Philosophy
HUM 220
Research paper # 1
5/11/2011
Descartes argues that cognition (res cogitans) is not a physical property (res extensa). Explain if his argument is accurate and if so, why.
When I look at my prompt I do not just see a head in a box, I see a detailed face, a wooden floor, white walls, pursed lips and closed eyes. The prompt shows a human head inside which looks like a box with four walls, the fourth wall being our view of the inside. The human head does not seem to be connected to a body and the eyes are closed, which makes me think it might be dead, or thinking. The head is placed on top of the floor, the hair is swept back and the lips are pursed. Looking at the prompt inspires me to think about philosophical issues such as; is the body a slave to the mind? Or even more, are the body and the mind connected? This question led me on to focus on such thought as mind and matter.
English: René Descartes, the French philosopher, ...
René Descartes
Drawing from René Descartes' (1596-1650) in "medi...I would like to take a look at the most substantial philosopher Descartes to support this view. He believed that we are absolutely unconnected to our bodies and that we can exist without it. According to Descartes a body is an extended thing, and that the mind is the thing that thinks, these two different things can exist completely independently of each other. Descartes said that our conscious mind and body are so mixed together that they appear as one whole, for example if we put our hand over a stove our thought would be to check if it was turned on, or hot so we would not harm our bodies by leaning on it. If our thought did not check for this...