Essay about Descartes And Locke

Descartes is now clear on his perception of God so he looks at material things. He points out that a body must exist in reality, because for him to dream about his body, it must exist before he would know what to dream about. So although he can perceive qualities of material things, he is still confused about some things because of is imperfect perception. He concludes that the senses are meant to help him get around in the world, not to lead him to the truth. ( SparkNotes Editors, 2012 )

     On the journey to find truth to base all thought upon, Descartes explains his first step in doing so. “Never accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgment than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt.”(Kolak, Pg.228). Assuming that everything you see is fictitious, Descartes believed he had no senses at all; “body, shape, extension, motion, and place are unreal.”(Weissman, Pg.23). Our senses have failed us all at one point or another in our lives, so why use the senses as a base for thought? The most famous quote and philosophy by Descartes in history ever, “Je pense, donc je suis, cogito ergo sum” (Durant, Pg.639). “I think, therefore I am” was the first step towards a basis to understand truth, and leaning away from truth through the senses.

Karl Marx and John Locke both formulated philosophical theories that worked to convince people of their rights to freedom and power; however, they had conflicting viewpoints on the idea of private property. Locke felt that property belonged to whoever put their labor into it, and one could accumulate as much property as he or she wants (692). Marx, however, considered the private property of the select few who possessed it to be the product of the exploitation of the working class (1118). Personally, I believe that Locke’s conception of private property is more convincing than Marx’s point of view.

     This is where the wax argument comes into play. All the properties of the piece of wax that we perceive with the senses change as the wax melts. This is true as well of its primary properties, such as shape, extension and size. Yet the wax remains the same piece of wax as it melts. We know the wax through our mind and judgement, not through our senses or imagination. Therefore, every act of clear and distinct knowledge of corporeal matter also provides even more certain evidence for the existence of Descartes as a thinking thing. Therefore his mind is much clearer and more distinctly know to him than his body. At this

With the exception of Native Americans, there is no race of people that originated in America. Yet today, we all come together under the colors of red, white and blue, sing the National Anthem and call ourselves "Americans". Despite our differences in religion, norms, values, national origins, our pasts, and our creeds, we all combine under one common denominator. Alain Locke addresses this issue of cultural pluralism in his article, "Who and What is `Negro'?" In this article, Locke states that, "There is, in brief, no `The Negro'. " By this, he means that blacks are not a uniform and unchanging body of people. He emphasizes that we, as Americans, need to mentally mature to a point where we do not view

Locke also believes that people have innate ideas through experiences. He has three explanations for this idea. Firstly, if we had innate ideas, we would know that we have them, which means that if you have ideas they are conscience and everything you think, you think you think. Secondly, if there were innate truths of reason we would all agree on them. Lastly, our memory cannot recall these innate ideas.

Locke and Rousseau present themselves as two very distinct thinkers. They both use similar terms, but conceptualize them differently to fulfill very different purposes. As such, one ought not be surprised that the two theorists do not understand liberty in the same way. Locke discusses liberty on an individual scale, with personal freedom being guaranteed by laws and institutions created in civil society. By comparison, Rousseau’s conception portrays liberty as an affair of the entire political community, and is best captured by the notion of self-rule. The distinctions, but also the similarities between Locke and Rousseau’s conceptions can be clarified by examining the role of liberty in each theorist’s proposed state of nature and

Socrates once said, “As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.” Several philosophers contradicted Socrates’ outlook and believed that true knowledge was in fact attainable. This epistemological view however had several stances to it, as philosophers held different beliefs in regards to the derivation of true knowledge. Rationalists believed that the mind was the source of true knowledge, while in Empiricism, true knowledge derived from the senses. Rene Descartes, a rationalist, and John Locke, an empiricist, were prime examples of epistemologists who were seen to differentiate greatly within each of their philosophies. However, although Descartes and Locke’s ideas did contrast in that sense,

