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Descartes Meditations On First Philosophy

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This week Dean Greg Faye visited our class and discussed what it means to be human from the perspective of Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy. His visit brought up many interesting and challenging points along with some of the comments from the students. He uses Descartes’s theories of philosophy to try to make sense to us what exactly a human being is. Although I found some of these theories to be impractical. Dean Faye made it so even though we may have questioned these points that we still put them into consideration. The first concept he uses is Descartes idea of doubting everything we know and completely starting over with a clean slate. He does this by doubting his senses and Faye uses this example of him holding up his five fingers and asking how you can doubt he has five fingers. This whole concept just made me frustrated because it is something impossible to try to make sense of. Therefore, bringing up the point that philosophy would never be a choice of career path for myself because it’s this never ending fundamental of theories and questions. I feel when you question …show more content…

He’s notion on this is that it is our minds that make us human our thoughts, being able to think, and understand to doubt. This to Descartes is what makes us humans and this I was able to make sense of and also understand better. I find it difficult to be able to label and characterize a human being because there is so much that goes into what it means of being a human. We’re not just one thing or even a thing at all in my opinion. For an example a thing is an object like a lamp it’s just an object it doesn’t have a mind or can think. A human though as Descartes describes has a mind that allows us to be aware and awake and this is what separates us from objects because we are able to think for

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Descartes believes that certain things, such as size/shape, number/quantity, and a duration of time are clear ideas. They are qualities of an object that an object possesses that are not subjective to the observer- they are clearly objective and do not change. Other things are more subjective- such as colour (changes according to

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He assumes that although man is “the intermediary between creatures, close to the gods, master of all the lower creatures, with the sharpness of his senses, the acuity of his reason, and the brilliance of his intelligence the interpreter of nature, the nodal point between eternity and time, and…the intimate bond or marriage song of the world”, those characteristics alone do not suffice. There is much more to a man than those traits alone. Furthermore,

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Descartes makes it clear that the distinction is to build up a knowledge of material things. He says, “they exist in so far as our ideas of them are clear and distinct.” His main point is that knowledge of material things lacks when it is established on sense experiences. Descartes

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Without a tangible “thing” to split, it could be argued that divisibility has no real meaning at all in relation to things that by their nature cannot be split. To wit, Descartes’ argument supposes that a mind divided would result in absurdity, such as two fractions of a greater mind, both with capacity to think, or in other words, two new minds, he takes this as evidence that a mind cannot be divided; but it would seem plausible also to say that this absurdity is the result of applying terms that only have meaning when applied to things with extension. In other words; a mind may well be capable of division, even if it was substantively different and separate from matter and body, thus we may conclude that Descartes cannot prove the distinction between mind and matter by ascribing notions of relative divisibility or non-divisibility to them. Additionally much of Descartes thought regarding the indivisibility of the mind is based on a preceding conception of the mind as non-physical before the argument proves

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This essay seeks to provide a critical commentary on Descartes’ disquisition titled ‘Meditations on first philosophy’, based on Descartes’ arguments about ‘human nature’ and what makes one human. For Descartes, what makes one human is the ability to be aware of one’s self; using reason and rationality to comprehend information and the world around us. Descartes’ famous quote exemplifies this argument, he stated ‘cogito ergo sum’ ‘I think therefore I am’ concluding that the first thing that one can be certain of is one’s existence. In passage three of the second meditation the meditator seeks to identify exactly what ‘I’, ‘a thing that thinks’ is. This essay will provide an analysis of Descartes ' philosophical theories expressed in passage three of the "Second Meditation."

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In Descartes meditation he is looking to gain total assurance about three problems. Is the body separate from the soul as it is a thinking thing. Whether God exist and if the outside world exist. In his desire to gain total assurance of these issues; Desecrates sets the base of ethics in which he gets his understanding from. This process he take to set the core fundamentals of this ethics is being doubtful.

