MODERN RATIONALISM AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL IDEAS OF RENE DESCARTES

Descartes the doctor: rationalism and its therapies.

During the Scientific Revolution one important gauge of the quality of reformed natural philosophical knowledge was its ability to produce a more effective medical practice. Indeed, it was sometimes thought that philosophers who pretended to possess new and more potent philosophical knowledge might display that possession in personal health and longevity. Rene Descartes repeatedly wrote that a ...

Descartes on the Logical Properties of Ideas

There is a problem in Descartes’s writings about the logical nature of the contents of his understanding, his ideas. On the one hand it seems that such things can be true, for as is well known, Descartes argues in Meditation III that any idea he very clearly and distinctly perceives is bound to be true. However, in the same Meditation, he seems to say something incompatible with this: he says t...

Rationalism and Empiricism in Modern Medicine

About ten years ago, after fellowships and clinical experience in a community setting, I had my first experience as a ward attending in a university hospital. We were working with cardiac patients, and I was struck by the common treatment each patient received. No matter what the symptoms, patients received an exercise treadmill, an echocardiogram, and were put on a calcium channel blocker. Thi...

Franz von Baader’s Criticism of Modern Rationalism A Brief Overview

Emotion , Desire , and Numismatic Experience in Rene Descartes , Zhu Xi , and Wang Y Angming

Zhu Xi writes, "To extend understanding, one must first cultivate understanding. To cultivate understanding, there is only reduction of desires." I Wang Yangming writes, "When this heartmind is free of the obscurations of selfish desire, it is none other than the natural patterning. Nothing external need be added.,,2 Rene Descartes writes, "Because these passions cannot lead us to perform any a...