Descartes or Sartre's Theory Research Paper

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Philosophical Discussion of Descartes

Man's incredible thirst for knowledge has spurred our species domination of the physical world, while also guiding the refinement of our morality, but throughout history the role of assumption in shaping knowledge has been the subject of intense philosophical debate. While Plato uses the sudden comprehension of geometric rules a slave in his classic Meno as proof that the paradox of learning is false, Descartes remained unconvinced when he wrote his revolutionary contribution to the pursuit of knowledge, Discourse on the Method. Seeking to strip his understanding of knowledge to the bare minimum by removing all ideas which can subject to reasonable doubt, Descartes separates assumptions from true knowledge because, in his view, any perception based only on sensory input must be flawed because the human sensory system is known to be wrong (Collingwood 3). By rejecting the role of assumptions in forming knowledge, Descartes devises perhaps the most well recognized philosophical expressions ever formed: Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am). According to Descartes and his philosophy of dualism, "there are two (and only two) kinds of (created) substances, namely minds or thinking substances and bodies or corporeal substances … a dualistic metaphysics that there are 'two parallel but independent worlds, that of mind and that of matter, each of which can be studied without reference to the other" (Baker & Morris 11).

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Descartes supports his controversial view that the mind is not a physical substance by demonstrating throughout his philosophical writings that knowledge, which is widely believed to exist in the real….....

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