1. Descartes' Mediatations on First Philosophy

welcome this is a history of modern philosophy my name's mark Thor's be in this series of videos we are conducting a survey of key philosophers from Descartes to Nietzsche pretty much all of the text were looking at you're available freely online but I am we are using this book right here classics of philosophy third edition which is edited by positive on from Oxford University Press if you'd like to have all the text just buy that book and you can follow along so welcome everyone it's great to have you this is our first video and so I want to begin our first video lecture here with our thematic question you'll see that throughout the next I guess probably 10 to 15 videos we are going to be looking at a variety of modern philosophers we'll be moving through them chronologically beginning with Descartes all the way up into contemporary modern period of Nate Frederick Nietzsche who dies in 1900 so that's sort of the range we're gonna be looking at in this course but with all of these philosophers we're gonna be sort of engaged in them give it the following thematic question really we're interested in this which is can a subjective epistemology provide the grounds for objective knowledge now let me see if I can explain what that question is and if you haven't taken a lot of philosophy previous to this video then certainly you may be a little bit lost it sounds like mumbo-jumbo the first thing we're going to introduce here you'll see is and really in today's video we'll see this distinction most prominently made distinction between the subjective on the one hand and the objective on the other right so right now as you're sitting watching this video right take a your the one hand experience in something that's outside of you right you can think of that thing outside of you the computer screen if you will as having an objective existence beyond just your own mental process but your perception of the computer right takes place in your mind right that means that it takes place as a subjective process now epistemology this is a term that comes from the Greek term the stem a which means knowledge I mean it's the type of knowledge here that's certain in an epistemology can be defined roughly we looked at this in previous videos is as your theory of knowledge or the analysis and the critique of how it is we think we come to know things and what our theories of knowledge are so you can ask here is when we're experienced in the world we have knowledge and if that knowledge is given as subjective is that enough for us to think that we know something outside of ourselves that is can't objectivity rest upon a subjective foundation this is a very difficult and a deep question and and if I haven't put it correctly or put it in such a way that it makes sense forgive me the poverty is on my side you'll see that as we look at each of these philosophers an especially Descartes we were going to look at in this video we will see that this distinction will become to become clear to us so that we could sort of ask this question but ultimately our my sort of concern or the theme that I've chosen in making these videos is for us to pursue the question of whether or not we can have objective knowledge if the foundation of knowledge begins with a subjective process so can a subjective epistemology provide the grounds necessary to have objective knowledge about things outside of ourselves that's we're gonna be taking a look at throughout the next series of videos though you'll see there will be talking about a lot of other things as well ok so we're starting off here and we're gonna be taking a look at in this video of probably the most important modern philosopher which is Rene Descartes he was a French philosopher who lived from 1596 to 1650 and he's frequently considered the father of modern philosophy so he's sort of given this title and you're gonna see why it's partially because the distinctions that get brought out in his meditations on First Philosophy and the problems especially the problem of the mind-body problem and the question of how we overcome skepticism these become such critical issues for flaw purrs after Descartes that his introduction of these problems into the arena philosophy really puts him as a foundation maker philosopher at least for the modern period so and so he's frequently called the father of our philosophy I think that's an acceptable title he's also he was also in his day of course a prominent mathematician in science I think thinker you've probably heard of the Cartesian coordinate system which is named after him but the Cartesian coordinate system was not exactly invented by him but it's named after him because he's one of the first mathematicians to articulate the principles for its creation or it's um its creation in use soda cards are pretty important about petition and of course he's also a very important scientific thinker not quite at the level of Galileo and later Newton and some of these scientific thinkers maybe not even Francis Bacon but a notable scientific thinker now he lived in an age of revolution I think that's sort of important here because we have to remember that when decartes alive everything is changing right the not only is that there's first and foremost there's a scientific revolution underway right Copernicus Galileo these are his contemporaries and it's also important remember that in his in his day and age it was absolutely essential as a scholar and academic to also in many ways integrate one's work into the theology of the day so of course during the age of the Scientific Revolution especially at the beginning there was a clash between the religious establishment and scientific ideas they're being postulated we're not going to go into those right now but it's important to notice that to know that Descartes is living in this time period so there's a sort of hostility and yet fervent excitement regarding scientific product progress cultural tensions this is not unknown in our own day for instance I'm thinking for instance the debate they regarding climate change there's there's also of course political revolutions but there's a religious revolution he's living in it he's living closed quite a bit post the Reformation but at this point it's important to recognize that in his life there's there's actually a huge war between the Protestants in the Catholic countries and ironically even though Descartes was actually a Catholic and he was French he actually fought on the other side of I believe he fought fought for the Netherland for the Netherlands and the product for the Protestant side and so he was famously apart he's sort of odd things some biographers have postulated that perhaps he was a spy there's absolutely no evidence to that but it's sort of interesting to think about but he lived he was an engineer while he was in the military and but so the Koch context of his life is set by the by a sort of religious tensions - and of course philosophical as well he did receive a Jesuit education from la fecha and that's an important thing because the Scientific Revolution would not have been possible had not the Jesuits the Jesuits referred to one of the orders of the Catholic Church known as the Society of Jesus but the Jesuit mission which really begins in earnest in the during the Renaissance and during the time of the Reformation the Jesuit education became a means for mass education so more and more people in Europe or receiving education because of the Jesuits instead of simply the noble class or the nobility Descartes is one of these people now it goes without saying that he is one of the few world upper-class people but he does receive a really solid Jesuit education in fact a classic education in terms of philosophy now for six I already mention from 1618 1620s an engineer in the army it was though after his his work in the army in fact after the majority of his work in mathematics that he eventually began writing and publishing philosophy these key philosophical works are the meditations in first philosophy on first philosophy which is what we're going to take a look at here as well as the discourse method now take car has a lot of other text beyond this and so I'm only putting two year I'm sure that people watching May or when you do further research will find that he's written actually quite a bit so in he was also a contemporary of Thomas Hobbes and actually Thomas Hobbes reviewed his tags the meditations on First Philosophy now take our eventually moved to Sweden to be the tutor of the princess there who required him this sort of funny tragically who required him to wake up at 5:00 a.m. every day to give her her lessons Descartes famously at least in his journals talks about they usually didn't like to get out of bed until after noon till around noontime or late in the morning so he suddenly he so he'd his letters he complains about having to wake up so early he caught pneumonia and died in Sweden in 1650 so he I guess he should have slept in so it's actually quite a loss so anyway that's a little bit about who date carnage there's of course a lot more this is really just think of this as a general introduction give you a sense of the context of who Descartes was what we're going to do now is really just turn immediately to the text itself and look at his meditations on First Philosophy now drawn my sort of diagrams of the meditations in this way now I should mention that I'm gonna try to cover all the the key elements that get in the key arguments that get raised in Descartes meditations but by no means is this video exhaustive there's more in Descartes than I'm able to cover here so watching this video is not sufficient or at least not comparable to actually reading the text the nice thing here is that on the one hand it's a very easy read on the other hand some of his arguments can be quite difficult but I don't think that's due to him I think it's because they're just typical topics