Response to George Berkeley's Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous

Everyone has some summers that are very more memorable than others, and for Clair it was her fifth-grade summer. In the passage Cherry Bomb Maxine Clair uses various different literary techniques to characterize her memories of her fifth grade summer world. She uses literary devices such as diction, imagery and details to characterize the memories of her fifth-grade summer as joyous as well as a time of innocence. Clair uses diction and language to help characterize her adult memories of her fifth grade summer. Clair uses words from a childhood perspective to emphasize and show what it was like when she was a child.

In this paper, I will discuss the “Divisibility argument” on Descartes mind- body dualism presented on Descartes meditations. I will claim that the mind and the body are in fact different as Descartes argument suggests, but I will more rather neglect and explain why his belief that the mind is indivisible is wrong. I also will discuss how Descartes argument on the body’s divisibility is reasonable, and the reasons why I believe this argument is true.

Descartian dualism is one of the most long lasting legacies of Rene Descartes’ philosophy. He argues that the mind and body operate as separate entities able to exist without one another. That is, the mind is a thinking, non-extended entity and the body is non-thinking and extended. His belief elicited a debate over the nature of the mind and body that has spanned centuries, a debate that is still vociferously argued today. In this essay, I will try and tackle Descartes claim and come to some conclusion as to whether Descartes is correct to say that the mind and body are distinct.

Berkeley's attempt to popularize his pro-mind conception of the external world, Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, serves to undermine Locke's distinctions between primary and secondary qualities of the external world. In his publication, Berkeley uses dialogue between Hylas and Philnous, which consists of a series of arguments, to determine the most sound theory. Ground rules of the debate consists of: whoever of the two's position avoids skepticism about knowledge of physical objects wins and that if one position can be shown to entail that we cannot know anything about physical objects, consequently that position should be dismissed as absurd (Kelly, 2013). Throughout the arguments, Berkeley weakens Locke's theory of Limited Representationalism by counteracting Locke's with the possibility that instead of “matter” that comprises physical objects in the external world, these objects are simply ideas. Drawing back on Berkeley's catchy motto, “to be is to be perceived”, he proposes three arguments that support his idealist view that the motto encapsulates. The three pieces of support also importantly shed skepticism upon Lockes primary and secondary distinctions involving “matter”. The three statements of support include: The argument that physical

In order to fully understand Berkeley’s argument for the dismissal of material objects, one must understand his preceding argument on abstract ideas. According to Berkeley, the existence of abstract ideas is actually a myth. Humans tend to generalize concepts, such as the general idea of a table, a car, or a triangle, for example. However, Berkeley claims in his argument that there is no explainable way to have a general idea of anything. So if someone tells another to think of a table, that person will have a very specific picture of a very specific table –maybe a brown dining table with large, carved wooden legs, or a plastic folding table. There is not one table that has all of the characteristics of a table and none of them at the

The purpose of the wax argument is designed to provide a clear and distinct knowledge of “I”, which is the mind, while corporeal things, “whose images are framed by thought, and which the senses themselves imagine are much more distinctly known than this mysterious ‘I’ which does not fall within the imagination” (66). Through the wax argument, Descartes’ demonstrates that corporeal things are perceived neither through our senses nor imagination, but through our intellect alone. In this argument, you will see that there is cause to doubt Descartes’ analysis of the wax and his method of philosophical reasoning.

Purposely difficult and intentionally obsessive, Plato’s Phaedrus is an exceedingly difficult read that defies all conventional logic as a piece of discourse. The text is extremely subjective, open to interpretation and individual creativity as to what or whom the narrative is about. Written by Plato, a close disciple of Socrates, this text is set along the Illissus river where Phaedrus and Socrates meet for a day of speech, debate, rhetoric and okay…flirting. Phaedrus leads of the day and recites a speech by his close friend Lysias, who Phaedrus considers to be a top speechmaker. Socrates then, after chiding by Phaedrus unleashes two speeches of his own that overshadow and refute Lysias claim so boldly that Phaedrus is so taken by the

In the words of George Orwell, “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” Language has been spoken for over 350,000 years. It has expanded tremendously, but its power has never changed. The use of language shapes peoples' perceptions and the depth of interactions because it can demean, avoid, portray emphasis, persuade, and conceal from simple phrases such as “I feel like” and “just”.

Substance dualism is a never ending argument in the Philosophy world as it’s been going on for decades. It is the view that the universe contains two important types of entity which is mental and material. The structure of this paper is that four main argument leads to one conclusion. Firstly, I’ll argue about Descartes’s ‘separability argument’ which stands as the definition of Substance Dualism. Secondly, I’ll argue that mental and physical have different and perhaps irreconcilable properties. An argument is not complete without a counter argument which in this case the “pairing” problem that exists in Descartes theory is highlighted and where is the interaction of material and immaterial takes

In Meaning and Reference , Hilary Putnam famously produced the twin-earth scenario to argue for semantic externalism (henceforth externalism), the view that the meaning of some expressions is partly determined external to the speaker’s mental states. In this essay I will first lay out Putnam’s argument for externalism. Then I will extend his scenario and show that externalism faces various problems. Lastly, I will cast doubt on Putnam’s idea that the essence of the term “water” is its molecular structure. Hence Putnam’s twin-earth scenario fails to establish externalism.

In Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy, he introduces the divisibility argument for his idea of mind-body dualism. It argues that the mind is distinct from the body and that they are different "substances". The argument has two premises; the mind is indivisible and the body is divisible. In this essay, I will interpret Descartes' argument by discussing the key points of these premises and how they are supported. I will also be incorporating my own thoughts on the argument to determine whether the divisibility argument is enough to validate the idea of mind-body dualism.

You see through the ages of philosophy there have been many debates and opinions. Yet it is those opinions that are the most radical that demand the most attention. On that note, we will address two radical philosophizers: Spinoza and Hobbes. Specifically there theory's pertaining to matter and the mind-body problem posed by Descartes. As such we will first address Hobbes then move to Spinoza and end with a combined statement on matter. Therefore we must begin by introducing Thomas Hobbes.

"Words [or labels], like little buckets, are assumed to pick up their loads of meaning in one person's mind, carry them across the intervening space, and dump them

It is the purpose of this essay to examine both Descartes’ Cogito argument and his skepticism towards small and universal elements, as well as the implications these arguments have on each other. First, I will summarize and explain the skepticism Descartes’ brings to bear on small and universal elements in his first meditation. Second, I will summarize and explain the Cogito argument, Descartes’ famous “I think, therefore I am” (it should be noted that this famous implication is not actually something ever said or written by Descartes, but instead, an implication taken from his argument for his own existence). Third, I will critique the line of reasoning underlying these arguments. Descartes attacks

Each culture has its own distinct way of rendering the spoken language. The aspects that make words and their meaning distinct are as unique as the properties of language that make them arbitrary. Words are nothing more than sounds. It is up to us to connect them to their actual meaning. This system follows no specific reason for words and their relation to objects, it is the culture that appoints meaning - this is why it is arbitrary. However, even though we can say that word meanings are arbitrary; language is not.