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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A paper which looks at the philosophical problems associated with the Cartesian circle, and some of the ways in which both Descartes and other thinkers attempted to resolve them. Bibliography lists 6 sources.
Page Count:
7 pages (~225 words per page)
File: JL5_JLcirc.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
flaws in his argument which emerge in the course of the Meditations and then look at the ways in which later writers have attempted to deal with the Cartesian circle
itself. As Swopes (2002) points out, Descartes spends much of the First Meditation in establishing the unreliability of sensory data: even though sensory impressions are what humans beings rely on
as being indicative of truth, there is in fact no evidence for this and, since a hallucination can have the same apparent level of reality as any other form of
perception, then it must be assumed that no sensory data can be relied upon. Since Descartes has already stated that he is intent on removing everything from his philosophy than
cannot be validated, this means that he will have to discount all the experiences and observations which he has gained through the senses, and consider what remains and whether it
constitutes absolute Truth. Up to this point, his theories appear sound: it is
certainly the case that sensory perception can never be proved to contain truth, and that it is easy for the human mind to be fooled into accepting falsity as truth.
It is in the Second Meditation, however, that the apparent flaw in his logic appears and gives rise to the Cartesian Circle. In this Meditation, He attempts firstly to account
for and justify his own existence, and that of God, on the basis that his own creation and his capacity for thought must be dependent on the action of a
deity; but then he considers the idea that he has initiated the power of thought for himself. He acknowledges that he is an aware being, since he can comprehend the
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