Considering that Rene believed that human mind has no accurate way of defining whether the outside reality truly exists or not, he concentrated on the mind itself as a thing connected with real existence, thus strictly tying thinking and living.
To compare this with one of your questions, it seemed to Descartes that thinking does require an existant thinking entity, and thus, unlike the visions percieved by senses, may really tell of existence of something.
Of course, I only talk about his original conception. The fun part connected with philosophical questions revolves around trying to answer or interpret them in various ways.
|