Descartes Flashcards
Which era of philosophy is Descartes considered the father of?
Modern philosophy
What area of philosophy did he mainly concern himself with?
Metaphysics
Epistemology
Define A Priori A Posteriori
A Priori before experience
Define A Posteriori
A Posteriori after experience
Was Descartes a Rationalist or Empiricist? How do you know
Rationalist because he doubted that sense experience can produce knowledge
What are the central questions of his philosophy?
How do we know something is real?
What can we know for certain?
Why can the senses not be the basis of knowledge
Senses are fickle and can deceive.
Descartes was trying to create a ___________ foundation of knowledge
Certain
If something can be doubt it must be?
abandoned
How does the relationship between imaginary and real things create uncertainty in reality?
If anything doubtful is unusable and imaginary things are derived from more real things then reality is doubtful because it can be imaginary. There is no evidence that what we experience is the most real thing
What was Descartes trying to show with the evil genius experiment?
In the evil genius, there is an evil genius who tries to trick you in everything by pumping ideas into your brain. The thought experiment shows that you can only be sure of something you cannot doubt
Describe clear and distinct ideas
Something that is self evidently true
can only come from god because a perfect idea has a cause and a perfect thing’s cause must be perfect. Therefore God who is perfect must exist and a perfect being would not deceive us.
Mind-body dualism
Soul is separate from the body because it you can doubt the body but not your existence
consciousness cannot come from the body because humans would then not have; free will, God, souled
