Philosophy 101D

Descartes takes the stance that humans cannot be deceived in the fact that they exist. He says that, “I am, I exist” is true. He claims this is true because one cannot be deceived in the act of thinking. If there was an evil genius out there somewhere in the vast expanse of the universe, on this point he could not fool you. Because you have the ability to think, you cannot doubt that you exist. Descartes uses this method of thinking to show the difference between humans and animals. He says that animals are rather like biological robots. They act on their instincts but they have no intellect beyond that. They are not able to realize they exist because there is no recognition of the self.

However, this puts Descartes in a rather interesting position, although he does not address it. The position is this: what of people who do not have the complete use of their intellect for some reason or another, and are unable to comprehend the statement, “I think. Therefore, I am.” If we were to follow the train of thought of Descartes, the people who cannot make that statement are not people. They may be people in form, but other than that they are biological robots, quite the same as animals.

This is completely unacceptable. Descartes’ line of thinking should not put people on different levels. A human being is a human being is a human being, regardless of their mental facilities. Descartes may address this inadequacy in his Meditations later on, but at this point his argument could very well be used to support eugenics. While there does not seem to be a way around this, perhaps Descartes would be better off recognizing that intellect does not make one exist. Humans with mental difficulties are still exist as human beings even though they cannot recognize themselves. Animals exist, and if their senses are deceived or there is an evil genius out there fooling them, they are not troubled by it. Why is there a need to define reality? Is it so irrational to think that if we are in some cosmic daydream, that it is a rather nice daydream and that we should enjoy it until the daydreamer snaps back to their reality?

I find that Descartes’ belief in God and distrust of the senses are inconsistent and conflicting.  In his first meditation Descartes proclaims there is a god.  “There exists a God who can do anything, and by whom I, such as I am, have been created” (15).  However, this statement comes after Descartes doubt of the senses, which is inconsistent with his belief that a perfect god created him such as he is.  Ifhe were to believe in a god that created a world for man to understand, and senses with which to understand it, it seems illogical to completely distrust the only tools he’s been given.  Although Descartes feels that  steadfast concepts within the mind are the only way to realizing the truth of everything.  But thinking we can only find truth by first abandoning our senses is foolish, because how are we to learn anything, or become intellectual people without learning to interact, or read, or reason.  As infants we have no skills, but we learn them through other people who teach us to use our senses in conjunction with our minds.  Essentially, our minds wouldn’t exist without our senses teaching it to work. 

Furthermore, at the end of the second meditiation Descartes goes ever further and states that bodies are percieved “by the intellect alone.”  While this statement is the opposite of the aforementioned argument, it uses the same logic.  Without one there would not exist another.  This shows the interdependency between the two, and whichever one decides is truly in charge doesn’t matter.  Descartes is foolish to turn from his experiences and senses to find truth because he doesn’t trust them.  His mind, so influenced by his senses, has an equal a chance at being tainted and his strategy is moot. 

Descartes starts by saying he has long wanted to “demolish” his opinions that he believes to be false. In this meditation he has finally stopped putting this demolition aside and has started on a seemingly long hard process, taking his beliefs of what is and isn’t fact and his own opinions on them and trying to forget he ever believed them. He is not doing this for all his opinions because he doesn’t feel like he can accomplish such an overwhelming feat but instead he is only hoping to reject opinions that he believes are not “completely certain and indubitable”. He then goes on to explain that everything he has always perceived as true was from the senses or through the senses, which by all means can sometimes be deceiving. He then says “it is a mark of prudence to never place our complete trust into those who have deceived us even once. Descartes no longer believes that he should trust himself or his senses because they have deceived him in the past, and undoubtedly do so in the future. The mere fact that your senses can be deceived makes Descartes question his entire being. From his head to his toes. He starts to question if any of it is in fact real and if so what makes it real. But I am confused by what he says about the insane, he asks “on what grounds could one deny that these hands and this entire body are mine” then adding that unless he was insane. Is he calling himself insane? I don’t understand if he himself is believing he is losing a hold on reality. He then goes on to compare his dreams while asleep to what goes on inside the head of an insane man when he is awake. Then brings up the point that in a dream he can do ordinary things and feel like he is actually doing them but in fact he is lying in bed. He then states that he does not see any definitive signs to prove whether or not he is sleeping or awake, bringing this up he starts to feel dizzy causing his senses to be deceived momentarily into the feeling of being asleep. Descartes meditation one opens the door to a thought of a fake reality, that like many other things are senses deceive us into believe things are there when they are really not.

