Philosophy Notes
Essay by hm13yi • December 19, 2016 • Study Guide • 728 Words (3 Pages) • 1,122 Views
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Descartes
- The father of modern philosophy
- 1641-philosophy was modern
- Represented a revolution in thinking
- Born march 31, 1596
- French city of Tours
- November 10th, 1619
- Meditated beside a stove/inside a stove
- Published meditations in 1641
- He believed each person should
- Imagination
- Understanding
- Relaxing the mind
Descartes Meditation One
- About the things we may doubt
- Considerable value in the titles that Descartes gives to six of the meditations
- Autobiographical text
- Written entirely in the first person singular
- I think therefore I am
- From Principle 1
- “Insofar as it is possible, everything should be doubted once in a lifetime by whoever is searching for the truth”
- From principle 2
- “Things which are doubtful should be considered as if they were false”
- Philosophy need to be built on a very solid foundation just as you would construct a building
- The overall aim
- To assess reason (how?)
- By means of reason (why?)
- In order to obtain some general rule of evidence
- True or false
- Think of a basket of apples, we should turn the basket over and dump all apples out. We need to examine the basket that the apples were in.
- Methodic or systematic doubt
- Over turning common sense realism or naïve realism
- Belief that all knowledge comes from or through the senses
- Things are exactly as they appear to be and they appear to be exactly the way they are
- Real Doubts
- Doubts we actually have
- “sometimes” or “occasionally”
- Metaphysical doubts
- Doubts that could happen
- “Let us assume…” or “what if” or “I will suppose that..”
- Let’s suppose just for the sake of argument, that
- Sometimes my senses deceive me
- External conditions are not ideal
- When things are
- Far away
- Very small
- Lighting is poor
- If they are ideal, I cannot doubt certain things
- Lunatic Hypothesis
- Internal conditions are not ideal
- A lunatic cannot trust the veracity of his senses
- Dream Hypothesis
- Descartes dream?
- As a man I am sometimes prone to dream
- Dreaming and being awake are alike
- Principle #4
- Why can we doubt observable things
- Let’s just suppose that I am asleep and dreaming this
- Simple and universal things
- True whether I am awake or dreaming
- Such simple and universal things seem to be true of all things
- Colour (What colour)
- body
- extension
- Shape (What shape)
- Size (How big)
- Quantity (How many)
- Location (Where is it)
- Time (when did it take place)
- Two kinds of science
- Physics
- Astronomy
- Medicine/complex
- Geometry
- Arithmetic
- Principle 5
- Source of his beings
- Why we can doubt even mathematical demonstrations
- Let’s just bracket God [God]
- God is just a fable or a fiction
- Principle 6
- That we have a free will which enables us to withhold our assent from doubtful things and thereby to avoid error
- To balance the scale
- Former questions decrease
- Methodic doubts increased
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