Philosophy 101E

Hume thinks that we have a natural, but non-rational, tendency to see complexity as a product of intelligent design. Linked is an interesting article from The Atlantic Monthly that talks about the possible cognitive basis for this belief.

Is God an Accident?

Stewart Guthrie, an anthropologist at Fordham University, was the first modern scholar to notice the importance of this tendency as an explanation for religious thought. In his book Faces in the Clouds, Guthrie presents anecdotes and experiments showing that people attribute human characteristics to a striking range of real-world entities, including bicycles, bottles, clouds, fire, leaves, rain, volcanoes, and wind. We are hypersensitive to signs of agency—so much so that we see intention where only artifice or accident exists. As Guthrie puts it, the clothes have no emperor.

1) Here are your midterm questions. Your response is due on October 10th at the beginning of class. You must submit a hard copy at the beginning of class, and submit the paper online through turnitin.com. Instructions for using TurnItIn can be found here.

Midterm (.htm)
Midterm (.doc)

Please come prepared to discuss the midterm on Tuesday. I will go over it in detail, and discuss any questions you might have. Remember, I have office hours on Tuesday and Thursday after class, and lots of time for setting up an appointment. I’d be more than happy to read a draft of an answer and give you a response.

2) Finish reading Hume’s Dialogues by Thursday. You can start reading the John Haugeland article Semantic Engines in the course packet (pg 13) for next Tuesday.

3) Remember, your next post is due by on Oct 5th, and your first 10 comments are due on Oct 12th. That means that the midterm is no excuse to avoid using the website!

I would like to address the last topic that we hit on Thursday; the problem of evil. Daniel said that it is a posteriori reason for God not to exist. So the argument is that if God is good, all-powerful, and all-knowing then he can stop evil from happening, but evil happens anyways. So either there is no God, or he does not possess these properties. Well, I can see this argument, but I can also fight it.

I feel that God can be all those things, but still not stop evil. The evil in this world is necessary to find the good. Otherwise we would not have a definition of good, because we would have nothing to compare it to and as we said in class all of our definitions are based off of comparison.

Bad things happen, it’s just the way the world works. If there wasn’t a God, at least in my opinion, then all we would have is evil. Good times would never happen, and we would be overcome with the bad. I am not saying God is responsible for only the good, and someone else is for the bad, because that would be contradicting myself. I feel God uses both to even out the world. As it is studied in science, matter is neither created nor destroyed, it is just transferred or changed. There is a necessary evil that is used to balance the good.

Also there is such a thing as free will, although I know we have been questioning that as well. This free will that I believe in is what allows men to be evil. It is what brought evil in this world, through the fallen angel. Men’s temptation by this fallen angel, coupled with our free will, causes evil to enter the world. God wants us to be able to have the power to choose him, not be forced to do so.

Waking Life is a very unusual movie. It encompasses many different segments that somehow relate to Philosophy. The plot of the movie at first was mind-boggling because it constantly shifted stories. Each of the individual stories attempted to teach us lessons about life, some were easy to understand, while others appeared abstract.

First off, I would like to comment on a beginning segment that deals with a woman claiming that ‘What we do makes a difference’. Along with this quote, the woman made similar comments that were positive and uplifting. After thinking about this quotation, I started to reflect on Descartes and his views on the world and I found that the woman and Descartes have a similar platform. Descartes claims that our mind is clear and distinct and it never fails us. This woman forces us to develop our mind and body interaction. This interaction allows us to utilize the brain and make rational decisions that positively impacts our surroundings.

In a sense this scene can also be comparable to Plato’s Philosophy. Plato’s main platform were his virtues. I would make an argument that prudence is the virtue that would be closely related to the woman’s quote. A prudent person wants to act out good deeds and therefore makes a difference in society. In another sense this woman also promoted a universal concept, and that is closely associated with Plato.

