Who am I?
Do we really live in a single reality or universe, or do we live in many realities that connect to this one existence? This essay will argue the theories, concepts and ideas of who we are in this world and reality. By discussing the points that we are genuine living beings, that are not figments of someone or something else’s mind, we are not copies of something that is eternal or in another reality. We along with everything we see, hear, touch ,taste and smell is in this one reality, not two, or three or a hundred, just one reality. What I mean when I say this is that we only live in one reality or one world. An example of this could be how we live on planet Earth, we only live on Earth we don’t live on other planets such as Mars, or Venus.
Known as the father of modern philosophy, Rene Descartes created the world renowned theory “I think, therefore I am”. Descartes came up with this theory when he tried to consider what really existed and what did not. He came to three major truths, the first being that he exists because he thinks the second that God exists and the third that external objects exist. God must exist because the idea of an all powerful being must have only come from God, therefore God exists. Finally we receive impressions of physical objects and perception may deceive us. Does God want to deceive us? No, because he is perfect, and he wouldn’t do that. Therefore, external objects must also exist. When Descartes came up with these three truths he was questioning what was real, he doubted everything because there was no certain answer to anything except the three truths he was certain of. Since Descartes questioned reality he came up with the three truths, which made him certain that ...
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In this paper, I will explain how Descartes uses the existence of himself to prove the existence of God. The “idea of God is in my mind” is based on “I think, therefore I am”, so there is a question arises: “do I derive my existence? Why, from myself, or from my parents, or from whatever other things there are that are less perfect than God. For nothing more perfect than God, or even as perfect as God, can be thought or imagined.” (Descartes 32, 48) Descartes investigates his reasons to show that he, his parents and other causes cannot cause the existence of himself.
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One of Rene Descartes’ major culminations in Meditations on First Philosophy is “I must finally conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind” (Descartes:17). This statement can be explicated by examining Descartes’ Cartesian method of doubt and his subsequent discovery of basic truths. Even though I do believe that Descartes concludes with a statement that is accurate: cogito ergo sum, there are areas of his proof that are susceptible to defamation. These objections discover serious error with Descartes’ method used in determining the aforementioned conclusion.
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
Alain Badiou’s entire philosophical project rests on reclaiming the centrality of truth in philosophy, and he does so through a detailed working through of subjectivity, truth, and the event. Badiou makes it clear that in his systematic philosophy he wants to do without any reference to a subject who has and constructs its experiences, and the phenomenological structures of conscious life are not his focus. Although Badiou calls the method he uses in Logics of Worlds a phenomenology - it is, in his terms an objective phenomenology because it is about the existence of objects in a world and the relations that obtain among these objects, “the degrees of identity and difference among objects in a world” (Logics of Worlds, p. 48) Badiou identifies
In the Third Meditation, Descartes forms a proof for the existence of God. He begins by laying down a foundation for what he claims to know and then offers an explanation for why he previously accepted various ideas but is no longer certain of them. Before he arrives at the concept of God, Descartes categorizes ideas and the possible sources that they originate from. He then distinguishes between the varying degrees of reality that an idea can possess, as well as the cause of an idea. Descartes proceeds to investigate the idea of an infinite being, or God, and how he came to acquire such an idea with more objective reality than he himself has. By ruling out the possibility of this idea being invented or adventitious, Descartes concludes that the idea must be innate. Therefore, God necessarily exists and is responsible for his perception of a thing beyond a finite being.
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Rene Descartes, a 17th century French philosopher believed that the origin of knowledge comes from within the mind, a single indisputable fact to build on that can be gained through individual reflection. His Discourse on Method (1637) and Meditations (1641) contain his important philosophical theories. Intending to extend mathematical method to all areas of human knowledge, Descartes discarded the authoritarian systems of the scholastic philosophers and began with universal doubt. Only one thing cannot be doubted: doubt itself. Therefore, the doubter must exist. This is the kernel of his famous assertion Cogito, ergo sum (I am thinking, therefore I am existing). From this certainty Descartes expanded knowledge, step by step, to admit the existence of God (as the first cause) and the reality of the physical world, which he held to be mechanistic and entirely divorced from the mind; the only connection between the two is the intervention of God.