Descartes and David - Essay Example

?Two schools of thought: Before going in to the deep discussions on the two philosophers Mr. Descartes and Mr. David, we should first get familiar with the two schools of thought they belonged to. 1st thought is the empirical method and the 2nd one is metaphysical method of inquiry or research. When a researcher or a laymen comes across a fact or reality which confuses his beliefs and truth world declares put him in the phase of research. He starts digging on the values and information related to it. At this stage there are various schools of thoughts exist to adopt for the research of knowledge. Researcher and philosopher would have to decide whether to go where with which type of inquiry method. Empirical method of inquiry to which Mr. David Hume belongs is basically the research which is based on the direct experiences and observations made. This method is adopted usually to test a hypothesis drawn for a research. Hypothesis is the assessment of association of variables and phenomenon gathered and drawn out of past studies. The word empirical itself means facts collected after direct experiences and observations. The paper “Dialogue Concerning Natural Religion” by David Hume is portraying the beliefs and knowledge gathering based on empirical method. David believes that knowledge comes from evidential base, so whether the religion beliefs are right or wrong, and you can say rational or not. By applying empirical method technique, David has to analyze whether there are enough proofs and valid arguments regarding existence of God or it is just about a person born with a particular religion. Another benefit comes from empirical studies that you have to ask directly the related population of your research about the concerns of objectives. Empirical studies are basically divided into two main broad categories. They are Qualitative methods and Quantitative methods. Qualitative research is an analysis by interpretation of facts and information gathered from interviews and questionnaires filled in by the population sample. The analysis made is without the involvement of any number and quantifiable material or aspect. Qualitative research is based on directly interacting with the people and asking about the views and belief for specific object. Quantitative research on the other hand is totally based on the measurements of facts, relations significance, number involvements etc. the phenomenon and all the collected facts are gathered in the way that they can be measured and quantified. Checking in the strengths of empirical method in this paper let us discuss the methodology Hume adopted for the collection of religion beliefs facts. He did not ask if he could rationally prove that God exist. Rather all should come to the conclusions demonstrating God’s nature. For the sake, he described three characteristics of different point of views; Cleanthes, Demea and Philo. Interactions among the researchers and believers enabled the information to give fruitful and reliable results of topics. Quantitative methods are strongly beneficial for the discovery of facts related to measurable research like finance, economic integrations, and scientific facts. But this method cannot work efficiently in the research of human beliefs and views about a real truth. For this purpose of exploration about people thoughts and beliefs on universal truth direct interactions, interviews focus group discussions and arguments are best ways to analyze. This method is called Qualitative method as discussed above. Empirical studies give best results in the research of economic and finance related topics through quantitative methods. And political science, philosophies, universal truths etc tends to come out more beneficial through Qualitative methods. Understanding and gathering of knowledge comes from researching each fact and figure related to them. And research expertise comes from holding complete command on the methods of research e.g. metaphysical method of inquiry, empirical methods of inquiry etc. These techniques help a lot in the removal of epistemology issues and people get to understand better the processes of analysis of topics research. Now coming towards the second school of thought the metaphysical method, Descartes adopted this technique in his research for analyzing the problems of skepticism. Metaphysical method is purely related to philosophy search. The facts analysis and inquiries of problems in the field of philosophy is done by metaphysical method of inquiry. It was basically found in the philosophical society in America and was developed as a result of philosophical inquiry needs. It is the branch of philosophy and has strength of being the sole considered technique among the philosophers. It deals with the explanation of fundamental nature and facts of being and the world. In its broadest term two questions are supposed to be answered by this research method technique: What is there? What is it like? Mr. Descartes adopted metaphysical technique and belongs to the metaphysical inquiry method school of thought. He is known as the metaphysicist or metaphysician. He tried to attempt for the clarification of basic and elementary notions about the understanding of the beliefs and mistakenly adopted thoughts found by him. This paper demonstrates that he has always stuck with the thoughts around him and found himself a believer of knowledge which is portrayed on absolutely certain basis. He claims that sometimes he is totally withdrawn from the senses and doubts the facts. He assumes that his thoughts are misled either by God or by some evil force. But eventually he started thinking that he cannot doubt his own existence and there is something in his inner self which is doing thinking and doubting. A person suffering from such a monumental distraction phase needed a help to find a way out from the closed dead end. Metaphysical technique led him think straight and analyze the running philosophy that could help him realize the problem and confusions about his beliefs. A meditator’s certainty about him comes from a distinct and clear perception. After going through his philosophical research by adding questions of what is there and what is it like, he assured himself that God does exist and does not doing anything bad with him. He is not deceiving him. In order to make sure such belief he investigated material things. He clearly and distinctly believes that primary attributes of body is extension and that primary qualities of body are size, shape, breath etc. he also analyzed and derived another proof for God’s existence that while other bodies are extended, God is essentially existent. Metaphysical technique secured the knowledge about a confused belief and drawn an ultimate conclusion about the fact of God’s existence. This method removed the epistemology issues during the process from the mind of meditator. It was all about that essence of body is extension and essence of mind is thought. References: Descartes, Rene. "Meditations on first philosophy. “arete press. (1985): 1596-1650. Hume, David. "Dialogues concerning natural religion." London. (1947): 141-51. Sambanis, Nicholas. "Do ethnic and non-ethnic civil wars have the same causes?" inquiry (part 1). (January 4, 2001): 5-21. Read More