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In which Descartes builds refinement between physical body and mind. Through this approach in mind, Descartes’s feels he can feel his existence through materialist things in life. He can now tell apart from his imagination and alertness in his soul and can think his thoughts apart. Creative ability needs a body, intellection does not; subsequently, creative energy is not part of the ideal of brain. He concurs the fact that though body can live without brain vise versa however, in God’s existence the two work hand in hand.

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Over the six day reading of Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes uses his meditator to raise questions, explain, and give reasoning regarding our mind and it’s capabilities. One question that gets raised is how our mind and our body are connected or work together, if at all. Through Descartes’s systematic, day-by-day exercises the meditator and the reader of the meditations are supposed to follow the reasoning that he lays out for the meditator throughout each meditation to arrive at a conclusion after finishing the Sixth Meditation. Having read the Meditations in their entirety, I believe that our mental capacities fully allow us to accurately represent aspects of the world that we live in.

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Rene Descartes’ “Discourse on the Method” focuses on distinguishing the human rationale, apart from animals and robots. In which he does so by explaining how neither animals, or machines lack the same mental capabilities as a human. For Descartes distinguishes the human rationale apart from non-humans, even though he does agree the two closely resemble each other because of their sense organs, and physical function (Descartes, pp22). However, it is because the mechanical lacks a sufficient aspect of the mind that makes it necessary for them to be equal with humans. Throughout Descartes “Discourse on the Method,” he argues that the significant differences between humans and the mechanical is their limited ability to respond to the world from

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It is connected with the previous one as Descartes tries to show peculiarities of human thinking and mind. Analyzing this very part, it is possible to say that the author tends to show the idea that a person or thing`s consciousness determines existence of this very person or thing. Providing example in which Mediators cogitates whether objects can exist if he does not believe in them or not, Descartes shows readers that human mind is the thing which makes the world real for a person. Moreover, his assumption that a human being is a thinking thing which analyzes and doubts can be taken as Descartes` definition of human being. Only a person which has critical attitude towards the world can be called a human.

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He believed that much of the world's problems such as war and poverty were caused by us not using our minds properly. He strove to help educate others to better equip their minds for thinking and reasoning. Descartes believed that to better understand a large problem you must first divide it into smaller and more understandable sections. He called this his “method of doubts.”

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Diana Palma Professor Klyng Philosophy 1 1 May 2018 Descartes: Meditations In Meditations I, Descartes begins by stating he must start to build new foundations for the false beliefs he had been convinced of since his youth. He concludes he cannot find knowledge in the world in places like school and consequently decides to focus on his mind and doubt all his beliefs until he finds one that cannot be doubted. All up to the present time his knowledge was learned through the senses; but the senses are deceptive (Descartes). He states he cannot deny the obvious, such as doubting if his body belongs to him, but he is man capable of dreaming and in those dreams, there are no indications where he could distinguish between reality from sleep.

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In second Meditation, Descartes asserts that he is a “thinking thing” (Descartes, 82). He believes a thing that “thinks, doubts, understands, affirms, denies, is willing, is unwilling, and also imagines and has sensory perceptions” (Descartes, 83). Not only does Descartes consider the self to be a thinking thing but he believes that is his essence (Descartes, 114). Descartes make an important distinction between the mind and body. He believes that there is a link between the soul and body which sensations are transferred and that this link allows one to identify body as one own.

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Meaning that he believed the mind and physical body are separate realties (Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy). Since he believed that knowledge was derived from within an individual 's own brain he believed that is where their identity came from. This is seen in his Second Meditation when he said: "I think, therefore I am (Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy).” It is apparent that he believes one’s identity comes from the mind when he states “It seemed quite out of character for a body to be able to initiate movement, or to be able to initiate movements, or to be able to sense and think. (Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy).”

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Descartes claimed there where two substances in which he made a distinction between them. Mind and matter, Mind is immaterial and characterized by thinking. Because it is

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