René Descartes - Meditation #1 - The Method of Doubt

definitely you have hands just have some [Music] these six papers or chapters written by rene descartes in latin originally in 1641 these are maybe the most famous most influential work of philosophy from the 17th and 18th centuries in europe okay so let me say something about the author renee descartes he was a french mathematician and philosopher his name is pronounced descartes and when you're talking about stuff having to do with him philosophers often use the word cartesian cartesian means similar to or relating to renee descartes this guy french guy wrote in latin he wrote six meditations these are six chapters he calls them meditations but they're just chapters of a philosophy book and in this video in this video lecture we're going to talk about the first one and then in subsequent lectures we're going to go through all six of them so if you're going to understand what happens in this first meditation in this first chapter then you're going to have to understand the distinction between beliefs that are probably true things that you believe that are probably true and things that you believe that are 100 guaranteed to be true definitely true let me start with some examples here's an example of a belief that i have something that i think is true and it's probably true i believe that the speed of light in a vacuum is 299 million meters per second okay that's something that i believe why do i believe that well i believe it because i read it on wikipedia this morning so it's probably true like some very trustworthy scientists they discovered that using some experiments good experiments and then wikipedia has some very good procedures in place for checking the accuracy of the information in their articles online right and some articles are less trustworthy than more articles like wikipedia has this whole thing where you know they have trouble with articles about people who are still alive human beings who are still alive they get abused a lot these articles and people write false things in them but this is about the speed of light so it's very unlikely that the information in this wikipedia article is false so my belief that the speed of light in a vacuum is 299 million meters per second that belief goes in the probably true category it's not guaranteed to be true because there could be a typo or maybe the scientists made a mistake scientists can make mistakes every claim that science makes seemingly goes in this category because it is possible for any scientifically based belief to be false although probably not so probably true beliefs those are the sort of things that go in this category what sort of things go in this category well we don't know i can't tell you that's because part of descartes whole project in the meditations is to figure out what goes over here that's what he's going to try to do indeed he's going to try to see if he can support all of the important things that he believes and demonstrate that they belong in this category he's going to try to prove for example that the existence of god he was a religious christian french guy in 1640 whatever right he's going to try to prove that the existence of god falls into this category and a whole bunch of other things ordinary things about his life like that he lives in france or whatever he wants to prove that that is in this category as well if he can so in order to figure out what goes in this category descartes is going to take all of his current beliefs and even if they fall into this category he's going to stop believing them he's going to as he puts it treat them as if they're definitely false and what you do with definitely false beliefs is you stop believing them so all the stuff in this category he's gonna stop believing them and he's gonna in that way wipe out all of his beliefs and then he's gonna slowly rebuild his system of beliefs he's only going to believe the things that he thinks he can prove for certain this is the word certain here right and this is the word uncertain he's only going to believe the things that he knows for certain and he's going to slowly build back up all of his beliefs believing new things only if he can support those new beliefs with you know guaranteed 100 fool-proof arguments that's the plan now this plan takes all six meditations in the first meditation which we're talking about today and which we you read for today in the first meditation he just wipes everything away that is he demonstrates that all of these things that he believes are only probably true and when he shows that they're only probably true that it's possible to doubt them he stops believing them that's what he does in meditation one is he wipes everything away he starts with a clean slate then in meditations two three four five and six he brings everything back demonstrating that all of these beliefs or almost all of them right are actually guaranteed to be true okay so i'm now going to read for you the two sentences early in meditation one where descartes explains that this is his plan the plan that i just explained to you he explains it in two sentences here they are ready reason now leads me to think that i should hold back my ascent from opinions which are not completely certain and indubitable just as carefully as i do from those which are patently false right so the idea in this sentence is that well what do you do with beliefs that are patently or obviously false you hold back your belief from them that is you don't believe in those things right if i told you that i wrote a unicorn here this morning you'd say well that's obviously false i'm not going to believe it well that's what he's going to do for anything that can be doubted right reason now leads me to think so this is what i should do if i want to be rational right i should hold back my ascent from opinions which are not completely certain and indubitable just as carefully as i do from those which are patently false so hold back