Rene Descartes "I have never written about the infinite except to submit myself to it, and not to determine what it is or not..." Philosopher Rene Descartes Were he alive and intellectually active in these times of terrorism and uncertainty, of AIDS and anthrax and animal cloning, what would Rene Descartes be doing? Were he awakening these mornings in 2003 to recount his expansive dreams in writings, and generate his geometric formulae,

Descartes viewed that the whole of human knowledge was a tree, with each part relying on the others for the purposes of functioning - and, in a philosophical sense, validity. The tree's trunk was comparable to physics. The branches Descartes considered to be the applied sciences of morals, medicine, and mechanic. The roots of the tree provided support and nourishment to the whole of the system; these roots, Descartes

Hypothetical Scenario: The creation of a "sensory bar" and the First Meditation of Rene Descartes At the beginning of the "First Meditation" the French philosopher Rene Descartes takes a philosophical posture known as radical skepticism: he resolves to doubt anything that cannot be proven. After all, he rationalizes, he is aware of the fact that sometimes he is dreaming and since this is the case, might not all the world be

If at the moment of stating this theory, animals were simply regarded as mindless creatures, their current status has changed. A large number of organizations received state funds to investigate the lives of animals and came up with astonishing results. The researches developed concluded that most animals had a very active brain and could reach high level of intelligence and communication skills. As such, even if a large part

Descartes argues that the mind and the body must be two different things since he knows the mind exists but knows no such thing about the body. Spell out this argument. What's wrong with it, if anything? Give a counterexample to the principle implied here. Are other philosophers that we have read drawing conclusions about what the mind must be like based on what we know about the mind or how

Descartes' Major Tenets Descartes Major Tenets Descartes was one of the most well-respected thinkers of his time, and he applied his special brand of logic to a wide-variety of disciplines, most notably mathematics and philosophy. The Cartesian approach to philosophy, like many approaches to philosophy, looked at the interaction of the mind and the brain. Were the mind and the brain one united organism, did they interact with one another, was one