Rene Descartes and a discription Essay Example for Free

Rene Descartes and a discription EssayRene Descartes (1596-1650) was not lone(prenominal) a philosopher tho also a mathematician and scientist. As a philosopher, he used skepticism as a fashion of baffleing the truth of every(prenominal). His judgement was to dubiety everything, and in suspecting everything, allthing that couldnt be doubted was definite. I get out doubt everything that corporation possibly be doubted, he reasons, and if anything is left, then(prenominal) it will be absolutely certain. (Moore/Bruder 93) This, Descartes felt was the only way to obtain truth and knowledge. This method was to take away all the confidence in everything that was taught to us, what we scent out and believe, and the things we take as being obvious. To actually determine if we know anything is for certain we must doubt it all disregarding all we knew about it before. So everything we currently believe is open to discussion and can be questioned. Descartes Method of Doubt in corporated cardinal well-known conjectures, a dream conjecture and the sliminess demigod conjecture. What the dream conjecture is, is the notion that everything that is reality might just be a dream.Adding to the dream conjecture, is the evil demon conjecture. This evil demon conjecture, in essence, is the concept that if this all reality, is just a dream, then perhaps there is an evil demon that is deceiving our minds with these false images of reality. So, we cant assume that our bodies or that anything of our experience make its and can be trusted to be true. For everything we know could be just a dream and not real at all and controlled by a deceiver. No, Descartes was not out of his mind. He was awargon that these two conjecture he composed sounded far-fetched.However, that was the whole point. Descartes was on a quest to find certainty in an any-case-possibility. What Descartes came up with later(prenominal) going through with(predicate) and doubting everything was the cogito, ergo sum or I think, therefore I am. What this meant was if you are thinking, you are make iting. The self that doubts its own institution must surely exist to be able to doubt in the first place. (Moore/Bruder 93) Subsequently, this was the only true thing we can know to be real. We know that we exist at least in a form of a mind.So we can doubt our sensible existence but not our mental existence because you can think. To take this a step come along he developed the clear and distinct test. The clear and distinct test was a test to find out what was true with clarity and distinctness. Meaning, anything that is clear and distinct is true. Using this clear and distinct test, Descartes came to the conclusion that beau ideal, in fact, exists. Descartes believed he viewed perfection clearly and distinctively, and further, God would not let an evil demon toy with his mind, if such a thing did exist.Descartes also thought that there were two distinct substances beyond G od, and these two substances were veridical substance and mind substance. The material substance was all that exists and occupies space and the mind substance is that of thought. Because a substance, gibe to Descartes, requires nothing other than itself to exist, it follows that mind and matter are totally independent of each other. (Moore/Bruder 95) The result to these two substances being independent of each other is called parallelism.The mind, they argued, does not really cause the body to move. When I will that my hand should move, my act of willing only appears to cause my hand to move. (Moore/Bruder 97)Descartes felt that God was the one who was regard in the mental things that happened and the sequence of material actions. He believed God was the reason those two things happened to happen together. This idea was called occasionalism. Descartes was first to make this systematic account of the mind and body relationship, and also the souls contact with the body. (Rorty).D escartes essentially through everything, approached all metaphysical issues by going back and trying to pick apart everything about the underlying things. Descartes tried to discover metaphysical truth about what is through epistemological inquiry about what can be know. (Moore/Bruder 97) The profit of Descartes ideas is that in the dismissal of everything makes you question and look at elements that may be overlook because it is human to draw on experience. So, to clear oneself of all former beliefs leaves everything wide open for exploration and opens up a wider scope.The puzzle I find in his distinct and clear theory is Descartes proof of Gods existence. In proving the existence of God he uses handbill reasoning. This circular reasoning is called the Cartesian Circle. The Cartesian Circle is the circular reasoning that, on one hand, we can only know that God exists because we clearly and distinctively distinguish it, and on the other hand, we can only know that our clear an d distinct perceptions are true because God exits. (Loeb 200-235) This type of reasoning doesnt make any concrete conclusions on the existence of God.It just keeps going or so in a circle, one right after the other. Descartes believe that only his perceptions could be deceived not his mind. So since God was good and perfect, he wouldnt allow him to be deceived, therefore God exists. To explain his ideas on the existence of God, Descartes states that if one can have an idea of a perfect being, which is God, then a perfect being must exist if we can think it in our minds. All of this to me, doesnt show any solid proof. sluice though you can think something in your mind, doesnt mean it must exits.I can think gobs of things in my mind personally, that doesnt necessary mean that somewhere, maybe not in the physical world I experience, truly exists. Also, if God did exists, and if God is perfect, as Descartes claims, then why does Atheism and such religious beliefs exist? Wouldnt perfe ction be if God could exist and not be questionable? Because what Descartes believes is all that we can embrace clearly and distinctively exists, and he had not given any way that explains how you can perceive God clearly and distinctively, other than stating he can perceive in his mind.Also, another thing that is a problem in Descartes method is his goal of proving the existence of the outside world was not valid by any substantial means. There is no proof that any physical object exists aside from a ascend universal belief that the external world exists. What Descartes says, is that since God makes us believe that there is an external world, then there must be one. However, there are lots of mistakes in his proof of God and it isnt truly valid. So, therefore we cannot say anything in this external world does exist or either God, based on the knowledge I have obtained on the subject matter on Descartes.From what I have discover on Descartes and his philosophical ideas, there are many holes and things to argued as Im sure is in most theories. Nonetheless, level though his ideas arent entirely credible to myself, I feel that his contributions to the field of philosophy are eminent. Descartes had brought lots of over-the-hill questions of past philosophers and tried to rationalize them, he failed in my opinion to come up with any fitted answers for what he was trying to prove. However, he did prompt other philosophers in his progression to come up later with some better answers to some of these ideas.