Philosophy Notes

Descartes

• The father of modern philosophy
• 1641-philosophy was modern
• Represented a revolution in thinking
• Born march 31, 1596
• French city of Tours
• November 10th, 1619

• Meditated beside a stove/inside a stove

• Published meditations in 1641
• He believed each person should

• Imagination
• Understanding
• Relaxing the mind

Descartes Meditation One

• About the things we may doubt
• Considerable value in the titles that Descartes gives to six of the meditations
• Autobiographical text

• Written entirely in the first person singular

• I think therefore I am
• From Principle 1

• “Insofar as it is possible, everything should be doubted once in a lifetime by whoever is searching for the truth”

• From principle 2

• “Things which are doubtful should be considered as if they were false”

• Philosophy need to be built on a very solid foundation just as you would construct a building
• The overall aim

• To assess reason (how?)
• By means of reason (why?)
• In order to obtain some general rule of evidence

• True or false
• Think of a basket of apples, we should turn the basket over and dump all apples out. We need to examine the basket that the apples were in.

• Methodic or systematic doubt

• Over turning common sense realism or naïve realism

• Belief that all knowledge comes from or through the senses
• Things are exactly as they appear to be and they appear to be exactly the way they are

• Real Doubts

• Doubts we actually have
• “sometimes” or “occasionally”

• Metaphysical doubts

• Doubts that could happen
• “Let us assume…” or “what if” or “I will suppose that..”
• Let’s suppose just for the sake of argument, that

• Sometimes my senses deceive me

• External conditions are not ideal

• When things are

• Far away
• Very small
• Lighting is poor

• If they are ideal, I cannot doubt certain things

• Lunatic Hypothesis

• Internal conditions are not ideal
• A lunatic cannot trust the veracity of his senses

• Dream Hypothesis

• Descartes dream?
• As a man I am sometimes prone to dream
• Dreaming and being awake are alike

• Principle #4

• Why can we doubt observable things
• Let’s just suppose that I am asleep and dreaming this
• Simple and universal things

• True whether I am awake or dreaming
• Such simple and universal things seem to be true of all things

• Colour (What colour)
• body
• extension
• Shape (What shape)
• Size (How big)
• Quantity (How many)
• Location (Where is it)
• Time (when did it take place)

• Two kinds of science

• Physics
• Astronomy
• Medicine/complex

• Geometry
• Arithmetic
• Principle 5

• Source of his beings
• Why we can doubt even mathematical demonstrations
• Let’s just bracket God [God]
• God is just a fable or a fiction

• Principle 6

• That we have a free will which enables us to withhold our assent from doubtful things and thereby to avoid error

• To balance the scale

• Former questions decrease
• Methodic doubts increased