I also find the prisoner scene very interesting in the movie. As I pointed out during the film, the prisoner walks around his cell condemning every person that directly or indirectly led to his incarceration. While talking about these people, he claims that he is going to kill everyone. As he speaks his skin complection changes until a point that his entirely red. This scene relates perfectly to the discussion of Sartre and freedom in class. Sartre claims that prisoners in jail can be free because they choose will. The inmate in this scene clearly maintains a sense of free will due to his ability to contemplate and come to a term of action regarding his enemies.

Waking Life was a interesting movie that forced me to constantly engage in new plots. It was surprising that the movie covered topics that we discussed in class. Also the visual images were very appealing to my senses because it appeared very abstract and unique.

Thanks to the people who came to the screening, I know it was a lot to take in. You can go back over the transcript of the movie here:

Waking Life full script.

I encourage anyone who couldn’t make the screening to rent the movie. I’ll see if I can put a copy on reserve at the library.

The movie has lots of problems, and you should definitely take everything in the movie with a grain of salt (especially the studies and statistics cited), but I think it wraps up the Descartes dreaming stuff pretty well, and gives us all something to think about. I can talk more about specific issues raised in the film in this thread, if there is anything anyone would like to discuss further.

In the first parts of Hume’s Dialogues, Philo discusses his skeptical ideas of reason and those who put all their faith in that reason (portrayed by Cleanthes). Philo says in part one, “Those who enter a little into study and inquiry, finding many appearances of evidence in doctrines the newest and most extraordinary, think nothing too difficult for human reason…” This stance on the issues of reason coincide with the Hume’s distrust of the inductive reasoning we discussed in class Tuesday. His distrust of reason and those that put all their faith in it seems somewhat founded in his arguments, as he asks how reason can possibly explain the issue of natural religion. Hume distrusts inductive reasoning because it is not deductive reasoning, an idea that is portrayed in Philo’s remarks on the ability to reason about religion or a higher, perfect deity/intellect. “who can retain such confidence in this frail faculty of reason as to pay any regard to its determinations in points so sublime, so abstruse, so remote from common life and experience?” Deductive reasoning is based on experience, for example, like we said in class, if you know that all men are mortal, and John Doe is a man, then you know that John Doe is mortal. That argument can be deemed both valid and sound, because the conclusion follows the premises, and the premises are true. That argument is based on your experience and common life practices, as Philo holds so highly in these dialogues. However, with inductive reasoning, you must rely on your ability to reason something, because the assumption you are making as your conclusion could be not true. The example we used in class about the fact that we have no way of guarenteeing that the sun will rise tomorrow seems to be an argument Hume would use. I had some trouble grasping how this was different from deductive reasoning, however. If we can not be sure that the sun will rise tomorrow, how can we be so sure that there is no man that is not mortal.

But, we can know that there are, as of yet, no men that are not mortal. Until a man lives “forever” (or at least an exorbanate amount longer than everybody else) we have no reason to dispute this fact, because it is not a possibility without some type of yet-to-be invented mystical substance preventing the process of aging. However, we cannot say that the sun will rise tomorrow with absolute certainty because there are so many factors preventing the assurance of such a fact. We do know that stars die at some point, and we also know there is the never ending possibility of the earth being destroyed by something or other, as remote as that possibility may be. So when Philo argues against the be-all-end-all theories of reason, it is clear that he is arguing against inductive reasoning, and also clear that he speaks for Hume.

Not only is this helpful in understanding the rest of the book by helping the reader to determine who is speaking for whom for the rest of the dialogues. I am not entirely convinced, however, that Philo/Hume’s skeptical ideas are in fact the truth. I understand them, but I also believe in the concept of logic and reasoning, and know how important it is to everyday life. Even if inductive reasoning cannot be taken as truth and has inherent problems, is it not helpful in stabilizing everyday life, and providing the average human with stability and assurance, perhaps even purpose? That may be enough to leave its faults behind.

Thanks again to everyone who gave me feedback in class. I’ll try to respond here to a few of the comments brought up in the assessment. If you have any other comments or suggestions, please leave a comment in this post. Follow the break to keep reading:

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I should say that the first round of posts went very well, and I have been impressed by the level of discussion on this website. Keep it up!

