Innate Ideas Essay

René Descartes believed that the mind and body are separate; that the senses could not always be trusted, but that because we as humans are able to think about our existence, we possess some sort of entity separate than our fleshly body. I believe this separate entity to be a soul”an immaterial and

Do we have innate ideas? Offer your view with reference to the work of Descartes and Locke

As a thinking entity, Descartes is a consciousness mind aware of the potential to engage in various modes of existence. To the numerous operations of “thought” he includes doubting, understanding, affirming, denying, willing, refusing, imagining, and sensing. As varied and manifold as these operations appear, they are but expressions of two principal types of conscious activity, to which Descartes eventually traces the nature of error. Thinking and reasoning, together with all belief in general, depend upon the operation of the twin faculties “knowing” and “choosing,” or the free will. Garrett Thompson writes:

Descartes is able to examine ideas and gain knowledge form them. Innate ideas mean they are present at birth, in other words we are implanted with certain ideas at our creation. He often uses ‘innate ideas’ to explain the mind’s original programming. “An infant’s mind is programmed with the rules of logic. Consider as an example the valid rule, modus ponens. Let P and Q stand for variables… the rules states that, if P then Q is true and P is true, then it follows that Q is true. We know that we are programmed with this rule because young children, who have never studied logic and have never entertained the rule, when given an argument in which the variables above are replaced by actual sentences, are able to intuit the validity of the argument.” Descartes believed our minds are programmed with eternal truths, “Whatever comes into existence must have been brought into existence by something else.” He also discovers that the idea of God is only part of his initial programming but also that God, operating through secondary sources such as his parents, is the programmer.

Something very essential to know about Descartes is his idea of Cogito Ergo Sum; I think, therefore I am. He believes that he exists because he is thinking, making him a thinking thing. Descartes first premise states, "I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, in so far as I am simply a thinking, non-extended thing" (Descartes, 54). The first thing that we need to understand from this premise is what Descartes means by extended; to occupy space. So, since he believes that he is not an extended thing, it follows that he does not take up space. Given this, he looked inside himself and saw no parts within his mind, no space or boundaries that his mind contains. In addition, the mind provides a place for free will and faith, which are not parts but different ways of thinking. He rationalizes this by making the mind of a qualitative substance. By saying that only things that can be measured must be of a material substance and those things that cannot be measured are of a thought like substance. The relation between body and mind now seem to be more divided since he believes that his mind is not extended. In short, this premise states that the mind has no parts, making it indivisible.

By basing his conclusions on knowledge that has been reasoned to be true through a method reminiscent of a geometrical proof, Descartes effectively prevents himself from attributing truth to something that is false. However, the structure of such an argument is built on the assumption that Descartes’s starting point is something undeniably true and, assuming as such, the next truth will organically stem from it. Descartes uses this type of reasoning in his proof of God’s existence and his reasoning that the soul is inherently separate from the body, both found in Meditations on First Philosophy. Rene Descartes’s argument is multi-layered, formed in such a way that each subsequent layer depends on that one preceding it, but by being structured

Descartes believes that since the mind and the body are two different things, then they can exist separately. This is the theory of dualism.

Descartes and Locke also believed in some sense of the external world. Descartes claimed that there is in fact an external world, however it does not exist outside people’s minds (Paquette 206). Since Descartes was a rationalist, he believed that the only method to acquire true knowledge was solely through the mind (Moore 2002). Through the process of doubting existence, Descartes realized that the mind exists (Paquette 205). He went further into thought and concluded that since he, an imperfect person, has knowledge of perfection, something perfect has to exist to have put that knowledge in his mind. From there he claimed the existence of God (Newman 2010). Descartes then stated that a perfect god would not deceive his people, indicating that the material world exists (Newman 2010). Therefore through this thinking process, Descartes came to the conclusion that the real world is of the mind, and the external world is everything else that falls into the material world

Through questioning the knowledge he had always believed to be true, Descartes comes to realize that many of his basic beliefs were founded on sensual knowledge. This leads him to question his very existence, and eventually to search for unconditional proof of his existence

His belief in God even affected his theories on reality. One of his theories was that he was being deceived by a conniving and mischievous demon that was hell-bent on distorting his reality. The demon could be comparable to the evil dictator and the memory replacing machine in Total Recall. Despite the evil demon, Descartes did manage to reveal one very true thing and that is that he must exist if he truly is being deceived by the evil demon because he needs to exist in order to be deceived. He later summarizes this into his famous phrase “I think, therefore, I am.”(Descartes 136).

Descartes defines senses as a part of the process of thinking. He also explains that we can use our senses to help us understand the true nature of things. Descartes struggled with doubt and his senses when he used his ontological proof that God existed. For example, he explains that he is aware that he is not perfect and he makes mistakes. He understands that he must know what perfect is in order to give someone the title. He knew that something perfect lead him to have these ideas and that it must exist. His definition of perfect is unique without the knowledge of anyone else and he defined it as God. For example, Descartes believes that God is perfect and deception is a sign of imperfection. Therefore, Descartes came to the conclusion that God cannot deceive. This example shows that Descartes did struggle to accept his own belief without doubting himself. His ontological argument proved, to Descartes, that through God everything

Rene Descartes, a rationalist, said that each person contains the criteria for truth and knowledge in them. Finding truth and knowledge comes from the individual themselves, not necessarily from God. Descartes also believed that reason is the same for every single person. Descartes believed that nothing could be true unless we as humans could perceive it. He also believed that you could break down things into smaller simpler parts. Descartes also believed that there was a relationship between the mind and body. He also believed that the idea of being perfect originated from God since God himself was perfect. He also integrates his mathematical concepts into his methodology. Descartes also applied doubt to his ideas before he

Descartes separates his notion of ideas in two categories: the formal or material and objective. The formal and material notion is that all ideas are the same. The objective notion is that all ideas are different. Considered formally, ideas are the content of the activity of thinking and involved in the cogito. These ideas are clear and distinct. When ideas are considered objectively, on the other hand, they are the mental representatives of things that really exist. Therefore, the connections between ideas yield truths when they correspond to the realities of the world in which we live. Ideas do not come from experience, but are found within intellect itself. Descartes, however, states that these clear and distinct ideas do not necessarily correspond to realities, as there may be an omnipotent deceiver.

He finds it plausible that we are all living in a dream and we have never experienced reality. He can no longer give any credence to his senses and finds himself in a place of complete uncertainty. Descartes comes to the conclusion that nothing can be perceived more easily and more evidently than his own mind. He has discovered that even bodies are not accurately perceived by the senses or the faculty of imagination, and are only accurately being perceived by the intellect. He also realizes that they are not distinguished through being touched, smelled, or tasted, but by being understood alone. (An apple is an apple because our mind tells us that it is an apple.) It is the faculty of reason that gives the knowledge and lets the mind know the truths and essences of objects. Descartes assumes that all of us can be decided by our senses, someone can see something far away, and then discover that is not what we thought it was. Or even a oar when is immerse half in water attempt to be bent, but instead is straight. Descartes think that we cannot always be sure of what we sense, and gives the example of himself seated by the fire.

Rene Descartes is a modern French philosopher, who is famous for his line, “I think, therefore I am.” The meaning of this quote is that he must exist because he has the ability to think. In Descartes most famous work, The Meditations, he starts off by doubting everything, which is known as the Method of Doubt. He believes that our senses are always deceiving us in some way and so our senses are unreliable in proving anything. By this, he means that when we use our senses, such as our vision, to look at something, the way that the object looks from afar is different from the way it looks upfront, thus, deceiving us. However, Descartes