my agreement or my belief in those claims that's what he's going to do and then he says so for the purpose of rejecting all my opinions it will be enough if i find in each of them at least one reason for doubt so for the purposes of you know figuring out what's definitely true and and for the purposes of wiping out all of the merely probably true beliefs that he has all he has to do is find one little sliver of doubt and that's enough if he finds that he's going to toss that belief out that's what's going to happen in the first meditation but notice there's a problem already which is that we've got a lot of beliefs like way too many to test each one how many beliefs do you have like a trillion a trillion trillion i mean you believe now that i told you and you trust me you believe that the speed of light in a vacuum is 299 million meters per second you believe that and you believe i don't know that north america includes multiple countries and you believe that um grass is green you believe lots and lots and lots of stuff and you can't go through each one of them and check oh is it possible to doubt that is there even a sliver of doubt is that certain that would take forever and so descartes comes up with a plan he has a method a way of wiping out all of these beliefs that won't take forever right the name of this method is the method of doubt here's the method i wrote it out consider big groups of beliefs and doubt all the beliefs in that group at once that's the plan so he's going to take whole swaths of beliefs and prove of all of them that it's possible that they are false all the beliefs in that big group and then once he's done that he's going to toss out that whole group okay well how's he going to identify the groups and toss them out well here's what he says and to do this i will not need to run through them all individually which would be an endless task when he says them all he means all of my beliefs right it would take forever it would be an endless task to go through all of my beliefs and see if i could doubt each one once the foundations of a building are undermined anything built on them collapses of its own accord so i will go straight to the basic principles on which all my former beliefs rested okay those two sentences that's where he explains the method of doubt so and that's it that's the only explanation of the method that we get is those two sentences now if i read those two sentences and you're thinking to yourself i don't really fully get it don't worry i'm just going to explain it to you right now here's what it is the method is to pick out groups of beliefs by the basic principles on which they are based how do we understand this whole basic principles bit i believe a whole bunch of stuff let's say because my grandmother told me those things and i'm using a basic principle something like this trust whatever my grandmother tells me that's a basic principle if i discover that my grandmother sometimes lies sometimes well then i've doubted this basic principle i've shown that even though my grandmother you know typically leads me towards the truth it's possible that she's been lying to me and so all of the things that i believe because my grandmother told me those things they all fall into this category of merely probably true and if they fall into this category then descartes is going to toss them and so i'm going to toss them in this example right and so by doubting this one basic principle i've doubted a whole bunch of beliefs like let's say a thousand or two thousand or ten thousand things that i believe because my grandmother told me those things that's the method of doubt so descartes is going to try to figure out what basic principles underlie all of his beliefs and then he's going to see if he can doubt the basic principles and he will be able to doubt them they won't be certain and then once he's done that he's going to stop believing all the things that are based on those basic principles and he's going to go through enough basic principles to get rid of all of his beliefs that's the plan for this meditation that's the method of doubt and in this quote these two sentences that i read about the method of doubt um he gives this metaphor with like a building and the foundation of the building here's what's going on let's say you've got a house and the house is made of sticks these are the sticks of the house okay there's the door i guess whatever okay that's your house it's made of sticks it's a crappy house you don't like it the roof leaks and you know the wind it's drafty whatever you don't like this house you want a new house a firmer house a sturdier house well what do you do first thing you got to do is you got to demolish your old house and then you're going to build a new house with like bricks or something better it would take too long to pluck off each stick individually so what you do is you go to the foundation the foundation is the bottom of the house you go to the bottom and you find the sticks that all the other sticks are resting on and if you just pull this one out well then a whole bunch of the other sticks are going to fall and then you find another one down here you pull that one out and then this side falls next thing you know you've done your first step you've demolished the house that's what descartes is doing except for he's doing it with his beliefs in meditation one he's finding the basic principles on which the other beliefs are based doubting those everything falls down he stops believing everything and then starting in meditation two he's gonna build everything back up again but on a firmer foundation that's the idea so far we've only talked about four sentences of this whole meditation right we got the big plan for all the meditations that was in those first two sentences that i read that appear in like the second paragraph or whatever we had those two sentences and then we had the two sentences explaining the method of doubt in the very next sentence descartes