Descartes is trying to gain understanding of what we can hold true in the world in his meditations. In his first meditation, Descartes attempts to tear down his preconceived notions of the world. Descartes says that he has to “raze everything to the ground and being again from the original foundations” (p. 59). To do this, Descartes wants to attack everything that he had just take for granted as being true. He says that to do this he does not have to attack every singe thing in his life, just the basis on which everything rests. To Descartes, proving the foundation is in question will cause the whole premise will fall.

Descartes first questions his very own senses. He says that we cannot “place our complete trust in those who have deceived us even once” (p. 60). He says that people think that it is easy to say that they know what they are seeing is true. He continues that it is easy to say that he was “sitting here next to the fire, wearing my winter dressing gown…” (p. 60). He offers up the example of a very lifelike dream as evidence that even something that most would argue to be a truth such as this can still be deceiving. Descartes says that sleep can “persuade me of such ordinary things… when in fact I am lying undressed in bed!” (p. 60) This causes Descartes to reason that because the senses can fool you in such a way, he can see “plainly that there are no definitive signs by which to distinguish being awake from being asleep” (p. 60).

Descartes still offers that there are some things that he knows to be true. He says that “for whether I am awake or asleep, two plus three make five, and a square does not have more than four sides” (p. 61). To account for these things, Descartes proposes the idea of the ‘Evil Genius.’ This genius, Descartes says, “has directed his entire effort at deceiving me” (p. 62). This allows Descartes to come to the conclusion that he really knows nothing, and thus must develop his truths of the world from the ground up since he has achieved his goal to “raze everything to the ground.”

Descartes: Meditation I
STARTING OFF

• Things that I believed when I was younger turned out not to be true.
• To establish anything “firm and lasting in the sciences”, I have to discard everything I thought I knew and start off with a clean slate
• I put off doing it before because I figured I should wait for the right time in my life before starting anything that huge.
• I’m going into solitude now so I can do it.

• Not all of my opinions are false, but I need to treat all of them with doubt.
• It would take too long to think about each and every one of my opinions, so instead I’ll look at the foundations that my opinions are built on.

SENSES

• Things I thought were true were received through the senses, but senses sometimes trick us, so we shouldn’t fully trust them.

• Senses sometimes deceive us on the little things, but surely some things we perceive are indisputable.
• I sense that I’m sitting in my robe in front of the fire. I’d be crazy to think otherwise.

DREAMS

• Wait… I could just be dreaming that I’m sitting in front of the fire.
• It doesn’t feel like I’m asleep, but then again whenever I’m dreaming I think I’m awake.
• There is no way to tell the difference between being awake and dreaming.

• Let’s pretend that I’m dreaming and none of this is really happening.
• I feel my self moving my head and hands, but maybe I don’t even have hands.
• However, the things we see in dreams are images of things we see in real life. So if I dreamt about having hands, I must have hands.
• The imagination combines things we see in real life. (Even though unicorns don’t exist, horses and horns do, so the mind is able to put the two images together to create a new animal.)
• So, even though my head and hands could be imaginary, you’ve got to admit that certain universal things are true, like shape, quantity, size, etc.
• So, things like physics, medicine, and astronomy, which rely on composites aren’t necessarily true.
• But, things that deal with simple things, like math and geometry can’t be doubted. 1+1=2 is true whether you’re dreaming or not.

HOW DOES GOD FIT IN?

• I’ve always believed that there’s an all-powerful God.
• How do I know that nothing I see really exists, but He makes it so that I see it all anyway?
• Other people have made mistakes about what’s true and what’s not. Maybe I’m deceived too.
• Hey, God wouldn’t deceive me! He’s supposed to be good.