now but I'm you can see I've drawn out the meditations now it's a by the way the meditations that response is very short text it doesn't really take that long it takes an afternoon for someone to sit and read through the whole thing I actually recommend that you you read it within the span of one week it read a different meditation each day and slowly really worked through the text and really absorb it so I should mention that the meditations in terms of these genres right most people today would think that philosophers would write simply in essays and actually that's true that many philosophers do writing as things but many philosophers are many philosophies have been rigid in very different literary genres so the genre that Descartes is actually using here is the prayer-book the genres the meditation genre which could be traced back to a catholic saint saint Loyola who wrote meditations of in fact the very style that des cartes right here is a meditation he calls it meditation it's something like a sort of prayer a prompt for someone to have a deep form of contemplation and so that's some one thing to recognize here is the the style so the style could throw a lot of students off I notice with their first read this text because Descartes will constantly go back and forth will he'll argue they say he'll remind himself of earlier conclusions he'll raise questions of doubt against himself and so he could be very easy for people to get lost in the text when they're accustomed to reading the more systematic essay now I will say that his text here is very systematic but it's quite logical so there is there is debates and there is certainly criticisms regarding date cards logic but I think it's certainly logical and systematic at least if from the from the get-go so it should be easy to understand it what I've tried to do is really simplify it now the meditation is composed of six meditations that for Descartes take place over six different days so you can see here's the first meditation we're going to look at the second that we got the third the fourth the fifth and the sixth and we're gonna see here that the meditations are sort of can be understood as sort of a working arc towards a question we'll see that really the first meditation begins with the question of the mind right and the certainty of the mind well meditation - meditations one and two but we're going to see that the questions of the night is whether or not we can move from the mind to the world from the mind to the world now before we sort of get going on this of course there's many science fiction films such as The Matrix and others which have sort of demonstrated this sort of deep epistemological question but let me just sort of throw a scenario for you and I want you to think about this I encourage you actually to pause the video and think about it I'm going to consider how this might be the case right we've all had dreams right we've all had dreams that felt real and we've all had experiences that were false right things that we thought we saw that later we realized we didn't see or we misunderstood what we saw so the question is well how much of what you know right now can you be absolutely certain is really being there as really existing for instance god forbid two days ago you were in a car accident and you're actually not watching this video and you're actually not sitting in front of a computer or on a phone or whatever you're watching the Sun you're actually in a hospital room and you are actually unconscious and you're in a coma and all of this is merely your minds way to keep you alive and through a sort of unconscious sort of dream scenario how could you prove to yourself if you were really here or whether or not you are in a hospital room under what conditions could you you be able to assert it to be certain and we'll see that this sort of question illustrates this mind world problem but I have a certain sort of immediate sense of what my mind is it is sort of immediate experience of what I called my mind because my mind is the thing which enables me to have experience but all of my experiences seem to be of this world that's outside of myself but since all of my experiences are mental or subjective then I can never categorically as it were stuck on the side of my mind how can I reach out beyond my perceptions to know for - what's out there is really there so for instance here's an orange cup of water that I have right I feel it right but how do I know that there's not a disease in my mind that's making my nerves experience something that's not really here how do I know that this isn't a hallucination for instance consider people who are schizophrenic who do in fact live with are they they live with living hallucinations so how can we be certain is there a way to do this and this is sort of the basic problem or the orientation for des cartes philosophy so let's sort of move into it and move through each of these this we're going to see this first meditation is really about the question of doubting ok so this is called meditation 1 and it begins with the question of what what exactly can be called into doubt what are we able to be what what can be doubted and what cannot be doubted right I would think here if everything can be doubted then it's difficult to know whether or not doubting itself would have any meaning right now notice that we've all believed falsehoods previously right people have told us things the later we discovered were lies right or for instance think about a good example is when I was a kid there was a dinosaur I believe it was called the brontosaurus right and then later on after years of us as children learning about the brontosaurus it was changed to a Brachiosaurus because they realized that they put the bones in the wrong order and if I have that wrong a different name of a dinosaur so please put it in the comments but think about that for a moment that means thing for I would say 20 or 30 years all the notches of the children in in the world but all of the scientists and paleontologists in the world all believe that this dinosaur existed when it did not exist right so and of course there's numerous other things that falses that have been believed both in our lives and we've seen other people believe it historically this has been this happens all the time so that means that there's lots of things we believe that are false ok it looks like what we really need to do is we have to start like we need to initiate the task of beginning again considering our old life and from our own perspective what whether or not there could be a search and foundation for things now if de cartes meditations he begins by saying I essentially arguing this and saying listen when I was young I learned all of these philosophies and I learned all this silence but a lot of it has turned out to be false consider he's living in an age of scientific revolution so the question is how could we be certain it's a perfectly acceptable and why his question to ask and he says he says now that I'm older I'm gonna take on this task and I'm gonna do so by actually good doubting all that could be doubted and I'm gonna and he employs an operation what they were gonna call radical doubt operation or a sceptical operation in order to investigate and see if there could be a philosophical certain basis an absolute basis upon which knowledge can be trusted right pon which we can we have we can know things without having to call them into doubt right he says reason now leads me to think that I should hold back my assent from the opinions which are not completely certain and indubitable and so here's what he's suggesting is there's been there's a lot of things in our lives we've believed that are gonna that are false that have been false and there's a lot of things we believe now that probably will turn out to be false considering for instance right now how much like you're taking this class and in college or in a university right they ask yourself how much of what is taught in the university will still be taught and let's say a thousand years right how much how many of our theories will still be taught and even and this is assuming there's a continual process of development it's highly unlikely that everything that we teach in the universities today is actually true right so this seems that we really should withdraw our asset and it hold back our opinions from anything that's not totally certain or indubitable right because we don't want to get caught if you will with our pants down or in which we believe things that turn out to be false so there's sort of sort of a seven steps that he takes in terms of developing this radical doubt number one he argues that our senses have deceived us now this certainly seems true I know that for instance would I've in the past I've looked across parking law and I thought I saw someone waving at me and I thought I knew who they were right I said hello Peter and as I got closer I realized that it wasn't Peter at all it was actually Sarah right or whatever and that's an example in which my senses have deceived me right of course the schizophrenic we already mentioned that example right the schizophrenic has whole conversations with people who may not really be there even though they have a sense or sensory experience of the person right so our senses can deceive us and they do deceive us by and large we don't really think that they they don't seem to in a practical matter to see this too much but there is room to doubt them because they do occasionally let us down and there's also the question he asked engages of well how do I know if I'm dreaming or awake we've already been mentioned that he actually will give a number of thought experiments that sounds oh I'm sorry that's thought experiments and we can give a whole bunch of these right the matrix that the film The Matrix is a great thought experiment for the question of whether or not are you really awake or are you really just dreaming