Philosophy of Skepticism - Essay Example

1. What does your adopted religion, government, education and examples set for you to contribute to your decisions What about the time in history hatyou were born Would you have the same interests and desires if all these factors were different How does that relate to your view of free will My values and beliefs system is designed according to my religion, the government that I support, the amount of knowledge I acquired through education and some examples that I have learned. All these affect my decisions in life. There are societal norms and standards that I should conform to. Being born in the 80s made me very much aware of the traditions, beliefs and fads during that time. My personal interests depended on the interests of the people I live with. If I have lived during the time of slavery, my interest would have been related to freedom and equality. There is no absolute freedom but I have the free will to choose which information and beliefs I would want to base my life upon. 2. In what ways is suffering caused by not getting what one wants. Would you prefer that you got everything you ever wanted I would prefer not to get everything that I ever wanted. Suffering is part of man's life which is destined to be imperfect and man has to strive to make the best out of what we have been blessed with. Man always wants what he does not have. 3. Plato's cave-dwellers discover that the source of their so- called knowledge, their senses has been giving them false information about the world. How reliable are our senses as a source of knowledge Plato rejects the senses as a source of knowledge. Do you agree with him Why or why not In consonance with his theory of Idealism, Plato propounded the view that man, in his present earthly existence is only an imperfect copy of his real, original self, the perfect man, in the realm of ideas. In such a perfect state as pure mind, man knew all things by direct intuition. Thus, according to Plato, man was omniscient, all-knowing, before he came to be born into this world. With his separation however from the paradise of truth and knowledge and his long exile on earth, he forgot most of the knowledge he had. To Plato the ideas are inborn, already present in the mind of man from birth, but these are partly forgotten memories obscured owing to man's life term confinement on earth, in the prison house of the senses. They only have to be revived and recalled. The things that we perceive on earth, according to Plato, are merely shadows, pale reminders of the truths man already knew truly and fully before his terrestrial imprisonment. I disagree with Plato on his idea about the senses. I believe that through sensation and perception, man is able to learn and acquire knowledge and ideas. When we sense something, it can be considered as first-hand information because that is something that can be empirically proven. 4. Does Descartes ever prove in his first meditation that we are not dreaming Why or why not We might appreciate the philosophical viewpoint that Descartes develops to be discernible and defined by the skepticism and cynicism he communicates in the First Meditation. He starts by asking how he can be certain or sure of anything and then develops all kinds of imaginative and outlandish reasons as to why he have to to mistrust his senses. Philosophy ever since has been known a constant skepticism toward knowledge claims, and the very question of how we can come to know anything with certainty has been much argued. Skepticism also informs the mind-body predicament which has come to identify our formation of the human mind. Descartes develops a conception of the mind where the senses and the imagination are also mental faculties. Further, he states that we are essentially thinking things that can be acquainted with our minds clearly and distinctly, but must exert much effort and strive harder to come to an understanding of our bodies. Most significant, he comes up with a very intelligent distinction between mind and body. Mind is essentially thinking and body is essentially extended, so the two have nothing at all in common. Ever since, philosophers have striven to understand how mind and body can interact and relate with one another. Skepticism and mind-body dualism have united to generate an understanding of the human mind as being sheltered away inside a body and estranged off from the world. How this mind can come to know anything at all about the world is a mystery, and the firmness of this knowledge is very much questioned. This conception of mind is so normal to us that it is sometimes tricky to comprehend that the pre- Cartesian world had a far less skeptical position toward knowledge and sensory perception. While we can trace Descartes' incredible importance and influence to the progress of mind-body dualism and modern skepticism, he has also given a number of other seeds for debate. The Cartesian Circle, the Wax Argument, and Descartes' theories of ideas, of body, and of perception are all important matters for discussion. His proofs for the existence and reality of God, however, are not original and unique, nor are they very triumphant. Descartes makes a captivating subject for study since we can see a contemporary worldview up-and-coming as he writes. 5. Descartes' famous proof of his own existence in one of the great moments in the history of Western philosophy. Instead of basing science, mathematics, religion, and logic on the collective knowledge of humanity, Descartes bases it on the fact of his own existence. Do you suppose this had any relevance for the subsequent individualism of Western civilization I will not track in specific aspects Descartes' rise from the Foundation until further through the truths of mathematics, to the relevance of mathematics to things and substances in the world, to evidences of the subsistence of exterior objects. I will concentrate to Descartes' explanation of the relation of the mind and the body. This consists of three topics --- mind body dualism, proofs for the genuine difference between mind and body, and two way causal interactions. In Meditation II, he investigates that he is in quintessence a thinking thing (res cogitans), and that it is likely that he exists without a body. He acknowledges that to bring to a close from this that his mind is really separate from his body would be deceptive. The Stoic paradox of the masked man puts this fallacy in to picture. If a wife sees his husband, she will very probably recognize him. If the similar person then appears wearing a mask, she may hesitate that this is her husband. Still, the masked man might be her husband. So, to conclude that the father and the masked man are really different because one cannot disbelief in one case but can in the other is clearly deceptive. The case is exactly the same for Descartes in connection to his mind and his body in Meditation II. Descartes does reached further success in relation to this dilemma in Meditation II -- he finds out, as mentioned above, that the real meaning of body is to be elastic, changeable and extensive. Thus it provides results that the essence of mind and the essence of body are two different things. Minds are in core thinking things; bodies are in core space occupiers, movable and flexible. This is the fundamental principle of Cartesian dualism with reference to mind and body -- bodies and minds are different kinds of entities. One impetus for this dissimilarity is a curiosity in the Christian doctrine of immortality. Descartes initially deliberately planned the Meditationes de Prima Philosophia to contain a proof of the immortality of the soul. He does not entirely achieve something in this, but perhaps takes some steps towards the achievement of such a goal. One of these steps involves proving that there is a genuine distinction between the mind and the body, i.e. that the soul can survive independently of the body. In Meditation VI Descartes gives two evidences for the real distinction between minds and bodies. One of these contains a contrast between the simple nature of the soul and the complex nature of the body. The other selects up the materials which Descartes had chosen and delegated for himself in Meditation II and III and combines them all together into a proof. From Meditation II Descartes gathers the fact that the essences of mind and body are distinct and separate. From Meditation III he takes the speech of apparent, clear and distinct ideas, and the existence of God and from God's supremacy can be deduced that God could construct distinctively any two things which Meditation I clearly and distinctly pick out could be distinguished. Since the real meaning of mind and body are different and these ideas are clear and distinct, it consequently proceeds that God could make them distinct. Descartes concludes that they are in fact distinct. There is a question in the academic literature over whether this last step is justified and warranted. This also is a philosophical problem about which one might write a paper. Assuming that minds and bodies really are distinct and different from one another, how do they relate to one another How are they connected Minds are philosophical things which are not extended, bodies are extended and do not think. Descartes response is that minds are affected by bodies in discernment and that bodies are affected by minds in deed. Thus, when we see a rainbow, the rainbow is causing light rays to strike our eyes, this information is in use by the animal spirits up to the brain, and passed through the pineal gland to the mind where it is perceived as the idea of a rainbow. REFERENCES: Durant, Will (1926). The Story of Philosophy. Simon & Schuster. Jackson, Roy (2001). Plato: A Beginner's Guide. London: Hoder & Stroughton. Melchert, Norman (2002). The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy. McGraw Hill. Nails, Debra (2006). "The Life of Plato of Athens", A Companion to Plato edited by Hugh H. Benson. Blackwell Publishing. Read More