Descartes Essay

René Descartes, the famous French philosopher and brilliant 17th century Scholar is credited worldwide as the founder of modern western philosophy for his works in the fields of Ontology – a branch of metaphysics regarding the ‘nature of being’- and Epistemology – the study of knowledge. What set him apart from the ancient philosophers was his avoidance of the scholastic traditions to write only in Latin (the language that only highly educated people were trained in) and instead wrote in French…

Throughout Meditations one and two, Descartes makes many arguments about many different topics within the area of philosophy. However one of the more important ones is the idea of “cognito”. This term basically means consciousness or mind when used in the context of Descartes’ Meditations. Furthermore, through his meditations, he seeks to create assurance that it is certain. He does this by making three main points to support his argument. The first point is one that involves this devil or…

Descartes states he is constantly being deceived and it is the result of all the falsehoods he blindly accepted in his childhood. He believes the falsehoods of his life leads him to contemplate the foundation of his knowledge. One falsehood Descartes claims is his senses. He learned most of his knowledge from seeing and his perception deceives him because he can not conclude that he is even awake. He stated he was certain that he was sitting by the fire in a rob with a paper in his hand, however…

Descartes v. Locke Rene Descartes and John Locke are two philosophers of the 17th century who study on what the self is and how the mind and body are associated together. Although Descartes and Locke share some ideas, they do have different and significant examples explaining their beliefs. Rene Descartes has 6 Meditations in a treatise written by himself called “Meditations on First Philosophy” in which 3 are important. Two of the important Meditations are the 5th and 6th Meditations and they…

Descartes did not believe that the information we receive through our senses is necessarily accurate. After the revelation he experienced on November 10, 1619, Descartes undertook his own intellectual rebirth. His first step was to throw out everything he thought he knew, refusing to believe in even the most basic premises before proving them to himself satisfactorily. In this act of demolition and reconstruction, Descartes felt it would be a waste of time to tear down each idea individually.…

universality. If I can think something is true, you can too! The lack of interest Rationalism has in sensory input is definitely a weakness. There are senses such as taste that cannot be proved by logic alone. Rene Descartes had a theory about wax and rationalism, called The Wax Argument. Descartes suggests that when we see, touch, or smell wax in its solid form we all call it wax, however, when that wax is melted it has changed completely but we still call it wax, the logic of which has been…

Descartes and Galileo were two the leading figures in the transition from natural philosophy to modern science and philosophy. They were some of the first modern thinkers who looked at the world and said that the laws of nature are indeed mathematical. One of Galileo’s goals was to take the studies of science and separate them from the ideologies of philosophy. Studying philosophy and mathematics Galileo was able to gain a clear understand of what separates the mathematics from the ideas of…

Descartes starts off by concluding that the existence of the body is an illusion and the senses do not exist either. It must now be demonstrated that one can exist, even though one has no body. The meditator states that he ‘has convinced [him]self of something’…

Beginning with the passage, whether the body is divisible, while the mind is indivisible, and the issue, stating that if the mind and the body are distinct. For Descartes premises, he understands himself to be a single, unified thing. What he states is that the body is by its nature divisible, while the mind is indivisible. What I’m going to discuss in this passage is that the mind is divisible as well as the body. While reading this passage I noticed how the mind and the body are distinct.I…

Although René Descartes and John Locke, were both considered great philosophers of their time; they are also well known for their opposing views on the Self. Descartes and Locke, both explored the nature of knowledge and the nature of self. As mentioned in the book, they both shared a scientific perspective in developing knowledge through clear thinking, analysis, and real world observation and experimentation. Descartes and Locke, both attempted to answer the same questions related to knowledge…