1) Read Hume’s Dialogues, Parts I and II for class tomorrow. I would like to get through Part VI by Thursday to make sure we can finish Hume before the Midterm.

2) Our second screening will be Wednesday at 7pm in FLB G30, the same room we had last time. Again, I will bring in snacks and drinks, and you will receive extra credit for attending. I will be screening the Linklater film Waking Life. The movie is about an hour and 40 minutes or so, and I’ll be sticking around until 9pm to talk about the movie afterwards. Feel free to bring your friends.

3) We have finished up the first unit of the course, so everyone should be pretty familiar with the nature of this course. Tomorrow, at the beginning of class, I would like to take a few minutes to ask how you think the course is going. Is the reading or lecture material too difficult? Am I talking too quickly, or not clearly enough? Do you think the course website is helping? If you have any comments or suggestions about the way this class has been going, please come prepared to talk about it at the beginning of class tomorrow. I’d just like some feedback, to make sure the rest of the semester goes smoothly.

Decartes is known as one of the great thinkers of his time. But Decartes’ time is long over, and we live in a digital age. His way of thinking progressed Philosophy, and that’s great, but his argument is full of holes. This text belongs in a library and should not be taken seriously. His thinking is all over the place and he tends to contradict himself. In one mediation he talks about how he wants to disconnect himself and his thoughts from all preconceptions, yet he talks about how God is all good and perfect. This perception of God is a preconception that he got from the church. How does he know that God is not an evil genius?

Descartes uses many false pretenses. He makes many assumptions which lead to bad arguments. His whole notion of “clear and distinct” is a really blurry line, yet it is one of the central arguments. He has no idea about what is clear and distinct. Back then it was clear that the earth revolves around the sun and the world was flat. Descartes does not have the advantage of science, and his attempts to create a framework for science are very shady.

He believes that humans are incapable of creating a notion of God, and that God must exist because he’s the only one that is able to create a notion of himself. This is clearly circular reasoning, and I believe that he underestimates the power of imagination.

The only good argument that I got out of Decartes is “I think therefore I am.” When those words were said, it was a mildstone in the history of man. For the first time, humans began to think in a more progressive way. Descartes was one of the first great thinkers, that does not mean he was exactly right though.

Free will does not exist. It is a fantasy we are forced to believe in order to function in society. The fact of the matter is almost all rational arguments support the idea of either hard determinism, the concept that everything is “predestined” so to speak, and the universe proceeds on an unchanging linear course—or soft determinism, in which we do in fact make decisions; but in every decision we make, despite the illusion of choice, we have no control over. In order to support the concept of free will, the arguments become extremely metaphysical. Concepts for which there is no empirical evidence, such as the soul, are introduced; or the universe is reduced to an utterly chaotic place, where it is only by the most improbable of events that we exist at all.
A far more rational argument is that free will is an illusion, a trait that we imbue ourselves with because we have the natural perception of making decisions. In actuality, the far more probable explanation for how we make decisions is that we simply are billions of atoms, which combine to form millions of cells, which make up our brain, and the millions of billions of tiny electrical impulses create what we think of as conscious thought.
This argument however, produces seemingly absurd consequences. If we do not in fact have free will, life becomes seemingly meaningless. Any kind of personal sacrifice or struggle becomes utterly pointless, as the results were inevitable. Despite the seeming futility of life without free will—the fact that every individual naturally believes he or she has free will ensures that regardless of whether or not it actually exists—the world will continue to function as it does. Despite the fact that free will does not exist, the natural tendency of human beings to believe they can change their own destiny ensures that we will not be relegated to a hopeless, seemingly meaningless existence. In short, while free will does not exist, the human belief in free will is one of the driving forces in the universe’s inexorable journey forward.