immediately starts to go through his basic principles he's not doing anything with principles about his grandmother that was just an example that i gave right he's gonna well he's gonna immediately introduce a principle and he's going to immediately undermine it in the next two sentences here's what he says whatever i have up till now accepted as most true i have acquired either from the senses or through the senses okay let's stop there all right that's the first basic principle that he's going to consider the idea is that he believes things because he discovers those things those facts putative facts he discovers them through his senses through a sense of sight and smell and taste and touch and hearing and whatever other senses there are that's the first principle the first principle is trust whatever my senses tell me okay in the very next sentence he doubts this principle here's what he says to doubt it but from time to time i have found that the senses deceive and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once the idea is that sometimes your senses get things wrong i see a spider on the wall and i jump back because i see it with my eyes but then it turns out that the spider wasn't really a spider it was just a smudge on the wall so my senses deceived me it seemed like there was a spider there but then on closer inspection it turns out it's not a spider the idea is that anything that descartes believes because he sees it or hears it or smells it or tastes it or touches it or anything like that well those things aren't guaranteed to be true they're just probably true the senses can get things wrong and so he's going to wipe out those beliefs what he then does in the next couple sentences is he actually pulls back he says that was too quick i don't want to get rid of everything that my senses tell me not all at once because some things that my senses tell me are more reliable than other things here's what he says yet although the senses occasionally deceive us with respect to objects which are very small or in the distance there are many other beliefs about which doubt is quite impossible even though they are derived from the senses for example that i am here sitting by the fire wearing a winter dressing gown holding this piece of paper in my hands and so on again how could it be denied that these hands or this whole body are mine what he's saying there is like look it's true that you know i shouldn't trust whatever my senses tell me he says like you know about small or distant things right so the spider in the example that i gave before the spider is a small thing and your senses can get things wrong you know about small things like spiders but my hands like i sense that i have hands right or descartes is like some rich french guy so he's in like a i don't even know if he was rich actually sorry forget that he was rich but he's some french guy and he's sitting in his winter dressing gown whatever that is right like the fact that you're wearing clothes that's not like a little spider something far away that you can be wrong about definitely you have hands just have some right definitely you are wearing clothes sitting by the fire or sitting in your house or whatever right that stuff like that stuff is not undermined those beliefs the beliefs about the fact that you have hands that sort of stuff that isn't undermined by the fact that your senses can deceive you right only your you know only the things that you believe about small or distant things so the first principle he sort of revises it he still doubted a lot of things he's allowed it doubted his beliefs about far away things or whatever right and he's doubted them based on the fact that well um senses can deceive did i spell deceive right i don't know no whatever anyway so we've got a principle it was a revised principle and now we've doubted it so we've wiped away descartes has wiped away all of his beliefs about you know small or distant things things that he's seen only from a distance but if he got up close to something or if something was large and he could see it clearly or smell it clearly without anything in the way or hear it without any distortion or i guess or whatever right then he thinks he can trust it right that's the second principle the next principle is that he can trust whatever his senses tell him about large and nearby things we've already eliminated all this all the beliefs that were based on this principle because we doubted this principle based on this and now we've got this principle so descartes is looking to see if there's any reason to think any sliver of doubt any reason to think that this principle might not be a good one on the basis of which to acquire beliefs trust whatever your senses tell you about large nearby things like the fact that you have hands well he does think that there's reason to doubt this basic principle and it happens only like three or four sentences later here's what he says how often asleep at night am i convinced of just such familiar events that i am here in my dressing gown sitting by the fire when in fact i am lying undressed in bed right the idea is that look we have dreams at night and it's possible to dream that you are sitting by the fire in your dressing gown when really you're not sitting by the fire and you're not in your dressing gown really you're in bed and you're you're naked undressed or maybe in your french pajamas or whatever i don't know okay the idea is that you know i could be dreaming can't trust our senses for sure we can't be sure that our senses are giving us guaranteed true beliefs about even large and nearby things because we could be dreaming and he even points out that we have no way of telling that we're dreaming while we're dreaming so we can't just check to see if we're dreaming and then on the basis of that you know if the test goes right then just believe all the stuff about large and nearby things here's what he says as i think about this more carefully i see