Reading Questions for Descartes

(1) What are Descartes’ Four Rules for Clear Thinking?

(2) Most authorities regard these rules as the earliest statement of the scientific method. Can you connect the rules to the ideas of forming a hypothesis, isolating a variable, experimenting, and looking for reproducible results?

(3) Descartes’s Method of Systematic Doubt IS just a method. That is, he does not REALLY believe that he being tricked by an all-powerful demon or anything else. Why then does he want to consider that as a possibility?

(4) What does Descartes find that he cannot doubt?

(5) How does he use that “one sure thing” to attempt to prove the existence of other things such as God, other people, and the physical universe?

(6) Descartes believes in two kinds of “real stuff”: material and mental/spiritual. How might that conclusion relate to his background as a mathematician/scientist who is at the same time a staunch Catholic?

(Threaded Discussion Questions) Most people in Western society share Descartes’ dualism. How does that show up in everyday life in Western culture? In other words, how does the fact that most people in Western culture agree at least in part with Descartes affect the structure of society, including everyday life?

Online Students should write out their answers to these questions and then post them to the Forum for Dr. Schmidt's response (if necessary).

© Dr. Loren R. Schmidt, 1999-2015
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