René Magritte

There have been roughly forty truth commissions created throughout the world, and according to Priscilla Hayner, author of Unspeakable Truths, these truth commissions have largely been ineffective and unsuccessful (2010). The reasons behind their unsuccessfulness differ widely. Many of the “strongest truth commissions have met with frustration from victims and activists, who have sometimes pushed for more robust inquiries” (Hayner, 2010). These robust inquiries, many of which are often…

Descartes Meditation 1 René Descartes, a 17th century French philosopher, has been referred to as the father of modern philosophy. Descartes works and writings on philosophy have transformed and altered the current landscape of philosophy as we know it. One of his more notable writings, Meditation I of the Things of Which We May Doubt, is still subjected to debate hundreds of years after René death. One of the major claims of this writing is that the mind is more knowable and certain than the…

Dualism is a view where the mind and body are two fundamentally different things. It’s the thought that the body is a pure physical state, and the mind is a pure mental/non-physical state. The body has an identified location, is led by the laws of nature, and it is open to the world to see. Whereas the mind has no location, isn’t led by the laws of nature, and is not public. Materialism is the view that individuals are nothing more than physical elements put together. For we all are made up of…

Descartes and Gilbert Ryle are the two philosophers that discuss the subject matter of dualism, for that they will be the objective of this paper. In this paper, I will be discussing the metaphysical claims and ideals that Descartes presents to us in his meditations, to be more specific, I will be covering his second and sixth meditation. I will also be discussing about Ryle, who tackles the idea of dualism in his paper Descartes’ Myth, in which he goes in thorough depth of Descartes metaphysics…

In Descartes meditations he argues the mind is a single unified phenomenon. The context of this argument is in favor of Dualism, he argues in favor of it using Liebniz’s “Principle of the Indiscernibility of Identicals”, the principle asserts that for two things to be identical then they must share all of the same properties. Descartes argues that since his body has parts it can be divided, but the mind has no parts and cannot be divided. “For in truth, when I consider the mind, that is, when I…

Rene Descartes was a true pioneer of his time. In 1628, he wrote Rules for the Direction of the Mind, and within the first rule in summary implies that we as human beings should control our minds into making accurate and precise perceptions through what and how we experience these things. Through the first rule individuals can already safely assume that Rene Descartes is writing about rationalism. When one uses religion and faith to perceive the world around him, then he is subject to the…

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’ Philosophy Effects Elisabeth Soul What can we understand from Descartes philosophy in his meditation? That is what Elisabeth was trying to do by sending letters to Descartes and because there was no other ways to have a conversation between each other’s so Philosophers usually send letters to each other’s to make a conversion. Elisabeth was the princess of bohemia she was born on 1618 in Heidelberg, Germany. Her highness was a Philosopher and she was famous of her sharp mind and her…

Rene Descartes’ “Discourse on the Method” is equal parts philosophical guideline and historical text. The core subtext of the book is that Descartes is sharing with the world the method that he has discovered with regard to reason that has helped him in his scientific endeavors. While there are numerous writing nuances found in this work, symbolism is one particular written trait that is not omnipresent in philosophical discourses like the one Descartes wrote here. Like many other philosophical…

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…