In chapter ten of the book “Problems from Philosophy”, by James Rachels, the author, the author discusses the possibilities of human beings living in an actually reality, or if we are just living in an illusion. Rachels guides us through concepts that try to determine wiether we are living in a world were our perception of reality is being challenged, or questioned. Rachels guides us through the topic of “Our Knowledge of the World around Us”, through the Vats and Demons, idealism, Descartes Theological Response, and direct vs. indirect realism.
This chapter is composed of concepts that try to differentiate between reality and what is actually happening in your mind, and are we living in a matrix? The Vats and Demons idea creates a vivid
…show more content…
Surprisingly, Descartes shows that religion might also help explain the basis of knowledge” (Rachels 133). This statement grasps my attention, because for me I see the world through my religion. Sometimes, when there is not an answer for questions I may have, I look back to my religion to help guide me to the correct answer. I find it strange that Rachels referred to it as surprising for Descartes to show that religion might also help guide our basis of knowledge. “Descartes imagined that a powerful “evil spirit” was intent upon deceiving him-a spirit with god-like powers that wanted to fool him about everything. This spirit can not only manipulate Descartes’ experiences, but it can also manipulate his beliefs” (Rachels 126). This quote made me feel like Descartes was trying to conclude that god was not as almighty as everyone puts him off to be. I feel like Descartes wanted us to think that god could also be fooling us at the moment, like this demon with god-like powers is manipulating him. “Color, one of the last elements added by the brain, can make huge difference to our emotions” (Rachels 136). This statement really took my attention, because every time I watch something on the TV that is in black and white, my whole mood change, I just feel gloomy. It’s weird that color is one of the last elements added by the brain, and it has such a huge impact on our life. I can’t imagine how life would be in black and white, color has so much meaning and symbolism, some people think of a color, and that certain color represents a certain thing to them, whether it’s a subject, food, or an
Review of Descartes: An Intellectual Biography and Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain
This paper will examine the reliability of George Berkeley’s metaphysical theory of Idealism. Berkeley’s Idealism holds that reality is made real by what the mind perceives and that what we perceive to be material is really a collection of immaterial sensations. Idealism is defined as the view “that only mental entities exist, so physical things exist only in the sense that they are perceived” (“Idealism”). Berkeley’s argument of Subjective Idealism is the view that reality consists of one’s mind and its ideas, while Objective Idealism says in addition, a supreme mind produces ideas in the physical world that do not depend on human minds to exist (Velasquez 146). Without Objective Idealism, one can undergo solipsism which is the belief that only one’s self and experiences of the world are real and everything else does not exist (“Solipsism”). Opposing Idealism is the metaphysical view of Materialism which holds that only physical things exist (“Materialism”). This paper will start by examining George Berkeley’s views of Subjective and Objective Idealism and how they apply to reality. Then, the critiques made and supported by Aristotle and Thomas Hobbes against both views of Idealism will be argued. However, these arguments fail to properly examine Berkeley’s Idealism, thus causing the critiques to be based upon misinformation. Although the criticisms pose potential flaws, Berkeley’s Idealism continues to be a major discussion in the metaphysical debate.
This essay will examine the philosophical questions raised in the movie The Matrix. It will step through how the questions from the movie directly relate to both skepticism and the mind-body problem, and further how similarly those problems look to concepts raised by both Descartes’ and Plato’s philosophies. It will attempt to show that many of the questions raised in the movie are metaphor for concepts from each philosopher’s works, and why those concepts are important in relation to how they are presented in the film. In this analysis, we will examine the questions of skepticism and the mind-body problem separately. Part one will examine how the film broached the subject of skepticism, and in doing so how it ties in to Descartes and Plato. Part two will analyze the mind-body problems as raised by the movie and how those problems hold true or not to Descartes’ and Plato’s ideas.
Descartes argues that we can know the external world because of God, and God is not a deceiver. Descartes’ core foundation for understanding what is important comes from three points: our thoughts about the world and the things in it could be deceptive, our power of reasoning has found ideas that are indubitable, and certainty come by way of reasoning. Once we have a certainty of God, and ourselves then we are easily able to distinguish reality from dreams, and so on. God created us and gave us reason, which tells us that our ideas of the external world come from God. God has directly provided us with the idea of the external world. The concept of existence, the self, and doubt could not have existed on its own; therefore they had to be created by someone to have put them in our mind. That creator is God, who is omnipotent and perfect. God is not a deceiver to me; God is good, so therefore what I perceive really does exist. God without existence is like a mountain without a valley. A valley does not exist if there is no mountain, and vice versa a mountain is not a mountain with out a valley. We cannot believe or think of God without existence. We know the idea of God, and that idea inevitably contains his existence. My thought on god is clear and distinct that he is existent. Descartes’ now has ‘rebuilt’ the world, solely because of his power and reasoning. Descartes’ is only able...
"BR: In every sense we create our own reality, and this goes much further than most people aware of or are willing to admit. The reason most people can't see this is because everyone is creating their own reality, but 99.9% of them are creating the same one-using
The teaching of Descartes has influenced many minds since his writings. Descartes' belief that clear and distinct perceptions come from the intellect and not the senses was critical to his ultimate goal in Meditations on First Philosophy, for now he has successfully created a foundation of true and certain facts on which to base a sold, scientific belief structure. He has proven himself to exist in some form, to think and therefore feel, and explains how he knows objects or concepts to be real.
