background preloader

Written Works

Facebook Twitter

Med.pdf (application/pdf Object) Meditations on First Philosophy. The title page of the Meditations.

Meditations on First Philosophy

Meditations on First Philosophy[1] (subtitled In which the existence of God and the immortality of the soul are demonstrated) is a philosophical treatise by René Descartes first published in 1641 (in Latin). The French translation (by the Duke of Luynes with the supervision of Descartes) was published in 1647 as Méditations Metaphysiques. The original Latin title is Meditationes de prima philosophia, in qua Dei existentia et animæ immortalitas demonstratur. The book is made up of six meditations, in which Descartes first discards all belief in things which are not absolutely certain, and then tries to establish what can be known for sure. The meditations were written as if he was meditating for 6 days: each meditation refers to the last one as "yesterday". Dualism (philosophy of mind) René Descartes's illustration of dualism.

Dualism (philosophy of mind)

Inputs are passed on by the sensory organs to the epiphysis in the brain and from there to the immaterial spirit. In philosophy of mind, dualism is the position that mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physical,[1] or that the mind and body are not identical.[2] Thus, it encompasses a set of views about the relationship between mind and matter, and is contrasted with other positions, such as physicalism, in the mind–body problem.[1][2]