So, I just attended the lecture. It was actually very interesting. Basically, Doug Hofstadter’s hypothesis is that all cognitive thought is based on analogies, whether they are conscious or not. An analogy, as Hofstadter defined it, is a comparison or recognition of the commonalities of two events. This goes far beyond the simple, “A cake is to a baker as a hat is to a haberdasher.” (and yes, I did throw that in there merely for the sake of getting to type haberdasher.)

Hofstadter gave many examples of how the mind draws such analogies. One that I thought illustrated his point rather well, was about his experiences on a plane and at the airport. While he was on the plane heading over the Atlantic Ocean, it had to be diverted to avoid a hurricane. Then, when he was in the airport, he had to change his path to avoid walking into a woman. Without going into deep thought, his mind drew the parallel that what he had just done was the same as what the plane had to do, to a certain extent.

Another interesting argument was the fact that people often call people by the wrong name. The conclusion is that since you clearly know the difference between your sister and your friend’s sister, then you must be making the analogy that they are both sisters, and therefore might inadvertently call your friend’s sister the name of your own. This would also mean that the mind is drawing analogies that you are not even aware of until the moment you misname someone. Then, you realize your mistake and will forget about it.

This hypothesis can also be applied to some of the topics we are discussing. One implication would be that no thoughts could be clear and distinct, because they are all analogous to several other thoughts with similar basis. Furthermore, this would mean that all new thoughts are really just building on old thoughts. Certainly this would agree with Descartes’ ideas about creativity and imagination. However, there is no clear determination of what the first thought that becomes the building block for all other thoughts is. For example, you can draw the analogy that a boat is a car on water. However, can you know whether you knew about a car before you knew about a bike or other vehicle?

Another thought that crossed my mind (pun unintended) is why our mind finds the need to use these analogies. It could either be to simplify a subject and make it easier to remember. Or it could just be out of laziness. It is always much easier to answer a question like, “What is that movie about?” with, “Have you ever read Fahrenheit 451?” It just makes explaining topics much easier. Instead of going into great plot detail and character information, the question can be diverted into an analogy with another movie. The same thing happens in every artistic form. However, when we turn this question from the point of the observer, to the point of the creator, it has some serious questions.

What if every artist created something as a reaction or homage to another artist? We draw these comparisons as observers all the time. How can we tell if The Matrix is not just a combination of several other books and movies already created? That would be a serious argument for people who like to say the creativity is dead or always has been dead. It is scary to think about, but at the same time, is somewhat understandable. If it is human nature to continuously draw analogies, then wouldn’t we want to be dealing with something we can do that with? Something completely new, which for all intents and purposes cannot feasibly be thought of, would scare people because they wouldn’t know how to react. The previous encounter with something similar wouldn’t be there.

This is exactly like someone brought up in class today. We see aliens as having human characteristics because that is exactly what we understand. If an alien didn’t look like a human, then chances are it would look like something else that we already know of.

So what does this mean for new ideas?

Any new ideas? (haha, ok, I got a laugh out of it)

One of the most interesting things to me is the debate between empiricism and rationalism. Empiricism is the idea, or theory, that a person gains knowledge about the world through their senses. As John Locke said, they begin with a blank slate and as they live, each new experience gives the person more knowledge. On the other hand, rationalism holds that humans are born with the ability to reason, and thus are able to gain knowledge through reason.

I personally find Descartes, and the other rationalists to have a more convincing argument. Newborn babies are born with the capacity to reason and appear to have some pre-existing knowledge, even if it appears to be the most trivial pieces of knowledge. Descartes’ examples of knowledge regarding mathematical principles and theories make this argument especially convincing for me. In general, people have a basic understanding of mathematics without some prior experience. For example, when I was very young, my mother said that without any prior experience or knowledge, I was able to understand addition. I think that most children are able to understand a basic principle such as addition without have ever experienced it before, meaning that it seems all children are born with the reason to understand a mathematic principle.

