Question

Answer one of the following questions (minimum 200 words).  

1. Why does Descates worry that everything everyone has ever believed anout anything important (in science, religion, politics, ethics) has turned out to be false? Should we worry about this?

2. Does Descartes prove that he exisits as a thinking being? Evaluate the cogito argument.

3. Is there any way to know (with certainty) that you are not dreaming or the victim of a matix like situation? If so say where you think Descartes' argument goes wrong.

4. Discuss one of the problems with Descartes dualism (e.g. the problem of other minds, psycho-physical causation).

Answer 1

Ans. 4

Problems with Dualism

It is clear that Descartes argument for dualism if correct, show that physicalism is false. After all Descartes suggests that I can imagine that I exist even though all the physical which seems to exit don’t and he takes this to show that I am not a physical thing.

We often says like “I wanted to ask a question, so I raised my arm,” or “When my arm was sunburnt that summer, I was lot of pain.” Claims of this sort seems to imply two things, first I often cause my body to do things and second, the events involving my body often cause effects in me. If the dualist agrees that person can cause effects in their bodies sometimes can effects in persons, then they are endorsing interactionist dualism.

In explaining ordinary casual interactions between material things like billiard balls, it’s natural to think that the spatial location of the ball plays some role. But could an immaterial thing like a person, according to the dualist view be located in space? This is less an argument than sort of puzzle, how could immaterial things cause changes in material things, or vice versa?

A second problem here concerns conservation laws. A conservation law says that a certain quantity in an isolated physical system, like energy does not change as the system changes over time. If interactionist dualism were true, would we expect to see violation of the conservation of the energy?     

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