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Philosophy Notes

Essay by   •  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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