Revision:Descartes’ Mediations
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First Meditation – About the Things We May Doubt
Aims of his Meditations
- “To begin afresh from the foundations and… establish something firm and constant in the sciences.” (p1)
- Descartes believes that he has accepted many false opinions about the world as true. Thus, he hopes to rebuild his beliefs system using a form of foundationalism.
- To do this, he believes he must reject all knowledge that is open to doubt and rationally rebuild his belief system(s), based on something certain and indubitable, from the foundations.
Step 1: Descartes’ Method of Doubt
- “The slightest ground for doubt… will suffice for me to reject all of them [beliefs]” (p1)
- “The destruction of the foundations necessarily brings down… the edifice.” (p1)
- Descartes establishes global philosophical doubt using his ‘three waves’ of doubt; systematically calling more and more ‘certain’ knowledge into doubt until, he claims, he has established that he knows nothing.
- Illusion – the barely perceptible
- Our senses sometimes deceive us; therefore they should never be trusted.
- E.g. Square or circle black tower / bent sticks
- But, would be mad to claim all sense perception doubtable (next wave)
- Dreaming – basic perceptions/ some worldly beliefs
- Had dreams which are indistinguishable from reality
- Could be dreaming right now
- Yet, dreams can only be drawn from reality – e.g. a painting or siren (leads to next wave)
- Evil Demon – our most basic and universal beliefs
- Deductive sciences => contain something indubitable (maths)
Inductive (composite) science => doubtful/ uncertain (physics)
- BUT what if evil demon deceives us, systematically tricking us in even most basic? E.g. deductive science
- E.g. 2 + 3 ≠ 5 if demon willed it so.
Critical Analysis of Method
Strengths
- Consists of three waves – strengthening his form of scepticism
- Upheld throughout meditations – consistently sceptical (to an extent)
- Allows discovery of cogito – some progress is made through his scepticism
Weaknesses
- Doubt requires certainty
- Wittgenstein – falsity comes from comparison with certainty.
- If always deceived how could I have a concept of certainty?
- We only reject beliefs after comparison with something more certain
- Doubt requires background (of certainty), not obliteration of all possible ones
- This is why we know the ‘bent stick’ is not really bent
- Dreams/ sense perceptions doubted by comparison
- Knowledge ≠ undoubtable
- That the Earth is flat was once undoubtable.
- That something can be doubted does not make it dubious
- Psychological and epistemological doubt differ:
- Indubitable/ doubt are psychological states (like his ‘clear/distinct perceptions’!)
- Truth/ knowledge is epistemological
- Can we move between them freely? Does indubitable = true? We can (psychologically) doubt what is true. “It will rain but I don’t believe it will”
- Descartes is never ‘fully’ sceptical
- No exploration of the possibility of logic!!/ memory being doubtful
- Impossibility of global scepticism (see doubt requires certainty)
- Use of language – language presupposes the outside world
- Descartes ‘sets bar too high’ – redefining knowledge (away from the above) such that he can only ever discover an isolated self
Second Meditation – Of the Nature of the Human Mind
Step 2: The First Certainty – Cogito
- “I am, I exist” (p103)
- “Archimedes… asked for only one point which was fixed and assured” (p102)
- Descartes ‘discovers’ that he exists from the very fact he doubts
- “I am, I exist” must be true (indubitable) every time he expresses it. The fact that he thinks cannot be doubted.
- Descartes believes he can now build a knowledge system, with this as his foundation
Critical Analysis of Cogito
Strengths
- Allows furthering of his foundationalism
- Maintained his scepticism
- Even if it does not establish the nature of ‘I’, that is not necessary at this stage
Weaknesses
- Tautology
- If the argument is taken syllogistically (above) then the argument is a simple tautology (if not then the main premise is missing and nothing logically constrains us to hold his view)
- The verb ‘to think’ contains the idea of an ‘I’ committing the action
- Use of first person
- Descartes has already assumed the outcome – where’s his scepticism?
- Method of Doubt
- Scepticism should be taken further
- Descartes never doubts his memory/ logic
- Why could an evil demon not deceive about ‘whatever thinks exists’?
- Use of language
- has already supposed that the world exists
- Cannot infer ‘I’ – only that ‘there are thoughts now’
Step 3: The Nature of Mind and Body
- “I am… a thing which thinks”
- His essences consists in his thinking e.g. doubt, perceive, will, feel.
- As ‘thinking’ is the only property he cannot conceive himself without, his essence must consist in that
- A thinking thing must, therefore, be a mental substance.
- His mind is obviously not nothing, and it is not a body therefore it must be different to corporeal things. (a soul?)