this and of course all of these thought experiments raise the question of what exactly does it mean for something to be real in a substantial sense and that's very difficult for us because if we're experienced in it there seems to be no difference between its reality and the sensory experiences we haven't these things because when we don't sense them we don't think they're real right so if I tell you wouldn't you see the demand in the bunny suit sitting in the room with you you would say no I don't see it so you don't think that's real but the reason you don't think it's real is because you don't have a sensory experience problem now if we are dreaming for instance then how do we know whether our experiences of corporeal matter are true right so this cup it has an extension in space right it has matter outside of myself as it were because when I put it on the shelf it sits there on its own it seems to take up space I know because when I touch it by hand stops when I make contact so you can see that in order for something to have matter it has to have different parts right so we have a question here about the parts and the holes of things what exactly it means for something - what is our experience of matter really telling us is it telling us about the parts of the holes and what is the relationship between a part in the hole right because you can see where's the cap oriole existence seems to always involve the extension of things but you can see here is that I can get things wrong sort of the interesting example here is if you've ever seen the Flatiron Building in New York City now if you want after this video quickly google the Flatiron Building if this building that's triangular like this right but when you look at it from this angle it looks like a regular building look that from this thing it looks like a regular building so you look at it you think that the building extends this out but out here there's no space so you can see that your senses give you make you think that there's a whole building when there's really just a part of a building so the and that all occurs because of the extension of things being in space and it looks like in order for things to have extension of space they have to have composite being right they have to be put together that's to be put together and combined with other parts right but how do we know what those parts are how do we know how those parts get together it's clear that there's reason to doubt the things we it's there's reason to doubt our experience of coupe Oriole things and they're extensions in space he also says that we should doubt the sciences and we've made sure that already and considered you know take that thought experiment gave you earlier right consider how but how many of our scientific theories turned out to be false or incorrect or is partially true there's reason to doubt the sciences as well so it would be unwise if we want a certain foundation for knowledge to begin by looking at encyclopedia to see what other people think they know right we have to begin by going by beginning with what really is certain not just simply the probability of certainty he says we could even doubt mathematics which will see that day car's not gonna hold on to too long mathematics for him eventually becomes something quite pretty self-evident but he says maybe we're wrong right maybe there's an evil got an evil demon for instance that is his convinced me to think the wrong things maybe for instance a triangle really does have four sides now that would be really quite remarkable because it's not even imaginable for me but he says he even goes on to doubt mathematics next he even goes on to suspend his belief and is supremely good at all-powerful God now you when you read a car here you can tell he's very careful particularly because it is his readers are and because of the reception and tension between the religious and the scientific establishment but he does postulate you're a very secular operation at least in initially here which is namely that he's gonna suspend the notion that there's your supremely good and all-powerful God why because according to especially for him Christian and Catholic theology human beings MIT have been created by God right which means that that in the past you could say well what how why should we believe our senses the answer is because God made your sense I think God is a supremely good at all powerful God and God would make it said so you would experience falsehoods right and be deceived by truths right so one way it's critical for me it's critical to date cards philosophy er that you have to begin by suspending belief mister pretty good and all-powerful God by the way sorry there's a story out there true that's done but life it's believed ok now he says one of the things he knows is that even when you go ahead you doubt the science as you doubt that nice and you did doubt your belief in God he says habit compels us to really resent these doubtful ideas because we're so accustomed to saying them right have you ever had a conversation yeah pardon have you ever had a conversation with someone a couple times where they keep repeating themselves right it's out of hat we help but we not only have physical habits we have mental habits and we have habits of belief and some of the things that were accustomed to believe you that we go back right back to them so simply doing a sort of category list here and try to figure out what my senses as it deceive me there's reason to doubt them there's reason to doubt the sizes there's reason to doubt all of these branches of knowledge but you can see is that if we take them in isolation it becomes very difficult because we sort of our habits our beliefs sort of pop back up and we start to believe that without realizing it so what we need here is a more radical operation and this is what will be caught in this video at the operation of radical doubt and this is the notion he says that I have the quote he says I will suppose therefore that not God who is supremely good and the source of truth but rather some malicious demon of the utmost power and cunning has employed all of his energies in order to deceive me I shall think that the sky the air the earth colors shapes sounds all external things are merely delusions of dreams which he has devised to ensnare my judgment now well he'll learn and what we can say well let me keep going on here the first thing here is that what take on arrives that is what I want to call a sceptical procedure and that is that he's going to doubt all things that can be doubted and in order to sort of animate the the universality of this doubt he suggests that he's going to assume that there's an evil demon that has really just deceived him in all matters right complete deception and because and if we can sustain this sort of hypothetical then we can maintain our our rigor in finding something that's absolutely certain regardless of any possible Talent but writing this first meditation take are introduced the skeptical procedure to doubt all things that could be doubted he says that this is quote an arduous undertaking and that we are left amid the inextricable darkness of the problems I've now raised Descartes completes the first meditation really in a dark place he sort of says wow this is really depressing I'm paraphrasing sort of silly in a silly way but he says I lost everything here right if we don't all that could be doubted then that means I can doubt whether or not my mother's by really by the whether or not I really even have a body whether or not that I have a soul whether or not I'm really even here am I just for instance a computer elucidation all right I'm sorry compute a holographic projection like in Star Trek or something right if you doubt all things that were left in a sort of deep sense of ignorance and darkness so meditation would is the enabling of radical doubt in which we'd hollow out all of the potential believes that we tend to hold now this is a great beginning point for us in this course because as we look through this course we have to begin somewhere a point zero if you will we have to begin and our beginning has to start by us renouncing or at least suspending our previous judgments and believes this was very very important I mean it's really echoes to the heart of the philosophical attitude which is namely that you one is willing to engage in this sort of skepticism even if one discovers that what they believe is false because it's better to believe what's true even if it's painful right so this is meditation one serious meditation now meditation two takes place in the next day right the title of this meditation is the nature of the human mind and how it's better to know than the body we're gonna see that this meditation is really probably the one of the most important texts ever written in the history of philosophy and especially modern philosophy and it begins by saying listen Wow yes just meditation left me in a whirlpool right I just feel like I'm being sucked down into a vortex and see I have protects here and you can think of Alice falling into the looking-glass here right this radical doubt procedure right becomes for us what Descartes is done is he's turned the uncertainty into methodology right so our uncertainty is now becomes a means of method by which we're going to see if we can come to have knowledge that's certain now here's a quote from take cards tags he says I will suppose them to everything I see is spurious I'll believe my memory tells me lies and that none of the things that it reports ever happened I have no senses body shape extension movement and plays are all chimeras so what remains true perhaps just the one fact then nothing is certain so Descartes sort of begins here with sort of recognizing it dear God it may be the case that there is no knowledge that's actually possible at all right which means that for him his entire life's work and interest in mathematics is all over right it's