Reason, Mind, Body

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that, although reason is the primary tool of philosophers, many philosophers have differed in their opinions concerning how reason should be employed, the most centrally held premises from which all of their arguments spring forth. The author describes the Socratic Method, Cartesian Dualism founded by Descartes and post-war period philosophers who argue that there is no true distinction between the mind and the body and the physical aspects of the body is the mind. The paper concludes that the relationship between the body and the soul necessarily is dependent upon (1) the mind versus body and (2) the free-will versus determinism debates.

From the Paper:

"Philosophers have also debated the elemental nature of reality. The concept of reality is particularly difficult to define by virtue of the fact that it encompasses everything that the individual experiences and knows, and everything that has been arrived at by mankind through the process of deductive reasoning. "Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object." This in one view that favors the unique individual perception over some abstract encompassing view of reality, and it can be seen as a revolt from Hegel's ideas concerning reality."

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