karatechamp
...ial attribute is thought. A. The primary object of knowledge consists of our own ideas whose existence is certain and indubitable. IV. Am I my body? No. My existence is certain and indubitable but the existence of my body is not certain and indubitable as the dream argument shows us. A. The essential attribute of body is extension. B. Space and body are extension. Body is movement in extension. 1. Geometry is is the science of extension. 2. Physics is the science of motion. V. Conclusion. I am a mind which thinks and combined with body which is extended. A. Descartes is a dualist concerning mind and body. The mind and body are two distinct entities or substances. B. Descartes is also an interactionist. The mind and body causally interact. 1. Movements in the body cause thoughts in the mind, in perception, for example. 2. Thoughts in the mind cause movements in the body, in free will, for example. Elisabeth of Bohemia. An objection to Descartes on interactionism. I. Elisabeth asked how something unextended, an immaterial an unextended substance, can cause something extended, a part of a body, to move? She added her view that it is easier to hold that a part of the mind, that part which produces motions of the body, is itself extended in space and is corporeal, than to understand how something that merely thinks and is unextended can produce any motion in a body. II. Descartes answered only that the union between the mind and body is a simple notion and cannot be explained further. But how can the union be a simple notion if there is dualism of mind and body? Hume, 18th Century, Scottish, Empiricist. 1. All of our perceptions resolve themselves into either impressions or ideas. 1.1. Impressions are perceptions of sensation, of sight, for example, or perceptions of reflection, of thought, for example. 1.2. Ideas are those thoughts resulting from impressions which have lost their force and vivacity. 2. Ideas may be put together and compounded. Their composition is the result of resemblance, contiguity, or cause and effect. 2.1. All of our compound ideas are the result of such composition. 2.2. Imagination composes the most familiar ideas in accordance with these principles of association or attraction. 3. The objects of the external world, the self within, and the relation of causality itself are but the work of the imagination in accordance with these principles of association. 3.1. Our ideas of the objects of the external world result from the resemblace and contiguity of impressions and the imagined constancy and coherence of them. The external objects are collections of experienced and imagined impressions. 3.2. Our ideas of our own minds result from the same principles. Our minds are collections of impressions and ideas, experienced and imagined. 3.3. Our ideas of causation and the exertion of power are only the ideas of the constant conjunction in experience. We have no impression of necessary connection between the impressions. We have only a habit of the mind to anticipate or infer one impression from another, and we mistake this habit of ours for a power or necessary connection among the impressions.. 4. Is there a problem of how the mind and body can causally interact? There is none. Mind and body are but collections of ideas and causation is but the constant conjunction between ideas. 5. What can reason tell us about matters of fact? It can only tell us what experience tells us. 5.1. Experience tells us only about what we have experienced. Reason can provide no proof about what we will experience in the future or defense of inductive reasoning. 6. Demonstrative reasoning only yields of knowledge of the relations between ideas and tells us nothing about matters of fact. 7. All knowledge of matters of fact is based on our impressions and can be traced back to them. Other claims of philosophy about reality, about matters of fact, are sophistry and delusion. 7.1. This principle suffices to refute all the metaphysics of universals, substances and necessity. 7.2. What is certain by reason, is not a matter of fact, and what is a matter of act, is not certain by reason. 8. Reason is powerless to prove the existence of objects, the existence of mind, or the future course of events. What produces the belief in these things? Nature and instinct. 8.1. Our beliefs in the existence of the external world cannot be...