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Descartes invokes his causal adequacy principle to support his trademark argument for the existence of God, quoting Lucretius in defence: "Ex nihilo nihil fit", meaning "Nothing comes from nothing" . Oxford Reference summarises the argument, as follows, "that our idea of perfection is related to its perfect origin (God), just as a stamp or ...
t. e. The wax argument or the sheet of wax example is a thought experiment that René Descartes created in the second of his Meditations on First Philosophy. He devised it to analyze what properties are essential for bodies, show how uncertain our knowledge of the world is compared to our knowledge of our minds, and argue for rationalism. [1] [2]
The Latin cogito, ergo sum, usually translated into English as " I think, therefore I am ", [a] is the "first principle" of René Descartes 's philosophy. He originally published it in French as je pense, donc je suis in his 1637 Discourse on the Method, so as to reach a wider audience than Latin would have allowed. [1]
Cartesian doubt is a systematic process of being skeptical about (or doubting) the truth of one's beliefs, which has become a characteristic method in philosophy. [3] : 403 Additionally, Descartes' method has been seen by many as the root of the modern scientific method. This method of doubt was largely popularized in Western philosophy by ...
t. e. Cartesianism is the philosophical and scientific system of René Descartes and its subsequent development by other seventeenth century thinkers, most notably François Poullain de la Barre, Nicolas Malebranche and Baruch Spinoza. [1] Descartes is often regarded as the first thinker to emphasize the use of reason to develop the natural ...
An ontological argument is a philosophical argument, made from an ontological basis, that is advanced in support of the existence of God. Such arguments tend to refer to the state of being or existing. More specifically, ontological arguments are commonly conceived a priori in regard to the organization of the universe, whereby, if such ...
Tree of knowledge (philosophy) The tree of knowledge or tree of philosophy is a metaphor presented by the French philosopher René Descartes in the preface to the French translation of his work Principles of Philosophy to describe the relations among the different parts of philosophy in the shape of a tree. He describes knowledge as a tree.
The evil demon, also known as Deus deceptor, [1] malicious demon, [2] and evil genius, [1] [3] is an epistemological concept that features prominently in Cartesian philosophy. [1] In the first of his 1641 Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes imagines that a malevolent God [1] or an evil demon, of "utmost power and cunning has employed all ...