René Descartes

-Descartes’ argument that the mind is not material is inherently flawed and can be countered. -He disagrees with Weirob’s argument that a person is his or her body only. Descartes knows that he exists somehow, to have all these thoughts of doubt. He initially thought that he had a soul, by which he could sense and think, and also had a body. However, all these physical attributes have been cast into doubt. Except for one. He may exist without any other of the above attributes, but he cannot…

gaining knowledge. All people have brains to think, interpret, and create anything they can imagine in their mind. But have you ever wondered if your perception of reality was truly real and not a giant deception. A man named Descartes had a very similar thought. In fact, Descartes decided in order to really know the realness of existence he had to forget all the knowledge his mind had gathered through his lifetime. The man disregards all knowledge that has no support to be true as well as all…

In Descartes third meditation he attempts to make an argument for god, he does this by using the certain basis of knowledge he attained in the previous meditations as a starting point. The knowledge he attained previously was that he existed as a thinking thing. He declares that arithmetic and geometry were simple truths, two and three does equal five, but he also reminded himself that these “certain” truths could be deceptions. The problem with this truth was that as soon as he stopped thinking…

Descartes starts off by saying that all the old opinions and beliefs that he had accepted as true were actually false. They were highly doubtful and he took time out of his retirement to reexamine them. He said that there was no need in proving al his old opinions wrong, but it was not necessarily wrong to believe in them either. Descartes says that beliefs are received from your sense and sometimes these senses mislead us, and because of this deception, it is hard to put total confidence in…

In the Meditations, Descartes attempts to give a firm theoretical basis of all knowledge on an individual’s rational capacities. Descartes’s dream argument and evil deceiver argument challenges an individual’s ability to know. He did not believe that our senses are necessarily accurate. The idea of perception that conveys accurate information is what he considered to be the very foundation. In the Dream argument, Descartes argues that while he’s asleep, he has perceptions about things that seem…

The third argument against Descartes’ successful refutation is that he admits throughout his meditations that he can in fact be deceived, which means there is no way for him to refute the first meditation in and of itself as explained by the dream argument. “From these considerations it is utterly apparent that, notwithstanding the immense goodness of God, the nature of man, insofar as it is composed of mind and body, cannot help being sometimes mistaken” (140). This statement recognizes that he…

One of Descartes’ most controversial proposals is that our whole entire life could be a very vivid dream because when people are actually dreaming, they often never realize it until they’re awake again. “I see plainly that there are never any sure signs by means of which being awake can be distinguished from being asleep” (Descartes 51), he suggests. With this motion, he questions the authenticity of studies such as astronomy, medicine, and physics, that rely on the analysis of composite things…

Descartes went on to mention the three hypothesis that he feels are ways to doubt his beliefs in the first meditation but as he goes on to the second meditation, he comes up with a belief that cannot be doubted. As he concluded his first meditation, he came up with his strongest hypothesis and that dealt with evil demons deceiving him but with this new belief that cannot be doubted, he feels that he must exist to even be led on towards deception from that evil figure. Because he was doubting his…

Descartes’ main goal with his first meditation is to provide a new foundation of the sciences. He claims that the foundation of the sciences lies within our minds and is exclusive of our senses. To prove this theory, Descartes uses the method of logical doubt, in which he states “if I am able to find in each one some reason to doubt, this will suffice to justify my rejecting the whole” (Descartes, 6). This means that, if he can find the slightest doubt regarding a fact, he can therefore can…

1A.) Descartes attempted to prove or examine the nature of physical objects as well as non physical objects and essentially discover whether or not they were true. He believed in mechanical philosophy, which can be explained when examining his method of doubt, and his views on the nature of the self. Descartes had a three step method of doubt which had the intention of discovering what can be found to be real or true. To sum this up, he wanted to discover what can be held as a base for certainty…