Descartes Sixth Meditation Essay -- essays research papers

In the Sixth Meditation, Descartes makes a point that there is a distinction between mind and body. It is in Meditation Two when Descartes believes he has shown the mind to be better known than the body. In Meditation Six, however, he goes on to claim that, as he knows his mind and knows clearly and distinctly that its essence consists purely of thought. Also, that bodies' essences consist purely of extension, and that he can conceive of his mind and body as existing separately. By the power of God, anything that can be clearly and distinctly conceived of as existing separately from something else can be created as existing separately. However, Descartes claims that the mind and body have been created separated without good reason. This point is not shown clearly, and further, although I can conceive of my own mind existing independently of my body, it does not necessarily exist as so. On page 56, when Descartes talks about how sailors are related to ships and why the mind body union is different, he is vague on the metaphorical analogy. To try to get his point across, dualism is used. Descartes is talking about something called interactionist substance dualism. He is stating that the mind and body causally interact with one another. This can be summed up to say that as easily as the mind can cause changes in the body, the body can also cause changes in the mind. Therefore the mind and body must be intimately united. An example of this is having the intuition to raise your hand. Your mind thinks about raising your hand and your body automatically does so. Contrary to this, if you step on a pin, your body tells your brain it has stepped on something sharp, thus causing pain, and your brain tells you that you have pain and to get off. In order to follow this, you must have a strong belief in the existence of God. For only God has the means necessary to make me certai n that the two things exist separately of each other. This is because God is a perfect entity, and is capable of countless things whose true causes are beyond my knowledge. To try to explain Dualism through God, we must talk about corporeal bodies and our knowledge of them. Regarding the nature of corporeal bodies and what is known about them and given Descartes premises, the conclusions he draws in Meditation Six are generally the correct ones. He again invokes the causal to argue that the ideas... ...rity and distinction, but we can conclude what Descartes means. He is saying that we can be sure that these primary qualities exist in bodies in the same way that they do in our ideas of bodies. This cannot be claimed for qualities such as heat, color, taste and smell, of which our ideas are so confused and vague that we must always reserve judgment. This can be seen in the wax example. Do you think that Descartes qualifies to your satisfaction that the mind and body are separate from each other? Only halfway; too many things are left up in the air, and the language is not quite clear. The mind and body can each exist separately and independently of one another. But they also need one another to work properly. This relationship is why the mind and body argument was shown with the sailor and ship scenario. By claiming that the mind and body were similarly related to each other as the sailor and the ship, Descartes was giving the average but intuitive reader something to ponder about while trying to make up his or her own mind about the relation between mind and body. From my point of view, however, Descartes needs further argument to prove that the mind and the body are distinct.

Death Penalties in the UK Essay

In PSHE we were studying death penalties in the world. All of the students had different opinions on why we should have or why we shouldn’t have it like it is now in the UK. In this case my opinion is to keep it how it is and not punish criminals with death penalties. I would like to keep the law with no death penalties in the UK. This is because even though the do horrible crimes to get a death penalty, they are still human and there are a lot of things that could go wrong. You could be taking an innocent person who done nothing wrong and giving the death penalty and realizing your mistake after they’re dead. Even if they are guilty there could be so much pain when they are getting injected or shot or any other ways to kill them. Just because they’re murderers, they are still human. Also, what if they did get their death penalty but they didn’t die until an hour after or several minutes, just imagine how much pain that person would be, how their family would feel, how you would feel if you were in that same position. A woman from the UK was sent to America to get a death penalty for something she might not have done and we’re only depending on the evidence of two people. On May 4th 1990 in Florida a man named Jesse Joseph Tafero was executed on the electrocution chair. During the execution, six-inch flames erupted from Tafero’s head, and three jolts of power were required to stop his breathing. State officials claimed that the botched execution was caused by â€Å"inadvertent human error† the inappropriate substitution of a synthetic sponge for a natural sponge that had been used in previous executions. They attempted to support this theory by sticking a part of a synthetic sponge into a â€Å"common household toaster† and observing that it smoldered and caught fire. Just ask yourself the question: would you liked to be treated this way? This also has a bad picture on Britain. Keep the old saying into your head: treat other people the way YOU would like to be treated. This is my opinion and I think you should take this on mind because we would like to keep a nice image on Britain and not damage it more than it already is. Please don’t put the death penalty in Britain. A lot of people would agree with me.

My Criteria for Evaluation of Teachers Personal Essay

My Criteria for Evaluation of Teachers The profession of a teacher has been one of the most important and responsible ones in the history of mankind. A lot is changing in course of time, but the essence of a teacher’s vocation remains the same. He has to guide a person through the early stages of life and help children and teenagers form a strong personality and understand different unwritten laws of society. Below I will present the main criteria of teachers’ evaluation from my point of view. First of all, teacher has to possess extensive knowledge in the field of his competence. It is of high importance for him to be able to explain every nuance of his subject and answer all the possible questions. Thus, the main criterion is profound knowledge of subject. Besides, a teacher has to have rich background information and be able to properly apply it, i.e. to present the information to his pupils, but not to show students that they are inferior as in comparison to him. Teacher has to be very interested in the subject he/she is teaching, as without interest in the corresponding field, he won’t be able to engage his students into active participation in class and won’t interest students in this subject. It is clear that without vivid favor of what one does, it is impossible to work productively and achieve great results. He or she has to be fair and should always try to understand each and every student, which is why basic psychological knowledge is vital. Each of the students has different personality and it is important to know how to approach each kind of character, how not to offend him/her and control assignments’ performance in the best way. On balance, a teacher has to be an energetic, professional, open-minded and nice individual without any prejudiced views. It is a pity that as of today there are not so many such teachers in our society. I strongly believe that formulation of our children’s world perception is not the kind of expense economy is appropriate in.