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Descartes Dualism Essay

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Throughout history there has been an abundance of ancient philosophers, including Plato, who explored metaphysics and its relationship to the real world before Descartes’ began questioning the idea. Nevertheless, his views on dualism are very different from Plato’s. As we know, Plato thinks and feels as if the body is just a vessel for the soul, but Descarte on the other hand strongly believes and shows proof that both your soul and body are connected and intertwining. Stating one is not superior to the other, both work hand and hand, affecting each other. Descartes states that “I reflect therefore I am.” Descartes shows through his dualism that though the mind and body are separate , they are connected and reliant on one another. This is one …show more content…

Cartesian Skepticism is the idea that we may only know something if we are certain of its truth, meaning that we know little to nothing about anything at all as many of us can not with confidence say we are 100% sure of anything. Just like in The Matrix where no character can ever have real knowledge by analyzing the stimulated version of the world around them they must always be skeptical of what they are experiencing and learning. This also relates to Descartes skepticism of ever getting real knowledge through our senses. This being said, such as The Matrix through skepticism, we can never be certain we are not trapped in our own virtual reality. Descarte does though bring to light the idea that even though we may never become aware we are in a “Matrix” we can be certain there is a “you” even if in a virtual reality, you exist. The Matrix makes use of Cartesian type skepticism as it tries to get the people watching into the virtual world. This is illustrated in Neo’s choice between the red pill and blue pill in The Matrix, which can be compared to Descartes’s theory of the acid test. As we can see by Descartes beliefs that even though our bodies and minds are completely separate they need each other. Descartes Meditations focus on his own thoughts and life experiences of reality, not the experience of humanity as a whole, in the meditations, he adopts a belief and idea of 100% skepticism.

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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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1.) What does it mean to say that Descartes was a dualist and an interactionist? According to Descartes, How did humans differ from animals? To say that Descartes was a dualist is to say that he believed the mind and body are two separate and distinguishable essences. The immaterial mind and the material body although separate, causally interact.

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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.

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In this paper I will explain Elizabeth of Bohemia’s main argument against Cartesian dualism. I will also explain why Churchland rejects Cartesian dualism and her arguments against it and what alternatives she has in mind. At the end I will explain why I think a Cartesian mind is not plausible. Descartes believed in Cartesian Dualism, which is saying that the mind and body are two different things. He says that the body can be divided into pieces but the mind/soul are indivisible.

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Cartesian dualism allows the existence of souls in our body like the in a car the soul being the driver and the car being our body. Descartes incorporated religion into his views but the soul is actually just the concept of our minds. Our soul is neither created nor destroyed, that human beings are just composed of the many firing neurons in the brain that constitutes personality, behaviors, and

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Descartes, in his Meditations on First Philosophy, used a method of doubt; he doubted everything in order to find something conclusive, which he thought, would be certain knowledge. He found that he could doubt everything, expect that he was thinking, as doubting is a type of thinking. Since thinking requires a thinker, he knew he must exist. According to Descartes if you are able to doubt your existence, then it must mean that you exist, hence his famous statement cogito ergo sum which is translated into ‘I think, therefore I am.’ Descartes said he was able to doubt the existence of his body and all physical things, but he could not doubt that his mind exists.

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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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I will now explain why Descartes’ second response weakens his arguments in his Sixth Meditation. Descartes argues that both (1) and (2) are true. However, in his response to Elisabeth, Descartes argues that (1) and (2) are contradictory. If (1) and (2) cannot both be true at the same time, then at least one of (1) and (2) is false. I think that by acknowledging that (1), mind and body are distinct, is false, Descartes can resolve the contradiction without damaging his metaphysics too

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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, what is the Cogito, and what does it tell me for certain about my own existence? What is strongest and what is weakest in Descartes’ account? The second meditation is based on the connection between a conscious and an existing body. Descartes has one main problem that he wishes to solve “How can he be sure that any of his beliefs are true?”

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This paper will critically examine the Cartesian dualist position and the notion that it can offer a plausible account of the mind and body. Proposed criticisms deal with both the logical and empirical conceivability of dualist assertions, their incompatibility with physical truths, and the reducibility of the position to absurdity. Cartesian Dualism, or substance dualism, is a metaphysical position which maintains that the mind and body consist in two separate and ontologically distinct substances. On this view, the mind is understood to be an essentially thinking substance with no spatial extension; whereas the body is a physical, non-thinking substance extended in space. Though they share no common properties, substance dualists maintain

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I will explore this question by looking at how this question has developed into two key schools of thought: Dualism and Monism. Dualism states that the mind is not physical and exists separately while Monism states that the mind and body are not separate. There are arguments for both theories and these dichotomous ideas have brought to light the mind-body problem, which I will analyse below. There are sub-forms of both schools of thought and one of the key sub-schools of thought under Dualism which I will discuss is Interactionism; that the mind and body are separate but both influence each other The Mind-Body Debate Rene Decartes believed that the mind

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Descartes Methodological Doubt and Meditations Methodological doubt is an approach in philosophy that employs distrust and doubt to all the truths and beliefs of an individual to determine what beliefs he or she is certain are true. It was popularized by Rene Descartes who made it a characteristic method of philosophy where a philosopher subjects all the knowledge they have with the sole purpose of scrutinizing and differentiating the true claims from the false claims. Methodological doubt establishes certainty by analytically and tentatively doubting all the knowledge that one knows to set aside dubitable knowledge from the indubitable knowledge that an individual possesses. According to Descartes, who was a rationalist, his first meditation

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The term ‘dualism’ has a variety of uses if we see the previous literature. In common sense, the notion is that, for any particular area of interest, there are two commonly different classes of things. In theory, for example a ‘dualist’ is one who believes that Good and Evil-or God and the Devil-are independent and more or less equal forces in the world. Dualism compare with monism, which is the theory that there is only one significant type, category of thing and rather less commonly, with pluralism, which is commonly referred to as many categories. In the philosophy of mind, dualism is the theory that the mind and body are, in some sense, totally different types of thing.

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