Medievalperiod

Ifyouwouldbearealseekeraftertruth,itisnecessarythatatleastonceinyourlife
youdoubt,asfaraspossible,allthings.
- RENE DESCARTES

Complete Sentence: That in order to seek truth, it is necessary once in the course of our life, to doubt, as far as
possible, of all things. As we were at one time children, and as we formed various judgments regarding the objects
presented to our senses, when as yet we had not the entire use of our reason, numerous prejudices stand in the way of
our arriving at the knowledge of truth; and of these it seems impossible for us to rid ourselves, unless we undertake,
once in our lifetime, to doubt of all those things in which we may discover even the smallest suspicion of uncertainty.

March 31, 1596 La Haye, Touraine, France -Feb. 11, 1650, Stockholm, Sweden
-1606 Descartes was sent to the Jesuit College at La Flche, established in 1604 by Henry IV
Joachim, owned farms and houses in Chtellerault and Poitiers. Because Joachim
was a councillor in the Parlement of Brittany in Rennes, Descartes inherited a
modest rank of nobility. Descartess mother died when he was one year old. His
father remarried in Rennes, leaving him in La Haye to be raised first by his maternal
grandmother and then by his great-uncle in Chtellerault
Descartes was a "jack of all trades", making major contributions to the areas of anatomy, cognitive
science, optics, mathematics and philosophy.
Descartes is considered by many to be the father of modern philosophy, because his ideas departed widely
from current understanding in the early 17th century, which was more feeling-based. Descartes believed
in basically clearing everything off the table, all preconceived and inherited notions, and starting fresh,
putting back one by one the things that were certain, which for him began with the statement I exist.
From this sprang his most famous quote: I think; therefore I am.
He created analytical geometry, based on his now immortal Cartesian coordinate system, immortal in the
sense that we are all taught it in school, and that it is still perfectly up-to-date in almost all branches of
mathematics. Analytical geometry is the study of geometry using algebra and the Cartesian coordinate
system. He discovered the laws of refraction and reflection. He also invented the superscript notation still
used today to indicate the powers of exponents.
He advocated dualism, which is very basically defined as the power of the mind over the body: strength is
derived by ignoring the weaknesses of the human physique and relying on the infinite power of the
human mind. Descartess most famous statement, now practically the motto of existentialism: Je pense
donc je suis; Cogito, ergo sum; I think, therefore I am. This is not meant to prove the existence of
ones body. Quite the opposite, it is meant to prove the existence of ones mind. He rejected perception as
unreliable, and considered deduction the only reliable method for examining, proving and disproving
anything.
he formulated the first modern version of mind-body dualism, from which stems the mind-body problem,.
Applying an original system of methodical doubt, he dismissed apparent knowledge derived from
authority, the senses, and reason and erected new epistemic foundations on the basis of the intuition that,
when he is thinking, he exists; this he expressed in the dictum I think, therefore I am.
Thus begins Cartesian Dualism, the theory that there are two fundamental types of entities : mind and
matter. The physical bodies exists extended in space, with depth, width and breadth. However, minds are