plainly that there are never any sure signs by means of which being awake can be distinguished from being asleep there are never any sure signs there's nothing you can do while you're dreaming like pinch yourself or whatever that would prove that you're either dreaming or awake or whatever because here's the thing you could always just dream that you pinch yourself whatever test you might try to run to determine that you know oh i'm not dreaming and i can trust my senses or whatever you could just dream that you ran that test so the fact that it's possible to dream means that this basic principle is undermined and now descartes has doubted away all of the things he believes based on his senses like that he owns a dressing gown and lives in france all that stuff that's all gone oh i forgot some things things that i was gonna mention earlier in the video and i just remembered them now so i'm gonna say them now and maybe i'll edit the video so that this comes at the beginning or maybe not i don't know anyway um that quote that i just read that comes from page 1819 a t 19. let me just tell you about this these page numbers uh which i will occasionally be referring to right it stands for adam and tannery those were two french guys in like 1890 something i don't know they were the editors of a big long multi-multi-volume book in french of all of descartes writings okay so they wrote this book and the book had page numbers and modern scholars modern philosophers when they're talking about descartes they're all using different translations and different versions of descartes writing that were different publishings and all that sort of stuff in all these different languages and they need to know that they're on the same page so everyone uses the page numbering from this edition this adam and tannery these are two people i can't remember their first names whatever the one guy's name his last name is adam and the other one's last name is tannery right and so they say 1819. that means in the adam and tannery volume that was published in whatever year or it could have been a little later i think volumes were published over the course of like a decade or whatever anyway in that book it's on page 19 in that book and so all of the uh well all of the decent current translations of descartes work from latin all of those they'll note the 80 page numbers and so occasionally i will note the 80 page numbers notice something we've gone through a lot like a lot's happened already we're not done with meditation one yet but we got descartes plan for the whole all six meditations we got that then we got descartes method of doubt that he's going to use in the first meditation to doubt away all of his beliefs all right and then we got the id right and that was the idea that he's going to use basic principles undermine the basic principles or doubt them and that's going to allow him to doubt all the beliefs that that were based on those basic principles so we got the plan for all six meditations we got the plan for meditation one and then we've gotten most of the way through executing this plan we've already got two basic principles and the reasons to doubt those two basic principles all of this so far has happened in like eight sentences so the work is dense and occasionally when i'm teaching this material in a regular in-person classroom which is how most of my teaching occurs you know and i try to like make chit chat with the students in the first few minutes of class before everyone gets there everyone's coming into the room and i'll say how was the reading what did you think of the reading for today students will often say it was repetitive but it's not repetitive actually the text moves very fast things change in one sentence or two sentences he's giving us the plan for the whole meditations then he's done with that and he's already moved on to the next thing which is explaining the method that he's going to use in this first meditation so the pace is actually very quick things don't repeat they move on to the next thing but it seems like they're repetitive the reason that it seems like they're repetitive is that for example descartes will keep talking about deception over and over but he's and so it seems like well it's just the same stuff he says deception and deceiving it's all about deception and deceiving yes that's right it is all about deception and deceiving and the possibility that you're mistaken or whatever but he's saying importantly different things and this is true of not just of descartes but of all the philosophy that we're going to read in this course right very different things at very different points and so you're just going to have to read these texts with a with an incredible degree of focus because if you missed just one sentence we could have moved on to some very important next thing anyway that's just a side note we've now doubted we've got two principles on the board and we've doubted each one of them right so i'm building a sort of little chart over here right and this little chart on this side it has the principles and then over here it has the reasons to doubt those principles and thereby doubt the beliefs that are based on those principles okay so got the principles and the doubt at this point we've doubted away a lot we've doubted everything that you believe based on your senses right so we've doubted uh you know that you um i don't know are wearing clothes that you've ever worn clothes we're doubting that you have a family we're doubting that the that the continents exist we're doubting everything because all of that stuff you only believe those things because you've even either seen them or you've seen someone who told you about them i believe that the speed of light in a vacuum is 299 million meters per second yes i believe that but i believe it because i like listened to an audiobook or read the wikipedia entry and all of that requires my senses so we've doubted a lot we don't know that we have hands we