Questions tagged [descartes]
Questions related to René Descartes (31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650)
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What logical arguments have been made to say an effect cannot be greater than its cause?
I'm currently writing a paper on Descartes argument for God based on his third meditation. One premise of the argument that seems fairly important is the claim that "no effect can be greater than ...
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Does Dissociative ego disorder challenge Descartes‘ „cogito-argument“?
In the 17th century Descartes set out for a new start in philosophy. Applying the method of systematic doubt he searched for a philosophical statement whose truth stands firm and cannot be questioned ...
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Is the opposite of Descartes “cogito , ergo sum” also true?
Is the opposite of Descartes dictum “I think therefore I am “ also true ?
That is ,
Is “I am unable to think therefore I am not” also true ?
That is ,
Can I say “Those unable to think do not have Self”...
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Burden of proof and solipsism
If we say that the burden of proof is on the one making the claim and thus we should only believe in something if we have proof and should otherwise discard it, than the saying that an external world ...
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A question about Descartes argument for the distinction between humans and animals/machines in Discourse on the Method Part 5
Descartes seemed to have the following problem:
At this point I had dwelt on this issue to show that if there were such machines having the organs and outward shape of a monkey or any other ...
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Who is "Anti-Descartes"?
We learn from writings of Descartes that he is always trying to seperate the rational mind from emotional mind and he trusts his rational mind while being sceptic to emotional mind. Also he has a ...
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How would Heidegger criticize Descartes' melting candle analogy?
I've recently finished reading Being and Time and have attempted to supplement my understanding with different takes on the piece. One interesting angle that I've mused upon myself but haven't seen in ...
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The private language argument and Descartes's private thoughts
In his "Thinking it Through" textbook, Appiah writes
It is a big step from saying that some of our mental states are things that other people can know about, to saying, with the ...
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Does Descartes conclude that imperfection implies perfection?
In the third meditation, does Descartes' knowledge of his limitations, or his imperfections, lead to his conclusion that there must be something limitless, something perfect?
In his third meditation, ...
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Does Descartes exclude madness from his meditations?
For Descartes, is madness fundamentally different to dreaming?
Reading these blog posts (I am unfamiliar with the discussion really), which has a few points against Foucault's analysis that it is ...
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If the external world indeed exists, would the ontological nihilism idea be conclusively refuted?
Descartes’ cogito has been discussed and, in many’s minds’, refuted ad nauseam. Anywhere you’ll read about ‘nothingness’, you’re likely to encounter some discussion on Descartes and his self-believed ...
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Did Peirce hold that, when stripped to its absolute core, Descartes’ cogito could be summarized as: ‘There is an Idea’?
In ‘The Simplest Mathematics’ (1933), C.S. peirce elaborated:
It is a fundamental mistake to suppose that an idea which stands
isolated can be otherwise than perfectly blind. He professes to doubt
...
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Why did Descartes claim that animals have no souls if they have the pituitary?
As far as I understand it, Descartes claimed that the pituitary is the "antenna" through which the brain and the soul communicate, and he also claimed only human beings have souls. So, how ...
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About Descartes first meditation
In his first meditation Descartes says that he cannot distinguish a state where he is dreaming from a vigil state. This gives him one reason to at least put in doubt the direct corporeal experience of ...
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Arguments against personal omphalism [closed]
Personal omphalism is, for a lack of a better term (let me know if you know of a better word), what I call the possibility of one's own mind having come into existence at any point, with one's ...
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Descartes and volontarism
Was Descartes a volontarist (= Voluntarism is "any metaphysical or psychological system that assigns to the will (Latin: voluntas) a more predominant role than that attributed to the intellect&...
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How does a thought imply there is a thinker in "I think therefore I am"?
How does Descartes say a thought necessarily means there is a thinker?
In my opinion, "I think therefore I am" is egocentric because could really stem from an illusion of the thoughts ...
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How can Descartes intuit/think without memory?
Descartes presented the Memory response against the cartesian circle. Descartes assumed the reliability of intuition all along. The doubt he laid to rest by proving God's existence is one of memory: ...
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What does it mean to say "I am the game"? [closed]
Do people mean this as flow state? Where you lose sense of time and become immensely engaged with an activity? (e.g. playing an instrument).
To say "I am the game" when the person is a chess ...
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A question about the Descartes' representative ideas being responsible for the scientific notion of sensation
This is from Nanavira's notes on Dhamma, Phassa footnote e:
The notion of sensation, however, as we see from the dictionary's definition, is an abomination from the start—how can one 'perceive the ...
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An Argument against Descartes's radical doubt
Reflecting on Descartes's evil genius, I came up with an argument to use against his radical skepticism, that is, when he doubts even the basic laws of logic and basic mathematics (3 + 2 = 5).
The ...
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What is the bridge between Agrippa's and Descartes' mindsets? What to read to understand the radical change
After Reading a couple of works by Descartes (XVI century), I am now reading "Three Books of Occult Philosophy" by Cornelius Agrippa (around 1530). The difference in mindset and worldview is ...
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What is meant by artistic qualities and Can anyone point out some of these qualities?
What is meant by artistic qualities? Can anyone point out some of these qualities?
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Descartes and natural inclinations and aversions
Descartes mentions “secondary properties” (qualitative properties) which guide human behavior.
E. g. we can not only recognize that food became spoiled by its odor but we’re immediately repelled by it....
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Descartes "I am, I exist"
At the start of the second meditation, Descartes seems to work his way to his first indubitable conclusion: "I am, I exist."
A question one might ask is: "how do you know you really ...