• Some people might say God doesn’t exist (or isn’t that powerful) rather than believing that everything is uncertain
• They think I either came into existence by fate, chance, etc.
• If I were deceived or mistaken in some way, I wouldn’t be perfect. These people feel that the less perfect I am, the less powerful my creator is. (If the creator were all-powerful, I’d be perfect.)
• I, uh… really don’t know how to respond to that. But I admit that everything I believed to be true can be doubted.

EVIL GENIUS

• It’s going to be hard to keep doubting all of my old opinions. I’ve believed in them for a long time. It’s a habit now.
• I should now deceive myself and pretend that all of these opinions about reality are definitely false, until I get out of the habit of automatically agreeing with them.

• Here’s a good method that will help me look at my opinions differently. Let’s pretend that there’s an all-powerful evil genius out there whose only goal is to trick me into believing that everything I perceive truly exists.

• From now on, I’m going to think of everything (colors, shapes, objects, sounds, etc.) as just one big hoax or a dream. I won’t even think of myself as having a body.
• This is a hard thing to do. I’m too used to thinking a certain way about the world.

 Descartes has skeptical views that make me think if we can never be certain, how can we argue we know anything? Descartes tried to rebuild a foundation of truth from nothing, but it seems to me the only certain truth he found was that there is no certainty.  He even questions if he has no senses or body, does he even actually exist? But if he is able to think and be deceived by evil then he must exist, at least in some way. He never doubts that he is thinking, but seems to doubt everything else. I find it strange that you can doubt everything in the world. The sun rises every morning. I don’t doubt that. Time is always passing. I don’t doubt that either. Some things are forever constant. 

Descartes says, “But what then am I? A thinking thing. And what is that? Something that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, refuses, and also sense and has mental images.” If Descartes does not doubt that he is thinking, did he doubt that other people were thinking as well? Not everyone thinks the same way. Some people may be more intellectual while others may think more creatively and so on. I wonder if Descartes would doubt their existents if their thinking was more based on senses like perception of the outside world. If Descartes is a “thing that thinks”, then I guess everyone else would fall into that same category.

Also, Descartes doesn’t doubt that he is set off track by an evil genius, but does he believe that there is a God that sets us on track and creates our thoughts? Because if he does not even have enough faith to believe that things in the world exist, how can he have enough faith to believe in a higher power, something that has even less amount of proof? If our mind is disconnected from the world, could it possibly be connected to something else? Something more real or powerful?

I think Descartes was too smart for his own good. Or maybe crazy.

In Descartes attempt to destroy everything that he believes so as to come to a new understanding about the world, he begins by stating: “I will attack straightaway those principles which supported everything I once believed” (14). In doing so he breaks the very foundation of all of his life experiences and therefore, as he had anticipated, introduces doubt into every aspect of his life. However, Descartes plan is not entirely executed, or at least it is not documented; after attacking each of his beliefs, he still believes that there is a god, or higher power, as is evident when he references god: “perhaps God has not willed that I be deceived in this way, for he is said to be supremely good” (15-16). Descartes has already “raze[d] everything to the ground and begin again from the original foundations” (13) yet this notion of god is still present in his logic. Not only does he still have a belief in god, but also, he believes in the idea of fate, or providence, as is evident in the portion of the quotation: “God has not willed”. This quotation not only affirms his belief in “God” but also the idea that He is supremely powerful and has already determined the path of each man.

After Descartes has destroyed his beliefs, he still asserts the presence of a god: “there is fixed in my mind a certain opinion of long standing, namely that there exists a God who is able to do anything and by whom I, such as I am, have been created” (15). Again, this quotation exemplifies his deep rooted belief in God and it also contradicts his original goal to destroy his beliefs “which supported everything I once believed”. If he used to believe in God, as is evident by the use of “long standing”, then that belief should have been attacked along with the rest of his opinions when he did his original annihilation of his belief system. However, this is not the case. Descartes continues to reference god: “Is there not some God, or by whatever name I might call him, who instills these very thoughts in me?” (17). He again demonstrates his belief in fate and the ever presence and knowledge of god, along with the fact that he may interfere or plan portions of Descartes, along with all other mortals, lives.