serious stuff let alone his views on his belief in God and so forth right we're not even sure with take hearts first meditation whether or not we even have a body right maybe we're ghosts forgotten that they're dead who knows right so this pertinence creates really what I want to say as an existential problem it creates a philosophical problem regarding existence which is nearly this if we doubt the senses and fortuitously the body's existence then do we even exist and what exactly what does our existence consist in right and this is the famous line that Descartes finally emerges with is we'll wait a second he says I have to conclude though that that this proposition I am I exist is necessarily true whatever it's put forward by me or conceived in my mind this is the famous quote that people often miss quote as I think therefore I am right and what I did the term that he actually uses here is a latin term which is cogito ergo soon which means coquito is to cognize to think right Erico needs therefore soon means to be so literally what he's thinking here's we'll wait a second even though I don't know if my body exists I know that I'm doubting everything that I can doubt so I'm a doubter and since I'm doubting I'm certainly thinking which means that while I'm doubting while I'm thinking I have to exist in some rudimentary way now this doesn't mean that I know what I am while I'm existing or that I really have a clear view of what existence entails but it does mean that at the most basic minimal existential level that while I'm thinking I must needs be exist I must be a being so I am I exist has to always be true whenever it's put forward by one in the mind so it looks like here that it's not really possible to extend this radical doubt procedure to absolutely everything because you have to doubt all that can be doubted well while I'm doubting all the things that could be doubted I can't doubt that I'm doubting and namely it's not the doubt that matters it's the eye that matters namely there has to be an eye that's doing the doubting so there must be something that exists this is what we would say is the rise of subjectivity right I mentioned beginning this question of subject of epistemology subjectivity take card sort of first point here is to say that the beginning of knowledge lies not with our sense experience but it lies with the mind it lies in the subjective process of thinking itself Descartes will later be referred to as a rationalist philosopher because for him rationalism entails in metaphysical truths of existence right so we'll talk about the reason itself is it is such that it can actually have knowledge of the world Cheerilee in virtue of itself right so rationalism is we looked at in the earlier text want to be a philosophy video right we said that rash flows with ideas some things that can be known by reason alone and that would hold here as well right so what Descartes says here is that okay so I exist necessarily while I'm thinking because the thought exists while it's being thought right and so he says so well what am i he says well I say I'm a man right he says well what is a man and he sort of runs through a couple things first I says that he looks at the classic definition that comes from Aristotle which is that a man is a rational animal right it's the animal but that uses reason it has a soul well here Descartes says this doesn't hold for me because I don't even know if I have a body still right I know that thinking exists but I don't know if I have a body so I can't really know if I'm an animal and at this point I don't even really know much about reasoning or rationality so no I'm not a rational animal that's not what a man is at this point he says well in my just a body well clearly no because I don't even know if I have a body because I've doubted all things that could be doubted including the Katori extension of my own physical presence so that means that I am a thing that thinks though and the answer is yes so what am i the cancer is I'm abide or I am a thinking thing what does Descartes say he says but what then am i a thing that thinks what is that well it's a thing that doubts it understands it affirms denies wills it's unwilling it also imagine it has sensory perceptions and I think the list is not exactly exhaustion here there's a lot of things that it thinking seems to entail but thinking seems to be one of these things that we always have immediate direct access to while we think so this looks like that subjectivity must be the beginning point for thinking about thinking right and so and by the way I should mention here take our calls the mind or the thing that thinks this subjectivity that's encapsulated by the cookie - ergo suit formula for Descartes this is what he calls the Archimedean point right Archimedes family says it so you give me a stick long enough and give me a movable point I could move the earth and that's actually physically true the physics are beyond insane but it's actually possible but the problem is where is an immovable point and this is what Descartes thinks he finds philosophically at least by analogy is that the absolute certainty of your own subjective existence is absolutely certain and that is an immovable point it is take carts Archimedean point no Descartes then sort of realizes that ok we know that our minds are search and we know we have a mind but there's all these other parts of our minds and these thoughts that we have that you didn't take that seem to be also included in thinking particularly the sensory perceptions I have of things so he's gives what's famously known as the wax example and here he says ok imagine you've got a piece of wax right and imagine you put it over a flame and then it melts right so just imagine that stage and if you want you can go you can pause this video and go turn out a candle and see the whole process take place for you right and the question is okay obviously when the wax melts and it turns to the goo right we normally all recognize that the goo is the same piece of wax that was previously militant right then even though it's gone under Goddard alteration it still maintains its identity as being the same wax even though it's liquid rather than solid right now be careful here Descartes is doing a thought experiment this is the whole thing is a thought experiment because he has it he doesn't he doesn't think that wax is really real right because he's doubting all that can be doubted so you if you don't even know you have a your own body you can't know if there's a piece of wax in front of you but you do know that you have a subjective impression of wax right that is real that you have a thought that's occurring in your mind right so saying oh it's also true that when you make a judgment about those perceptions your mind also seems to include the proposition that it's the same piece of wax when it melts as when it's solid so way let's think about that for a moment so what changes in this transformation well when it goes from solid to be liquid and there's an alteration in our five senses right the taste of the wax changes the smell of the wax changes right you may have a fragrance while it's solid becomes liquid that fragrance will diminish its site it certainly looks different right instead of looking like a little cube that looks like a little puddle when you touch it it looks different before how tooth up now it's gooey and sticky right and in fact if you dumped it you'd hear something and and now if you've dumped the pool you hear a little splash so the sounds changed so think about that that means that all five of your senses change so the question is is it the same piece of wax or as Descartes pass but what is this wax which is perceived by the mind alone because it looks like that does the body right the sense organs or what give us knowledge of this but somehow our mind enables us to know that it's the same piece of wax it looks like there's something that the bud perceives there's so as it were qualitatively contributed character of the mind that is not captured nearly through sensation right in Descartes says you don't even consider all of these things with the mind is constantly doing for instance when you see someone walking with a code to happy you can't really see what they look like how do you not know that they're in otamatone how do you not know how do you know for sure that they're real right it looks like that you're the reality that's being provided to these sensory experiences is something that the mind is undergoing or completing or doing right Descartes gives this this quote but then if I look out the window and see man crossing the square as I just happened to have done I normally say that I see the men themselves just as I say I see the wax yet do I see any more than hats and coats which could conceal its Hobbit ons I judged that the men are real now notice here the judgment is a operation of the mind in other words judgment is a Faculty of the mind so it looks like that when we see for instance the the Manitou coat or a person far off or when we see the wax changing its alteration really what we are doing is we are our mind is providing a judgement about the things we're seeing and about their unity so that's very interesting and one of the things that it seems to you to demonstrate this is the way I understand a card is it demonstrates the priority of the bite over are it demonstrates the priority of the minds operations above the sensory elements of our experience right namely here is is that the mind it seems to take priority over the body over the senses and that Faculty of judgment is what's doing making us believe all these things the question is under what conditions can the Faculty of judgment be considered correct now the third meditation I'm gonna take just above in here and just pause the video briefly okay so this brings us to the third meditation which really is about the existence of God we're gonna we'll totally see that Descartes