As we as a society strive to attack that endless void of unknown that is our lack of knowledge, we have been confronted by and fascinated with the notion of the indefinite, whether we have fully known so or not. As we seek to discover the unknown in the world, we find ourselves truly attacking wh...

Meditations is a discussion of metaphysics, or what is truly real. In these writings, he ultimately hopes to achieve absolute certainty about the nature of everything including God, the physical world, and himself. It is only with a clear and distinct knowledge of such things that he can then begin...

Descartes second consideration on the existence of God relies on his belief of the certainty of clear and distinct perceptions. In the meditations prior to meditation five Descartes emphasized the truth evoked by everything which is clearly and distinctly perceived. Descartes is able to theorize tha...

Tyler Sample PL 101 03/20/01 Can Doubt lead to Understanding? Descartes opens his Meditations indicating his desire to have only true beliefs. One way to accomplish this is to doubt everything he has learned that might be subject to error. He does not intend to doubt the truth of every specifi...

Can You Show That We Don't Know Anything? Most people go through life without ever questioning the idea of knowledge. We all make statements every day such as 'I know X', and 'We all have knowledge of Y', yet when we truly examine what it means to 'know' some...

When I was a child I viewed everything from a child's point of view. If I was afraid of the dark it was because I believed that monsters dwelled under my bed and in my closets. If I was afraid of loud noises it is because I believed with all my little heart that they led to danger. As I aged an...

Aristotle Aristotle was a famous ancient philosopher and scientist that lived from 384 to 322 B.C. He was born in Macedonia to a physician of the royal court. He moved to Athens when he was 17, to study with Plato, another famous philosopher of his time. Aristotle is said to have loved hi...

David Williamson's play Brilliant Lies explores the dynamics of sex and power, questions right and wrong and delves to try and find the truth. An attractive young woman accuses her former employer of harassment and unfair dismissal, demanding compensation of $40,000. Our view of the truth of th...

Bernard is a main character who is not a scientist and has basically no scientific background. From the moment he is introduced, he is portrayed as eccentric and odd. Here Bernard is described for the first time: "Bernard, the visitor, wears a suit and tie. His tendency is to dress flamboyan...

Throughout the play Arcadia by Tom Stoppard there is a distinct difference between the characters who have a science background and those who do not. One of the recurring themes is that those characters and actions of those characters which are against science often lead to conflict and disaster...

Meno's paradox is an argument in the form of a question. As it is written, Meno asks, "How will you look for something when you don't know what it is.. or even if you come right upon it, how will you know that what you have found is the thing that you didn't know?" Socrates states it more simpl...

In Rene Descartes Meditation V, he distinguishes the existence of God, believing he must prove that god exists before he can examine any corporeal objects outside of himself. By proving that the existence of God is not a sophism, he also argues that God is therefore the Supreme Being and the omnipo...

Pythagoras: A Great Man (or A Great Myth) Pythagoras, my adopted philosopher, was a man of great stature, a man who had a cult of followers, a man who is believed to be a product of the school of Anaximander , a man whose beliefs lead to his exile from his communities home in Kroton , and a man wh...

David Hume was one of the greatest thinkers in Western History. He was an 18th century philosopher who looked at the world in logical terms. He was a realist who, through philosophy, sought to distinguish between the impression of human experience and the ideas, which are ch...

Putting the Allegory of the Cave into my own words seems comparable to the Christian idea of using the lord's name in vain. First, I'd like to introduce a phenomenon I have observed throughout my life time. I call it soul resonance. Bear with me here. When two objects emit sympathetic vibrati...

Putting the Allegory of the Cave into my own words seems comparable to the Christian idea of using the lord's name in vain. First, I'd like to introduce a phenomenon I have observed throughout my life time. I call it soul resonance. Bear with me here. When two objects emit sympathetic vibration...

It seems that the meaning of human nature varies among existentialist philosophers. As a whole, however, existentialism can be characterized as a philosophy that searches for the essential self, or the essential human condition. In this paper, the views of two existentialists will be discussed with ...