Thoughts on his philosophy?

I wish I could be as smart as him.

is that the "give her the D" guy? didn't know his philosophy extended beyond that

who is this person?

>His philosophical response to the scientific and mathematical advances in understanding of this intellectually turbulent and exciting time was the development of a concept of representation that was much more abstract, powerful, and flexible than the resemblance model it supplanted. He saw that what made algebraic understanding of geometrical figures possible was a global isomorphism between the whole system of algebraic symbols and the whole system of geometrical figures. That isomorphism defined a notion of form shared by the licit manipulations of strings of algebraic symbols and the constructions possible with geometric figures. In the context of such an isomorphism, the particular material properties of what now become intelligible as representings and representeds become irrelevant to the semantic relation between them. All that matters is the correlation between the rules governing the manipulation of the representings and the actual possibilities that characterize the representeds. Inspired by the newly emerging forms of modern scientific understanding, Descartes concluded that this representational relation (of which resemblance then appears merely as a primitive species) is the key to understanding the relations between mind and world, appearance and reality, quite generally.

>This was a fabulous, tradition-transforming idea, and everything Western philosophers have thought since (no less on the practical than on the theoretical side) is downstream from it, conceptually, and not just temporally—whether we or they realize it or not. But Descartes combined this idea with another, more problematic one. This is the idea that if any things are to be known or understood representationally (whether correctly or not), by being represented, then there must be some things that are known or understood nonrepresentationally, immediately, not by means of the mediation of representings. If representings could only be known representationally, by being themselves in turn represented, then a vicious infinite regress would result. For we would only be able to know about a represented thing by knowing about a representing of it, and could only count as knowing about it if we already knew about a representing of it, and so on. In a formulation that was only extracted explicitly centuries later by Josiah Royce, if even error (misrepresentation), never mind knowledge, is to be possible, then there must be something about which error is not possible—something we know about not by representing it, so that error in the sense of misrepresentation is not possible. If we can know (or be wrong about) anything representationally, by means of the mediation of representings of it, there must be some representings that we grasp, understand, or know about immediately, simply by having them.

His "Meditations on the Dick" is essential reading for any thinking man.

>argued himself into a circle
Pure hack.

how

wait a sec ,
first , but if his only philosophy was that
there is a direct relation between a 'guiding set' of ideas
or 'non-represented' objects with the 'represented ideas' or 'physical objects'
in a way that the latter may reflect the nature
of the first ,it is in no way contradicts a god , quite the opposite really -
god is supposed to be this guiding set of ideas
, or 'non-represented' objects , being reflected upon the world.

secondly , let me ask you , or all of you who relay on theology (not because i'm satanic or something , but because I fail to understand) -
let us assume there is a 'god' and he is perfect.
'god' acourding to definition , created the universe , that means that god had created every law , or event that ever existed with the universe's beginning.
now let us assume that 'god' may alter
the laws of the universe at his will.
by definition of 'alter' , what actually happens
when god 'alters' an event at his will ,
means that there was an event that was supposed to happen , although for the will of god , god decided to change that event;
the same event he created at the beginning.
god changed his mind.
Is god perfect?
now let's continue to build this up and try to prove that the laws of nature are constant.
the basic laws of nature are the relations of
cause and effect within our universe.
those relations were created by god, as if as an encrypted message unravelling towards his will in time.
meaning that for each cause with some certain
terms god had already created an effect ,
which in the end this chain of cause and effect may lead to the desired situation (first 'proof') (notice that i'm
assuming that god has a will of how exactly every one should and shoulden't act which is
also questionable , but i'll not go there)
the reason that the 'laws of nature' are constant , accourding to this is because god only needed create a to chain of events in a certain order to unravel his will ,
when knowing that that chain of events was only created by one master event (creation) and not altered since, we get that the entire chain
is governed by one object , or set.
this is basically spinoza's 'proof' against the activism of god (and a bit of add-ons), and morever to say - if anything that I have said actually consists and there are no flaws in my way of thinking , then god can but won't change the nature of this universe or any of the events that occur in it.
meaning that the way god's will is being transfered is only by the basic laws upon he created the universe.
and he only actually acted in the beginning of creation.
meaning -
getting a messege from god is equal in value
for getting a messege from the environment upon which we live in , that leads us to certain
conclusions.
since there are people who are led by the environment into false conclusions ,
we can't relay on any evidence of god that came from any individual
and may regard them as if they were mad.
the same principle may apply with me.
god is irrelevant

