Hobbes and Descartes

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that Hobbes skeptically believed that all human or life experience was a real perception, and no one could ever acquire real knowledge of this material world. The author points out that, in contrast, Rene Descartes thought that the human mind and God were alike in that both could think but had no physical realities. The paper relates that Descartes saw the mind as pure thought and the body as a mere extension of it.

From the Paper:

"Hobbes established a hierarchy of abstract thought levels. At the base was the representation or appearance, the first motion transmitted by the senses to the brain. Upon entry into the brain, it followed a "trayne (Hobbes)", which was the course of its motion in interacting with other representations. The power or influence of each motion decreased as it interacted, and he called this interaction imagination, which he viewed as the "first internal beginning of all Voluntary Motion". All the different traynes in the mind at one time and not yet deteriorating constituted memory."

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