ipl-logo

Descartes Persuasive Speech

1505 Words7 Pages

Descartes: Good evening, Leibniz.

Leibniz: Good evening, Descartes.

Descartes: Leibniz, I’ve been trying to understand the true nature of reality… How can I know that this chair I believe to be sitting on is truly there, or is truly brown and solid? How can I know that I am truly here?

Leibniz: Interesting. How do you think we can know?

Descartes: First I began questioning the extent to which matter can interact with mind.

Leibniz: Well, first I believe we must question: what is matter?

Descartes: Yes, we must. I believe whatever has spatial extension is matter and matter, by definition, is that which has spatial extension. Spatial extension, then, constitutes matter.

Leibniz: And what is spatial extension?

Descartes: It is length, …show more content…

Why not some other quality of matter? It does not tell us how to distinguish an apple from an orange. Apples and oranges have similar length, breadth and thickness but I tell them apart by their taste, texture and colour. There is more to things than their geometrical aspect.

Descartes: Colour, smell and taste are sensations that cannot exist without our perceptions of the objects, or matter, themselves. They are sensations existing in my mind: sense data, if you will. They are too volatile to constitute matter but are an extension of it conceived in our minds.

Leibniz: But I cannot imagine an apple without thinking of its colour and …show more content…

Descartes: But if we were to light the candle the wax would be very different. Leibniz: Yes, it would. It would be soft – melted even -, transparent and liquid more fragrant.

Descartes: You see? All the properties have changed but it remains the same wax. Therefore, extension is the fundamental property of physical things. We cannot rely on our sense data, such as colour and texture. With all this in mind, the mind and body must be separate from one another. The mind cannot be extended so there must be a body – and matter - that is extended. Leibniz: Descartes, you must be mistaken. If the mind and body were completely distinct, then how can the mind and body interact with one another? Descartes: True… If I wanted to lift my arm up, I would have to have some sort of connection or interaction between my mind and my body… but surely any causal interaction between them is impossible?! Leibniz: Let me see if I can help. This problem suggests that there must be some pre-established harmony between body and mind and all substances. If we look towards physics and mathematics we can see that the universe is entirely made up of one element given the general name of a monad, a simple substance which is one, has no parts and is therefore indivisible. These monads are the first elements of every composed

Show More
Related
1540 Words | 7 Pages

Police brutality has been a raging topic ever since the Ferguson case and officers using excessive force can be stopped by using body cameras to see a cops’ every move. In the article, “Body Cameras Will Stop Police Brutality”, the author brings to concern issues of excessive force to subdue a suspect. The author comments, “Having a video record of events not only deters the use of excessive force, but it also helps dispute or demonstrate claims of police brutality” (Body Cameras Will Stop Police Brutality 1). Having a video recording of an event can save a police officer's job or destroy it. By being a cop who follows the rules and does the right thing, an officer will not have to change his or her behaviors and will continue being himself or herself.

Read More
213 Words | 1 Pages

CHIDIEBUBE OPARA PHIL 1301 PROF BROWN July 10, 2017 PRINCESS ELISABETH First, in my essay about what Princess Elisabeth was asking Descartes to clarify was about the meditation. This meditation was to give an expression of how the mind and the body interact to one another. Next, In Descartes response to Princess Elisabeth, he claims that the mind and the body are the two different important substances in our human beings.

Read More
723 Words | 3 Pages

He reasons that the idea of the body is the ideas of something extended like shape and size. This predicts the mind and body dualism, and the regulation of essential and supplementary qualities. Descartes found the essence of the mind which is to think; and the embodiment of matter, which is to be expanded. He also infers that despite his underlying beliefs, the psyche is a far superior knower than the body and that it is more realistic than the material world. Descartes infers that he must know his mind more than anything.

Read More
191 Words | 1 Pages

Descartes’s wax example is an experiment used to test the identity of the wax, and to test the perceptions and understanding regarding the mind and body. The wax is a thing, and he discusses what it smells like, the colour, and other various senses someone would use to identify and describe what would perceive the wax to be wax. (294) After perceiving what the wax is, Descartes moves close to the fire. The wax begins to melt, changing what has been perceived “What remained of the taste is exhaled, the smell evaporates, the colour alters, the figure is destroyed, the size increases, it becomes liquid...”

