René Magritte

In Meditations on First Philosophy Rene Descartes attempts to reconcile a Christian metaphysics with a new epistemology contrary to the scholastic, Aristotelian worldview. He seeks new foundations that knowledge can be built upon and tries to accomplish this by identifying basic, indubitable axioms to derive more complex truths by. As Descartes had a background in mathematics and geometry, these tenets are proposed alike mathematical truths in that they are self-evidential. He calls these axioms…

Princess Elizabeth questioned the ability of the two substances of Cartesian Dualism to interact, and thereby introduced the problem of causal interaction. She essentially questioned how the mind (immaterial) causally interacts with the body (material), and therefore demanded a description of the mechanisms that give the mind and the body this power . In this paper, I will argue that Princess Elizabeth’s criticism of Cartesian Dualism successfully discredits Descartes’s theory by exposing the…

Throughout history, philosophers have been setting up plenty of theories to determine if the mind and the body are one. Substance dualism is one of those theories. Specifically, Descartes is a dualist who brings up the indivisibility argument about the mind that has been trusted until science is well developed. Even though Descartes’ argument is well-accepted, it is not strongly supported by factual evidence, and it is easily defeated by a simple question, which is how the mind and the body…

Personal identity refers to certain properties that make a person feel a special sense of attachment or ownership. Both philosophers John Locke and Rene Descartes had contrasting views about one’s working mind. Descartes believes that the mind cannot be identical to the body whereas Locke emphasizes that our bodies and mind are the same thing. Locke’s ideas on personal identity are primarily focused on memory, whereas Descartes is focused on the “thinking mind.” The thinking mind is our way of…

Rene Descartes proposes a variant of substance dualism that maintains the equal and distinct existence of physical and mental substances. Descartes (1641) discusses that bodies are physical substances because they extend outward and occupy spatial regions while the human mind is a mental substance because it cannot extend through space (P.165). Descartes also notes fundamental differences on their activities; the human body is passive because it cannot think while the mind can handle complex…

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…

Socrates and Rene Descartes are alike in their most fundamental motives but yet contrasting in results both trying to improve thinking but about two different things. One example would be how they each convey their message formal versus informal, another would be their life style and beliefs of how things should be done. Both Socrates and Descartes have completely different views on getting their desired results, and the level of risk one is willing to take to accomplish certain results.…

Paul Gustave Marie Camille Hazard, born August 30th, the year of 1878 was a French educator, a historian of ideas, and a scholar of comparative literature. The Crisis of the European Mind, which is written by Hazard, is filled with intellectual history that gives the synopsis of the creation of Modern Europe. Hazard’s book takes a look at the transition from the old world to the new world, new developments such as science, arts, and philosophy, and how characters such as Pierre Bayle and John…

Dualism vs Materialism The mind/body problem, the question of what is the relationship between the mind and the body, is commonly seen as a key issue in the philosophy of the mind (Sober, 2013, p. 204). The two categories of views discussed in Sober’s ‘Core Questions in Philosophy’ that attempt to resolve the mind/body problem are dualism and materialism. Dualism is the theory that the mind and the brain are two fundamentally different substances (Sober, 2013, p. 204). Conversely, materialism…

Past life regression is the process of going back in time to one's previous existence, while under hypnosis. Past life regression, also known as PLR fist became known in the case of Bridley Murphy in 1952. Virginia Tighe while under hypnosis reported a vision of a 19th century Irish woman named Bridley Murphy. Further investigations still have not determined if there ever was a 19th century Irish woman named Bridley Murphy. It is fact however, that Ms. Tighe as a child lived across the street…