MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Location: file:///C:/8C4ADD13/descartes.htm Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/html; charset="utf-8"

Descartes

Mon= day, February 11, 2008

10:= 40 AM

  1. Influences on Descartes
    1. The Geometric or Deductive Approach
      1.  the sour= ce of his philosophy's shape.
      2. Find absolutely certa= in axioms.  From there, deduce (absolutely) other truths.
    1. The "mechanical" view of nature
      1. Nature is like a vast machine, organized.
    1. The significance of religious language and thought = as found in theism'
      1. Religion is meaningful to him.
      2. He would like to beli= eve in God, and seeks for a proof of it.
      3. Precisely wants to av= oid religious bias, tries to be neutral in himself.
    1. Lecturer:   Would like to reconcile the two; have a God and mechanical world at once.
  2. Descartes Dilemma
    1. Because I am human, I want absolute certainty.  But also because I am human, I am fallible.
    2. So how do I know I am = not starting at a place I am mistaken?
    3. So I must find a place= where I cannot be wrong, with an infallible set of premises from which to deduce.  But how?
    4. Where does one find a universal truth, or are skeptics right, and that the best you can do = is have a good guess?
    5. So here's the main que= stion: How can a finite being have absolute certainty.
  3. Descartes' Method of Do= ubt:
    1. Deliberate (v. ordinary doubt)-  Start out doubting everything he= can possibly doubt.
    2. "Universal"-=   Possibly doubt.  Not everything, but most things.  Doubt everything you can<= /span>.
    3. Economical-  Something that allows you to dou= bt things in large chunks (don't do something stupid like list out the beliefs and start crossing them out).
      1. The dreaming device:  "In dreams, I have often been deceived."  While you're dreaming, you don't necessarily know that you're dreaming.  When you open up your eyes, listen, when you touch.  You could be wrong.  The dreaming device rids the se= nses from being 'fact'.
      2. The evil demon devices:  There could be an= evil guy lying to you, deceiving you all the time.  Your memories could be lying.  So experience cannot be trusted= , for now.  Even mathematical tru= ths can be doubted.
      3. What does this leave?=   He can't doubt that he's doubti= ng, now.  If he doubts that he's doubting, then he's really doubting.  If he's thinking,   Move on to the first certainty.
    1. And so, he casts almost all of his beliefs into dou= bt to be tested, though they may be proven right later.  What he cannot doubt, must be a Certainty.
  4. The First Certainty: The Cogito Doctrine (formulations).
    1. Version one: "I think therefore I am."
      1. A thinker can't say he doesn't exist, cannot doubt= he is doubting.  Not deduction= or induction- it's an undeniable truth (existentially inconsistent to do).  And if one doubts, one thinks.  And the one thinki= ng must now know he exists, but he's thinking.
    1. Version two: "I  cannot be mistaken about the ideas I do have" (incorrigibility doctrine).
      1. You can't tell me I'm not having an idea.  You can't tell me I'm not think= ing, though my thoughts may be incorrect.  If you think you have an idea, you have an idea.
    1. Version three: "I am a thinking thing" (substance).
      1.  What am = I?  Descartes' conclusion:  I am a thinking thing.  Introduces the idea of 'thingho= od'.
      2. Lecturer's problem wi= th this:  The oddities of what= a 'thing' is.  Says Descartes' sneaking the substance Doctrine into the Cogito Doctrine.
    1. Problems with this to solve after this Certainty (t= o be solved later):
      1.  Solipsis= m:
        1.  (v1) Do= ctrine that I am the only person in the universe.  Silly.
        2. Epistemological Soli= psism: I can only know my own state of mind.  Anything else can be doubted.  This is the one we're interested in, and must get rid of.  Otherwise, we don't know if the reality we see is real or 'knowable'.
      1. He needs to/wants to prove solipsism isn't right (bring the physical world out of his universal doubt).
      2. A thinking thing is a= thing that thinks.  A thing that = thinks is one that must also be one able to doubt, deny, refuse, imagine, sense.  These must be true = as the fact that he must exist, he reasons.  It is the same I who imagines, and the same I who senses.  There is a trans-temporal ident= ity (something that's above time).
  5. The Second Certainty: T= he Substance Doctrine (formulations)
    1. (This is his attempt to bring the physical world ou= t of his universal doubt)
    2. The wax example.
      1. Let's look at the beliefs that are most generally = held to be existing.
      2. Looks at wax.  Retains some of the scent from = the flowers it was taken from.  Makes a sound, lists attributes of this wax.
      3. Brings wax to the fire.  All of its obvious attributes change.  'Flavor= ', colour, shape,  size, state, temperature.
      4. Does the same wax remain?  All the ideas of w= hat this was are different now.  I must confess it does exist still.  What is there in the wax that made it wax?  The idea of the  wax remains.  The wax was never the attribute= s, but was instead, a body that manifested itself in some ways, but now, in other ways.
      5. So what am I?  He's using this to say that tho= ugh he changes, he is still the same person today that he was yesterday, despite changes in his attributes.  A substance is something that can change attributes, but rema= in the same thing.  So there i= s a substance of 'him'.
    1. (From Aristotle) A substance is that which can admit contrary attributes through time while remaining numerically one and = the same.  A substance (primary)= is the subject of predication, but can never be predicated.
    2. Everything there is, is either a substance or an attribute of a substance.
      1. (If there are attributes of a mind, there must be a mind that goes with it.)
  6. The Third Certainty: The Causal Doctrine or Principle of Sufficient Reason.
    1. Every change/effect (like an idea) in a substance (= like his head) has a cause (or reason).  Even if there's the evil demon, then he must be that cause.
    2. There is never any more objective reality (ideas) in the effect than there is formal reality (substance) in the cause.