Read More
737 Words | 3 Pages

Most famously advocated by René Descartes, substance dualism is the view that minds, which are essentially thinking and consist of mental substance, and bodies, which are necessarily extended and made of material substance, are ontologically separate entities. The material and mental have entirely different natures, so a mind cannot be equivalent to a body. Human beings, therefore, must be mixtures of the two substances. Substance dualists assert that, despite lacking properties in common, mind and body connect through the capacity of each to causally affect the other (Kim 34). While this position may initially appear intuitive and commonsensical, Descartes and subsequent dualists have faced a multitude of challenges concerning mental causation.

Read More
1919 Words | 8 Pages

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

Read More
1272 Words | 6 Pages

Rivet was born to two earthponies who tended an apple orchard on the outskirts of Symphorium. She was the eldest of four siblings, but was the frailest compared to her two earthpony brothers and her baby sister. She was never strong enough to help out in the orchard. Instead she would help her mother with odd jobs around the house and help take care of her baby sister. But as the days went on Rivet began to find her daily life unfulfilling.

Read More
1520 Words | 7 Pages

In his Sixth Meditation, Descartes argues that (1) mind and body are distinct, and (2) mind and body form a union, in which the mind and body can interact with each other. To better understand a union, take the example of ‘3 meters’: a measurement, i.e., union, formed from the number ‘3’ and the unit ‘meter’. Descartes argues in his Second Meditation that he can conceive of a mind as essentially a thinking thing, not an extended thing. Thus, he argues that a mind can exist without being extended, since extension is not in the essence of a mind. Similarly, he argues in his Fifth Meditation that he can conceive of a body as essentially an extended thing, not a thinking thing.

Read More
690 Words | 3 Pages

The argument from extension is as follows: I am a thing that thinks and not an extended thing. I have a distinct idea of body as an extended thing. Therefore my mind is distinct from my

Read More
1480 Words | 6 Pages

Descartes shows through his dualism that though the mind and body are separate , they are connected and reliant on one another. This is one

Read More
646 Words | 3 Pages

One of the most famous sentence of Descartes :“I think therefore I exist.” shows that if I doubt my existence, I must exist, or I would not be wonder (15). For the bodies, he claims that with the help of the mind, the bodies will be known indirectly. (16) Moreover, he affirms that “bodies and brains could no more be conscious than tables or chairs or houses, or any other hunk

Read More
1104 Words | 5 Pages

In his philosophical thesis, of the ‘Mind-Body dualism’ Rene Descartes argues that the mind and the body are really distinct, one of the most deepest and long lasting legacies. Perhaps the strongest argument that Descartes gives for his claim is that the non extended thinking thing like the Mind cannot exist without the extended non thinking thing like the Body. Since they both are substances, and are completely different from each other. This paper will present his thesis in detail and also how his claim is critiqued by two of his successors concluding with a personal stand.

Read More
1275 Words | 6 Pages

In the second meditation, Descartes uses this cogito of consciousness and existence to assume that the mind is distant from a body. “I am, I exist”. This essay I will clearly discuss an outline of Descartes cogito in the second meditation and how it deals with the subject of existence and also Descartes’s strongest and weakest arguments in this case. “The Meditation of yesterday filled my mind with so many doubts that it is no longer in my power to

Read More
722 Words | 3 Pages

Descartes explains that the sheer human senses cannot conceive the changes through which the wax goes through. Descartes Wax Argument, allows one to make connections to the existence if matter; however, this can only be done up to some

Read More
1744 Words | 7 Pages

But may believe even Descartes isn’t exactly clear on the inner working of the relationship (Robinson, Howard). Spinoza’s substance monism cleverly dissolves this issue by labeling mind (thought) and body (extension) as attributes to a common and singular substance. Other substance pluralist philosophies are also denied when we truly capture the infinite extent of

Read More

More about Descartes Persuasive Speech

Related Topics

Open Document