Rene Descartes 's Philosophy On The Mind

Descartes’s first, and arguably most important deduction, is that he must exist, even if nothing around him does. He deduces that “it necessarily had to be the case that I, who was thinking this, was something” (Descartes 18), leading him to his famous axiom “I think, therefore I am” (Descartes 18). Even if his senses, his prior knowledge, and anything about his physical body and life are a fabrication, his mind itself must exist. This crucial discovery is the basis of Descartes’s philosophical musings. Descartes takes this single, certain fact and expounds upon it to “confirm” that the soul, God, and many other things certainly exist outside of his mind. Concerning things outside of his mind, Descartes determines that “they are not something I have fabricated; rather they have their own true and immutable natures” (Descartes 88). Using triangles as an example, Descartes reasons that they have “a certain determinate nature, essence, or form which is unchangeable and eternal, which I did not fabricate, and which does not depend on my mind” (Descartes 88). Concerning his body itself, Descartes reasons that his mind and body are tightly joined; “when the body is in need of food or drink, I should understand this explicitly, instead of having confused sensations of hunger and thirst” (Descartes 98). By determining that things such as his body and surroundings did in fact exits outside o f his mind, Descartes can start to “confirm” what he believes to be the true nature of God by his A priori

This essay attempts to explain Descartes’ epistemology of his knowledge, his “Cogito, Ergo Sum” concept (found in the Meditations), and why he used it [the cogito concept] as a foundation when building his structure of knowledge. After explaining the concept I give a brief evaluation of his success in introducing and using this cogito as a foundation. Finally, I provide reasons why I think Descartes succeeded in his epistemology.

Descartes’ method of radical doubt focuses upon finding the truth about certain things from a philosophical perspective in order to truly lay down a foundation for ideas that have the slightest notion of doubt attached to them. He believed that there was “no greater task to perform in philosophy, than assiduously to seek out, once and for all, the best of all these arguments and to lay them out so precisely and plainly that henceforth all will take them to be true demonstrations” (Meditations, 36). The two key concepts that Descartes proves using the method of doubt are that the “human soul does not die with the body, and that God exists” as mentioned in his Letter of Dedication, since there are many that don’t believe the mentioned concepts because of the fact that they have not been proven or demonstrated. (Meditations, 35). In order to prove the above, he lays out six Meditations, each focusing on a different theme that leads us “to the knowledge of our mind and of God, so that of all things that can be known by the human mind, these latter are the most certain and the most evident” (Meditations, 40).

At the beginning of Meditation three, Descartes has made substantial progress towards defeating skepticism. Using his methods of Doubt and Analysis he has systematically examined all his beliefs and set aside those which he could call into doubt until he reached three beliefs which he could not possibly doubt. First, that the evil genius seeking to deceive him could not deceive him into thinking that he did not exist when in fact he did exist. Second, that his essence is to be a thinking thing. Third, the essence of matter is to be flexible, changeable and extended.

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:

Having assured himself that he exists and that the essential nature of his self includes at least the capacity to think he then explored the question What else am I? (Section 27) and reached this conclusion: But then what am I? A thing that thinks (res cogitans). What is that? A thing that doubts (dubitans), understands (intelligens), affirms (affirmans), denies (negans), wills (volens), refuses (nolens), and that also imagines (imaginans) and senses (sentiens) (Section 28). Descartes acknowledges that thinking includes doubt, understanding, affirmation, denial, will (volition), refusal, imagination, and senses .

At the end of Meditation Two, “Concerning the Nature of the Human Mind: That It Is Better Known Than the Body,” Descartes concludes with the above quotation after illustrating multiple times that the more you employ your senses and imagination to judge something, the more your mind will manifest itself to you. The juxtaposition between “ the senses or by the faculty of imagination” and “intellect” emphasizes that the senses will always fail to demonstrate the existence of an object or body because the only thing that they truly make more distinct is the mind. Interestingly, Descartes doesn’t urge the reader to ignore their senses and neglect their imagination, rather Descartes sees the usage of them as an effective way to become more in touch with our mind. The

Descartes' meditations are created in pursuit of certainty, or true knowledge. He cannot assume that what he has learned is necessarily true, because he is unsure of the accuracy of its initial source. In order to purge himself of all information that is possibly wrong, he subjects his knowledge to methodic doubt. This results in a (theoretical) doubt of everything he knows. Anything, he reasons, that can sustain such serious doubt must be unquestionable truth, and knowledge can then be built from that base. Eventually, Descartes doubts everything. But by doubting, he must exist, hence his "Cogito ergo sum".