      1. (the formal reality at this point is only, for certain, the mind)
      2. There is a suf= ficient reason for change.
    1. The more perfect cannot be derived from the less perfect.
      1. I am not perfect.
  7. The Third Meditation (Cartesian) Proof for God (skeletal):
    1. I have an idea of perfection. (The theist definitio= n of perfection)
      1. Omnipotent, omniscient, all good, all present.  In some sense, he is the creato= r.  Can't die, can't come into bein= g.
    1. The causal doctrine.
      1. This means he has an idea of this substance (entit= y?).
      2. All my ideas must have causes.  My idea must have = come from a cause that is more formally real than my idea.  So where is the cause?
    1. Hence, God exists, and he must be the most 'real' thing.
    2. Poking at it: Causal Doctrine (internal).
      1. It's nearly impossible that you're here.  What comes into existence?
      2. You can doubt the Pri= nciple of Sufficient Reason.  Why = does there need to be a sufficient reason for thinking of the idea of God?  Creativity, chance.  Novel ideas.  The more perfect doesn't need t= o come from the less perfect.
      3. We came from more 'primitive' things.  Evolut= ion?
    1. Poking at it: (external).
      1. How can an all-perfect being create an imperfect world?  (Book of Job).
      2. Descartes himself: Why would God make someone as imperfect as himself?
        1. Will outstrips reason. (Fourth Meditation)=
      1. "Logic of Perfection".
    1. Problem of including freedom in this universe (as by lecturer)
      1. If I am free to do x, then not-x is possible.
      2. If God knows everythi= ng, he knows what I will do next (x).
      3. If God knows I will d= o x, then not-x is not possible.
      4. Therefore: Either God= does not know everything or I am not free.
      5. Understand:
        1. This does not suggest coercion, but a logical determinism.
        2. Doubtful that the so= lution to evil in this universe is freedom.
        3. Calvinism?  (Predestination)
  8. Fourth Meditation (Why = evil?)
    1. Will outstrips reason- it's free will's fault, mayb= e.
    2. Why would a perfect be= ing make me imperfect (in things like knowledge of the past, or of the future)?
  9. Fifth Meditation (a tak= e on Anselm's Ontological Proof of God)
    1. Not really stealing, just assuming reader's'll know it's Anselm.
    2. Just in case we're dou= bting his supposed indubitable proof.
    1. If I have an idea of the greatest conceivable being (God), that being must exist, since it does not, then the idea does n= ot exist.
    2. I have an idea of the greatest conceivable being.
    3. Hence God exists.
      1. Why should God exist because of this?  I have ideas of unicorns, etc.<= span style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'>  They don't exist.
      2. What is 'greatest conceivable being', then?
      3. I can think of God of existing or not existing.  = If you subtract existence from the greatest possible being, then it is not = the greatest possible being.
      4. Kant's criticism-  existence is not a predicate (n= ot a property, but a thing).
  10. The Proof For the Physi= cal (Corporeal, external) World
    1. I have an idea of an external world which does not = seem to be effected or affected through my own mind.
    2. The definition of the physical world- there are things that are have extension, location, movability
      1. Primary (the above, mathematically describable)  v. secondary qualities (sounds, tastes, etc)
    1. If there is no physical world then I am nearly alwa= ys mistaken (in thinking it exists).
    2. If I am nearly always mistaken, then God is a deceiver.
    3. A perfect being (God) = is not (cannot be?) a deceiver.
    4. Therefore, there is a physical world.
  11. Descartes' Mind-Body Du= alism: Interactionism
    1. Absolute distinction between mind and matter.
    2. Primary attributes are things like location, volume, mass- things that can be measured absolutely
    3. Secondary attributes of matter are the things we get from the senses. (You can't quantify the 'redness' of something- they wouldn't exist without a mind).
    4. So we have mind, and m= atter which causes the mind to experience things.
      1. Mind's essential property is to think
      2. Matter's is to exists= in space.
    1. Not only can matter work on mind, but mind can work= on matter.  This is will, like = moving your hand.  Toys with the id= ea of directly altering the mind, but doesn't go anywhere with it.
    2. Says the share no esse= ntial characteristics,  (except th= at they may both exist in time, though he doesn't delve further into that). <= /span>
    3. Thinks that the mind i= s not part of the matter's world (you can't say 'here, catch my mind').
  12. The Problem of Interact= ion (not necessarily Dualism)
    1. How do these two separate things interact?  Where do they hook up?  Where does this interaction happ= en?
      1. Answer by Descartes: ...the pineal gland.
  13. Some Alternatives:
    1. To Dualism
      1.  Materialism-  The mind is only the brain and = the central nervous system (lecturer- throwing the baby with bathwater).  Radical way of= getting rid of the interactionism problem.
      2. Idealism- (Lect. &quo= t;More interesting radical alternative", Barkley )  Once you introduce God and Mind, that's all you need.  God i= s the one putting the ideas in  my mind.  Gets rid of the prob= lem of interaction by getting rid of matter, than a mind.  (Problem of other minds)=
      3. Psychophysical parallelism-  Descartes was= right: there is a material and mental world, except that they never shall meet.  What seems like inte= raction is just that these two different substances acting roughly in parall= el.
      4. (Dual Aspect Theory)<= /span>
        1. Aristotle- every individual thing is form (textur= e, shape, etc) and matter.  T= here are also different kinds of matter and different forms.  What Aristotle says that Mind = is the form of a Body (that form being thought, rationality).
        2. Streisand- Mind and = matter are two aspects of the same thing.
    1. Descartes' basically attributes much of the attribu= tes of soul to mind.  He doesn't= say outright or claim to have proven immortality (he believes it, but doe= sn't think he's proven it).

     

 

Created with Microsoft Office OneNote 2007
One place for all your notes and information