The Matrix, directed by the Wachowski sisters, is a film that discusses free will, artificial intelligence and poses a question: ‘How do we know that our world is real?’ This question is covered in the philosophical branch of epistemology. Epistemology is a component of philosophy that is concerned with the theory of knowledge. The exploration of reality is referenced in the film when Neo discovers he has been living in an artificial world called ‘The Matrix’. He is shocked to learn that the world in which he grew up is a computer program that simulates reality. The questioning of knowledge and its irreversibility provoked by The Matrix invites the audience to wonder whether their own world is an imitation of true reality, thus making it a
I’m convinced that we all have choices and what we choose to visualise and see, in time, creates our reality. We can choose to live in routine mediocrity, or create through thought and our beliefs—which are merely repeated thoughts, our dream worlds.
According to Descartes, “because our senses sometimes deceive us, I wanted to suppose that nothing was exactly as they led us to imagine (Descartes 18).” In order to extinguish his uncertainty and find incontrovertible truth, he chooses to “raze everything to the ground and begin again from the original foundations (Descartes 59).” This foundation, which Descartes is certain to be the absolute truth, is “I think, therefore I am (Descartes 18).” Descartes argues that truth and proof of reality lies in the human mind, rather than the senses. In other words, he claims that the existence of material objects are not based on the senses because of human imperfection. In fact, he argues that humans, similarly to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, are incapable of sensing the true essence or existence of material objects. However, what makes an object real is human thought and the idea of that object, thus paving the way for Descartes’ proof of God’s existence. Because the senses are easily deceived and because Descartes understands that the senses can be deceived, Descartes is aware of his own imperfection. He
Rene Descartes’ natural light is his saving grace, and not Achilles’ heel. Descartes incorporates the concept of natural light within his epistemology in order to establish the possibility of knowing things completely without doubt. In fact whatever is revealed to the meditator via the natural light is considered to be indefeasible. The warrant for the truth of these ideas does not rely on experience or the senses. Rather the truth of the idea depends on viewing the concept through clear and distinct perception. Descartes’ “I am, I exist”, (Med. 2, AT 7:25) or the ‘cogito’ is meant to serve as the basis for knowing things through clear and distinct perception. Descartes’ cogito is the first item of knowledge, although one may doubt such things as the existence of the body, one cannot doubt their ability to think. This is demonstrated in that by attempting to doubt one’s ability to think, one is engaging in the action of thought, thus proving that thinking is immune to doubt. With this first item of knowledge Descartes can proceed with his discussion of the possibility of unshakeable knowledge. However, Descartes runs into some difficulty when natural light collides with the possibility of an evil genie bent on deceiving the meditator thus putting once thought concrete truths into doubt. Through an analysis of the concept of natural light I
These past couple days in class, we had some in-depth discussions of experiences and hallucinations dealing with the existence of the external world. I even asked a question today, which was, “how do we as humans even know whether or not we are living in an everyday hallucination or something like the Brain-in-a-Vat Hypothesis” which is a similar idea from that of The Matrix. The answer to that question is much more complex than I can answer in four pages but the goal of this essay is to determine a philosophical direction or idea, which backs the question of “do we live in an external world or are we living a life of illusion?” By using ideas presented in Martin’s Epistemology, such as: testability and the best explanation, the idea that we
Descartes believed that science had was the connection of truth towards one body and matter. One’s senses is connected to the science part of the body because the senses are a tool that is used towards and individual’s everyday doings. The senses also bring doubt within one’s mind because it is a natural feeling. Descartes explains, “This would all be well and good, were I not a man who is accustomed to sleeping at night, and to experience in my dreams the very same things, or now and then even less plausible ones, as these insane people do when they are awake (60). Descartes expressed that in one’s dream and awakening the confusion of one’s sense can block the thought of truth and reasoning. Descartes introduces dreams, a deceiving God, and an evil demon as ways of motivating this doubt in the accuracy of our sense
William James’s, “Lecture XX, Conclusions” wants us to understand that the nature of the universe is perfect because it’s what creates everything. He addresses that the universe is what creates everything like the sun, which lets people see and gives light to everything in that the universe contains. In James’s “Lecture XX, Conclusions,” he mentions that the universe created the sun, which “contributes to the primary purpose of creation: without it the race of man could not be preserved or continued.” From this I understood that the universe is perfect because it creates everything that we need to survive. Without the creations of the universe, human beings could not be able to exist. The universe is perfect since it is able to give humans,
Descartes’ first foundational argument asserts that one can have knowledge of one’s own existence. The claim is essential to many arguments that follow because it survives his “Deceiver Hypothesis.” This hypothesis states that “there may be a powerful deceiver of supreme power who is deliberately and constantly deceiving me” (Med III, p. 17). This demonstrates that we cannot know, or be sure of, anything based on sensory experience alone. However, Descartes supports the idea that some things can be known entirely outside of sensory experience; through the use of logic and re...
What is reality? Is it what we all believe? That everything exists independently from us or that everything exists because we make it exist in our minds. An ancient philosopher Rene Descartes thought of as the father of modern philosophy proposed that humans are made up of two different compounds, the body and the mind. He saw the body as an intricate machine but he was sure that the mind was completely different. He tried an experiment. He tried to imagine that he had no physical body and that he was floating around like a ghost, then he tried another experiment, he tried to imagine that he had no mind, however that was impossible because if you have no mind how can you imagine anything at all. He summed up his thoughts in the phrase “I think. Therefore I am.” Our body is like the hardware of a computer and our mind is the software. How do we know that what is there is really there? Take a chair for example, how do you know if the chair is still there if you are not there to see it. For all we know the chair can get up and go out the window and visit any place in the world or even v...