is still trying to make this movement from the mind to the world we've now discovered the mind and we've discovered the priority of the mind in terms of its role of making judgments about our perceptions right so that's really critical so we've learned a little bit about the mind but strictly speaking our skepticism or the radical doubt procedure it's still in effect which means that we still don't really know if we have a body even though we know we have percent we have these perceptions but we don't know if they're true or not right and this is this will see this - is that for take our truth consists in a representational system so it's a representational theory of truth namely and said when I make a claim when I say there's a cup that claim is true if there represents something that's really cool poriyal you in the world so the question of course is whether or not even though I have these perceptions the question is whether or not they have any representational validity now the general rule that Descartes says is that okay we've got a sort of letter stand here it looks like under what criteria can we be certain it looks like we can be certain when if we can if our reflections follow this general rule which is namely that whatever I perceive very clearly and distinctly is true okay so just to the same sense that my I am I exist formula was totally clear you know immediately obvious self-evident that was totally clear and totally distinct so much so that there's no other way to understand my existence right that definitely would be true if when I say I am I exist that has to be true so I I perceive that clearly indistinctly so what I need to do is extend that criteria to the other things that we're gonna be taking a look at to our other questions and problems it looks like that the strength of perception is what differentiates this criteria from my sense perception this is sort of the interesting point because Descartes actually says this right answer says it's this that this clear clearly a distinctly rule this seems to be a consequence of the strength of my perception of my I am I exist formula so that's interesting namely that looks like the way I the way that Descartes argues for the validity of this rule is in terms of perception sort of inner perception and so that's sort of interesting thing that perhaps someone could follow up on a paper later on now but this meditation begins our okay using this general rule let's see what we can find out about the mind right we know that the by baek's judgments but what else right and can we classify thought into distinct in different kinds and in fact a car goes on to do this he says for instance on the one head sometimes we have foster images right there ideas right sometimes our thoughts concern ourselves right in these other sort of more formal judgements these are all different types of thought right and what we can say is that none of the no idea in itself is false right it's not an idea that's actually false if the problem concerns our judgments about the ideas right so what someone makes an idea we fall into falsehood when we make a judgement that that idea represents something that's actually in the world what if it doesn't right imagine if I say if I have the idea of a dragon the idea of the dragon is not true or false but if I say there's a dragon sitting over there right that idea becomes subject to a judgment of truth or falsity because of the representational nature of things so it looks like judgments concerned the way in which our ideas could form to the world right it seems to be a sort of general supposition of is is that when we make a judgment our judgments if they're accurate they conform to something that's beyond the subjective horizon right so this raises the question where exactly do we get our ideas from what's the origin of our ideas now we have different ideas right and Descartes says it looks like there's three possible ways that you can get an idea the first is maybe you can give it a bait idea an innate idea would be an idea that's inborn you're born with and it's pre-programmed if you will right it's in dated for instance if you're familiar with the linguistics of Noam Chomsky at least his early theory of universal grammar he argues that the fundamental structure of grammar is innate innate so some people really do argue for innate ideas we'll see de car has a very particular thought here we talk about innate ideas so it's possible you ideas could be 1/8 it's also a possible of course that our ideas come from outside of us this is what he calls adventitious ideas so it ideas adventitious right think of the advent right if you're if you're Christian or knowing about the Christian tradition of avid as it refers to the idea of God revealing himself right so think this we have ideas that reveal themselves to us right for instance if you tell me that that you are angry with me that's an adventitious I don't get that idea unless you give it to me so that is some of our ideas could be a date some of them could come from outside of us or they could be adventitious and of course some of my merit is we could just invent right so if I write a short story and I David character gooseman vogner right well goose but vogner has been inventive it's an idea that I myself obeyed so the three possibilities they were there from us for the beginning we get them from outside of us or we ourselves create them right so this is the notion of where our possible ideas could come from now it's clear that we have ideas that are but that probably definitely conformed to the invented and the adventitious but what about the innate we're gonna see this is the key thing for him now one thing I thought worth bitching here is the cars discussion of the natural light right by the way I apologize I've turkey all this water my throat is killing me today it's hard for me to talk he gets scratchy as I talk so forgive my the constant of distraction Descartes the natural light right he says whatever is revealed to me by the natural light for example that from the fact I'm doubting too follows that existence so on cannot hit anyway be open to doubt this is because there cannot be the other faculty both as trustworthy as the natural light and also capable of showing me that such things are not true so it's sort of interesting here what exactly Descartes means what he talks about the natural light he seems to be mentioning to this idea that there seem to be principles of rationality that are given to us automatically in there they said that insofar as they're natural to us as reasoning creatures as creatures that think they're naturally a part of us and they seem to be the basis upon which these propositions like I am I exist are necessarily true whatever they're spoken so it looks like there's sort of some sort of fundamental purpose or some sort of fundamental to mention of rationality that he refers to here's the natural light it easy this even seems to refer to it as a faculty right so it's something that's with it so that's there's something right about that - right notice here that the log-dog contradiction that something cannot both be and not be at the same time in the same place and in say respect this is a principle that's at the very fundamentals of human reasoning right I can't be give you this lecture in documenting the lecture at the exact same time in the exact same way right because if I was so you could say I was both doing it and not doing it the same time that doesn't make any sense but notice here is that when you know or recognize the limit of sense itself you seem to be relying upon some sort of natural faculty some sort of natural light I mean I think in many ways this natural light that we see Descartes mention here is implemented of what we're gonna see throughout all of the modern philosophers at least especially up through early SMO STUV them and this is this emphasis the innate natural rationality of the world reason with the capital R so we're gonna see that play a large role and I want you to emphasize that let me zoom in here some reasons don't doing it right so here's we wanted to first off we're gonna distinguish then ideas as ideas versus ideas as things right because obviously you can have an ideas and ideas true right that it's really or false but ideas a thing is either true or false right so what it's the idea of a dragon versus the idea of a dragon being really here right here's the quote he gives us right pulled out Descartes says insofar as the ideas are simply modes of thought there is no recognizable inequality above them right appeared all comfort with me in the same fashion right so ideas his ideas they're all sort of the same right I've learned something in my body it's something I think but insofar as ideas represent different things it's clear that they differ quite widely right so we we we ask ourselves what our ideas might represent we suddenly realize there's a big difference between the idea of a dragon and the idea of vacuum cleaner right both of the bright ideas insofar as they're just ideas but they very very much in terms of their theory that's the terms of what kinds of things they are and this sort of prompts Descartes to articulate a key principle which is I'm going to read through these quotes and is we take a tree care ideas which represent substances contained within the more objective reality than the ideas which merely represent modes or accidents right so for instance when I look out and I see let's say I'm looking at this book here's the textbook right and I have an idea of the book in terms of my perception of it but I also have an idea of just books as books right but my idea that this particular Pope seems to because it's a substance my idea my head represents it as being a substance that substantial representation seems to carry with it a more objective reality right right comparison the bookends on your desk with the book in your imagination one of them has more objective