don't know that we have clothes we don't know that the earth exists we don't know that the speed of light is 299 million meters per second what do we have left what are the beliefs that descartes hasn't yet doubted so far at this point a few paragraphs in to meditation one he then lists some stuff that he hasn't yet doubted here's the list the first thing that he thinks he hasn't yet doubted this happens by the way on 1819 he makes this point is that colors exist colors exist now he's not saying that any specific things have any specific colors he just thinks that you couldn't dream that there was some color that that didn't exist you could only dream uh of a color if there really was such a color he thinks okay so he thinks that the fact that some colors exist is not something that one you know well one only discovers because of one's senses and that and that dreaming could uh well could deceive him about then he thinks that he still knows that corporeal corporeal means coming from the corpse or a body right corporeal or material stuff is extended bodily stuff physical stuff like a human body or a table or a chair or a mountain or whatever that stuff is extended this is going to be a very important term in this course extended means stretched out in space located and distributed through space like you know this marker is extended it's like it extends from here to here like it's stretched out and then it extends from here to here that's its extension that's what descartes means by extension stretched out in space he's not saying that he knows about any specific physical stuff any specific bodies human bodies tables chairs or anything he's not even saying actually that any physical stuff exists it's just that if it does exist it takes up space right and he thinks that that's just because it's the definition that's the definition of corporeal or material stuff this all happens on 80 20 page 80 20 in the reading anyway so that's he thinks is true by definition and so he didn't learn it through his senses he also thinks that the truths of arithmetic and geometry those truths they are uh not yet called into doubt he thinks that we don't learn he's right about this by the way we don't learn arithmetic or geometric truths we don't demonstrate that they're true through the senses now this might seem weird to you like you might think look the way that i know or demonstrate uh or come to believe truths of arithmetic like you know one plus two equals three the way that you came to know that is through your senses like you listened in elementary school or whatever when the teacher told you that one plus two equal three and that's how you came to learn this fact so why why aren't arithmetic truths called into doubt by the fact that you could be dreaming maybe you were dreaming back when your teacher said this thing descartes thinks and he's right by the way although that's the way that we sort of learn about mathematical facts that's not the way that we support them that's not the way that we demonstrate that they're true we don't demonstrate that they're true through the senses this right here this is not the number three take a look it's not it's the numeral the the arabic numeral three the arabic numeral three which represents the number itself right the number three you've never seen the number three the number three isn't in space you can't find it in like your bedside drawer or whatever the number three if it exists at all whatever that means it doesn't exist in space this is a numeral this is a bunch of ink on a board here's another numeral this is called the roman numeral you may be familiar with these from the super bowl or whatever roman numeral three arabic numeral three the number three is a totally different thing when we figure out facts about the number three we figure those facts out not by you know smelling a numeral or whatever we figure these facts out by just defining what three is in our minds and then thinking very very clearly in a way that does not rely on the senses thinking very very clearly about the nature of the number three and the number of two and one and addition and whatever right so arithmetic and geometric truths the same is true for a triangle like this is not a triangle this is a drawing of a triangle triangles don't exist in the world because they are well triangles are supposed to be two-dimensional enclosed polygons or whatever but this isn't two-dimensional it's just a bunch of ink and the ink has depth to it it's this is not a triangle anyway the facts about triangles and the facts about numbers triangles and numbers those facts we discover them not through the senses or we demonstrate that they're true not through the senses but by by pure thought descartes claims so we've got all of these beliefs that still have not been doubted here's what descartes says next and yet firmly rooted in my mind is the long-standing opinion that there is an omnipotent god who made me the kind of creature that i am how do i know that he has not brought it about that there is no earth no sky no extended thing no shape no size no place while at the same time ensuring that all these things appear to me to exist just as they do now descartes points out that it is possible for a creature to trick him he thinks even about all of these things he doesn't actually go through these three as clearly as i would have liked but the thought is that if there was a creature powerful enough like god then that creature could trick descartes into thinking that colors exist even if colors don't exist or that that there's material stuff that is extended when really there is no material stuff and nothing is extended and and that sort of thing and and also descartes doesn't say this in that passage but he also thinks that god could trick him about arithmetic in geometry right even though he doesn't come to believe those things because of his senses he does come to believe them because he thinks about them and and a sufficiently