The great debate on rationalism versus Empiricism, whether to believe in a priori or a Posteriori knowledge has many of great arguments from both the rationalists and the empiricists. Are you just a, Tabula Rasa, blank slate or is all knowledge formed by Reason? As this debate grabs your mind and twists it to the reality it may already belong in. How can we know anything of itself, are our minds just wandering in an alternate reality? A quote by Albert Einstein “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” one of the most influential people discussing limitations on the rational mind.
I disagree with certain idea and issue Rene Descartes argues about in his passage. His beliefs of skepticism at points were valid at times but every human has a right to believe, do anything or create what they want to believe in their mind. To make it feel real is up to the person because we control our emotions which control our mind set to think if we are being trick to having ten fingers or to believe there is no god that created this world we call earth. The scope of knowledge in this reading "Meditations on first philosophy" by Rene Descartes is the truth of doubt. Doubt causes people to believe that you do not know something when you actually do.
Rachels discusses Descarte’s thoughts on the dreaming state, and how if we can be made to believe that our senses are correct there, than they cannot be trusted. The author discusses Philosophical thoughts on Idealism, in which it is considered that our perceptions of physical objects are not “real”, they are only mental ideas as recorded by our senses and imagined by our brains. Rachels discusses the attempts by Descartes to find a foundation for knowledge by identifying absolute truths, and concludes that the task may too difficult, or impossible. Quotes: I found it intriguing where the author wrote, “The mind does not simply record what passes before it; instead, the mind actively interprets experience according to certain built-in principles. Therefore, what we think of as “simple”
McCloskey attempts to make an argument for the non-existence of God and to give reasons why atheism is more comforting than theism. This paper is a response to that article which will address certain ideas raised by Mr. McCloskey. This author is a theist and will present arguments to show the reasoning for the existence and necessity of God. To begin with, McCloskey suggests in his article that the theist’s arguments are “proofs” which do not provide definitive evidence for the existence of God, so therefore, they should be discarded. This is not a justified argument due to the fact that theists do not try to definitely prove the existence of God.
As intellectual beings we seek to know the reality of how things appear to be versus how they really are. Historically the question, “what is real?” has been the subject of much philosophical conjecture. In comparing the synopsis from the movie The Matrix, Plato’s The Republic (The Allegory of the Cave), and Descartes, Meditation 1, I find both similarities and differences. While all three deal with the concept of false realities, both the Matrix and The Allegory of the Cave explore more the concept of two worlds, one world that has been created (an illusion) by outside sources, and the real word which is eventually revealed thus destroying the reality of those involved. While in contrast, in Meditation 1 Descartes takes a more introspective approach by analyzing reality with systematic doubt.
Classical theism provides a depiction of a God that has three main attributes; omnibenevolent, omnipotent and omniscient. A subject that conveys problems for classical theists is that of evil and suffering. It is understood that suffering is a direct consequence of evil. This evil leads to a lot of religious people to question their faith, especially when it comes to natural evil. These issues arise due to the question; if God is all knowing and all loving, should He not then stop suffering from happening?
However, it does not take long to realise that Berkley appears to have not been careful with his choice of words and has committed various conflations leading to fallacies of ambiguity. It is my view that these fallacies play a large role in undermining the success of the Master Argument. In order to analyse the strength of what Berkeley saw as his most convincing argument against the existence of mind independent objects I intend to look specifically at Bertrand Russell’s discussion of the Master Argument in his evaluation of idealism in his book The Problems of Philosophy. I will then look into the nominalist interpretation of the Master Argument in order to see if Russell’s allegations can be sidestepped once we discern the assumptions that Berkeley arguably based the Master Argument on. The Master Argument was originally known as the inconceivability argument until Andre Gallois referred to it as the former in his 1974 article as a nod to the prominence that Berkeley gives it within his attack on materialism.
He was the man responsible for a majority of quotes that made this text popular. Voltaire’s satire evolves around Pangloss’s optimism. His philosophical views mainly target conceptions from the Enlightment. His views state that, “the conception that if God is all good, and all-puissant God had engendered the world and that, therefore, the world must be impeccable.” It is believed through his philosophy that it is seen as misguided or evil, it is because they do not understand the overall good that the “evil” is designated to accommodate. Like Candide, Pangloss is not a tenable character; rather, he is a distorted, hyperbolized representation of a philosopher whose beliefs and perspective is considerable linked to his philosophy.
Yet before analysing this, it is important to consider the main ideas behind Descartes’ meditations. The first of these see’s Descartes engage in a process of radical doubt, one which he believes will leave him with one certain truth, and thus a truth which can be used as a criterion to judge every other idea which he may obtain (Cottingham, 1992). The reason for this being the deceptive nature of the senses from which all his knowledge was obtained from. “All that up to the present time I
Speech according to him is the transition of the mental to the verbal; he puts words to the superior position claiming that there is no possibility of science without words and perceptions thus neglecting empirical methods. Also we have desires and aversions, and those things that contradict our desires or aversion are seen as evil opposite – good. Further the power is defined as an instrument to get the desired object or to put another way to fulfill the appetite, one’s power may collide with another one’s that is what hold people from using it and it is called fear, not to use power because of fear is called manners. There are two types of power – one acquired from the moment of birth another through the experience. The state of nature is the war of all against all since not regarding that some maybe stronger than others everyone has capacity to kill, but people also have the Natural Rights like The Right for life – clash of these two takes place.