     Through his philosophical search Descartes was able to find one indubitable certainty, that we are thinking beings. We always think, even when we have doubts that we are thinking we are still thinking because a doubt is a thought. Although Descartes found this one universal truth, he was still not able to believe in anything but the fact that he was a thinking being. Therefore he still doubted everything around him. He used this one certainty to try to find a system of knowledge about everything in the world. Descartes idea was to propose a hypothesis about something. For example he might say that a perfect being was in existence. He would go around this thought in a methodical way, doubting it, all the while trying to identify it as a certainty. Doubting everything was at first dangerous because in doubting everything he was also admitting that he doubted the existence of God, and thus opposing the church. However he made it a point to tell us at the beginning of his Discourse on Methods that what he was writing was only for himself and that he expected no one but himself to follow it (Descartes 14, 15). Descartes eventually managed to prove the existence of a higher being. He said that since he had the idea of a perfect being, then that perfect being must exist. His

Perhaps one of the most controversial issues in the Cartesian view of mind and body is how the two substances interact. In the book The passion of the Soul Descartes returned to the problem; he suggests that there is a gland in the middle of the brain in charge of the interaction; he maintains that “from there it radiates through the rest of the body by means of the animal spirits”) (Descartes, 1649/1984, p.341). But what does he mean? The pineal gland is itself physical; Gassendi pointed out that “If it is a physical point, the difficulty still stands, since such a point does not wholly lack of parts. If is a mathematical point, then such a point, as you are aware is, purely imaginary” (Descartes, 1641/1985, p.236) To

In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes strives first and foremost to provide an infallibly justified foundation for the empirical sciences, and second to prove the existence of God. I will focus on the first and second meditations in my attempt to show that, in his skepticism of the sources of knowledge, he fails to follow the rules he has set out in the Discourse on Method. First I claim that Descartes fails to draw the distinction between pure sensation and inference, which make up what he calls sensation, and then consider the consequences of this failure to follow his method. Second, I will show that in his treatment of thinking Descartes fails to distinguish between active and passive thinking.

René Descartes was a French philosopher and also mathematician. His method of doubt led him to the famous "cogito ergo sum" when translated means "I am thinking, therefore I exist". This cogito was the foundation for Descartes' quest for certain knowledge. He explored doubt and how we can prove our own existence, by taking the first steps of scepticism. His book "Meditations On First Philosophy", was written in six parts. Each representing the six days that God took to create the world. Not to upset the Church, Descartes would need to prove the existence of God, and the soul. Within Descartes' argument, we find some important areas. Two, which require focus, are his

- The mind has innate and tribal principles prior to each experience, and is not generated by the sense, it is clear and simple without fault, and as a result of this knowledge arises and consists of the correct ideas, such as the principle of the identity that the thing is always the same, and not be another thing, The principle of non-contradiction, which says that the two contradictions do not meet together, and the principle of the attic, that every bug has an explanation and for all those who are wrong, and innate and intuitive ideas of the existence of God, and the existence of the self that comes from thinking, Descartes says,

During Meditations 2, Descartes establishes a version of his famous ‘cogito ergo sum’. He establishes that despite the fact that we may not know the world around us as well as we think we do, we can know the mind better and the trusting the mind can lead him to the seemingly justified conclusion that he exists.

Based on the conclusion that “I am something” or “I am; I exist – that is certain” (15), Descartes explores his Cogito argument in “Meditation Two”. First of all, another question immediately follows such a conclusion: if such something – “I” – necessarily exists, what it is? Or what is such an “I”? Descartes first shows the evolution of his own meditations about this question. He once divided “I” into “the body” and “the soul”, the latter of which refers to “a rarefied I-know-not-what”, “the power of self-motion, […] of sensing or of thinking”, or “some supremely powerful and […] malicious deceiver” (14). Nevertheless, he not only shows his current “discovery”: “thought exists; it alone cannot be separated from me”; but also claims: “I am a true thing and am truly existing”, “I am […] a thinking thing; that is, a mind, or intellect, or understanding, or reason” (15).