PHIL 2160 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Well-Founded Relation, Individualism, Omnipotence

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: PHIL 2160
• Professor: Patricia Sheridan

Document Summary

Lecture descartes: belief, abstract ideas, and error. Assent our assent to things (experiences, ideas we have; all things we take to be true) it is the easiest thing in the world to assent to something (to believe something to be true) The will is boundless and ready to assent to anything. Immediate experiences are believed to be true, judgments are formed, we assent to things. They were immediate experiences, we have intuitions, the authority around us tells us what is true, languages (what we call and categorize things) and cultures can also influence what we believe about the world. Abstract ideas: we take them to reflect the order of things. We believe they do: some are more complete than others. Some don"t even need to reflect extra-mental reality to be compelling: descartes is trying to categorize things outside the mind, but he does not believe that things exist outside of our minds exactly how we conceive them, geometry.