Descartes belief in god is the antithesis of all of his other assertions. The only ones he knows for sure to be true are that he is “a thinking thing” (19) and that “I exist” (23). Shortly after these statements, he states that “I have returned on my own to where I wanted to be” (23). This statement implies a sense of free will, or what one may like to believe is free will, which is in accordance with Descartes main beliefs, or those things that he asserts. However, this contradicts his implication of fate, that God has or has not “willed” something for each individual. He states later that he “did decide later on that I must doubt these things [related to math], but that was only because it occurred to me that some God could perhaps have given me a nature such that I might be deceived even about matters that seem most evident” (25). Ultimately, Descartes implies that God intervenes in everyday life or has already determined one’s fate, and therefore this concept of free will and the destruction of beliefs are obsolete as God is the Supreme Being in control of the world and of man’s life.

Descartes “belief” in God seems quite contradictory to everything else that he asserts or does not completely destroy throughout his doubting, which leads one to conclude that the belief in god may not have truth behind it, but rather, he used it as a mechanism to get his book published and so he would not be shunned, or worse, by the Catholic church. It is said that Descartes, when originally going to get this book published, turned around on his walk to the publisher, which one can infer is due to the stir or problems that would have resulted if he had not amended his work to fit the ramifications of the Catholic Church. In doing so, he has tainted the magnitude of impact his work could have had; while it still shook the very foundations that philosophy stood on, it could have perhaps had more of an impact, had the Catholic Church not have been so oppressive and violent. One can only wonder what Descartes really believed in regards to God and organized religion.

In the past discussions we have pondered Descartes’ question, “what bridges the gap between the mind and body?”  After introducing Descartes’ theory of mind-body dualism, Daniel described two other theories of thinking; eliminative materialism, in which there is no mind and consciousness is only an illusion, and idealism, in which all you have is a mind with things inside of it.  Though I do reason with Berkeley’s idea of secondary properties more so than the eliminative materialism theory, I believe Descartes’ to be the most intellectually mature and reasonable theory of the three.
I still don’t quite understand the eliminative theory.  It seems ridiculous to think that there exists no consciousness and only matter and motion.  Even Descartes is completely sure that he is a “thinking thing.” How can the supporters of the eliminative theory believe actions occur without a conscious decision or signal in the mind to make these actions happen?  Idealism is easier to understand, especially since God is used in the equation.  It is easier to believe that God can take care of all of the primary properties, such as shape and size, rather than the more mental properties, such as color and taste.  An individual is more inclined to control the secondary properties of an object than the given primary properties.  
It is written that Descartes is sympathetic to the sciences, therefore proving that he does believe in the power of the body and the mechanical laws.  However, I find it interesting to know the true meaning of the infamous, “I think, therefore I am.”  He believes all objects are governed by the mechanical laws within the physical world except one—the conscious.  At first during discussion when we went over this information, it seemed to me that even though Descartes was considered a rationalist, he placed more importance on the mind.  But later, in meditation two, he describes how man’s senses can actually connect to the conscious mind.   
“For example, I now see a light, I hear a noise, I feel heat.  These things are false, since I am asleep.  Yet I certainly do seem to see, hear, and feel warmth.  This cannot be false.  Properly speaking, this is what in me is called ‘sensing.’  But this, precisely so taken, is nothing other than thinking (20).”
The passage is meaningful to me because he admits that he does truly use his senses to feel, see and hear and these senses are indeed significant.  The catch, however, is that Descartes, near the end of the passage, makes the key note in his dualism theory; the senses are really a reaction to a man’s thinking.  The phrase “I think, therefore I am” ties in more clearly after I have read this passage in the second meditation. 

