René Descartes

1 Compare and contrast the views of John Searle and Rene Descartes on dualism. Dualism claims that all real objects are either physical or nonphysical. Rene Descartes maintains that reality is composed of two substances: mind and body. Mind is immaterial essence and body in material essence. All our thoughts and feelings are immaterial and exist in our mind, while our body exists in material space. He believed that they interact with each other at some point in the body. On the other hand,…

with many significant philosophers expressing skepticism about the external world’s existence. René Descartes details a particularly notable and compelling argument for skepticism about the external world in his Meditations on First Philosophy, specifically in his “First Meditation”. Descartes argument centers around bringing everything we think we know and understand into doubt. To accomplish this, Descartes first questions information we receive through our senses. If we acquire our beliefs of…

“What we call monsters are not so to God, who sees in the immensity of his work the infinity of forms that he has comprised in it;” Michel de Montaigne, Of a Monstrous Child I sat down to write this essay with what I thought was a clear plan: I was going to persuade you, my audience, that society is indeed screwed up and how society has led me to do things to myself that I would have never dreamed possible (Yes I had a more “appropriate” way of describing it rather than using the word “screwed…

Prepared for instructor Mrs. Vafiades 11th Mar 2016 The Blade Runner Movie Summary In the year 2019, Los Angeles has become a dark and distorted city. Rick Deckard an ex cop, is a Blade Runner. Blade runners are people assigned to kill replicants. The replicants are robots that have all physical attributes of human’s beings and can’t be distinguished from humans except for if tests are run. When four replicants committed blood munity on the off World colony, Deckard is called out of…

Substance dualism is too extreme to be convincing; dualism and materialism are much stronger arguments. Substance dualism is the belief that the body and soul are completely separate entities, which can exist without each other. Plato and Descartes were two key philosophers that supported this idea, however philosophers such as Aristotle and Elizabeth Anscombe believed in a less extreme dualism, in which the body and soul are separate but require each other to complete their purpose. Conversely,…

Descartes thinks that the mind is better known than the body. However I do not believe that is accurate, I believe this because Descartes seems to make a mistake in regards to how the mind and the body are perceived. He thinks that they are distinctly different, and that the mind is better known. This is a false assumption that will be explored throughout the duration of this paper. Descartes famously defended the Cartesian dualist view. This view being that the mind and body are separate. They…

In the Meditations, Rene Descartes seeks to develop secure foundations for knowledge. Descartes wants to break down the unstable and uncertain foundations that all his current knowledge is based on, in order to discover truth or certainty. Descartes argues that everything can be doubted, including all knowledge from the senses, and even simple mathematical principles, yet he searches for certainty. However, Descartes does not even explain the nature of knowledge, or provide sufficient reasons to…

temporal locations. This means that the concepts of space and time are rationalist in nature. They are not learned from experience. The mind is also needed to join associated qualia into the objects we recognize. In order to do this, Kant agreed with Descartes when he stated that the mind must necessarily be a unified whole. Kant did not accept mind-body dualism however, because the idea of the soul is also formed by custom, instinct, and…

Philosophy has come a long way since it began. Rene Descartes was the principal father of philosophy. He was the perfect representative for the new scientific spirit. He had strong beliefs that there was a God that existed and he wanted to prove everyone wrong with his axioms. Alongside of this axioms he also went ahead explained his arguments for universal doubt through his book of Meditations. There was many people that disagreed with his view and they argued it with science, but he still…

“Viewing the Human Mind through Being John Malkovich” This essay is about exploring the human mind through the brain of a person name John Malkovich. In the movie Malkovich’s brain appears to be a metaphysical portal that represents the human mind. His mind is descriptive of himself from the exterior and interior of his body and mind that is seen by others. The premise of the movie is about wanting to be another person. There are philosophical concepts brought forth on the nature of self,…