reality even though they are both subjective thoughts so that means that there must be at least as much reality of the efficient and total cause as in the effect of the cause this is another really important point which is namely okay in order for something to be created it is reasonable all out of the natural light right that whatever causes something has as much objective reality as the thing it causes right or a thing which is caused by something has to be caused by solely which it has at least as much or more reality so for instance consider yourself your human being that was birthed but you have a mother or had a mother and your mother existed right and that in in a certain way her giving birth to you required that she have as much reality dead as you do now right so first it's no person can be born to an imaginary mother why because there must be at least as much reality of the efficient a total cause as in the effect of the cause right so Descartes suggest here that in order for a good idea to contain such and such objective reality it has to surely derive from some cause which contains at least as much formal reality as there is objective reality either the idea right okay so this is very very simple idea right is namely it were for something to manifest it has to be caused by something which has as much reality or has more reality right do this the same way right so that means we can ask ourselves you can see we're gonna link up this question of the origin of our ideas if we have a date ideas if there are ideas that we're born with that those ideas have to have a cause that has at least as much reality as those ideas and we're gonna see here these gonna say that well let's think here for a second about well what is the origin of our idea of God where do we get this notion of God from and this takes us oh okay so now I got this to get done right sorry about that okay so now we ask ourselves okay well what does the origin of an idea look like Descartes says well although one idea may perhaps originate from one another there cannot be an infinite regress right eventually how one has to reach the primary idea the cause of which there will be an archetype which contains formerly all the reality or the perfection which is present present will be objectively or representatively in that idea right think about it for a moment where did my idea of me coming from whatever cause that has to have cause from something else whatever caused that idea has to have come from something else it's so hard and so forth eventually you have to get to some sort of archetype that is the principle cause for all things right of course we call this idea of God so we have this idea of God and and the question of course though is is it really real right and we have to distinguish for Descartes distinguishes between formal falsity and material falsity right something is formally false if it's logically close for tinctoria doesn't make sense right something is materially false if it represents a dog thing as a thing right so if I say that the dragon is sitting by on my shoulder right here right that's materially false because there's not really there's not think I'd be right but it's not necessarily formally false because it's possible these are in principle right so the question there when we talk about God is I mean at the one hand we can ask what about God is formally false notion it doesn't seem like that would follow but the real question we ask if God exists is whether or not it's God is a conception that's materially false does our conception of God align with an objective reality that's representational II outside of our Styles now we have to define God what exactly do we need by God Descartes says that God can be defined as an infinite substance right something a subtle con is a substance that's infinite right which means that God is without end so we get these sorts of characteristic descriptions right God is a turtle God is immutable gods it depended supremely intelligent supremely powerful etc right so the question is okay we have this concept of God but am I the origin of that idea Ruhr either the concept is from myself it comes from outside of me or it's being poured well by the words of today make up the concept of God the answer is no I do not make them for the concept of God why because I find it so if God is an infinite substance then I cannot be the cause the cannot be the cause of God because I'm finite and that means that I lack the necessary sense of reality to make that concept because remember our principle right in order for something to cause another it has to have it at least as much objective reality if there's an infinite substance to the world I don't have as much reality I don't have the reality of the infinite substance so therefore I could not cause the idea of an infinite substance that's his notion here so he says I'm fighting of course the idea of God it doesn't come adventitious lee either it's certainly true that people will tell us about their concept of God right Descartes will say but obviously I have the concept of God is an infinite substance is not given to me through by sensory experience adventitious Li so that was gonna leave us really with the notion that God has to be an end date idea now and of course we wanted what if it regress if they regress what means that we have to search for an infinite origin so the idea of God is clear distinct a car actually says which this I find interesting you actually will see later on in philosophy especially we get to live Vincent Spinoza then this is probably not true or at least probably not conceptually accurate but here's what Descartes says he says the idea is forever utterly clear and distinct to remember it's clear distinct Allah the Faculty of judgment of the natural light he says for whatever I clearly a distinctly perceive as being really true and implied any perfection is wholly contained in it it doesn't matter that I do not grasp the incident or that there are countless additional attributes of God which I cannot in any way grasp and perhaps cannot even reach them I thought for it is in the nature of the incident not to be grasped by a fight I'd be like myself it's enough that I understand the incident now it's very interesting here Descartes things it is argument here is that we actually have a concept of the incident even though we're finite which means that for him the concept of the infinite is a positive conception so it's not negative right he's not saying that the if it is just the negation of it right it's the dog limiting of something he actually thinks that our concept of the infant is positive we recognize we sort of have this sense that the infinite extent in always at all directions right but that cannot have come to us but yet we have this clear and distinct idea of what the if it means that's his argument right I think there's strong point for criticism right there in fact right so that means that we have this idea that a perfect being and this be perfect being must require a perfect origin so how is that possible and take Carl ultimately gives what's known as the trademark argument here which is namely this that ultimately this idea that we have of God must have come to us through iterations and generations but that the concept is in vain that God has left the concept of himself as an infinite perfect being within our minds as an innate self recognized concept regardless of our experience that he's left to within us like a trademark right he's left it like a you know so it puts bated China on the bottom of the bowl or made-in-america or whatever right they leave their trademark in the same sense this notion of God requires objectively that there be an infinite being to create it that infinite being leaves leaves a bark of itself through this idea in ourselves so God is an innate idea and this means that God can't be a deceiver so there really is a God out there now there's God is if we don't know a lot of particulars about this god but we know that this God would be perfect and it gets perfect this God would not be a deceiver either right you could see here also this is a strong relationship here so let's notice the different variations of what's known as the cosmological arguments for God's existence namely that how did I get here well my parents got me how did my parents get here their parents but you can see if it goes on infinitely then there's no answer to the question of where these concepts come from there's no answer the question where I come from there has to be an end point kidding point a phyto point at that point is god right and so that means that ultimately at the at the final sequence at the origin eight origination there is where we finally get this concept of God okay that's meditation three so quickly just to sort of review here what we see where this through our hat we're sort of half way through the meditations party and I appreciate your patience with my voice so the first three meditations we looked at doubt we discovered the cogito and now we've realized that there's a sense of innate ideas so there's some ideas that we have no way of accounting for other than through an infinite creator so that leads us to this concept of God so the fourth meditation that sort of takes some pause and says wait a second can we really be certain or we still have this radical tile operation going on so this fourth meditation about truth and falsity how can we know it's true how can we know what's false and what is the source of error in judgment now first and foremost it's clear that God cannot be the source of error and why we make mistakes because God it cannot be a deceiver God's perfect and a perfect thing does it deceive all the imperfect thing deceives at least that would be take cards argue with it so that means I have a faculty of judgment that is capable of certainty right I have a thought just capable sturdy I know God's not deceiving me so that means I'm making mistakes