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René Descartes's Existence

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René Descartes, considered to be the father of modern philosophy, was the first person to formulate a theory about mind-body dualism and to try to reject existence. By trying to prove that we do not exist, he found that there is no way that we do not exist. "Cogito Ergo Sum", which is a famous quote of Descartes, signifies that it is through thinking that we can affirm our existence. René Descartes reached this synthesis by several trial of doubting, but he could not doubt his existence because by ignoring his mind existence, he realised that it is a thinking process. Thus he confirmed that existence is true, and it is through thinking that it is acquired. The act of doubting one's existence prove that one exist. In this paper we will be discussing …show more content…

(2001 ). How is it possible for two different substances such as mind and body, that have nothing in common (because our mind, as we will explain in next sections, is not extended in space, and for the body cannot think alone) interact together. It was hard for him to elaborate clear explanation about the connection between mind and body, and when does it come (Watson, n.d.). He considered that this connection is the work of God's constant action because to Descartes substance does not require anything to exist. But this connection is still not clear, and it needs something to exist, and this where he pretended the interference of …show more content…

If God is always interfering, then we are not free, and our power is limited. Descartes fell into a conflict that he could not save his self from (Brown, 2011). Part of the people attacked him for challenging Scholastics, the Catholic church accused him of challenging her also. The others did not accept the idea of that God is concurring each second in our life. Meanwhile, Descartes started to understand more the connections. The world is consisted of extended bodies whose nature is to occupy volume in space. But our mind is not part of the material world. So we can not consider it as an extended body, because it has no volume. But this immaterial and non-extended substance interfere in different activities such as feeling, willing, thought, etc (Britannica, 2014). In one way Descartes had started to understand the connections of the system, and moreover he eventually could prove that knowledge is not based on sensation, but the opposite. Sensations are governed by mind which he will try to prove as the center of all

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