January 10, 2010 – Jeff Bruns
Descartes – Meditations on First Philosophy
Reactions:
Appreciate the more, relaxed style to draw in the reader
Notice the “6 day” approach that was modeled after the 6 days of creation and possibly other philosophers
Juxtaposition of the philosophical vs. the theological
Current philosophy reasons God out of logic, math, science while Descartes’ goal was to prove the existence of God
Was Descartes really trying to prove the existence of God?
Introduction states that Descartes’ goal was to convince, but also to invite you into the the thinking process and understanding of the world. He was acknowledging God, yet adding a more rational thought to sciences, removing the fantastic and mythological. Rationalism expels mystery and mythical from science.
Why was Descartes proving that we existed?
He was removing everything else to get to the foundation and remove anything else that cannot be proven. The foundation is that he exists and the meditations build on each other.
Meditation 1 – Remove anything we can doubt: senses, sanity, physics, medicine. We can’t trust our senses because we cannot tell dreams from reality. He transitions to God when he says God would not deceive us by his very nature.
Meditation 2 – The fact that I doubt, proves that I exist. So, what am I? I am a thing that thinks.
The wax example shows we know what wax is because of our intellect, not because of our senses because the data that our senses experience can change. But, it is still wax. A person is not defined by our physical body (arms, legs, head), but by what we think. A person is defined by what we think.
The mind is more easily known than the body.
Mediation 3 – Types of thoughts: Innate, adventitious, or invented by me. Innate ideas are and have always been within us, fictitious or invented ideas come from our imagination, and Adventitious ideas come from experiences of the world. He argues that the idea of God is Innate and placed in us by God and he rejected the possibility that the idea of God is Invented or Adventitious.
The formal reality of anything it its own intrinsic reality, while the objective reality if an idea of an idea is a function of its representational content. (from book notes)
Meditation 4 – Is humanism creeping in with Descartes? The will is the part the makes the mistakes. Although the mind can understand the truth.
Conclusion:
What role does philosophy play in our everyday lives? It can lead us to be open minded and consider that there could be new information that you have not considered.
How does reading Descartes and learning this process of doubting help us when we evaluate anything? A class in logic would further refine this skill.
When considering imagination, there is a parallel to the end of the Chronicles of Narnia when the believers and dwarfs were in the shed. The believers could leave to enter heaven, but the dwarfs could not see heaven or the door.