Rene Descartes

31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650

Enlightenment period – everyone is questioning their most basic understandings of the way the world works (religion, science, etc)- “I think, therefore I am”
Founder of Cartesianism
- Cartesians view the mind as being wholly separate from the corporeal body. Sensation and the perception of reality are thought to be the source of untruth and illusions, with the only reliable truths to be had in the existence of a metaphysical mind. Such a mind can perhaps interact with a physical body, but it does not exist in the body, nor even in the same physical plane as the body.
  In general, Cartesian thought divides the world into three areas of existence:
  - that inhabited by the physical body (matter),
  - that inhabited by the mind, and
  - that inhabited by God.

Rationalism (knowledge can be arrived at through logic) vs. Empiricism (knowledge needs to be arrived at through sense experience)
- British Empiricists – John Locke, David Hume, Berkley
- Continental Rationalists – Descartes, Spinoza, Liebnitz (Kant?)
- Descartes starts this divide
Must argue against Skepticists who believe nothing can ever be truly know, so must create simple, unarguable ideas
Is reality real? Are we in a dream? – example; we don’t know we’re dreaming until we wake up
“How do I know there isn’t some evil demon assigned to me whose sole purpose is to trick me into thinking the world I see exists?”
Infinite, finite and modal reality
Argument for God’s existence – finite beings couldn’t have come up with the idea of an infinite being
Did much of his philosophy in bed, died when he got a tutoring job and had to get up early every day
Believed that philosophy is best done in older age once ‘living’ was done