In the first meditations Descartes established foundational certainty by doubting all truths he once held. In meditations three he brought up the idea of the evil genius, a being that is systematically deceiving you about everything. A question brought up in class asked; “Why wouldn’t Descartes doubt the evil genius?” The answer was that it was impossible to know. When I heard this answer I immediately assumed that Descartes view on the nature of God would relate to agnosticism. One who does not deny the existence of God and heaven but holds that you cannot know for certain whether or not they exist. This to me seems to be a pretty logical interpretation, but Descartes took it a whole other direction. He walked a fine line between two extreme philosophies’ of mind, eliminative materialism and idealism. The first claims that a person’s common understanding of the mental states are false and do not exist and that the mind can only adequately be explained by biology. The second concerns the fact that we only have knowledge about the world we know through the contents of our mind and conscience. Idealists assume that the only things we know for certain are ideas. Those two epistemologies are quite contradicting. After reading Descartes medications three and five concerning God, I was even more confused. His standpoint, also called the ontological argument asserts that God is proven by intuition and reason alone and that if it is possible for us to conceive the idea of God, then he must exist. Atheism is eliminativist about God, and denies the existence of a supreme being. There is contradiction number one. Concerning idealism and Descartes view, whatever I clearly and distinctly perceive to be contained in the idea of something is true of that thing. I must contradict this idea by stating that just as it is possible to comprehend anything existing it is equally possible to comprehend anything not existing, so it is unthinkable to image God not existing. Everyone has the will to believe what they please, but putting these ideas together makes me believe that Descartes, a man with a love for the sciences, abandons the fundamental theories for a more peaceful and comforting explanation.

The extra credit movie on the Bower Birds was very interesting to me.  It made me ponder, in a way, exactly what the capability of certain animals is compared to that of humans.  When one looks at an animal, they don’t exactly think about the complexity of their mind.  One sees more of the primitive hunting and aggressive nature of the animal over the more intellectual side.  This is especially noticeable in the mating habits of animals.  Most species compete for the female by fighting, like deer locking horns, or by showing the colorful characteristics built into their bodies.  All animals fight for territory to help their quest for a mate as well.  They will do most anything to protect it.  The bower bird, however, competes for the female by collecting ‘treasures’ and making a display of them.  This collection becomes very intricate based on different colors and shapes of the objects.  In the movie, the birds collected everything from leaves, which they often laid a certain side up, to water bottle caps.  Some even went as far as to chew up leaves and paint the area where they put their collection in a tunnel like structure of weeds or grass.  To protect this collection area, the bower bird stays by it at all times, only leaving to collect more treasure to add to his stash.  How these birds sabotage others areas is very different as well.  They show a thieving tendency, stealing others treasures in order to improve their own collection.  This is also a very complex side to the nature of the bower bird that amazed me.  Usually animals fight anyone who enters their territory, but these birds sabotage other’s territory with a crafty nature.   This process by which they compete for a mate was unlike anything I had seen in or on nature shows because it involved such a complex thought and recognition process by the bird.  It made my mind wander into what other types of actions animals take in all ways of life and exactly just how smart and capable they are.

Last week in class, we briefly talked about the beginnings of Aristotle.  Aristotle truly believed that science alone could determine the forms. According to Aristotle, science took three forms: animate, which included plants, animals, humans who could move freely; inanimate, which included chairs, tables, rocks, etc; and eternal, which included the stars and the heavens that moved in regular patterns. However, Aristotle also believed that “man” was different from the other forms because “man” had mind and reason. This brings me to a discussion of Descartes.

From what I understand, Descartes had an adequate understanding of math and science, but he did not quite understand where man fits into this picture. What does it mean to be a person? Is it having a body or a head or feet? Based on physics, aren’t animate and inanimate objects the same? Descartes was beginning to contradict everything he had ever learned, most of which he based on Aristotle’s teachings.  As a result, Descartes decided to forget everything he has ever known in order to establish something certain, which would not be subject to doubt. I still find this nearly impossible to do. How can you forget everything you have ever seen, touched, felt, believed? I think it would be much too difficult.

Anyway, throughout the process, Descartes moves through different stages of doubt. The first stage he ponders if our “senses sometimes deceive us.” Then he cannot decide if we know the difference between being awake and being asleep. The third and final stage he begins to think there is an evil genius who is deceiving us about everything that exists. After all these stages, Descartes comes to realize that he is a person, he has a body, and that he truly exists. In Meditation II, Descartes states, “Here I make my discovery: thought exists; it alone cannot be separated from me. I am; I exist—this is certain.” Descartes realizes that in order to contradict whether or not he is dreaming, or whether he exists as a body, he must be thinking about it. From this, he makes the assumption that humans are thinking things; they have a mind, and intellect, and reason, and understanding. His realization that humans are thinking things who have reason supports Aristotle’s assumption that “man” is different from other forms because “man” has reason. Now what about Aristotle’s other two forms: inanimate and eternal?