powerful creature could plant in his mind some incorrect geometrical or mathematical thoughts descartes you know thinks well god god wouldn't deceive him but he realizes that it is at least coherent to imagine a creature that is as powerful as god but is not good and so here's what he says this is one of the most famous passages in the meditations here he goes 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 okay let me pause there actually the idea is that well we've got this lingering principle and that lingering principle is going to be doubted by the possibility that there is a malicious demon that is as powerful as god but not as good as god and that's trying to fool him so here's the remaining principle that all of his remaining beliefs are based on okay this is the last basic principle trust the truths of arithmetic geometry the general nature of corporeal objects the existence of shapes and colors and that sort of thing that's just this stuff right okay that's the lingering principle and he thinks he can doubt this principle too and the way that he doubts it is by considering the fact that he might be currently under the deception of some all-powerful malicious demon so now he's doubted everything he's even doubted this stuff because it's possible that he could be wrong about all of these things not because he came to these beliefs because of his senses but because he came to these beliefs because of something about his mind and that's all stuff that a malicious demon an all-powerful creature that was evil that's all stuff that that sort of creature could fool him about and there could be such a creature he doesn't think that there is such a creature he's operating under the assumption that there's such a creature he's assuming that there's such a creature and when you assume that you get rid of all these beliefs just like when you assume that you're dreaming you get rid of all the beliefs that are based on your senses like the belief that you're you know wearing your dressing gown by the fire or whatever i'll just read this last passage it's a sort of longer passage and i just read the first sentence but here goes 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 his energies in order to deceive me i shall think that the sky the air the earth colors shapes sounds and all external things are merely delusions of dreams which he has devised to ensnare my judgment i shall consider myself as not having hands or eyes or flesh or blood or senses but as falsely believing that i have all these things i shall stubbornly and firmly persist in this meditation and even if it is not in my power to know any truth i shall at least do what is in my power that is resolutely guard against assenting to any falsehoods so that the deceiver however powerful and cunning he may be will be unable to impose a impose on me in the slightest degree he's going to stop believing all of this stuff that's where meditation one ends he stops believing everything and so if there were a malicious demon at least this malicious demon wouldn't be tricking descartes into believing in the existence of things that don't exist we're at the end of meditation one and descartes has wiped out all of his beliefs this is everything he's got nothing left what's going to happen at the beginning of meditation 2 is that descartes is going to find one belief one claim that he thinks a malicious demon could not trick him about couldn't fool him about there's one thing that he thinks he knows has got to be 100 guaranteed certain has to be true there's going to be one thing at the beginning of meditation too and then from that one thing he's going to try to build up all of the beliefs that he has now just doubted away one last note before we end this video on meditation one notice that there are different basic principles and that they were doubted on the basis of different doubts right so like his belief in geometry and arithmetic he didn't undermine those beliefs because he could be dreaming no he undermined them because uh there could be a malicious demon and the beliefs that his senses are reliable sources of truths about large and nearby things that wasn't doubted based on the malicious demon or that census can deceive but that he could be dreaming so make sure you've got all this straight right which principles are the foundations of which beliefs and then which doubts undermine which principles get all this straight i'm definitely going to put some questions on the exam about that you

Channel: Jeffrey Kaplan

Views: 17,426

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Id: 3GaE0GmZ2OQ

Length: 40min 54sec (2454 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 25 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

I’ve used your other videos before ! I love them man.

[u/woke-hipster]

I liked the first one so much that I'm now watching #2!

You're charismatic and present the subject matter in a clear and concise way, your rhythm is near perfect, hats off, you've nailed the format. I'm middle aged and have followed at least 3 classes on Descartes, I think you do wonderful job of making the subject matter accessible to pretty much anyone, thanks for sharing!

My only other comment is that, when you say "he was right about this", it's makes me smile, I dunno exactly why but I grin from ear to ear every time :)

[u/JeffreyKaplan]

ABSTRACT: In this meditation, Descartes explains his plan for all six meditations, then explains how his method of doubt will allow him to temporarily cease to believe all the things that he cannot know for certain, and finally executes the first part of that plan. He goes through the basic principles which underly his beliefs, doubts those basic principles, and then wipes clean all of his previous beliefs. Most notably, Descartes discusses dream skepticism, or the possibility that he is dreaming, and malicious demon skepticism, or the possibility that he is being deceived by an evil genius or malicious demon.