What I do not understand however, it how the different philosophers were able to actually distinguish themselves. For example, John Locke tends to be compared to David Hume. David Hume was an empiricist, so I am assuming that John Locke was for the most part an empiricist as well. (Correct me if I am wrong). Yet Locke’s theories on free will seem to correlate with the rationalist Descartes’ theory of mind-body dualism. Descartes seems to think that the mind and body are separate, just as Locke seems to believe when speaking of free will. Locke states that a person’s body may be free, but the mind will never be free, meaning that they are separate in most respects. It seems like Descartes would agree with Locke’s idea of free will, especially due to his beliefs and ideas about God. Perhaps I am simply making too many assumptions, but it seems like many philosophers from different schools of thought seem to cross over to the other schools of thoughts.

When I was pondering Descartes and his ideas, I decided to think back upon Meditation Two and his reasoning as to how he knows he exists. He rationalizes that because he is thinking, he exists. Then that brought a question to my mind: what about brain dead people? Descartes pretty much answered my question in Meditation Two. He said “for as long as I am thinking; for perhaps it could also come to pass that if I were to cease all thinking I would then utterly cease to exist.” The thought that someone who is brain dead does not exist, according to Descartes, seems to make sense. Wikipedia defines brain death as “a complete and irreversible cessation of brain activity.” Since there is no brain activity whatsoever, the person is more or less a vegetable. Although their body is still in existence, their thoughts are no more and they cease to exist. Descartes’ argument seems to make sense in this case.

Since Descartes seemed to have answered that question, I began pondering about people that are in a coma. Wikipedia states that when in a coma, you are in “a profound state of unconsciousness.” A coma is similar to being brain dead except that there is a chance of it being reversible and the body can sometimes exhibit respiration without assistance of a respirator. If you take into account that respiration is just a natural bodily function and has nothing to do with a person’s thoughts and that the person is unconscious, then a person in a coma is nonexistent while they are in that coma. Now if that person were to come out of the coma, they would exist once again. There seems to be a fallacy in logic in that a person in and out of a coma is going from existent to non-existent and then back to being existent just as they were before. That basically means that someone can either rise from the dead or they are reborn under the Cartesian view on existence. That seems a little too far fetched to make sense, but then again, lots of Descartes’ thoughts seem far fetched, so I guess it seems to parallel his ideology.

Descartes seems to express the confliction that his ideas have with themselves through his “Concerning of God.” As we talked about in lecture this afternoon, Descartes conveys two principles; “clear and distinct,” and “cause and effect relation.” What the first principle means to me is that whatever a person believes in, whether it be God, a manipulative evil genius, or both, there must be defined characteristics and aspects to rest those beliefs on. We cannot simply “imagine” these beliefs and expect them to be accurate. This can be represented through what was expressed in lecture today – the fact that Descartes believes, “for the most part, I’m not being deceived.” Descartes also portrays that God is perfect because he has a clear and distinct idea of God. The cause and effect principle inevitably leads students, like myself, to be lead in circles while reading Descartes- as a previous post suggested. Descartes says he “understands by the name ‘God’ a certain substance that is infinite, independent, supremely intelligent and supremely powerful, and that created me along with everything else that exists- if anything else exists.” At the end of that statement, Descartes doubts his original conclusions by questioning “what” exists. Along with thinking, imagining, and understanding – doubt is of the mind according to Descartes.

So if it is in his mind, can any of those forms of consciousness be connected to the world, or are they separate? Many of these questions have to do with perception. Do we control our own thoughts? Or… is God the true trump card - as Descartes believes, because God does not deceive, yet is compassionate. But going back to the second principle of “cause and effect relation,” this is where Descartes turns himself around into a seemingly never-ending circle of contradiction and deception of the senses. As we talked in lecture today, the Descartes’ thought was proposed that, “maybe the evil genius can implant an idea in my head that there is an infinite being because he believes there is an infinite being. Therefore, to cause the idea in the evil genius, the infinite being must exist.” These statements put me deep into thought and it only spurred more confusion. It seems like a series of patchwork that Descartes uses in order to induce the readers into this train of thought. this train of thought being that, through the two principles, things like God or the evil genius, are easier to comprehend and believe. I believe that Faith, or leaning on what one believes on, is the way to believe in God. Also, I believe that Faith is good enough to use in the sharing with others, that God or an “infinite being,” does exist. In actuality, it very well could be Descartes who is deceiving our senses into believing he has a plausible, well thought out, straight laced argument. Anyone who understands my questions concerning my confusion, please feel free to comment.

