РефератыИностранный языкDeDecartes Method Essay Research Paper Descartes

Decartes Method Essay Research Paper Descartes

Decartes Method Essay, Research Paper


Descartes’ Method of Doubt


Biography


Rene Descartes (1596-1650)


Born in La Haye, a small town in Touraine, France.


Educated at the Jesuit college


Wrote Meditations


Descartes is extremely important to Western intellectual history


Contributions in physiology, psychology, optics, and especially mathematics


Introduced analytic geometry


Influential in modern scientific approach (can’t just say it’s true, show it’s true)


The Cartesian Method


Descartes is very concerned with skeptical questions


Though he was not actually a skeptic, he used skepticism as a method of achieving


certainty.


“I will doubt everything that can possibly be doubted, and if anything is left, then it will be absolutely certain. Then I will consider what it is about this certainty (if there is


one) that places it beyond doubt, and that will provide me with a criterion of truth and knowledge, a yardstick against which I can measure all other purported truths to see if they, too, are beyond doubt.”


Doubt


In order to doubt everything he could, Descartes used two conjectures


Dream conjecture


Evil demon conjecture


Descartes was just as aware of how bizarre these ideas are as we are….that was his point,


to doubt anything that had even the tiniest possibility to be false


Cogito Ergo Sum


Descartes realized that he could, in fact, doubt “absolutely everything, save one


indubitable truth: I think, therefore I am”


The self that doubts it’s own existence must exist to be able to doubt


Moreover, a self that doubts must not only exist, but must exist rationally (being a t

hing


that thinks)


The “Absolute”


Once Descartes established that he doubted everything except that which cannot be


doubted (his doubting)—he wanted a yardstick that he could measure all other


things by to see if they are true beyond all doubt.


This yardstick is clarity and distinctness


Those things that are clear and distinct are true.


What is clear and distinct?


Mathematical concepts


There is no perfect circle in nature, but we know what a perfect circle is


God


Descartes, armed with his clear and distinct test discovers that he has certain knowledge


that God exists


3 Proofs


1) The idea of God must come from a reality that is at least as perfect as the idea


2) -I exist as a thing that has an idea of God


-Everything that exists has a cause that brought it into existence and that


sustains it in existence


-The only thing adequate to cause and sustain me, a thing that has an idea of


God, is God


-Therefore God exists


A thing needs a cause to be sustained


God is invoked by Descartes as the cause of him


3)-My conception of God is the conception of a being that posses all perfections


-Existence is perfection


-Therefore I cannon conceive of God as not existing


-Therefore God exists


Ontological


Everything Else


Once Descartes was able to prove God exists he felt he could believe what he first doubted


If God is supreme good, he/she is incapable of deceit


If God is incapable of deceit, the reality of the world can be accepted because God would not have us perceive a world that did not, in fact, exist.

Сохранить в соц. сетях:
Обсуждение:
comments powered by Disqus

Название реферата: Decartes Method Essay Research Paper Descartes

Слов:587
Символов:3931
Размер:7.68 Кб.