Position Paper- Rene Descartes Essay

Rene Descartes was known as a modern philosopher who questioned everything unable to be proven true, a type of thinking called skepticism. He also was intrigued by reason and opinions of people and how they created the opinions from society and their surroundings. His ideas have evolved into modern philosophy all around the world. People are born with the natural sense of reason (the instinct to determine right from wrong). This natural sense is what creates opinions. No two people have the exact same opinion, because no two people reason the exact same way. The distinction between right and wrong is an opinion itself, therefore, reason is just a subject of opinion. Opinions are becoming a problem. Many people are either open minded or close minded based on society and their surroundings. Descartes’ was neither here nor there about how someone thinks, but the best lesson he learned during his life was â€Å"not to believe too firmly anything of which I had learnt merely by example. † This basically means to caution yourself from making opinions based on a set example, which implies the greatness of an open mind rather than a closed mind. Another subject of opinion is acceptance. Take the average Joe for example. He has an opinion, he accepts it, and that opinion is true, no question. But what about the other millions of people in the world who accept something different than Joe? Won’t they think Joe’s opinion is not true and he’s accepting something wrong? In the grand scheme of things, no one really knows what is true and what’s not. That’s why everyone should have an open mind and be willing to accept more than what’s in their zone of comfort or belief. Our society has a bad habit of manipulating the human mind and forcing it to believe what’s popular. This has become a controversy all over the world. Descarte would not appreciate what society has done to many of its citizens because more people than not are obsessed with their own belief and aren’t willing to think outside of the box. Everyone needs to remember what Descarte talked about in this document and create a balance of what they currently believe in and what beliefs they would like to explore.