PHILOS 2F03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Cogito Ergo Sum, Pineal Gland
15 Sep 2014
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Cogito ergo sum i think, therefore i exist. Why is this cogito significant: proves the possibility of knowledge, 2. Truth ideas are clear and distinct, like the cogito: proves that knowledge is possible, use it as a yardstick for truth, substance: something whose existence does not depend on another. Exists in itself, not in another: thinking substance: immaterial, non-extended. Res extensa: descartes equates material substance (matter, body) with spatial extension. Four implications: primary qualities: qualities that necessarily accompany spatial existence. There is nothing extended, n material body, that does not have: size, shape, position, quantity or rest or motion. Secondary qualities: arise in-between primary and secondary qualities: plenum: when space is identical with matter, then empty space is impossible. The physical universe is therefore filled up , a plenum, with no empty space. Every region of space however small is a body. Inertness: spatial extension is the whole essence of matter.
