/lit/ - Literature

>>4042703
About how everything I believed to be real can be doubted.
>The D always works

What does Descartes' "I think therefore I am" really mean?

Am I right in thinking it basically means...'I think therefore I am an existence external to the physical world around me that is not I' ?

Could we conceive of a perfect entity if it didn't exist?

>>3947056
My guess would be that the majority of intellectuals today support a heavily materialistic metaphysical view to the point where it's dogmatic and they shout at people who even question it.

But I have not read any Nagel nor am I that interested in mind/neuroscience debates so don't listen to what I say.

> Even now an old black ram is tupping your white ewe.

>>3750714
But, consider the real question.

>muh dualism

Little late to the party, bro.

How can you argue that Literary Criticism is NOT a huge pile of steaming horse shit?

It is logically fallacious to assume that one can judge, quantify, and legitimize or even deny art in objective terms-- even if your judgement of a book (or even painting, but we'll leave that out for now) is purely cerebral, you base that judgement on a logical and intellectual system of critique that YOU, personally, have elected.

And if you do not, then you judge it through the lens of a logical and intellectual system of critique that others have deemed noteworthy and acceptable, which completely discredits you as a rational, FREE thinker.

If I think freely, my response to literature and art as a whole is personal and cannot be valued over other opinions that circulate. If I do not think freely, then I do not judge or critique art at all- I merely regurgitate a common consensus.

You may attempt to disprove my claim by asserting that my logical critique of Literary Criticism is, by my own standards, simply personal- and you are right- but that is only deflecting from the FACT that LIterary Criticism is not and cannot be what it claims to be, outside of my own opinion. It denies and discredits itself simply by claiming to be something impossible.

And so I ask you, much to your and my own chagrin, to disprove me.

Three issues with Descartes' Ontological argument:

1. Concepts do not identify with the reality of an external object (mind --> concept--> object problem). Therefore claiming that a concept entails the existence of a corresponding reality is implausible.

2. Perfection does not entail existence. If fact, it is more logical to assert that existence cannot identify with perfection.

3. If Monism is correct, then a being of pure spirit is implausible. And if Dualism is correct, the only relevant beings in the physical universe would be those of dualistic nature, because they are the only ones capable of affecting change within the physical universe, thereby making God arbitrary.

“The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries.”

Does anyone know where this quote even comes from? I can't find a source, and I've never come across it in anything of Descartes's I've read

Can anyone tell me where beliefs come from? (maybe according to Descartes?)

I need a philosophical standpoint to prove/disprove that beliefs originate from sense experience.

>>3006315

>>2993127
Shit, forgot my picture.

So, I read an excerpt from Descartes' "Meditations on the First Philosophy" for class, specifically about his view of reality. It was unbelievably dense and I didn't really get a thing out of it. What was Descartes' view of reality?

On that same subject, what exactly is the Cartesian mind? I was never clear on that

As a child, I had vivid dreams, and I remember once waking up and wondering whether the dream world was in fact the real world, and the waking world was the dream world.

>Fucking Descartes

>>2657667

>>2636196
Give her the why have you destroyed my image and legacy

help /lit/

what is a metaphysics?

The Mod's existence is obvious and necessary. Besides ourselves, he is the only thing that can be inherently known, and by him we know the existence of other things with more certainty. Ignorant amodists do not see the clearness of this argument.

What's the first thing that jumps into your mind when you think about descartes?

Interesting philosophy books?

I was in philosophy and things got a bit off course, in short we were asked the question: If an idea is written down on a piece of paper and lost forever, never to be found again, does the idea still exist?

Can an idea exist without a human acknowledging it?