right I've sowed up screwed things up because I believe lots of false things and my senses the senses make me think things that are true so here's what he's gonna say a couple things and this is really his theory on error error is not pure dication but rather a privation or a lack of sub knowledge which should somehow should be in me right which somehow should be a B so error is not just the negation it's not just just an absence of knowledge but error is a lack it's the sort of missing leak that I shouldn't have right so that's what an error is so looks like error has you could Kurt cause this looks like there's two ways in which I could have air one I could have error because of my knowledge right I just have a gaps right I just don't know for instance whether or not strings and quarks exists right I could just have gaps of my knowledge so I could lack knowledge it could be error the other possibility for error is well that there could current so it looks like error requires both of these at the same time a lack of dollars but also requires my will my will to say what I think I know this is report so error involves knowledge and it involves the will that take a look at this quote Descartes says the will simply consists in our ability to do or not to something but rather it consists simply the fact that where the intellect put something forward for affirmation or denial or for pursuit or avoidance our inclinations are such that we do not feel we're determined by external force right so that's his sort of discussion of what he means by the will right but it does look correct that the will involves what I know it involves by willingness to know right if you will will acknowledge number five error right occurs would my will seems to race ahead of my judgment this is really the sort of conclusion I'm sort of going through it quickly here you think about it this way now he thinks that I have a perfect Faculty of judgment given to me by God the natural light of through clear distinct ideas again I make errors I make errors but I don't have full dollars but I think I do or I don't care to know that I don't know and I will it anyway right so that means that Eric occurs and I believe false things when my will seeks to could seeks to make judgments about which I don't have the requisite knowledge to make the judgment right so if I will raise his head of my judgment there seems to be something right about that first it pause the video right now just think about a time in your life where you made a mistake right maybe you thought that your boyfriend said something and he said something different right and then you got angry right well why'd you get angry because you weren't exactly clear sure and yet you acted as if you were and looks like error is a consequence of will the free will is what gets us into trouble so that means that to avoid error what you have to do is you have to be rigorous in suspending your judgment unless you have clear and distinct ideas Descartes writes if however I simply refrain from making a judgment in cases where I do not perceive the truth will with sufficient clarity and distinctness then it's clear that I behave incorrectly an avoided error but in such cases that I either affirm or to die but I'm not using my free will correctly so basically error occurs between the interface between making judgments based on our knowledge and the will to make those judgments there's a great wisdom here even if you don't like date card which is namely this you should avoid making judgments quickly right you should make certain you're clear on things before you make judgments the chances are that you will make an error in your judgment if you race ahead of what you could know and sometimes the wisest course of action is simply to admit that you do not know for instance all of you who are watching this video are gonna face a time of your life when someone's gonna ask you something and you don't know the answer but you feel the need to give an answer take car would invite you not to give an answer right to admit that you don't know because otherwise you will make a mistake in judgment okay so take a take a notice here we've gone from subjectivity and doubt all the way to the certainty of our subjective existence to the notion of a date idea of God now we recognize that the mistakes we made our mistakes related to our Faculty of will not the Faculty of judgment right it's when we forced the judgment to make a decision before it's able to that we fall into error so the fifth and sixth meditations is were sort of when we make our way to the world and we're gonna find the sea take our argue or make argit's for why we can be certain that the experience we actually have of the world is of a real world right that there's a there there is an objective reality to that world now some things are clear distinct areas such as for instance of mathematics now I don't have to I by the fifth meditation you'd no longer have to judge the first is a triangle has three sides or you no longer have to doubt whether or not a triangle has three sides it's clear it is to stinked at this point so we take our test this in this section is he introduces another argument for God's existence this is notice the auto logical argument and it depends upon a distinction between essence and existence for most things of the world you can all walk for everything the world you could distinguish essence in existence so let's use my orange cup that I've been using throughout the video this orange cup has an essence namely that it's a cup an essence is it answer to the question of what something is so its essence is that is set because it is there's such a thing that is orange made of plastic it could hold liquid right that's its essence essence is it answers the question what it is an essence refers to the essential characteristics entity right so it's essential that this particular thing be words and PLAs would be called water etc the existence of something really is just a claim that something is that in essence is substantiated into objective reality so everything has essence in existence now what's fundamental in in classic philosophy this distinction essence in existence it goes all the way back to Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas talks about it Plato I mean it goes all the way back right of course different terms exactly but the distinctions the same essence has always been sort of logically prior because the essence of something persist indefinitely even if I take this cup and I'd melt it down and it disappears I'll still know what a cup is right so in essence the essence of something always seemed totally distinct from the existence of something because it's not essential that this cup exists right there always the state we're gonna see that when we talk about God take arts argue for the ontological argument is that God's essence implies or includes existence right take Cartwright's and the arguments longer than this notice or giving you the key moments here he says from the fact that I cannot think of a bout two with the valley it doesn't follow that about to devalue exist somewhere right so notice here that a valley and about it or formally related right you can't have the belt without a valley in vice versa right but just because they're conceptually is required that is just because their concepts are essentially related that doesn't mean that they exist reality right that doesn't mean that there really is about to do to valley somewhere right that they're mutually inseparable right but from the fact that I cannot think of God except as existing it follows that existence is inseparable from God and heads to really exists that your piety will wait a second what's the argument for God's existence exactly and we can think about like this God is an infinite substance if God is an infinite substance God is a perfect substance what is better is it which is more perfect a perfect substance that does not exist or a perfect substance that does exist the answer is that a perfect substance that does exist is more perfect than a non-existing perfect substance right so that means the existence Tonie perfection infinite substance perfection requires existence as an essential element as an essential attribute so elect abouten in the valley example that descartes mentions it looks like their concept of God as an infinite substance that's perfect essentially it necessarily requires existence otherwise it could not be the perfect infinite substance that it is why couldn't it be perfect because something is more perfect if it's real and why would have to be infinite well because if it didn't exist that there would be a limit to the substance so that means that an infinite substance has to exist right so heads it looks like our concept of existence is necessarily entailed and inseparable from our the essence of God so he's God necessarily exists this is known as the ideological argument and argument here is that the very concept of God depends upon his existence now notice that this argument is purely rational that is we don't even know still if there's a world or a bar we don't even know if we have bodies or if there's a world outside of us we could trust mathematics because it's clear distinct we know we have these innate ideas this subjective processes but here the argument is that even though we don't know anything about the world we know that this concept of God as an infinite perfect substance necessarily entails existence which means that that's perfectly clear and distinct it's this is perfectly clear distinct that means that we could make an affirmative judgment in this case and say that God really does exist now this brings us finally to the sixth meditation which essentially is going to argue a lot of important things but the core argument here is we'll guess what that means that the existence of material things are that there really is but there really are material things material