entirely immaterial and nonspatial; they are the "I" he refers to. Since the mind is the only entity that can
think (rocks cannot), Descartes uses the cogito arguemnt to prove the existence of a mind.
Senses were at the center of his 'Meditations on First Philosophy'
In Which the Existence of God and the Distinction Between Mind and Body are Demonstrated. The six
Meditations of the book are titled: Of the Things that we may doubt; Of the Nature of the Human Mind;
Of God: that He exists; Of Truth and Error; Of the Essence of Material Things; Of the Existence of
Material Things; and Of the Real Distinction between the Mind and the Body of Man. In Meditations
Descartes argues that the mind and body are distinct substances, He writes that humans are spirits, and
that their essential attributes are exclusively of the spirit (for example thinking, willing, and conceiving).
The human spirit occupies a mechanical body, made up of extended substance. Attributes like sense
perception, movement and appetite are of the body and not the spirit, so they do not comprise human
essence.
Descartes is considered a revolutionary figure, especially for his attempts to change the relationship
between philosophy and theology, and integrate philosophy with the new forms of science.. Descartes has
been influential to philosophers throughout the 17th and 17th centuries, including Spinoza, Malbrache,
Locke and Leibniz.
Descartes is the first of the modern rationalists much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his
writings, which are studied closely to this day.
Descartes thought that only knowledge of eternal truths including the truths of mathematics, and the
epistemological and metaphysical foundations of the sciences could be attained by reason alone; other
knowledge, the knowledge of physics, required experience of the world, aided by the scientific method.
He also argued that although dreams appear as real as sense experience, these dreams cannot provide
persons with knowledge. Also, since conscious sense experience can be the cause of illusions, then
sense experience itself can be doubtable. As a result, Descartes deduced that a rational pursuit of truth
should doubt every belief about reality. He elaborated these beliefs in such works as Discourse on
Method, Meditations on First Philosophy, andPrinciples of Philosophy. Descartes developed a method to
attain truths according to which nothing that cannot be recognised by the intellect (or reason) can be
classified as knowledge. These truths are gained "without any sensory experience," according to
Descartes. Truths that are attained by reason are broken down into elements that intuition can grasp,
which, through a purely deductive process, will result in clear truths about reality.
Conclude that reason alone determined knowledge, and that this could be done independently of the
senses. For instance, his famous dictum, cogito ergo sum or "I think, therefore I am," is a conclusion
reached a priori i.e., prior to any kind of experience on the matter. The simple meaning is that doubting
ones existence, in and of itself, proves that an "I" exists to do the thinking. In other words, doubting ones
own doubting is absurd. After reaching this[32] This was, for Descartes, an irrefutable principle upon which
to ground all forms of other knowledge.

Final Years
Descartes went reluctantly, arriving early in October 1649. In Swedenwhere, Descartes said, in winter
mens thoughts freeze like the waterthe 22-year-old Christina perversely made the 53-year-old
Descartes rise before 5:00 am to give her philosophy lessons, even though she knew of his habit of lying
in bed until 11 oclock in the morning. While delivering these statutes to the queen in the morning hours
on Feb. 1, 1650, he caught a chill and soon developed pneumonia. He died in Stockholm on February 11.

It was said that he died due to pneumonia owing to the lack of sleep. According to German philosopher
Theodor Ebert, Descartes' death was not due to natural causes or any illness but because of an arseniclaced wafer given to him at the time of communion by a catholic priest.
The cogito is a logically self-evident truth that also gives intuitively certain knowledge of a particular
things existencethat is, ones self. Nevertheless, it justifies accepting as certain only the existence of
the person who thinks it. If all one ever knew for certain was that one exists, and if one adhered to
Descartess method of doubting all that is uncertain, then one would be reduced to solipsism, the view
that nothing exists but ones self and thoughts. To escape solipsism, Descartes argues that all ideas that are
as clear and distinct as the cogito must be true, for, if they were not, the cogito also, as a member of the
class of clear and distinct ideas, could be doubted. Since I think, I am cannot be doubted, all clear and
distinct ideas must be true. On the basis of clear and distinct innate ideas, Descartes then establishes that
each mind is a mental substance and each body a part of one material substance. The mind or soul is
immortal, because it is unextended and cannot be broken into parts, as can extended bodies. Descartes
also advances a proof for the existence of God. He begins with the proposition that he has an innate idea
of God as a perfect being and then concludes that God necessarily exists, because, if he did not, he would
not be perfect. This ontological argument for Gods existence, originally due to the English logician St.
Anselm of Canterbury is at the heart of Descartess rationalism, for it establishes certain knowledge about
an existing thing solely on the basis of reasoning from innate ideas, with no help from sensory experience.
Descartes then argues that, because God is perfect, he does not deceive human beings; and therefore,
because God leads us to believe that the material world exists, it does exist. In this way Descartes claims
to establish metaphysical foundations for the existence of his own mind, of God, and of the mate- rial
world.
According to Descartes, Gods existence is established by the fact that Descartes has a clear and distinct
idea of God; but the truth of Descartess clear and distinct ideas are guaranteed by the fact that God exists
and is not a deceiver. Thus, in order to show that God exists, Descartes must assume that God exists.