During class on Tuesday, we learned more about Descartes and what he thinks about consciousness and existence. While discussion Descartes views, another philosopher was brought to out attention, Sartre. We had already learned that Descartes believes that we are “thinking things”; we exist because we are thinking. However, Sartre believes that we exist for more reasons. He thinks that we exist not only because we are thinking but because we have bodies and personality. After skimming through my notes, I realized that I do agree with both men however, I found Descartes to be more accurate in a philosophical sense.

Yes we all have bodies and personality, but Descartes was trying to discover the “real” truth and by doing so he had to forget everything he had already known. This means he had to throw away the fact that he has a body. I’m sure he was taught that it was called a body but for all he knows he could have been taught wrong, and the real truth could have been that his body will deteriorate and his head will remain untouched. It seemed a little extreme to get rid of all his prior ‘knowledge’, but now I can almost agree that it was not a bad thing to do.

Another thing I found to be very intriguing was what Descartes said about how you can be wrong when your consciousness interacts with the world such as the green dot illusion. We see the green dot when we stare into the center but once we look away we can not see it anymore. On the other hand, you can not be wrong that you have consciousness and how things seem to you. We were correct when we said we see a green dot because we did, however that dot never really existed it was only in our minds (our consciousness).

I still have a difficult time understanding and believing what these philosophers have to say is true, but after I sit down and think about it for a while I start to see where they are coming from. Before, we discussed Descartes I was very hesitant to think that we can know things without using our senses for re-assurance or that we can know things because that is how they are and always will be. Now, proposed theories and ideas are becoming more possible to me.

Today in class I found it interesting that during the lecture on Descartes meditations professor Estrada brought up how Idealists believe that there is only a mind and consciousness and nothing else. I found this to be a profound way to view the world because there is no consideration for the senses that interpret the physical world we live in thus affecting our consciousness. I believe our consciousness and our reasoning our derived from the physical world we live in. That is what makes us unique as humans because each of us views situations differently from the next person due to  the environment we grew up in and the people who influence our lives. So to say there is only a conscious state and the mind I find hard to believe because there needs to be source from which we can interpret the information in our minds and consciousness. But since we are raised in different environments and with different economic backgrounds, our state of reasoning and interpretations differ so we as humans in some situations cannot see eye to eye when we need to. So what makes us unique through reasoning which is rooted in our environment and interpreted through the senses is at the same time the downfall of man because this disrupts the harmony amongst mankind.

That is what I like about Descartes Meditations is that he tries to link and understand the physical world and the mind. Which is a hard conclusion to come to but I find it more complete than the idealist argument that only the mind and consciousness exist. A great example that was mentioned class but I have experienced it to, is when you have a dream about someone you know and then it effects the way you view them in your waking state for what ever period of time even though the dream could be a completely wrong interpretation of that person. I just find the Idealists point of view on the mind and consciousness to be wrong but even though I don’t have a concrete argument about how the physical world influences the mind I don’t see how our reasoning and consciousness states could come about without it.

From Time magazine:

The Mystery of Consciousness
by Steven Pinker

It shouldn’t be surprising that research on consciousness is alternately exhilarating and disturbing. No other topic is like it. As René Descartes noted, our own consciousness is the most indubitable thing there is. The major religions locate it in a soul that survives the body’s death to receive its just deserts or to meld into a global mind. For each of us, consciousness is life itself, the reason Woody Allen said, “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying.” And the conviction that other people can suffer and flourish as each of us does is the essence of empathy and the foundation of morality.

Descartes ponders over the doubt of his very existence. Descartes originally states in Meditation Two that he has denied that he has any senses or any such things as arms and a body and wonders if he can even exist without such things. Does he exist? Well he begins to understand that even if he is being deceived by an evil genius or if he is dreaming like in two of his stages of doubt from Meditation One, that it is enough to show he exists. Descartes is taking part in the process or activity of thinking which in itself is enough to prove his existence. If Descartes is being deceived by an outside force or evil mind then it is proof he exists because the outside mind must be deceiving something or someone, in this case Descartes, because you cannot deceive something or someone that does not exist. Descartes realizes that he is a “thing that thinks,” so he is a thing that has done everything that he has done in the past except now he is aware of it in his mind. In order even to doubt something, you have to think. Thinking means simply that he “doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, refuses, and that also imagines and senses.” Descartes realizes at the very least that he is a “mind, or intellect, or understanding,” and that is a start for him.