Descartes’ Wax Example
- Descartes thinks it strange that he understands what corporeal nature is better than that of his mind, he uses this example to investigate
- Wax is capable of changing its properties, I.E. smell/ consistency, but we know it is the same wax. Thus known independently of sensations
- Perhaps it is imagination? No – cannot imagine its infinite forms
- Must be known by intuition of our mind
- The outcomes of this are:
- The mind is primary – before than the world. Otherwise could not understand the world
- Knowledge of world = rational (sense data vs. sense perception)
- Distinction of mind/ body
- Mind is better known than the world
Weaknesses
- Seperability
- Descartes suggests that if the concepts of two things are separable conceptually they must be capable of existing independently ontologically.
- BUT, just because conceptually independent doesn’t mean ontologically
- Water and H2O conceptually independent, ontologically dependent. Wife/Husband conceptually dependent but ontologically independent.
- Thus imagining existence without body ≠ could exist without body, we just may not be aware of their dependence on one another.
- Modern science shows brain can affect mind
- Imagination
- Imagination as a guide to reality!?
- Can conceive selves without body, not imagine. (must imagine something vaguely invisible hanging about in SPACE). See above
- Action/ actionee
- Blurs what a thing is and what it does
- Negative definition
- Tells us what mind isn’t, but not what it is.
- Wax example outcomes
- Adds nothing to our understanding of what we are
- Really have understanding of what wax ‘is’? Take away the ‘incidents’ which allow wax known, what are we having understanding of? Sense data/ sense perception distinction = troublesome.
- Could all knowledge of world be rational? What about need for investigation?
Third Meditation – Of God; That He Exists
Step 4: Clear and Distinct Perceptions
- “something clearly and distinctly perceived cannot be false”
- In order for something to be known, it must be clearly and distinctly perceived.
- Because if clearly distinctly perceived could turn out to be false, it would not be enough to convince him
Weaknesses
- Actuality
- It is possible to have a C/D perception that turned out to be false
- Circularity
- Conclusion depends on premise + visa versa
Step 5: The Existence of God and Causal Principle
- “What is more perfect… cannot arise from what is less perfect”
- Even C/D perceptions could be undermined by a God. Thus, must know if exists/ deceives.
- This leads to trademark argument:
- OBJECTIVE REALITY – reality of ideas in the mind (what it represents)
- FORMAL REALITY – the reality something has by existing => infinite (god), finite (object), mode (quality)
- ‘By the natural light’, the effect of something cannot be more perfect (contain more reality) than its cause. CAUSAL REALITY PRINCIPLE
- God is the only thing with enough formal reality to cause an idea of God in our minds
- He must exist
Strengths
- Causal principle seems true
Weaknesses
- Distinction between ideas and things
- ‘effect may not be greater than the cause’, Descartes doesn’t prove for ideas – only for physical.
- i.e. just because can’t make something more intelligent than me doesn’t mean can’t conceive it.
- Idea of infinite objective reality
- Can be obtained by negation of finite objective reality (string of infinite length)
- Refutation of causal principle by science
- I.E. Physics – anti-mater/ matter; suggests universe mass = 0
- Idea of things having more reality?
- Descartes’ responses
- Descartes raises many objections himself, but only responds by reaffirming the causal principle
- Suspends scepticism on ‘natural light’ and not sceptical about memory
Fifth Meditation – God; that He Exists
Step 5.1: The Ontological Argument
- “I find in myself an infinity of ideas … which… posses their own true and immutable natures”
- “Existence can no more be separated from the essence of God… than the idea of a mountain can be separated from the idea of a valley”
- The ontological argument goes as follows:
- Ideas have attributes which (by C/D perception) are essential to their nature and cannot be separated from them e.g. triangles/ mountains
- This is true whether the object of an idea exists or not
- God is perfect and thus his existence must, by C/D, be contained in his essence (we can only conceive of him this way)
- Therefore, God exists. (a priori)
Strengths
- Bypasses his scepticism by being a priori
- Is true whether he thinks it or not, as it is not dependent on outside world
Weaknesses
- Category mistake – Kant
- ‘Existence’ is not an attribute
- Saying my cat is ‘large, black, and grumpy’ is not changed by adding ‘exists’ to the end of the description
- Existence cannot be perfected, you either have it or you don’t
- If something is non-existence it simply has no properties/perfection, it doesn’t lack them (have them to a lesser degree).
- Perfect ‘everything’ would have to exist
- i.e. perfect heffalump would have to exist
- (But, to say perfect everything exists = absurd
- Therefore, existence has nothing to do with perfectness)
- Even if claimed God as ‘supremely perfect’, example still shows existence has nothing to do with perfectness.
- Argument results in tautology
- God without existence is a logical contradiction
- That which is logically contradictory cannot exist
- God without existence cannot exist
- Cartesian Circle
- How do I know God exists?
- C/D perception that he does
- How do I know C/D perceptions = true?
- Because God exists
- How do I know he exists?
- Descartes has no right to suspend method of doubt on C/D perception in order to prove that god exists
- C/D perceptions of triangle compared to those of God
- People cannot meaningful disagree about triangle’s essence – but can about God!
Comment
These notes are aimed at people studying for AQA A2 Philosophy Personal Identity.
written by eraze on TSR Forums.
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