Throughout Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy, the narrator, or Meditator, isolates himself in order to think clearly and develop a new perception on many concepts like the mind, body, and existence of God. ... In order to do so, he must first examine the sensory perception through which he has come to know these beliefs and foundations of knowledge. ... Throughout the First Meditation in Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes presents and details several reasons to doubt all of his beliefs. ... Therefore, he begins to question the accuracy of sensory perception as an epi...

• Word Count: 1233
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• Grade Level: Undergraduate

In the Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes attempts to convey the fascinating illusion of always being in a dream without a certain ability to distinguish what is actually reality or what is a dream, or at bare minimum prove that there are no certain marks to prove otherwise. ... The result is that I begin to feel dazed, and this very feeling only reinforces the notion that I may be asleep" (First Meditation). ... I turned my attention to his famous dream argument originally brought forth in his Mediation on First Philosophy, and will be using different ideologies between a John Lo...

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• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Running head: René Descartes: The Man of Meditation A Brief History and Interview of René Descartes: The Man of Meditation Danielle Ennis René Descartes René Descartes, philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. ... Often called the father of modern philosophy, he is regarded as the bridge between scholasticism and all philosophy that followed him. ... Then in 1641 he published a work called Meditationes, in which he described his views on philosophy. ... D.E.: What was Meditations on First Philosophy about? ... R.D.: Honestly, I wouldn't change a t...

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• Grade Level: High School

Descartes" writing his Meditations on First Philosophy in a first-person format is essential to the potential success of his argument. ... Thus, Descartes promotes the first-person structure of the Meditations as a guide to discovering for oneself the existence of God. ... Thus, by the title of the piece and the first meditation Descartes establishes that the Meditations are to be read just as such - as meditations. ... Descartes" primary premises are proven most clearly by his use of the first-person in writing the Meditations. ... Throughout the Meditations the strength of Descartes" ar...

• Word Count: 1200
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• Grade Level: Undergraduate

The foundation of Descartes argument is based on the first person narrative style of his Meditations on First Philosophy. ... As soon as Descartes creates the basis of his argument he can make more inferences as he moves on to different meditations. ... This is his first method of doubt. ...

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Traditionally, there are five main subfields of philosophy. ... Epistemology is the subfield of philosophy concerned with the concept of knowledge, how we learn, and what we have the ability to learn. ... He begins his first meditation by reflecting on the falsehoods to which he has previously believed. ... However, after his first meditation, he comes to the foundation of his proof: I think, therefore, I am. ... However, Descartes proved in his third meditation that there is a God. ...

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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. ...

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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 ...

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Descartes himself described Meditations as being a philosophy much like a tree. ... In Meditation One Descartes flooded his mind with doubt. On page 17 of Meditations on First Philosophy Descartes says " it was necessary.. to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything at all in the sciences that was stable and likely to last." ... Conventional wisdom then that the body is easier to understand than the mind is in error, therefore doubt about opinions is the first step to building a reliable body of knowledge. ... Descar...

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Rene Descartes, in his first meditation, tells us that everything in this world is dubious and that we cannot rely on our senses/perceptions. ... In meditation three Descartes attempts to prove the existence of God. ... His first is that, "All the things we perceive (sensible things) are ideas in our minds." ... Russell tries to make a distinction between "appearance" and "reality", which he says is the most trouble in philosophy. ... (Marx Philosophy 121)...

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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
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• Grade Level: Undergraduate

The mind/body issue in philosophy asks many questions. At first, what are these things, these substances, that we call "mind and ˜body?" ... Still, as noted, many philosophies and religions attempt to answer the question of mind and body by simply subordinating one side to the other. ... In his Meditations, Descartes set out to prove that in fact he was a thinking thing, and this fact alone guaranteed his existence. ... Descartes, realizing the problems with his dualism, attempts to construct a link between the mind and body with reference to the pineal gland (Meditation VI), that which...

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This proposition is a fundamental element in Western philosophy, as it is presupposed by all knowledge. Descartes' original phrase, je pense, donc je suis, which is first written in his Discourse on the Method. ... First of all, "Cogito ergo sum" has to be in first-person. ... Writing in third-person has already proved the existence of first-person, therefore, the third-person's existence is questionable. ... According to Descartes's meditation, "I have convinced myself that there is absolutely nothing in the world, no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies....

