Both are faculties of the self or soul, whose existence is proved in the Second Meditation. ... Descartes first starts out by saying that the candle has smell, color, shape, and size. ... He shows us this in his first meditation because he says that he must exist because he thinks. ... First, Descartes argues for the possibility that his mind exists without his body. ... Explain Anne Conway's main objection with Cartesian philosophy. ...

• Word Count: 841
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

Finally, after traveling all over Europe, Descartes decided to end his travels and reside in Holland in 1628 where he began to write his three famous books, Discourse on Method, Meditations on First Philosophy and Principles of Philosophy where his passion for philosophy and mathematics could shine. In my term paper, I will be focusing on specific passages from Meditations on First Philosophy, which was written in 1641. Meditations on First Philosophy is a discussion of metaphysics, or what is real. ... Descartes' focus in Meditations is absolute certainty. ... To this day, he is ...

• Word Count: 1700
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

The success of his attempt to achieve certainty can be analysed in relation to how far he overcomes the universal doubt he has introduced in the first meditation. ... In the second meditation, he appears to define thinking in terms of all conscious acts when he describes a thing that thinks as "a thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, is willing, is unwilling and also imagines and has sensory perceptions". ... However, as he asserts in the first meditation, it is not the case to believe that "I have sensory perceptions" necessarily makes it a true belief. ... Thus Descartes is unable...

• Word Count: 1657
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

History is, of course necessary to any understanding of philosophy: how it came about, what people did with it. ... Rather, philosophy should be integrated with the rest of the sciences through the method of rational judgment. Rather than sailing behind, or next to but away from, the rest of the sciences, philosophy should be the flagship of the group. ... Descartes was the first to bring philosophy to its "renaissance." ... In this meditation on his philosophy, Descartes on numerous attempts tries to convince both the readers, as well as himself, of his theory that we must reject all of ...

• Word Count: 2227
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: Undergraduate