Deep-seated and often implicit beliefs about what should go through for knowledge, truth, justice, beauty, the good life, are generally acknowledged to be fundamental to the way we think and act in life. An important intellectual challenge in this regard is finding one's way among the increasing variety of theoretical perspectives, ideologies and truth claims that abound in scholarly fields. In this view, science is regarded as part of, created by and, hence, embedded in human culture. A still unresolved question and debate arising from this state of affairs is: should we continue in our knowledge endeavors to follow the old, analytic tradition of Western sc

According to Descartes, our minds and bodies causally interact with one another almost all of the time. Meaning that events and states in our mind can cause physical events in our bodies and vice versa. For example, you step on something (a physical event) causes you to feel pain (a mental event) and causes you to say “ouch,” (a physical event) As a result, the term Interactionism was used to explain the relation between the physical and mental. Descartes’ theory of Substance Dualism was his best way of explaining human life and how our minds are able to interact with our bodies. Of course, not everyone is going to agree with Descartes theory.

The Cogito Ergo Sum is the heart of Cartesian philosophy and represents the starting point of his method. It set Descartes apart from the Scholastics who began with real things in a really existing world. Opposing himself to this tradition, Descartes began simply within the certitude of self as a thinking being. This self-evident principle for him was the cogito ergo sum. If I doubt the existence of things, then I think, and if I think, I am!

And so, it seems to me, the best way that a philosopher can keep from being dated. Not in the romantic sense; many seem to have not problem with that is to be aware of scientific knowledge, and integrated it into philosophy. Of course, this necessities an independent evaluation of the merits and draw backs of a given scientific idea, which necessities, in turn, a thorough knowledge of that theory.

I suppose that my point, which I am being exceedingly long-winded about, is that philosophy does not stand apart from the rest of the sciences and it should, can, and must be a science. Rather, philosophy should be integrated with the rest of the sciences through the method of rational judgment. Rather than sailing behind, or next to but away from, the rest of the sciences, philosophy should be the flagship of the group. Although the other sciences can provide use with data, observations, and theories, only philosophy can integrate those into a coherent whole, to tell us what to do with them, or provide a meaningful context for using these facts in out own lives.

Though his techniques of doubting everything, which he believed to exist, and establishing a new philosophy, Descartes discovered that without a doubt, the only thing he could truly believe to exist was his own mind. He then supposed that a demon was deceiving him by causing him to believe that which he say. With this idea, he concluded, “all external things are merely the delusion of dreams” which the demon was devising. By being able to convince himself of ideas and by being able to be deceived by the demon. He also came to the conclusion that if he were to cease from thinking, he would cease to exist entirely.

In many ways, he constructs a convincing argument for the existence of the self, and for the process of the thinking being, the essence of that self. In this meditation on his philosophy, Descartes on numerous attempts tries to convince both the readers, as well as himself, of his theory that we must reject all of our present ideas and beliefs and start from nothing. He believes that the only thing that has any certainty at this point is “his

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