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When looking and examining both Plato and Descartes method of philosophy, we can see that both had similarities and differences to their approach. ... We also see the belief that the mind and body are separate come to life with Descartes after reading Meditation Two. ... First he argues that we have an idea of God and second being that the only way to have an idea of God is if God exists. ... After evaluating each of these arguments of knowing the absolute truth, I come to see myself favoring the philosophies of Plato. ...

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In Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes attempts to establish a new method of obtaining knowledge where he only accepts beliefs as true if they are beyond possible doubt. ... Descartes begins to explore his previous belief with "First Mediation: On What Can be Called into Doubt.... In Meditation 2, Descartes seeks to determine what (if anything) can be known beyond any doubt. ... In the Mediations on First Philosophy, Descartes believes he established that God exists as a perfect being but ultimately fails in providing clear and distinct explanations of this truth. ...

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In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke disputes the notion of innate ideas as a response to Cartesian Philosophy. ... In Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes argues that ideas such as infinity and God encompass more formal reality than do finite humans. ...

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Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind, Oxford Univ. ... He insisted that the first task for the philosopher is to rid himself of all prejudice by calling in doubt all that can be doubted. ... This strategy is clearly stated in Descartes" Meditations. Here are some extracts from the First Meditation in which skeptical doubts are raised: What I have so far accepted as true par excellence, I have got either from the senses or by means of the senses. ... I will remain firmly fixed in this meditation, and resolutely ta...

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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 our present ideas and beliefs and start from nothing. ... At the beginning of meditation two, Descartes is "stuck in the middle of nothingness". ... This is the first accurate idea that Descartes knows with any conviction, he knows that he is a "thinking being". ... In sternly following his philosophies, Descartes must have missed out on many wonderful things in his lifetime. ...

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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 ...

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• Grade Level: Undergraduate

The most critical account of the mind-body theory was first systematically carried out by Descartes. ... He was the first to argue that the mind is a non-material entity which is distinct and separate from the brain. ... In his work, Meditations, Descartes began his philosophical journey by finding out the things which he can claim absolute certainty from those which he is doubtful. ... He observed that the truth 'I think therefore I am' was so solid that it become the first principle of philosophy he sought. This expression summarizes Descartes philosophy. ...

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• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Rene' Descartes, a French philosopher, mathematician and writer has been dubbed the father of modern and Western philosophy. ... Descartes understands the body as follows: " whatever can be determined by a certain shape, comprised in a certain location, whatever so fills a certain space as to exclude it from any other body, whatever can be apprehended by touch, sight, hearing, taste or smell and whatever can be moved in various ways " [Meditation II] For example, the material does have extension in space. ... First of all, how is it possible for the mind which does not possess any physica...

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In 1879, William Wundt (considered the father of clinical psychology) founded the first psychological laboratory at the University of Lepzig, in Germany. ... It transformed psychology from a philosophy to a science, and forever changed the study of human behavior. ... Since the advent of William Wundt's first psychological laboratory in Germany, seven basic perspectives have emerged to be the most prevalent today. First is, Biological, followers of this theory look to the body to explain the mind. ... People can also purposely alter their consciousness to avoid problems and escape rea...

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In this paper I am going to argue, first that through this thought-experiment Descartes tries to deny the concept of knowledge. ... After he accomplishes, this he begins his meditations. ... He first looks at the things around him. ... But because of such modern help Descartes" thoughts still live on in modern philosophy and society. ...

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Modernism also disregards that which is supernatural as it is not possible for it to be proven by science (Thompson, 1998).Caputo and Descartes greatly influenced this shift through the philosophies that they introduced. ... Aristotle was the first to devise a plausible theory of the universe. ... However, In the Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), Descartes introduced the idea of the Cartesian dualism which is made up of the res extensa which is the material world including the body and res cogitans which is the rational mind (Cavell, 2003).Furthermore, he defined the body as a thing th...

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This is a question you need to answer, when you decide to dive into the philosophy of the Matrix, one of the biggest blockbuster film trilogies, joining notable other such film trilogies as Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Terminator, and Star Trek. ... To help me in this journey, I will be relying on a few sources, first being- The Matrix and Philosophy: Welcome to the desert of the Real edited by William Irwin, Philosophy of Technology edited by Robert C. ... I will be covering many aspects of the Matrix in how it deals with wide array of elements of philosophy that range from metaphysics to ethic...

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• Grade Level: High School