In trying to reanalyze every single belief that he ever held, Descartes tore down every one of his beliefs down to the ground. He wanted to work from the ground up, using reason to reestablish his knowledge and beliefs of everything. Starting from nothing, Descartes is able to at least reason that he in fact exists, because he is able to think.

The next thing he wants to prove is that God exists. If we follow his reasoning for the existence of God, we can see that it really does not have a solid foundation. Descartes claims that God simply exists because he put the idea of himself into our minds.

Most of the things (ideas, images, etc.) in our minds are there because they are things that we have seen or felt through our senses. However, religion and God are things that are faith based; he is probably something or someone that most of us will not see in our lifetime. Why would God exist in our minds if we have never seen him or anything like him in our world? This is the basis of Descartes’ argument.

Because God is a higher being than we are, he has certain characteristics that make him divine. Everything that we see in our world is temporary. Everything here has a certain shelf life. Biologically tenacious beings will one day die. Material good will not last forever. Everything has a life cycle, that is, everything except God. God is infinite and permanent, and Descartes had a clear and distinct understanding of this, therefore God must be real.

Even though most people have never physically seen or felt the presence of God, he is there because he planted himself in our minds. But Descartes’ rationality has a leaves a few questions unanswered. For example: Why are there so many different religions in our world? Why do people believe in different Gods?

To answer this question, let us examine another one of Descartes’ claims. He says that human imagination is product of our experiences as well as the things that we have seen. Yes, we can imagine new things or ideas in our mind, but these new things are nothing more than a combination of old things we have seen. Take the centaur for example. A half-man half-horse creature has never existed, so it is nothing more than a figment of imagination. But how original is it really? It is merely a composed of a horse and a man, only mixed together in a way never before seen.

Suppose that Descartes was right in his theory about God placing the image or idea of him into our minds. The reason we now have so many different religions and views of God is because of our imagination. Even though most people have never physically seen God, he is in their minds. He has become a part of their experiences, so the imagination is free to use God to create something new. This explains why there are so many different religions and Gods in existence today.

However, this doesn’t explain the certain portion of our population that has no concept of religion at all. Why would this happen to them? If God were really what Descartes claimed that he was, he would not have forgotten to place the idea of himself into the minds of these people. This is only one of the many questions left unanswered by Descartes.

I don’t know if this has been confusing to anybody else, but I have been thinking about the lecture today and I just can’t understand how Descartes can change his beliefs and contradict himself in his third meditation. I finally started to understand what he was talking about in his first two meditations, about how the mind and body are seperate and there might be some kind of evil genius deceiving us. Also, how we can’t be certain of anything except our mind and the fact that we exist. Then in the third meditation he just starts talking about how as long as you have a clear and distinct idea about something then that means that it exists. He says, “when I considered something very simple…for example, that two plus three make five… did I not intuit them at least clearly enough to affirm them as true?” This is external knowledge that he was not born knowing, so how can he be sure that this is one thing that he can be certain is true? Would he not say the same for things such as the grass is green or the sky blue since those are certain “truths” that we all believe to be right? I don’t understand how he can, or would even want to, automatically change some of his ideas and contradict some old ones to make an argument that isn’t even as strong as his first. I don’t know if I am misunderstanding what went on in lecture today or what. I also had trouble believing his rational for the reasons why he can be certain that God exists. His first point is that “God has all perfections.” However, I don’t understand if he just assumed that if there was an infinite being out there then they would be perfect, or if there is some logic behind that. I liked the first two meditations that Descartes wrote, but these last ones seem to have gone downhill after the first.

