Self Of Damasio And Descartes Essays - Philosophy, Metaphysics

Self Of Damasio And Descartes 1. Explain Damasio's view as to what Descartes' error is, and why he thinks Descartes is "in error"? How do Descartes and Damasio differ as to what the"self" is? Damasio and Descartes differ greatly as to what the "self" is all about. They have different answers to the philosophical question of what makes up the self, and determines who a person is. A person's identity is more than just the body they both agree, but have different reasons why. Descartes is also known as " the founder of modern philosophy" he is most known for his cogito argument of "I think therefore I am". He thinks that one cannot doubt their own existence because something must be doing the doubting. Although, that statement was refuted later by some, who said the fact that you think pre-assumes existence. Descartes also refutes skeptics by saying that they cannot deny they are thinking and something must be undergoing that thinking, so one cannot deny that they exist. Descartes starts his arguments by saying that God is the guaranteed, and uses his existence to prove other things. First though, he says he will not believe anything until he proves that God exists. Once he does this using the circular argument, he proceeds to talk about the separation of mind and body and his beliefs. The circular argument simply states that if you believe in the light of nature, you believe in God, and if you believe the causality principles you believe in the other two. He believes that the mind and body are two entirely separate entities, the soul is independent from the body, and the mind is for reason and rationality. The emotions of the body are what interfere with reason, and the body is used for all of the sensory things such as sound, sight, and pain. Based on this, he thinks that a person cannot know a substance. The way a person can "know" a substance is only through its qualities. For example, one cannot know soap; they can only associate its qualities such as scent, shape, and color. "How does one know the notion of color?" he speculates. One can only know a substance through experience. Descartes argument with the wax shows his idea of how one does not experience the thing itself, but its properties. These physical characteristics are the only way to relate to the body, which one cannot know. One can only experience or "know" the mind. This leads to his discussion of complex and primitive ideas. Primitive ideas require experience, and complex ideas do not. A complex idea is something like the notion of infinity, or language. Descartes believed there was no definition of infinity, and would not accept a negative definition to resolve his problem. He believed that God was the infinite thing. The only widely accepted belief at that time was that mathematics were undeniable, and ever present in the world. Essentially the world is composed of mathematics, which gave a lot of merit to his proof of the existence of God. Another two principles Descartes used to further his arguments were that of formal and objective reality. The idea of formal reality is that formal reality is what is actually out there in the world, kind of the ultimate truth. Objective reality on the other hand is the ideas that are in our minds, what we perceive to be true. Descartes comes to the conclusion that an idea must have at least as much formal reality as objective reality. He also uses this notion to further his proof of God's existence. He wants to find an idea that has more objective reality than formal reality. This, he deduces, is God. He also comes to the conclusion that people cannot be the cause of an idea like God because it doesn't have as much formal reality as objective reality. This means that as humans we cannot know for sure what the formal reality is, but what we do know is objective reality. Unless God is a deceiving demon this must mean that he exists, because why would he create a world of deception, when he is a perfect being? In other words, God obviously exists because what we know to be true about him must be true, because there is no truer formal reality in regards to the idea of God. Eventually a problem arises for Descartes known as the Mind-Body problem. He observes that one can fully understand their own mind, thus understand their