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Descartes Vs Hume

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Michael Ryerson Philosophy 200 Final Paper The understanding of the way we acquire knowledge has been one of the most debatable topics in philosophy, either through experience or reasoning. Experience is defined as dealing with the impressions and the events through one’s life. Hume and Locke are empiricists, or those who believe that experience is the ultimate form of knowledge. Descartes and Kant are rationalists, who believe that reasoning is the better and more fundamental form of acquiring knowledge. Hume and Locke agree that impressions and ideas are what form the background and the foundation of reasoning for humans to rationalize or reason about their experience. Hume however further explains, while he agreed with Locke’s concept, …show more content…

Using examples of people who have been brain damaged or considered insane, who cannot rationalize or reason about the senses being deceived and normal or mentally healthy people would be able to realize that the senses can be deceived. Descartes states that dreams are a prime example of being deceived by the senses and the experience because dreams are made up similar to movies from our experiences which we cannot distinguish from reality. The dreams are made up of copies of real things, but since dreams are vivid and consist of things like eyes, heads, hands, and the body as a whole, it must be real and not imaginary. During Descartes’ work of reasoning he only comes up with the certainty of: if one can think, then they are real and they do exist, but it never proves that the knowledge through the senses is …show more content…

Kant joins all of these into as aforementioned synthetic and analytic statements: analytic propositions or statements are true by logic of our mind, nature and convention. Synthetic truths are factual truths proven through experience. An analytic proposition is a triangle having three sides: people use logic, reason and the context of the definition to prove and support this claim. Synthetic proposition is defined as one having to use his/her experience to go out and prove or disprove the statement because the statement is not true by

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1301 Words | 6 Pages

This is evident through arguments such as “The Argument from Past Failures”, “The Argument from Madness” and “The Dreaming Argument”. In Descartes’ famous “Dreaming Argument” Descartes argues that “there are never any sure signs by means of which being awake can be distinguished from being asleep.”, giving an example where he thought he was sitting next to a fireplace, unaware he was actually in bed dreaming (13). This argument challenges the idea of the senses again as it presents the idea that we can never know if what we are currently experiencing is real as we may be in a dream. Proving that there is no way to differentiate between reality and a dream, resulting in the idea that our whole life may have just been a dream, Descartes provided a counter argument to elaborate on the “Dreaming Argument” known as the “The Painting Analogy”. This analogy explains how like a painting and painter, dreams derive their material based on experiences we have while awake (13).

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462 Words | 2 Pages

Descartes begins his argument by comparing the dreams he could have to the dreams of a madman. He says he has similar experiences as one would except of a madman why asleep, if even sometimes more outlandish ones (Descartes, 13). He goes on to describe how his dreams in the past contained events that are hardly different from the time he considered himself to be awake. Theses help to support the claim that there is no way to tell whether or not he is dreaming or awake. This defines Descartes’ first premise to be “If you cannot distinguish between the time when you are dreaming and the time when you are awake using the sense, then the sense can be doubted.

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How Did Descartes Make One Doubt Their Beliefs About Reality?

837 Words | 4 Pages

However, Descartes could not without a doubt solely discard his perceptions based on his senses, just because his senses did or did not fail him on other occasions or under less than ideal circumstances. This argument does not allow Descartes to doubt all that could be doubted. The dream argument is a skeptical argument. It means is that it is possible, at any given moment, one could be sleeping and having only dreams, but the dreams are so realistic that they are undistinguishable from sleep or waking experiences.

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Summary Of René Descartes Meditation On First Philosophy By David Hume

578 Words | 3 Pages

In “Meditation on First Philosophy”, René Descartes states, in the first meditation, that all the falsehoods he had accepted as true before he had “acquired either from the senses or through the senses” (144). Descartes says that “from time to time I have found that the senses deceive, and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once” (144). Humans have fives senses: touch, taste, smell, sight, hearing. Throughout our everyday lives, we need our senses because they allow us to experience things and gain knowledge through these experiences. However, in this essay, I will stand by Descartes and argue that our senses cannot be completely trusted because they can be easily deceived through illusions, emotions, and differences in perception.

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Reason takes a journey through various philosophical thinkers such as Descartes, Hume, and Kant, throughout history. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy discusses the difference between rationalist and empiricist theses. For rationalists believe that some of our knowledge comes from our own rational nature; whereas empiricists say that all of our knowledge is derived from our sensory experiences. Reason is objectively what we know about the world to be true regardless of our opinion. The truth cannot be disputed and reason cannot be contradictory. It is a structuring mechanism by way we know things and grounding of how we come to know things.

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711 Words | 3 Pages

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1316 Words | 6 Pages

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1523 Words | 7 Pages

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1404 Words | 6 Pages

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1139 Words | 5 Pages

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