What did Rene Descartes believe/do?

Question

What did Rene Descartes believe/do?

Answer 1

Descartes  sought a firm principle of philosophy that could not be doubted. he began doubting everything, including truths that he previously accepted. he would not accept empirical evidence to prove something true. he believed that our senses could decieve us. what we think we are experiencing could be  hallucinations, dreams or false experience cause by a 'malicious demon'. Descartes' doubt of everything included doubt doubt of his own existance. he decided that the only certantity was doubt its self.

Descartes realised that the only that he could not doubt was his thoughts. even if he was dreaming or hallucinating, he was still thinking.  even if he did not have a body, he was still thinking. he found a solution to proving his existance: "i think therefore i am" (cogito ergo sum) Descartes said that he:

"noticed that while i was thinking in this way, regarding everything false, it was nonetheless absolutly necessary that i, who was doing this thinking, was still something. And observing that this truth 'i think therefore i am'  was so sure and certain that no ground for doubt, be it ever so extravigntly sceptical, was capable of shaking it, i therefore decided that i could accept it without scruple as the first principle of the philosopher i was seeking to create"

Rene Descartes, discourses on the method of right reason 1637

Descartes had proved his own existnce, be he had not proved the existance of the outside world. in order to do so, he concluded that he needed to prove the existance of god. this was because he believed that god was perfect and would not allow deception. if god existed and had created the world, then descartes was satsfied that we could accept the reality of the external worlds existance.

were doing idealism in re and its really hard to get my head around the idea that things only exist if we see them and they dont if we dont see them. its all slightly confusing. hope this helps. sorry for any spelling mistakes.

Answer 2

Rene Descartes was a philosopher and mathematican!

Hello this is the Anthropology section!

Answer 3

Did not qualify for the 1810 Tour de France

Answer 4

He asked if it was possible God was tricking us into believing we existed. He also inveted the coordinate system that we use for Algebra and Geometry which is called the Cartesian plane.

Answer 5

He thought and therefore was.

Answer 6

Read the Wikipedia links given in response to your earlier question and then you will know. Sometimes, just sometimes, it's good to put a little effort in yourself.

Answer 7

"Meditations On First Philosophy" was about proving the existance of god, but before that he had to prove his own existance which follows his most famous line "I am; I exist" meaning: I'm thinking so I must exist because thoughts can't be articulated outside of a thinker - they can exist in space (he assumes all ideas already exist because they exist in the mind of god) but need to be thought to come to fruition... anyhow he proves the existance of god to his liking. Other philosophers refute his work, naturally.

"Discourse on Methods" was his way of explaining nearly everything by means of sense impressions and being able to use his senses to describe the actions of things he yet failed to understand using forethought and hindsight (rationality).