Descartes’ reasons for believing in substance dualism relies on several arguments including his argument for certainty or knowledge. The argument relies on the idea that I can be certain of my mind but not my body or any other physical thing‚ so my mind is not a physical thing. In this paper‚ I will argue that Descartes’ assessment of the mind-body connection makes a jump in its logic by declaring that the mind cannot be physical‚ even though his certainty argument does not take into account that
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describes reality; and as property dualism is just as logically possible as substance dualism‚ the latter cannot be the right account of the mind and body. What Descartes needs to show (to secure the success of his argument‚ i.e. demonstrate that the mind and the body are separate substances) is that it is logically impossible for the mind and body to be the same substance; but‚ as he fails to do this‚ I must reject his conceivability argument‚ and Cartesian dualism in general as the right account of
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of psychology continues into seventeenth century France‚ once inaccurate correlation between brain‚ mind‚ and body became a popular topic of discussion and questioning. The spark of controversy was ignited by Rene Descartes’ suggested theory of dualism‚ that the mind influences the body through the pineal gland. Over the course of 100 years‚ Franz
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Two authors that have written about American consumerism‚ James Twitchell and Ian Frazier‚ have two different ways of expressing their thoughts in their essays even though the two topics are similar. In Twitchell’s essay‚ “Two Cheers for Materialism”‚ he expresses his views in a different way than Frazier does by taking a more serious approach. Frazier on the other hand‚ attempts a more comical view of the issue in his essay “All Consuming Patriotism”. However different their essays may be‚ they
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OUTLINE BACKGROUND HISTORICAL OVERVIEW INTRODUCTION PRIMITIVE COMMUNISM FOUNDATIONS FOR HISTORICAL MATERIALISM HISTORICAL MATERIALISM RELEVANCE OF THE CONCEPT TO CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY CONCLUSION BACKGROUND Society is constantly changing. History attempts to catalogue these changes and tries to explain them. But what are the laws that govern historical change? Do such laws even exist? Just as the evolution of life has inherent laws that can be explained‚ and were explained‚ first by
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exist or be conceived.” Spinoza’s criticism of Descartes’ substance dualism By: Jawad Samimi 01/04/2012 Substance dualism is often called ‘Cartesian dualism" and is the assumption that mind and body are really distinct substances. Rene Descartes (1596 – 1650) was the first early modern philosopher to hold that a thinking-thing is entirely different form an extended thing and mind can exist without the body. Cartesian dualism‚ which started the famous mind-body problem of causal interaction‚
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Wednesday‚ July 11th 2012 Materialism Changed People’s Attitude In the 20th century‚ after the World War I‚ rapid surge of industrial and technological growth swept throughout the world. At the same time‚ people started to build their own ideas and belief based on the materialism rather than giving higher priorities to moral and individual values. As Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby portrayed a story happening in that time period‚ it contains various contents about materialism. In order to display the
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The Madness of Materialism by Steve Taylor talks about how we are so driven to accumulate possessions and wealth. He also talks about the history of James Marshall in the early 1848. James Marshall is a guys who found a piece of glowing metal on the floor‚ which turned out to be gold in Sacramento. As soon as he found the gold‚ people started going to the area‚ struck by ‘gold fever’. In a little over a year‚ San Francisco grew from shanty town of 79 building to a city of tens of thousands. But then
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he establishes the idea of Cartesian Dualism. Another major topic that Descartes mentions repeatedly in his meditations is the distrust of the senses and reliance on reason. He also heavily uses his own method of doubting the existence of everything until he can prove it through his own logical analyses. The idea of Cartesian Dualism was conceived through the mind of Rene Descartes through a series of meditations. In its most basic definition‚ Cartesian Dualism is the belief in the separation between
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The theme of these readings was human sexuality‚ including intersexuals and transgenders. In Dueling Dualisms‚ Anne Fausto-Sterling talks about human sexuality and sexual difference and how choosing which criteria to use in determining sex are social decisions for which scientists can offer no absolute guidelines. Throughout the text she explains how biology and other human sciences became to optimize and standardize the human’s function and how two kinds of processes‚ nature and nurture‚ can help
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