proof of this likeness to be genuine. At the same time, one is not prohibited to find connections and generalize things for better understanding. Nevertheless, inductive reasoning, along with deductive, still finds its way in science. It is used for forming hypotheses and theories, while the latter allows applying them to specific