Questions tagged [descartes]
Questions related to René Descartes (31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650)
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Does Descartes conclude that imperfection implies perfection?
In the third meditation, does Descartes' knowledge of his limitations, or his imperfections, lead to his conclusion that there must be something limitless, something perfect?
In his third meditation, ...
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Did Descartes declare the "Non Cogito" first, prior to "cogito ergo sum"
I took A-Level Philosophy, during which we studied Descartes "Meditations" at length.
I remember our teacher explaining that, whilst "Cogito ergo sum" was the famous phrasing, ...
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Does Descartes exclude madness from his meditations?
For Descartes, is madness fundamentally different to dreaming?
Reading these blog posts (I am unfamiliar with the discussion really), which has a few points against Foucault's analysis that it is ...
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What happened to ( aristotelian) substantial forms in cartesian ontology? On which ground ( metaphysical or physical) are they rejected?
In aristotelian philosophy, there are no bare particulars ( contrary to what is the case in Plato, according to P.V. Spade) but internally structured ( substantial) particulars in which 2 "parts"/...
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How can Descartes intuit/think without memory?
Descartes presented the Memory response against the cartesian circle. Descartes assumed the reliability of intuition all along. The doubt he laid to rest by proving God's existence is one of memory: ...
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Why did Descartes believe the physical world was determined?
What justification does he give for the idea that everything in the physical world is determined?
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Can we doubt the existence of our thoughts and feelings? How?
I'm reading Russell's "The problems of philosophy" and he says that the only thing we can be certain about is the existence of our "Sense-data" which are mainly our thoughts and emotions. I wonder if ...
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What is Malebranche's explanation for the source of human error?
An omnibenevolent God would not deceive us or cause us to be in error, thus the gifts from cannot be the source of error. Rather sin confuses our faculties and prevents us from using them as they ...
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What are Kant's critiques of Hume's and Descartes's conceptions of the self?
What are Kant's critiques of Descartes's conception of the self contained in the Metaphysical Meditations and of Hume's conception of the self expressed in the Essay concerning human understanding? ...
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Descartes’ Clear and Distinct Principle
Can someone explain Descartes’ clear and distinct principle in depth? I am reading his Meditations, and find the explanation presented there to be short and inadequate for such a bold claim. I would ...
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How did Descartes made a logical skeptic argument against logic, without falling into a paradox, in his Metaphysical Meditations? Is it actually valid
René Descartes seems to have made some arguments against logic and mathematics in his Metaphysical Meditations, however it seems that these arguments are still logical, and the problem is whether that ...
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Large cardinals and in intellectu existence?
I have had some success in the philosophy of mathematics. Briefly I compare Cantor's sets to the clear and distinct ideas of Descartes which is regarded as philosophically rigorous work; on the other ...
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Contributions of Descartes
What ideas did Descartes have about knowledge and reality that were so incongruent with the prevailing neo-Aristotelian paradigm of knowing the real essences of things through abstracting from sense ...
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How can beliefs be justified when they are always subject to Cartesian skepticism?
It seems obvious to me that after glancing at my watch I "know" what time it is. But this apparent "knowledge" can be explained away by infinitely many skeptical hypotheses. ...
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Why does Hayek refer to French 'individualism' as the "Cartesian" school?
I am reading Frederick Hayek right now and saw that he refers to the French liberal tradition, what he calls French "individualism (vs the English liberal tradition of Smith, Ferguson, Burke, etc.) ...