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How did Descartes made a logical skeptic argument against logic, without falling into a paradox, in his Metaphysical Meditations? Is it actually valid
René Descartes seems to have made some arguments against logic and mathematics in his Metaphysical Meditations, however it seems that these arguments are still logical, and the problem is whether that ...
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Quotations from Descartes on Animals as Automata
Animals do not feel pain and are automata. This view is commonly attributed to Descartes. And I would agree that in his philosophy no other conclusion makes sense.
But still, I want to distinguish ...
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How does idealism deal with 'discovery'?
I just responded to a comment on an old post. At the time I was thinking about Richard Dawkins and his concept of a 'meme'.
That is any concept that lives rent-free in the minds of humans and evolves ...
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Can Cogito, ergo sum be formalized?
I was wondering lately whether Descartes argument for the existence of undoubtable truth could be formalized. I tried to formalize his argument in FOL, but only his light version proving that there ...
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Large cardinals and in intellectu existence?
I have had some success in the philosophy of mathematics. Briefly I compare Cantor's sets to the clear and distinct ideas of Descartes which is regarded as philosophically rigorous work; on the other ...
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Implications of Cartesian Psychophysical Dualism for free-will and determinism
For Descartes, reality consists of two fundamental substances: the mental, and the physical.
The mental substance is distinct from the physical substance in that it is not bound by the deterministic, ...
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Does my personal philosophy have a name?
I am not trained in philosophical thinking nor have I read philosophy except for the motto "I think therefore I am".
My personal philosophy
I know that something exists (by observation and ...
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Contributions of Descartes
What ideas did Descartes have about knowledge and reality that were so incongruent with the prevailing neo-Aristotelian paradigm of knowing the real essences of things through abstracting from sense ...
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Descartes and his taxonomy of ideas
Given the context of philosophical ideas such as tabula rasa, empiricism, and rationalism, René Descartes is known for his philosophy of mind and his attempt to analyze thinking as well as his ...
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Is thinking an activity of a subject?
I am interested in the question of whether thinking must be an activity of a subject. Is it true that thinking has no reality without being a mode of the subject? Could it be possible that there is ...
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Self-evident vs. self-explanatory vs. ...?
How far apart are these descriptions? I was approaching the issue from the perspective of erotetic logic, and my intuition is that self-evidence is when a proposition is evident from its erotetic ...
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Was the notion of mind-body dualism invented, or at least popularized, by Rene Descartes?
This dualism seems so compelling (from a layman’s perspective) that it seems difficult to imagine that Descartes invented or even popularized it. For instance, people kept using words like “soul” to ...
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Does Descartes avert the divine illumination trope or play it straight?
(Preamble: according to tvtropes.com, a trope can be instantiated, meaning played straight, or almost subversively instantiated, meaning averted.)
In the Book of Ezekiel, an entity known as the ...
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Why is mind/body duality so widely accepted?
It seems strange that Cartesian mind/body duality is so widely accepted, given that it leads to scepticism around the possibility of human knowledge.
Why is it so widely accepted, and how do its ...
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Descartes and the concept of motion
If we believe that calculus satisfactorily solves Zeno’s paradoxes of motion, conceptual clarity about real analysis was not achieved before Cauchy's definition of the limit (in “Cours d'Analyse”, ...
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How can beliefs be justified when they are always subject to Cartesian skepticism?
It seems obvious to me that after glancing at my watch I "know" what time it is. But this apparent "knowledge" can be explained away by infinitely many skeptical hypotheses. ...
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Can’t we assume that the Boltzmann Brain scenario can be cognitively stable?
In the Boltzmann Brain scenario, we are all brains produced by random fluctuations within a high entropy universe. The argument which I had accepted before was that our very reasoning can not be ...
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Can we say that "I Think Therefore I Am" was never about "I", or thinking, or "I" doing the thinking?
Strictly speaking, "Cogito ergo sum" simply means:
"The existence of your own mind can never be in doubt."
Item 1) also describes our true knowledge in its entirety.
Or we can ...
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Is the argument "Cogito ergo sum" compatible with metaphysical nihilism?
Metaphysical nihilism says that there might not be any objects at all.
I'm not interested in whether there are potential problems with this viewpoint. One problem could be that "Cogito" can't come ...
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Which conception of a " machine " allows to call "mechanical" Descartes and Hobbes views of nature and of science?
The word "mechanical" comes from a greek word meaning " machine".
However, the received definition of mechanical philosophy does not contain the concept of a machine. This school of thought is said ...
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What happened to ( aristotelian) substantial forms in cartesian ontology? On which ground ( metaphysical or physical) are they rejected?
In aristotelian philosophy, there are no bare particulars ( contrary to what is the case in Plato, according to P.V. Spade) but internally structured ( substantial) particulars in which 2 "parts"/...
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Why does Hayek refer to French 'individualism' as the "Cartesian" school?
I am reading Frederick Hayek right now and saw that he refers to the French liberal tradition, what he calls French "individualism (vs the English liberal tradition of Smith, Ferguson, Burke, etc.) ...
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Is existence a necessary condition for thinking? [closed]
Is existence a necessary condition for thinking?
Descartes argues that because he thinks, he exists. But wouldn't he have to exist in the first place for him to:
A) Think and
B) Realize that he ...
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Does the frequent study of the history of philosophy cause us to lose critical thinking? [closed]
Does the long and frequent study of the history of philosophy cause us to lose critical thinking and philosophical insight into the issues and, as Descartes puts it, "contaminate ourselves with past ...
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In What Sense is Substance Epistemically Prior?
In Metaphysics Z (1028a32), Aristotle outlines different senses in which a substance can be considered to be "first":
there are several senses in which a thing is said to be first; yet substance is ...
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