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Rene Descartes The Passions Of The Soul

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“Cogito ergo sum,” or in layman 's terms, “I think therefore I am.” This statement is possibly one of the most famous latin quotes of all times, said by René Descartes himself. Descartes was one the great french philosophers, mathematicians and scientists in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Outlandish to some and inventive to others, his theories shaped the way we view psychology today and set him apart from other philosophers and scientists at that time. Maybe an oddity to us humans now, but at the time his work was revolutionary and extraordinary. Descartes was an exceptional man, who wrote many engaging and thought provoking books. The excerpt of his work, The Passions of the Soul was an especially engaging and laborious passage to read. The focal point of the fragment assigned to read for this essay, mainly focused on the body, the mind and how animal spirits are the driving force of the human anatomy. He answers a series of several questions relating to his work on mind and body dualism, and goes into depth on each question so that the reader gets a philosophical understanding of his theories. …show more content…

The amount of work psychologists have done in the past few hundreds years is definitely noticeable when reading works like Descartes’. The apparent measures of difference between the sixteenth century, to now into the twenty-first century, is astonishing. As stated above, Descartes answered a series of several questions. The first question in the passage was asking Descartes (1649) about the principal of the functions of the mind and body (Descartes, 1649, p. 10). In his answer to the inquiry, he says something I find especially

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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.

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Sherley Ly Professor Matthew PHIL1301 19 February 2018 Essay 2: Descartes At this point, Melinda and Melissa are still on opposing sides of one another, each having their own context of the soul. Based on Descartes's argument, the mind and body are considered as two separate substances. He isn't absolute that he has a body; however, he uses the scholastic definition of a soul. He believes that the soul can be vegetative or rational, meaning it could be unconscious or sensible.

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Notre Dame ID: 902008117 In René Descartes ' Mediations on First Philosophy, Descartes abandons all previous notions or things that he holds to be true and attempts to reason through his beliefs to find the things that he can truly know without a doubt. In his first two meditations Descartes comes to the conclusion that all that he can truly know is that he exists, and that he is a thinking being. In his third meditation, Descartes concludes that he came to know his existence, and the fact that he is a thinking being, from his clear and distinct perception of these two facts. Descartes then argues that if his clear and distinct perception would turn out to be false, then his clear and distinct perception that he was a thinking being would not have been enough to make him certain of it (Blanchette).

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Midterm Essay March 19th, 2017 Philosophy 020 Professor Lewis Section 09: 10:00 a.m Madeline Eller Word Count: 1370 Error in the Faculty of Judgement In “Meditations of First Philosophy” René Descartes argues that human errors in the faculty of judgement are not God’s fault, even though God is all good and all powerful. Instead, Descartes asserts that humans have a lack of perfection that lead them to make errors. I will argue that this is incorrect, because if God is all good and all powerful, he could make all humans with the ability to have a perfect faculty of judgement, which would prevent them from making errors.

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For this essay, I will define what passions are and how they are regulated according to Descartes. Descartes writings in the Meditations are very important for the theory of the Passions of the Soul. Primarily his writing on the mind and body and also the existence of god. Descartes theory of mind and body is important to his writings of what passions are because he notes that it is important that the passions do not be associated as part of the mind and body conflict. Descartes also establishes god’s existence in his third meditation.

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Descartes declares he has to determine if there is a God and if he does exist, whether he can be a deceiver. The reason he has to determine the existence of God and what he is, rests in his theories of ideas. This is because we do not know if there is an outside world and we can almost imagine everything, so all depends on God’s existence and if he is a deceiver. “To prove that this non-deceiving God exists, Descartes finds in his mind a few principles he regards as necessary truths which are evident by the “natural light” which is the power or cognitive faculty for clear and distinct perception.” If arguments is presented in logical trains of thought, people could not help but to be swayed and to understand those arguments.

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I. Descartes – Evil Genius Problem A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF DESCARTES’ THEORY The Doubts about the Evil Genius Doubt 1. Does the evil genius exist? Although it may seem trivial to question the hypothetical being, Descartes’ arguments are also phrased cunningly to avoid questions.

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Therefore, Descartes argues that the mind and the body must be two logically distinct

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In the sixth meditation, Descartes postulates that there exists a fundamental difference in the natures of both mind and body which necessitates that they be considered as separate and distinct entities, rather than one stemming from the other or vice versa. This essay will endeavour to provide a critical objection to Descartes’ conception of the nature of mind and body and will then further commit to elucidating a suitably Cartesian-esque response to the same objection. (Descartes,1641) In the sixth meditation Descartes approaches this point of dualism between mind and matter, which would become a famous axiom in his body of philosophical work, in numerous ways. To wit Descartes postulates that he has clear and distinct perceptions of both

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One way that Descartes might explain the mind-body interaction is by appealing to God. Since God created the union of mind and body, God gave both the mind and the body the ability to interact with each other. In his Fourth Meditation, Descartes argued that there are some things that we cannot understand because our understanding is limited compared to God’s. Thus, Descartes can conclude that we cannot understand specifically how the mind and body interact with each other, since the specific details of mind-body interaction are beyond our understanding. However, this explanation fails to resolve the contradiction between (1) and (2).

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Nature “programs” animals with certain abilities and reflexes; however, unlike humans, animals cannot expand on theses skills, which for Descartes is a sign of no consciousness

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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.

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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

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Rene Descartes is considered as one of the most important founders of modern day philosophy. His greatest contribution to philosophy is his meditations. This paper aims at establishing what wax represents in Descartes meditations. In his second meditation, Descartes introduces the idea of wax freshly obtained from honeycombs.

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The Joy That Kills The Story of an Hour, is a short story about a woman. The woman finds out in the story that her husband’s life was lost to a train accident, which was told to her in the calms way possible because she had a weak heart. This upset her, but then she thought about it and this meant that she had the freedom to do what she wanted, instead of her husband’s will. To this thought she was becoming overjoyed that she was not a slave to her husband anymore.

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