I would like to start this post with a note; I can not argue myself out of a paper bag. I can only make claims that I assume in my head. And on that note, as my mom always likes to tell me, my brain is like a train jumping tracks. It goes one direction, but somehow gets from one place to another without any warning or rationale. So first I would like to comment on how I believe Descartes has some great ideas, while still somehow being completely crazy. But if you were to raze every thing you believed only to start over from the beginning, it would make you crazy too. Especially without the guidance of an instructor, the technology and quick information, and the plethora of books we have today. But this does not discredit him to the point where we shouldn’t be reading his works. Yes, he is faulted, but isn’t everyone. He makes some great basic statements that can be discussed and contemplated. I especially have been very moved by “God has all perfections, existence is perfection, and therefore God exists.” I know this might be a statement that self-fulfilling but it is a little hard to argue. (Also by the way, I like to ramble on, and sometimes I might not make sense, so maybe I have a little Descartes is me, but like him, there are small ideas that come out of the madness.) You have to first believe the fact that God is perfect. You could believe that because the Bible tells you to, you might believe that because Daniel tells you it is so, or you just might not be able to discredit it. I believe the last idea is actually horrible. I believe that you should know something that you believe because of instinct. This might just be one of those things that gives you a feeling inside that you know it is true, like love. The argument that you can’t discredit it so it must be true, a double negative, is faulty in my mind. So that is like saying you can’t not look at something, so you have to look at it. I guess I’m arguing that if there is another possibility out there, that is possible. It is terribly hard to change your mind on something you think is right. Over the years, people have changed models of the world, models of the universe, and the thesaurus to account for the changes in believes that were widely held. Things are constantly changing because we are looking for a new truth everywhere. I believe that this is a truth that has been studied over SO many years that it cannot be discredited. God is perfect. If he wasn’t, wouldn’t he just be like you and me. There has to be something that makes him different from everyone else that ever lived in this world. I guess when you look back, and you try to break everything down to the smallest/most basic truth, there has to be one thing that you start at. Even in molecules, which Descartes would challenge are even there until he brings the world back in his mind, starts at an atom. People didn’t know that atoms were there because they did not have the technology to find them. And on that statement, I have a few things to assert. First, is on the comment of imagination. Albert Einstein said “Imagination is more important that knowledge.” That statement in itself is faulted with Descartes reasoning about imagination only being knowledge morphed together to get something “new.” This class has opened my eyes to the truth about imagination and “thinking” of new things. You don’t “think of new things”, you only apply things that were already there to something different. Like sliced bread; who ever did that first didn’t slice the first thing ever, and he didn’t invent bread. He just put two things together that made sense to “make something new.” People couldn’t start to imagine about the atom because it was never seen before. Also, I believe that all things are already here in the world. In science I learned that matter is neither created nor destroyed, it is just moved/changed. I believe that this is true about thought as well. Because God is perfect, he has all knowledge already and he just let’s us see the light once in a while. So when someone makes a statement saying that they know the truth and whole-heartedly believe it, I believe that it is the truth because you can’t know anything more at that time. Time might go on and God would open your eyes to more information, and you may retract or change your statement, but at the time it was said, it was true. I might be a romantic, but I relate things back to love a lot. If you are in love and you know what that feeling is, you might not be able to give concrete reasons to anyone out side of your mind what that feeling is. It is a truth and you are believing it. Maybe down the line, you learn more and your thoughts on a person change, that is okay. You can either work through it and find why things have changed if you have fully committed yourself (marriage), or you can realize that you did love them at one time and the feeling has changed and back out. Truth is what you believe at the time you believe it. If God changes your mind with new the light of information, that is just how the cookie crumbles and you have to change or bend your believes.

