Flashcards on Foundational Thinkers: Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes
Foundational Thinkers: Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes Summary
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René Descartes
13 cards
Card 1
Question: What is methodical doubt according to Descartes, and what is its purpose?
Answer: A radical technique that involves treating as false anything about which there is even the slightest possibility of error; its purpose is to eliminate
Card 2
Question: What three sources does Descartes question with methodical doubt?
Answer: The senses (because they can deceive), the dream state (because there are no clear marks distinguishing it from wakefulness), and the Evil Demon hypot
Card 3
Question: Why isn't Descartes a skeptic who remains in doubt?
Answer: Because he uses doubt as a methodological tool to find firm certainties, not to stay in uncertainty.
Card 4
Question: What is the first indubitable truth Descartes finds after applying methodical doubt?
Answer: “I think, therefore I am” (Cogito, ergo sum): the existence of the doubting subject is indubitable because doubting implies thinking, and thinking imp
Card 5
Question: How does Descartes explain the certainty of the cogito?
Answer: Not as a traditional logical argument, but as an immediate intuition: to be deceived or to doubt, I must exist; if I think, I necessarily exist.
Card 6
Question: What does res cogitans mean in Cartesian dualism?
Answer: Res cogitans is the thinking substance: the mind or soul, characterized by thought, immaterial, indivisible, and without spatial extension.
Card 7
Question: What does res extensa mean in Cartesian dualism?
Answer: Res extensa is the extended substance: the body or matter, characterized by extension (occupying space), divisible, and subject to physical and mechan
Card 8
Question: List the key differences between res cogitans and res extensa.
Answer: Res cogitans: essence is thought, immaterial, indivisible, accessed by direct knowledge. Res extensa: essence is extension, material, divisible, acces
Card 9
Question: What is the classic problem arising from Descartes' substance dualism?
Answer: The problem of interaction: how an immaterial mind (res cogitans) can cause movements in a material body (res extensa).
Card 10
Question: What solution did Descartes propose to explain mind-body interaction?
Answer: He proposed that interaction occurred in the pineal gland, an idea now superseded but which demonstrates his attempt to connect mind and body.