Even though I maintain that this philosophies associated with Descartes along with Locke are wide and varied, this does not exclude an opportunity of characteristics. In reality, I believe there are several points associated with agreement between Locke along with Descartes. Locke 's Essay Concerning Human Understanding is not a direct attack with Descartes; in comparison, it is surely an account associated with epistemology which often, though not Cartesian, was influenced in part by Locke 's reading of Descartes. Locke borrowed a lot of Descartes ' philosophical thoughts and arguments and adopted much of his terms. I will now take into account four passages in which Locke seems to be drawing with Descartes: the notions associated with ideas along with qualities, the importance of dialect and purpose, God along with the will, along with universals along with classification. (Note that in these cases differences along with similarities could be found, but I am here choosing simply to address the similarities.) Locke 's notion in the idea is one of them of a new term assimilated from Descartes. Intended for Locke, a perception is that which ``the intellect perceives in itself, or may be the immediate item of perception, thought, or maybe understanding ' ' (Locke, 48). This is apparently exactly Descartes ' classification of idea: ``whatever will be immediately perceived because of the mind ' ' (Descartes, 132). Locke then goes on to look at the qualities (powers to generate

Like Descartes, Locke also believed in an external world. As an empiricist, Locke relied heavily on the senses to provide true knowledge (Moore 2002). He shared Aristotle’s belief that the mind is a blank slate, also known as tabula rasa, at birth (Paquette 211). Our sense experiences thereafter provide us with knowledge to fill in those slates (Paquette 211). In Locke’s “Representative Theory of Perception,” also known as Epistemological Dualism, he stated that material objects exist and are separate entities from human beings (Paquette 227). However, he also believed that objects exist in the mind as psychological entities (Paquette 227). Locke concluded that people can taste, smell, touch, and see the external world which, in turn, becomes impressions in our minds (Paquette 227). Descartes and Locke are thus seen to be similar in the sense that they both believed in an external world.

Descartes says that he has decided to doubt everything he previously held to be true and instead rely only on his reasoning ability starting from scratch and building his knowledge beginning with the things that which he's completely certain he rejects the knowledge from his senses deciding that such knowledge is unreliable and open to deception so it's not trustworthy. By employing the method of doubt, Descartes has now eliminated most, if not all sensory beliefs as candidates for his certain foundations. Descartes argues two topics, the inability to see the difference between being awake to being asleep and that God has not deceived him about the matters he believes he knows most perfectly, both arguments are equally sound.

To begin with, Descartes holds Cartesian skepticism that doubts the trueness of every past and present opinions, including the ones we gain by sensation. He believes that our sense organs can deceive us not only about the external world, but the trueness of our beliefs as well. Descartes states in his Sixth Meditation that faculty of sensation is a sort of passive activity that receives sensorial ideas from something else than itself. He examines what kind of thing can contain such sensory ideas or holds

In his attempt to continually work his own entire system of knowledge, Descartes called all his previous beliefs into doubt through some of his skeptical arguments and took it to the extreme by considering false any beliefs that falls prey to the slightest doubt (188). Descartes was also critically involved in questioning the validity of believing in the senses as a way to acquire knowledge and thus the “Meditations on the first Philosophy” became his first analysis of the system to ascertain the truth. He again formulated the “unreliable witness argument” to try to formulate a complete certainty in his belief system (183). At the end of First Meditation, Descartes was in the midst of false beliefs, however, he finds it ideal to doubt all his beliefs to demystify if he was dreaming or being deceived by an evil demon (184). The main idea was to find what cannot be doubted even though an evil demon was deceiving him while he is dreaming . Since both classic theories differ in the acquisition of knowledge, it is important to focus on each in order to better understand them (189). Descartes also argued that the senses can be manipulated in a way and should not be trusted while the Empiricists on the other hand, argues in favor of sense perception or empirical knowledge that it is the accurate way to acquire knowledge since one can see, feel ,and even taste. Empiricists also look at it as the basic principle way where all knowledge originates

John Locke (1632-1704) was the first of the classical British empiricists. (Empiricists believed that all knowledge derives from experience. These philosophers were hostile to rationalistic metaphysics, particularly to its unbridled use of speculation, its grandiose claims, and its epistemology grounded in innate ideas) If Locke could account of all human knowledge without making reference to innate ideas, then his theory would be simpler, hence better, than that of Descartes. He wrote, “Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas: How comes it to be furnished? To his I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE.” (Donald Palmer, p.165)

Firstly, Descartes deals with the issue of empiricism- the theory that our knowledge is derived from our sensory experiences. Since we know from everyday errors that our senses have the ability to deceive us fairly often so making our perceptions to be something that it is not. For example, there are lots of examples of optical illusions and the fact that the train tracks may appear to converge from a distance. Consequently, we ought to