Cesarine May S. Bawasanta AB-Philosophy II Question: Explain the existence of LRC building using Descartes method.

September 7, 2009

First let me tell you who Descartes is and what is his method at arriving in certainty. Ren Descartes is a French scientist and mathematician he was also one of the most influential thinkers in Western philosophy. Let me tell you what Descartes philosophy really means, Descartes was examining attentively what he was, and seeing that he could pretend he had no body and that there was no world or place that he was in, but that he could not, for all that, pretend that he did not exists, and that, on the contrary, from the very fact that he thought of doubting the truth of other things, it followed very evidently and very certainly that he existed; while, on the other hand, If he had only ceased to think, although all the rest of what he had ever imagined had been true, he would have had no reason to believe that he exists, needs no place and depends on no material thing; so that this I, that is to say, the mind, by which I am what I am, is distinct entirely from the body, and even that is easier to know than the body, and moreover that even if the body were not, it would not cease to be all that it is. Descartes stressed the importance of skepticism in thought and proposed the idea that existence had a dual nature. One is physical, the other is mental. This passage from Discourse on Method including the phrase I think, therefore I am. The question; explain the existence of LRC building using Descartes method is quite not hard. First let state to you the methodological rules on how to arrive at certainty. 1 The first was never to accept anything true if you dont have evident knowledge of its truth; that is, carefully to avoid precipitate conclusions and preconceptions, and to include nothing more in my judgments than what presented itself to my mind so clearly and distinctly that you had occasion to doubt it. 2Second, to divide each of the difficulties you examined into as many parts as possible and as may be required in order to resolve them better. 3The third, to direct your thoughts in an orderly manner, by beginning with the simplest and most easily known objects in order to ascend little by little, step by step, to knowledge of the most complex, and by supposing some order among objects that have no natural order of precedence. 4The last, throughout to make enumerations so complete, and reviews so comprehensive, that you could be sure of leaving nothing out. Let us use this to explain that LRC building really does exists. The first rule was never to accept anything as true if you do not have evident knowledge of its truth. So let us assume that the LRC building could be true and could be not, this is the method of doubt. Taking Descartes other methods just as cautiously, one should divide each of the difficulties examined into as many parts as possible and as may be required in order to resolve them better. So let us begin with the simplest and most easily known objects in order to ascend little by little, step by step, to knowledge of the most complex, and by supposing some order even among objects that have no natural order of precedence. First are the properties that make up the building of LRC, these are the following: cement, wood, the people who built it, the place where it is located, and the time when it was built, the steels that was use to help the building stand on the ground. These are the things that help prove that the LRC building exists. In addition to this, let us recall the last rule, which is to make enumerations so complete, and reviews so comprehensive, so that one could be sure of leaving nothing out. Following this rule may not lead to us to discover the existence of the LRC building, as Descartes thought, but they remain rules that recommend themselves to searchers after any sort of truth about the world, even where those truths are metaphysically more modest than those that Descartes sought. Consequently, this was perhaps the most important contribution of Descartes to the opening up of thought in the modern and early modern period.