Descartes does not yet know who he “himself” is though, if he will ever even find out. Descartes states that the knowledge of him does not depend upon the existence of other things that he does not yet know about. He believes “who he is” is not dependent upon things he imagines because imagining is the contemplation of shapes and images of things, which is quite similar to what we do when we dream, except when we dream we are asleep. What we imagine can be subject to change because it is dependent on what we think about instead of necessarily what we know.

Descartes bases some of his realization of what he is into his “sensing” of things, because awake or not he is doing “nothing other than thinking.” Yet he still has some doubt in knowing himself because the images formed by thought and the senses, such as corporeal things, are much more known in the truth compared to him because he does not fall within imagination. He can imagine such things with his mind or intellect by thinking of them and using his senses to understand, but this activity does not help him too much with finding out who he is as a more than a “thing.”

Could it be considered daydreaming when someone sits in complete concentration or imagination of something? Imagining and dreaming like what Descartes talks about is more proof of his existence as you need to think to imagine, and dreaming is thinking and/or imagining in the state of sleeping. However, through reading all of this I have thought about the concept that some of the things we sense could be completely different from what we initially think. In the example of the wax of the honeycomb in Meditation Two, is it possible that we imagine something such as honeycomb wax to be sweet and sticky when really it is not? I mean initially we probably know the truth of the honeycomb wax to be sweet and sticky, but if we experience it to be different either in a dream or during imagination, does our entire concept of the honeycomb wax change to what we last thought about it as or experienced it to be. If contents of dreams reflect experiences from actual life, could contents of actual life reflect experiences from dreams? Experiences in real life change our perceptions and images and thinking of certain things, so why can’t a dream do the same thing if it feels so real. Descartes states that sensing is just simply thinking, therefore, could we sense or think something to be different than what it really is? If so, could this judgment stay the same in our senses after it has already changed and maybe eventually it could even change again or go back to its original state? “But indeed when I distinguish the wax from its external forms, as if stripping it of its clothing, and look at the wax in its nakedness, then even though there can be still an error in my judgment, nevertheless I cannot perceive it thus without a mind.” In a statement from Meditation Two, Descartes kind-of says here that pointing something out as its original form can be more than just “perceiving it through the mind alone,” because he may have to look beyond other things involved with something’s original form, like the external forms of the wax(the clothing). However, he says his judgment of something can also be wrong like with the original form of something such as the wax. Descartes concludes that perceiving it at all whether as its true form or a different form with imagination/thinking/senses cannot even take place without a human mind such as the one he has, and so far that is most of what he does know for sure.

At a time when there was immense scientific learning and technological advances taking place, Descartes struggled with his views of the world. The once commonly accepted and logical views of the past had been shattered by new scientific findings. Realizing that his views had been shattered by the recent developments, Descartes vowed to “establish a foundationally certain base of knowledge.” He decided that the only way to achieve this base was to erase all of his preexisting beliefs and start from nothing.

In order to achieve a “foundationally certain base of knowledge,” Descartes had to doubt everything possible in every possible way to doubt it. His first step to doubt was determining that the senses sometimes deceive. It is true that the senses sometimes deceive us, but I believe that we are able to use out other senses to counteract the deception and know the truth. The in class example of a stick in the water looking bent to the eyes is only deceptive to the sense of sight. Had someone reached in and touched the stick, the sense of touch would have counteracted the sense of sight, and we would know that the stick was really straight. Descartes did agree that the senses only deceive us sometimes, and it would be wrong to doubt them in all situations.

His second step to doubt was the inability of a person to distinguish differences between dreaming and being awake. Descartes decided that if you cannot differentiate between dreaming and being awake, you cannot trust your environment. The concept that you can be dreaming and you think you are in a forest but really be in bed upsets the notion that when you are awake and think you are in a forest that means that you are really in a forest. If you can dream it and believe it then, then it is possible that all of our lives are dreams and we are not really anywhere we think we are. The entire environment could possibly be a creation of the mind. Descartes thought that this undermined all of our sensory experiences. He did concede that dream content can only reflect real life experiences and from this concluded that we cannot doubt all sensory experiences, only current ones.

