2006-06-20 18:28:03 · 14 answers · asked by rubie 1 in Arts & Humanities ➔ Philosophy
Man is nothing but a speck of dust in the universe. Who cares what descartes says. WHO CARES ! LOOK OUTSIDE and tell me WHO CARES ?... Get away from this forum. Hurry up. Be quick. Get Lost...
2006-07-03 11:47:52 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
I own a compendium of Descartes' philosophical works. I believe the main tenet of Cartesian philosophy is DUALISM which states that the "mind" and the "body" are two completely separate entities and that the mind is not connected to the body in any way. It is evident from reading Descartes that he believed in God.
Many philosophers believed that the existence of a soul could then be derived from Descartes' dualism theory.
If the mind is not connected to the body, then it could separate from the body and live on outside of the body in heaven or somewhere else.
Thus, I believe Descartes would say that people and humans are actually souls that have nothing at all to do with the physical world.
I strongly oppose his philosophy and promote something different. Cartesian dualism is often referred to as "Substance Dualism," referring to the proposition that the mind is a different substance than the soul. My bet is on "property dualism" which suggests that the "mind" emerges from the physical world and depends on it for existence, but that it has different properties than physical matter. This theory is also sometimes called "non-reductive materialism," "non-reductive monism," or emergent materialism.
Descartes was very intelligent, but he had nowhere NEAR the amount of scientific data we have about the brain and nervous system we have today. Just reading is text, you realize how archaic his philosophy is and how little scientific knowledge they had in the late 1500's - early 1600s. I think Descartes would change his mind if he were living today.
2006-06-21 02:06:08 · answer #2 · answered by doogsdc 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The Description of the Human Body (La description du corps humain) is an unfinished treatise written in the 1640s by René Descartes. Descartes felt knowing oneself was particularly useful. This for him included medical knowledge. He hoped to cure and prevent disease, even to slow down aging. He believed the power to move the body was wrongly imagined to come from the soul because a corpse has all the organs of a living body but lacks a soul. A corpse cannot move.
René Descartes believed the soul caused conscious thought. The body caused automatic functions like the beating of the heart and digestion he felt. The body was necessary for voluntary movement as well as the will. A sick or injured body does not do what we want or moves in ways we do not want. He believed the body dying stopped it being fit to bring about movement. This did not necessarily happen because the soul left the body.
René Descartes believed the body could exist through mechanical means alone. This included digestion, blood circulation, muscle movement and some brain function. He felt we all know what the human body is like because animals have similar bodies and we have all seen them opened up.
2006-06-29 10:23:55 · answer #3 · answered by leon_godless 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
its been a while since i took modern philosophy, but didn't descartes say that man was a thinking machine? the ghost in the cartesian theater which is our minds?
ashli k: lol. i've never heard anybody say descartes was an idiot. a lot of his views are outdated now, but were breathtakingly amazing for his time. as for your question, actually nobody has been able to do better than "cogito ergo sum" in the centuries since then. It is by far the simplest and best proof of how we can be certain of our own existence. Of course descartes did take it too far in trying to prove god from that.
2006-06-21 01:44:44 · answer #4 · answered by student_of_life 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I knaow about the whole "I think, therefore I am" deal, but I think the greatest slogan to come to light since Descartes is this one: "No good deed shall go unpunished."
2006-07-04 23:18:48 · answer #5 · answered by Samba Queen 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
who cares, descartes was an idiot, how could he even be considered a philosopher, ever heard of cogito ergo sum, "i think therefore i am"? anyone could do better than that.
what's a man, an intelligent being who can reason and think for themselves with morals was my understanding.
2006-06-21 01:34:26 · answer #6 · answered by ? 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Man is a fancy worm.
2006-07-02 18:48:58 · answer #7 · answered by willberb 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
when an old rabbi was asked why god made only two people Adam and eve he replied "so no body can say, i came from better stock than you do
2006-07-01 03:40:54 · answer #8 · answered by pitbull_saki 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
wht is man??!! man is cute puppy in childhood,, than horse in young stage and bullock when he become old....
2006-06-29 11:49:48 · answer #9 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Just replace the letter "n" with "d".
The meaning does not change !!!!!!!!!
2006-07-04 13:27:20 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