is your native language Klingon

Is he wrong though? Cartesian Dualism is much easier to assail than Hylemorphic Dualism. His ideas just took us one step closer to the materialistic qua mechanistic metaphysics we have today which have 'legitimized' things like atheism.

>He thinks consciousness isn't incredibly magical in and of itself
>He believes that consciousness doesnt need an "I" to realize it's conscious
>He thinks he's just a bunch of chemicals

This kind of thinking goes against humanity itself. You feel real no? You can smell the air and taste the wines of life. But no you're just a brain!

name one philosopher that did not

...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Münchhausen_trilemma

RIP foolosophy

>He thinks he's just a bunch of chemicals
You have no idea what you're talking about.

not an argument

friendly tip : the guy in OP's pic is French philosopher René Descartes

The biggest fuck-up in the history of philosophy. Heidegger had him right.

Also, Newton fucked him when Principia came out and his sci-stuff became irrelevant.

Smart guy, way smarter than most, but his dualism is annoying.

He is one of the most subversive thinkers in the history of philosophy, but this fact goes unnoted as everybody learns "I think, therefore I am" on their first day at university, and there an end. What he does is doubts his way into a solipsistic worldlessness, reducing the sensual reality of perception into the bare thought of perceiving. He does this on the pretext of being bewitched by some evil spirit who he believes is trying to deceive him, which actually sounds like a lunatics delusion.

Unironically this.

Also, I can't think of a single transgression against the Human Spirit that hasn't suppurated out of France one way or another. What's up with that?

I think he is way overrated. The worst famous philospher I know.
But what do I know? It has been 20 years since I've read his Methode but I remember how unimpressed I was with his work while Kant and Nietzsche were blowing me away.
His arguments were simplistic and easily refutable. Some of the non philospocal ideas in that book were also stupid. But it's hard to seperate the thinker from his times. His importance is in the effect his ideas had on the history of philosophy/ideas not in the power of his thoughts themselves in my very humble opinion.

Gibberish in the vein of Spinoza, Aristotle, Plato, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Feuerbach, etc.

I don't remember reading Joyce Descartes hate (outside of the whole disagreement).
He certainly doesn't like him, which is to be expected of course.
If anything, we should blame Ockham.

Feser, why the fuck did I say Joyce?

I respect the contributions he made to various fields, but the only thing he really pushed forward in philosophy was the question of: what can I know? I don't think he had a particularly sensible answer to that question, nor was he the first to pose the question. But he definitely popularized it.

Actually Plato is the biggest fuck-up in the history of philosophy according to Heidegger (Descartes logically follows from Plato).

>muh god
Really like the reading that he is, in fact, the starting principle he suggests, and that the meditations are quite literally self-contained within Descartes, as a traditional meditation would have it.

Give her the dick

>and still messing with STEMfags all across the world
That's because he invented the Cartesian plane; we still use it because IT WORKS

he IS overrated. nothing he said makes any sense what so ever. he was literally wrong about everything.
just a meme dualists use to troll real philosophers

but he was still right though

He wrote the Method for dummies. What's really worth reading is
- Meditations + the objections and replies to the Meditations
- The Passions of soul + letters, especially to Elisabeth, where he clearly goes beyond dualism. Descartes' dualism only lasted 10 years.

> reads philosophy

> still evaluates the history of ideas in naive terms of 'right' and 'wrong'

either your argumend is sound or it is not. if you are not being able to make any argumends that are logically valid, youre a shit philosopher. thats that.

That might explain it. But it doesn't motivate me to read anything beyond what is in Méthode.