Because there is no mechanism for distinguishing sleep from wake, Descartes says that he is also uncertain about the existence of the body. In addition, he argues that an evil demon may be deceiving him about the existence of the sky, air, colors, sounds, and bodies yet such things are illusions of dreams (Cress 41). By reflecting on the scenario of the evil demon and dreaming, Descartes doubts whether external things such as the body exists. In the second Mediation, Descartes argues that the nature of the mind is different from the body. However, he does not present a premise for the existence of bodies until the sixth meditation when he supports substance dualism.
In the article “Some Close Encounters of a Mental Kind”, Stephen Jay Gould, an author talks about the certainty. Gould argues about the human memories that human could remember things back that have happened long times ago. He mentioned in the article that there are three levels of potential error in direct and objective vision: misperception, retention, and retrieval. Gould uses several different examples to support his statement. I was convinced by Gould that people should careful and doubt itself of what we see with our eyes when we think back from our memories.
Which is more desirable, a wonderful illusion or a harsh reality? Not that everyone’s reality is harsh, but is it really real? As Plato pointed out in his allegory of the cave, many people who are part of an illusion take that illusion as their reality and will not easily believe that it is in fact an illusion. This is something that is also true in the movie The Matrix, in which only a few people believe the life they are living has an odd tinge to it, something that just doesn’t feel right. These are just two examples of illusion versus reality, which is a fundamental philosophical topic that dates back to the Pre-Socratics.
In Rene Descartes’, First Meditation, he analyzes the system of beliefs in anticipation that he would come to find truth. In his rationalist argument on universal doubt, he explains his theory that for us to know the truth we must first be sure that the belief is unquestionable and to do so, we first need to put all of our beliefs into question. We will also be concerned with Putnam’s argument that if you were a Brain in a Vat you would not be able to self refer. I will argue against the application of such high Universal Doubt but nevertheless, I will accept that some doubt is necessary in order to find the truth in your beliefs. Although, Descartes and Putnam are playing devils advocate I will fully argue for Putnam’s discretization of the Brain in the Vat theory.
Freudian theory states dreams are triggered by unacceptable repressed wishes, often of a sexual nature. Dreams we experience are merely disguised versions of our real dreams. Hobson’s activation-synthesis theory states that the information supplied to the cortex during REM sleep is largely random and the resulting dream is the cortex’s effort to make sense of these random signals (Pinel 2009). Conclusion I agree with the activation-synthesis theory. I do not believe dreams are triggered by unacceptable repressed wishes of a sexual nature.
With respect to the two papers, I want to show (1) reasons for accepting or denying Self-Predication, (2) how this assumption leads one to a metaphysical or epistemological interpretation of the TMA, and (3) how this assumption determines their different views of the structure of the TMA. In the final section of Vlastos’ paper, Vlastos gives us his critique of only three discrepancies he has with Sellars’ interpretation of Self-Predication. It’s important to understand first why one should accept or deny the view of Self-Predication. And though it seems like a minor debate within the whole argument, the implications of either one’s assumption determines the reasons for many of their other discrepancies on the TMA as a whole. The first problem for Vlastos consists of Sellars’ attempt to discredit Self-Predication within the language used by Plato.
Edmund Husserl’s Idea of Going Back to the Things in Themselves I. Introduction: The main problem of this work is to laid down the ideas of what Husserl really meant of zu den sachen slebst. This paper will also see the difference of Husserl’s method in knowing things compared to the methods or to the process in knowing of other philosophers just like of Aristotle and Descartes to name a few. Basically, the researcher will try to follow the idea on how Husserl finds the way of going back to the things in themselves. The researcher considers that it can only be done by more focusing on the method to which Husserl asserted in knowing the essence of things.
For Descartes’ in the 16th century, the ability to discern truth was a matter of paramount importance. How do we know what we know? Descartes subjected all ideas to skepticism and doubt in order to find a foundation for knowledge. He argued if there was any way in which he could imagine that something that he thought he knew was true wasn’t true, then he could not say for certain that it was true. Descartes expounds on his “Method of Doubt” in three stages: the “Argument from Illusion,” “Dream Skepticism,” and the “Evil Genius.” The first two stages allude to the inclination of humans to be deceived by their own senses, and the third argument was essentially a thought experiment for Descartes, and will not be considered here.
Both philosophers, in their articles, define deficiencies in the current state of knowledge. For Descartes, humans should have doubts in order to make decisions and/or learn. In the first meditation, the mediator argues that human beings should learn from, or through, their senses because the senses can deceive. Therefore, people should not go by their senses. Even when humans are dreaming and sensing real objects, those senses can still be deceived, and the present sensation can be dream images, proving
Most likely, the dreams were the result of some fact of the unconscious mind. He realized the impossibility of conducting a self-analysis using the method of free association, as it would be impossible to play the role of patient and therapist at the same time, so he decided to analyze his own dreams. Throughout this paper I will expose Freud‟s theory of dreams summarily, focusing in the chapters II, III and IV of his book “The Interpretation of Dreams”. In the chapter II, Freud gives the distinction between some popular methods of dream-interpretation. In this same chapter, he uses one of this own dreams that help to clarify his position that “wish-fulfillment is a meaning of each and every dream”1.