Synopsis:
- Doubt as the foundation of philosophy
- All our beliefs based on our sensations can be doubted
- Everything can be doubted except my own existence
- Two substances: matter has extension, mind has thought, each has its laws, they communicate via the pineal glande (Dualism)
- Equivalence between living and non-living matter
- Animals are machines
- Everything material can be reduced to mechanics
- Human bodies are machines too but the soul is not
- What is unique about humans is thought
- The mind is capable of representing the world of objects
- The mind is a stage where ideas are illuminated by the inner light of reason (Cartesian theater)
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- Mathematics is certain knowledge (what cannot be doubted), from which other certain knowledge can be derived
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- Planets revolve around the sun because it is surrounded by a vortex
- God is the perfect thing
- Existence is one of the perfections
- Thus God exists
- We can arrive at "useful knowledge _ by which, knowing the force and action of fire, water, air the stars, the heavens, and all the other bodies that surround us_ we might also apply them in the same way to all the uses to which they are suited, and thus render ourselves the lords and possessors of nature."
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