things exist and that there is a real distinction between the bite of the bias so there's sort of two elements to this argument now for Descartes we begin with this distinction between imagination and period election now imagination two pains upon something distinct for me because imagination strictly speaking is a subjective thought that occurred that I experience but it is one in which it is guided as an image right hence the term imagined right it's an image those images depend upon something distinct from me right but I don't imagine myself what I think those ideas think if I say the word divert right a person who dives into a pool you have an image but that depends on something that's distinct from you in order to imagine it so the imagination is separate here for what he's going to refer to as pure intellection pure intellect which is reasoning that is purely dependent on it idea so it's purely something that begins from within this is totally critical because because of the radical doubt procedure we only have our subjective awareness as being certain right IMI exists is necessarily true whatever it's put forward by B right that is a but that is a mode of pure intellection right it's so are so is the ontological argument is these the traits of our argument for God's existence right it also the analysis of error and all the stuff we've looked at so far so we have to recognize there's a distinction here between the types of reasons we have and the types of reasons we could make now of course the question will be talked about whether or not the body is real this depends upon the police that seem to originate from sensation so right now as I'm talking to you I could see by hands and I could hear by voice and I could I could feel the fan that's blowing on me right now and I have these sensations and out of these sensations arise a lunch of different beliefs that adorably would agree to right now number one the ideas that are perceived by the sins have a certain spot date in vivacity right it's really true that for instance if someone runs over here and slaps me in the face right I can't control that it's sort of spontaneous it just sort of happens it's vivacious and vivacity means here the notion that my experience is from sensation somehow seem more real that there's something to them qualitatively as distinct for my perception so if I just imagine someone slaps me in the face and so it really does slap me in the face the experiences will be different and the difference there can consist in the vivacity of the experience right it's the sort of the qualitative texture of substantial texture of an imminent experience number two the use of the senses actually seems to come before the use of reason so even though Descartes has argued that reason and the mind is philosophically the starting point here for knowledge we have to recognize that in terms of the order of our actual experience the census seemed to come before reason I seem to experience the world before I actually have the ability to think about it I mean even if I ever average everyday experience a lot of times I don't think about these and I first have an antecedent sensation so the use of the senses do seem to come before the use of reason number three there's also the qualitative aspect that my body seems to be unlike all other bodies like this body this body the computer you all of the other material bodies up surround seem to be very different from my body I seem to be tied to my body that its body this is a belief that arises out of my sensation but it seems like it's there's a good reason to believe these so what are the consequences well the first consequences should be that never would I should doubt every idea from sensation why because God is not a deceiver right a half-wit did be a passive faculty to receive sensation it has to be the case right there's something in me that allows me to receive inputs from the world right and to turn those into sensations so when I touch something hot there must be a passive faculty that enables me to recognize sensation I also seem to have an active faculty that's capable of producing these ideas of sensation my apologies for the spelling error though right I have to have also happen to be an active faculty that's capable of producing these ideas so there's about the passive and active faculty and it looks like this faculty is in the substance of my body hey why do I think this well because if you cut off my arm I could no longer feel things right if you burn my skin I could no longer feel if you poke out my eyes I could no longer see it looks like these passive and active faculties of sensation reside within the body so I have this belief that I have a body right so the question though is that or the next consequence here is that it looks like a portal things really do exist external to my perception first and foremost because God is not a deceiver I have a strongly inclinations to good ideas arise from Coryell objects right so when I see a bus cubby TV I jump out of the way strong inclination and when I clearly distinctly preceded sensation I have a strong lineage to believe that really exists right so I jump out of the way of a movie bus I don't pause it you know go through a Cartesian thought experiment about whether or not it's really real right think how absurd that is imagine if you know you know you were waiting for a train it's somewhat jumped on the tracks you said jump off the tracks the train is coming and they looked up to you they said well how do we know if the Train is really real right well we would eventually classify that person is killed by insanity right that person wasn't thinking clearly right so we do have these strong inclinations despite these sort of philosophical problems we've looked at now to answer those of course that God is no deceiver and that means we had to reject this down to this reject this radical doubt procedure and we can actually believe that things were experiencing are really real that there really is an objective world beyond our subjective experience now but here because of de cartes procedure because of his epistemology and because of his methodology we're left with what we call a dualism a dualism is the notion of a bifurcation of reality right the reality is ultimately composed of two different things and it looks like there's a distinction in the qualities or the orders of reality of the one and I have a body and the body is this kind of mechanism that I experience right there rationally could be searched because of what I know about God right it also has its limited sort of kind of reasons to believe it because of its spontaneity in vivacity but I also know that I have a bite right and des cartes gonna clearly distinguish these as always both separate yet somehow United so the body is something that's extended in space the mind is unexpended right think about it how big is a thought right I know how big a body is and how big a head is but I don't know how big a thought is exactly or how big is the will I don't know what that really even means notice that thinking does it have spaciality it's not in space even for those of you who say we'll wait a second professor Thor's bee doesn't the braids have Bureau chemical impulses that aren't those spatially organized well wait a second what you're describing there is a body at least on the order of the analysis here that might braid it what I know about the brain comes from sensations I have of it what I know about the bind does it come from sensation I know about the by because of cogito ergo su and because of my imminent awareness of the subjective process itself but that order level of certainty at least for Descartes is qualitatively distinct so this piece that the senses indicate external objects of Harman benefit and then the body sort of recognizes these things but the mind makes the judgments and does the sort of thinking and this for Descartes as a Catholic philosopher is well suited to his theological impulses already because here we have a sort of distinction between the soul of the body he doesn't use this term soul exactly but it's a similar distinction God's no deceiver and this means that we can actually reject radical doubt now let me go back here so this is the how Descartes really concludes and there's more to des cartes meditations but I've gone on for quite a long time here and so I want to sort of give you guys a breath but I want to sort of return here and say okay so take a look here well we've seen here is that Descartes begins with the bud and he tries to make an argument a bridge to the world well we're gonna see is that in many ways this whole problematic sets the stage for all of the philosophers to come and in many ways what we're gonna see is that most of the philosophers agree with Descartes at the beginning but that most of them are gonna show arguments for why we can't quite make it to the world and this provides the first sort of element the first puzzle for our courses discussion on whether or not it's possible to have an objective certainty from a subjective foundation and we'll see that bar philosophers are not convinced but I take this is sort of take cards arguments the meditations are from first philosophy okay we go from down so the cogut owed to God to truth an error to God's existence again and finally with Descartes we conclude with dualism so this has been our first lecture for the history of modern philosophy and an analysis or a summarization and discussion of Descartes meditations on First Philosophy thank you guys very much for watching I look forward to seeing you guys online next time for our next lecture in the history of modern philosophy thank you very much

Channel: Mark Thorsby

Views: 5,782

Rating: 4.909091 out of 5

Keywords: Philosophy, Descartes, Epsietmology, Cogito Ergo Sum, Modern Philosophy, God's existence

Id: Azp1BK7cGaM

Length: 87min 9sec (5229 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 05 2017