Essays on Descartes

Out of all the philosophers we have examined in this unit, René Descartes (On Thinking and the Soul) presents the best argument about what a soul and body are. In contrast, I believe that Locke’s interpretation of the body, mind, soul and self was my least favorite interpretation. René Descartes believed the soul is a…

Dualism of Descartes against Plato’s dualism in `Republic` Introduction Initially, the Greek philosopher Plato is considered to be the main supporter of dualism. Dualism is related to his theory of the eternity of the soul, as conveyed in Republic. Plato put forward not only the idea of a life after death however an existence of…

Cogito Ergo Sum: An Analysis of Rene Descartes’ Philosophical Inquiry             Rene Descartes, the infamous French philosopher, is usually credited as a person who ushered philosophical inquiry on to the modern era. And it is certainly not for nothing that the learned thinker is widely considered as the “Father of Modern Philosophy”. At the very…

Critically assess Descartes’ three arguments for his claim that mind and body are distinct. The concept of Mind-Body dualism is one that has its roots in early classical philosophy, with both Plato and Aristotle setting out strong arguments for this philosophy of the mind. The most famous proponent of this theory though is the “father…

After much consideration, I have chosen to write this final paper on the topic of rationalism. I will be using Rene Descartes: Meditation on First Philosophy as my only resource. I plan to address each question asked one at a time in order to answer them completely. To understand what Descartes’ point of view, I…

Descartes applied illusion argument, dreaming argument, and evil genius argument that is called «method of doubt» to achieve his goals: Mind and body are two different substances, the complete separation of the mental world and the physical world. Once, he claims that even awake or asleep, two plus three is always five. Even evil genius…

I found Descartes’ way of thinking very interesting when compared to Aristotle. Descartes doubts the existence of God when he decides to start over and completely ignore his senses. He states in his third meditation, “…and I do not yet even know for sure whether there is a God at all…I must examine whether there…

Asimov’s short story “Reasons” in I, Robot is the fictional account of a robots creation of his own path of reasoning. Much like Descartes, the Robot, Cutie, is curious about the truth of his existence and plans to find the answers out for himself. Cutie is a self-aware, reasoning robot on a station in space…

Rene Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician, scientist, and writer of the 17th century. He was dissatisfied with the philosophy of his time which was dominated by scholastic philosophy, which sought to answer highly abstract philosophical questions mainly on the basis of Aristotle’s teachings. Descartes was dissatisfied with this kind of philosophy because he considered…

Analysis of Descartes and Locke’s Epistemology             Rene Descartes and John Locke are among the most distinct philosophers of the modern period. Both have constructed their own philosophies on the theory of Knowledge. How knowledge is achieved and what constitute knowledge are the most fundamental questions that are essential in the inquiry on knowledge.            …