Descartes’ last attempt to doubt all knowledge was the theory of the Evil Genius. He spoke of an EG being in control of the world and who was systematically deceiving people of everything. With this idea, 2+3 did not equal 5 anymore. It really equaled 7, but the EG deceived us and made us think it equaled 5. Through the concept of the Evil Genius, Descartes succeeded in convincing himself that “everything you know is wrong.”

Although Descartes said he demolished all of his beliefs, I do not think this is possible. No matter what anyone says, I believe 2+3=5. I believe the sky is blue. Similarly, I don’t think Descartes could have possibly demolished all of his beliefs. He probably still believed that his mother was his mother, not an alien who pretended to give birth to him. I don’t think he could have doubted that he walked on two feet, not four. Beliefs are dependent on memory. Although Descartes tried to demolish all of his realistic perceptions, I do not think that that will be possible until the day that is possible to erase a persons entire memory.

Click the link below to see a few interesting optical illusions. Do these illusions support Descartes’ claim that the senses are sometimes deceptive?

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Here’s this week’s R&L thread. Leave a comment by class on Tuesday for participation credit.

Prompts and Questions:

• Are there real essences in Aristotle’s sense? Is the universe essentially atoms, or quarks, or quantum fluctuations? Are human beings essentially rational animals?
• Is Descartes’ goal, to ‘establish something firm and lasting in the sciences’, a worthwhile project? Does science need to rest on indubitable certainty?
• Is radical doubt the best way to establish certainty? Can anyone ever really raze their entire belief structure to the ground and ‘begin again from original foundations’?
• Is Descartes right to claim that there is no way to distinguish dreams from waking life?
• Does the Evil Genius effectively accomplish Descartes’ goals of destroying his beliefs?

From Nichomachean Ethics

In the beginning of this reading Aristotle points out the aspects of how humans are able to grasp truth. He claims that through craft, scientific knowledge, intelligence, wisdom and understanding he can explain the virtues of thought.

Remarking in scientific knowledge, Aristotle says that we learn about the sciences only what is essential and that these facts are eternal. Here I would like to pose a question/statement about Aristotle’s writing concerning scientific knowledge. It seems to me that he claims that the pursuit of scientific knowledge will only provide information which is “by necessity.” Through the past decade there have been much technological advancement within our society, and not every new scientific discovery has been beneficial. Would Aristotle still claim that everything we discover is “by necessity,” knowing the extent our society has advanced in many scientific fields?

It is interesting, to me, how Aristotle says that everything “scientifically knowable is learnable,” meaning that we are all capable of being taught science. This shows that he has faith in every human’s capability for learning, but goes on to categorize the extent of which humans are knowledgeable. First he explains how a “craft must be concerned with production”, such as that of a manufacturer. Next Aristotle says that an intelligent person is one who is “able to deliberate finely about what is good and beneficial for himself.” I agree with what he is saying about intelligence, as I also think that it is received this way in current society.

I agree with Aristotle’s view on understanding our surroundings. He says that we first must grasp the principles. And by this, we will be able to understand scientific knowledge, intelligence, wisdom and understanding. I believe that this ties in to science because we first must have an understanding, for instance regarding physics, of mathematics before we are able to apply Newton’s theories to physics. We also must have a good understanding of our surroundings to also look into Newton’s laws.

A few course announcements:

Make sure you read Descartes’ Meditations 1 and 2 this week.

There will be a screening this Thursday at 7pm in 302 Architecture Building. The architecture building is just south of DKH on the South Quad. Here’s the campus map if you get lost.

Remember, I will be bringing snacks, and you will get extra credit for attending. It will be a fairly relaxed atmosphere, and although I hope you learn something I wont be lecturing. I am planning on showing a documentary about the Bowerbird. I promise it will be interesting.

If you cannot make it for the screening for whatever reason, don’t panic. It wont count against you. If Thursday at 7 is a bad time for you, please email me or comment in this post so we can discuss a time that accommodates more people.