The past week in class, we’ve been talking about Descartes and his various beliefs. Some of these make a lot of sense, but I got to thinking about how odd his beliefs are and how some of his arguments just seem ridiculous. Like Daniel was saying today, Descartes argument for God’s existance is not a good one. This seems obvious, at least to me, especially when he says things like “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”. Before I say anything I will say that I do believe in God, so I’m not criticizing Descartes for saying so, but it seems like he’s saying that he created a God in his mind, so therefore it must exist. What I don’t understand is how Descartes thinks that he thought up God, and even if he did, how does that cause God to exist. Everyone knows Descartes did not just think up God one day. Regardless, of course God can exist in his mind, but if the only known place that God exists is in Descartes mind, how does that make It real? I might just not be of a very philosophical mind, but if I were an atheist, hearing Descartes say “for nothing more perfect than God, or even as perfect as God, can be thought or imagined”, wouldn’t be very convincing, especially after he just admitted to reasoning that God exists because of an idea of God that only exists in his mind. How can anyone be expected to buy Descartes argument when it appears to me that, as Descartes explained it, Descartes somehow got an image of God, then used his own reasoning to conclude that God does in fact exist and that he is perfect. I’m probably wrong here but I feel as if almost any religion could do a better job of explaining God and It’s existance than Descartes can.

Personally, I cannot buy Descartes proof of god. It is too convenient. Do not get me wrong, I understand what he is aiming for. The theory makes sense. He has an image of God being all perfection, which is nice and all. Then of course if god is perfect and if existence is a perfection, then God must exist. On the face of things, that makes perfect sense. It ties together really nicely I suppose.

I cannot agree with the fact that he has an image of God. Like I argued with in class, he is simply putting something out there first, and explaining it. Where does this come from? Where does he get this notion that God is perfect? Is this the same situation from his earlier meditations in which he claims that since God is infinite, he cannot derive him from something finite? In other words, is this image of perfection being put into his mind by God, because he himself cannot define perfection?

It may seem like I am going in a circle here, but I believe that is the fault in Descarte’s reasoning as well. His whole proof of God is a circle. He is simply plugging in explanation after explanation until he somehow manages to close thing up nice and tidy. He says God exists because existing is part of perfection. What defines existence as perfection? As I asked earlier, what defines God as all perfect? I imagine Descartes would simply say that since we cannot drag either of those definitions out of all things worldly, that there must be an infinite being like a God out there, thus proving his existence. He is not proving anything to me though. He is just using one part of his argument to prove another part. His proof of God is a closed circle that is drawing on the circle alone. There is nothing from the outside that can be applied to it. He is essentially defining a word by using the word in its own definition. Again, think about it. God is perfect; to be perfect you must exist. Thus god exists because he is perfect. Why is God defined as perfect in the first place though? This proof of God has too many holes that Descartes simply tries to fill with other explanations out of his head.

Last week when Daniel started to talk about philosophy in The Matrix, it spurred my attention. I mean all these philosophers we have been talking about have lots of ideas, but The Matrix is something I could relate to. I went to google “The Matrix and Descartes” to get some ideas and I ran into some really good sites that brought up some very interesting parallels between what we have been reading and The Matrix.

As already mentioned earlier in class, Descartes’ idea of the evil genius can be seen personified by the “Architect” in The Matrix. In Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes is skeptical that his sensations cannot tell him what is true. This is due to the fact that when we dream we can feel like we are sensing things but in reality we are not or it could be the works of an evil genius that is feeding us this information, deceiving our very own knowledge of reality. But it is finally concluded that since Descartes is thinking, he knows he is existing (Cogito ergo sum, “I think, therefore I am”). In The Matrix, the Architect is the creator of the Matrix, which is a virtual world where humans are plugged into and are convinced that it is reality. The Architect is in effect deceiving the people in the Matrix of their reality because in actuality they are connected to generators and their energy is harvested.

Another similarity can be drawn between The Matrix and Plato’s allegory of the cave. We all already know by now that in the cave, prisoners are chained up and are made to look at shadows directly in from of them, which to them is “reality”. This is comparable to the people plugged into the Matrix, as that computer world is their own “reality”. It was not until when the person from the cave was let go and was free to wander outside the cave was he then able to realize the truth to the world. Similarly, it was not until when Neo took the red pill, was he able to be disconnected from the Matrix and finally realize that he was living in a virtual world.

Holler back.

Jeff