Concepts in metaphysics

Unlike the body, the soul is immortal. It is a form, or perhaps an idea that dictates the ideals of beauty. Unlike the soul, the body inevitably changes through body modifications, stress, health-related issues, and time. Soul, beauty, love, and the body all intertwine together, even if sometimes their ideas oppose each other, like the purity of the soul versus the impurity of the body. The relationship between the soul and the body, and love and beauty is well depicted in Plato’s Symposium:…

The unique and foremost influence to psychology that Descartes had was his consideration of the mind-body interaction. Descartes lived as a French philosopher and mathematician who; in the early 17th century, agreed with the notion of a clockwork universe. According to the text, this notion of the times proposed that the universe could be likened to a clock due to the fact of its constancy, predictability, and exactitude. The clock could act as an allegory to expound upon the workings of the…

proceed. However, this concept faces a challenge when placed into context with determinism, the idea that everything happens because something causes it to happen. If someone’s actions are causally determined, could we say he or she had the free will to choose them? As a proponent of soft determinism, Hume would answer yes. For Hume, the seeming incompatibility of determinism and free will is merely a…

In this essay, I outline two similarities of Descartes and Spinoza—belief in apriori knowledge, and God as the infinite substance—as well as two differences—contrasting conceptions of God’s relation to the world, and mind-body relations. Both Spinoza and Descartes subscribe to the rationalist epistemology which claims that knowledge must be self-evident and derived from reasoning, rather than experience. As such, both philosophers believe in apriori knowledge, in which true knowledge is derived…

The literature review article I researched examined the parallels between moral judgment and modal judgment. The article described the methodology of the experiment that was administered on freshman college students taking an entry-level psychology course. The experiment included a series of physically possible events and morally permissible actions, and the students were to judge on a yes/no scale of what they deemed to be either morally acceptable or unacceptable. At the conclusion of the…

Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God Philosopher Samuel Clarke introduced a myriad of reasons that are now considered the “Cosmological Argument” that directly attribute reason to the existence of a supreme being we humans consider “God.” Throughout this essay, I will be discussing Clarke’s Cosmological Argument, but I will be using the formulation from Professor Kearns’ notes. Clarke’s Cosmological Argument is founded on four premises and a single conclusion. This essay will analyze…

existence of God. Descartes and Anselm are two examples of philosophers who have done so. Both use the concept of having the idea of God to try to prove his existence. However, the ontological argument for the existence of God is unsuccessful in proving his existence. Descartes uses the idea of existence being a property and an aspect of perfection to try to prove God’s existence while Anselm uses the concept of God existing in the understanding rather than reality to do so. Descartes’s argument…

All others “drown” in its complexity and depth. He goes on to say in lines eighty-nine through ninety-two that the equally difficult to understand concept of divine predestination is contained within the concepts laid out in the rest of his discussion, although he does not delve into it. In final summary on lines ninety-three through ninety-five, he summarizes, writing that good and evil are predetermined to exist necessarily and…

When first reading the experiment in regards to rescue I and rescues II, I did not like or want to make a choice, and really, I do not have to make a choice. My job is to tell you what Stuart Mill would do and what Immanuel Kant would do based on their philosophical views of utilitarianism and categorical imperatives respectfully. In Rescue I & II Mill. Utilitarianism is the basic principle to look at what is right and wrong. Depending on the consequences or the outcomes you can select the…

The theistic worldview maintains that the universe was created by a perfect being who continues to actively observe it. Conversely, the atheistic worldview avows to a belief in the existence of only the materialistic world, which they contend was not created by a supernatural being. Non-believers commonly employ arguments that are grounded in the problem of evil to dispute the theist’s divine creator. The problem of evil elicits the question of how a perfect and loving God could allow evil, such…