values regardless of how unwise or foolish those choices may appear to others.”[2] R v Blaue[3]‚ a famous causation case in criminal law‚ brings to foreground a thought-provoking debate about whether an individual’s religious beliefs and other psychological values could be included in the ‘thin skull’ rule and whether the refusal to take lifesaving medical treatment breaks the chain of causation that exists between the defendant’s wrongdoing and the purported outcome of that wrongdoing. The facts of
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opens the door to the question of “How can the mind control the body if the mind is not physical?” In other words‚ can mental events explain the causation of physical events even though they are two separate substances. There will always be the problem of trying to explain “how your mind affects your body and how your body affects your mind” (Descartes 329.) A modern day response to substance
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Rationalism is the principle that maintains that through reason alone we can gain at least some positive knowledge of the world. The three major rationalists‚ Rene Descartes‚ Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Welhelm Leibniz‚ used this idea in order to defy skepticism and expose the true nature of reality. However‚ each philosopher is frequently in disagreement. The idea for ‘God’‚ and what constitutes substance‚ matter and reality are the four key structural beliefs that aid each rationalist in the forming
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Rene Descartes’ third meditation from his book Meditations on First Philosophy‚ examines Descartes’ arguments for the existence of God. The purpose of this essay will be to explore Descartes’ reasoning and proofs of God’s existence. In the third meditation‚ Descartes states two arguments attempting to prove God’s existence‚ the Trademark argument and the traditional Cosmological argument. Although his arguments are strong and relatively truthful‚ they do no prove the existence of God. At the
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Plato and Hume The philosophic debate of justice goes back millennia with many points of view on what it actually is and why we have it. Both Plato and Hume had ideas on justice and both differed. Plato‚ in his Republic‚ searches for justice by building a city from the ground up in our imagination. He starts with merely five to ten people each with their own job and states that justice is the virtue of the soul. David Hume tells us that “public utility is the sole origin of justice (Hume‚ 15).”
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One early philosopher was Rene Descartes with his work Meditations on First Philosophy. Descartes was once a foundationalist‚ believing that our knowledge originated in our senses. His positioned changed‚ however‚ when he began use his skepticism to test if our belief could be absolutely certain. His Dream Argument helped explained how mathematics are able to be true even if our senses could be fooled‚ though the Evil Demon Argument calls that to question. Descartes does placed mathematics as true
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the opposing morale and school atmosphere between Pearl Cohn and Hume Fogg can be considered a result of each of the schools’ composition as well as goal. Pearl Cohn’s presentation seemed as though they were attempting to battle stereotypes and prove themselves. The ambassadors were well put together and articulate. The tour was formulated and somewhat closed off. However‚ the math class was quite poorly behaved. On the other hand‚ Hume Fogg was very natural and carefree in terms of its presentation
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Hume believes the root of morality is emotion. He believes emotions‚ or passions‚ as he calls them‚ are the driving force behind our actions. Hume believes that how we feel about things determines what we determine is moral or immoral. There is no logical reason for keeping one’s promises if there is no benefit to you. However
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To discuss the argument of Hume on miracles‚ Mackie says we must first develop definitions of laws and miracles that does not automatically mean that the concept of a miracle is incoherent or is logically impossible the miracle occurs. ~ Mackie notes that if we define a miracle as a violation of a law of nature and set a law to be a pattern of how the world works‚ then it is impossible that the miracle occurs. These definitions imply that the bill violated the miracle was not really a law‚ because
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Empiricism‚ according to David Hume is a flawed and incomplete mode of thinking‚ this is largely due to the fact that one may never truly experience a cause. He poses the argument that causes are assumed using synthetic‚ not analytic judgment. This is the essence of Hume’s main argument that the view of actions and their consequences as logically dependent upon one another is necessarily flawed and detrimental to human understanding. He argues this in the following way. First‚ that empiricism is
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