Descartes’ Meditations

1. Descartes’ Meditations Meditation One: Concerning Those Things Which Can Be Called Into Doubt

2. Section 18 • Descartes realizes his opinions may be false. • He feels compelled to “raze” his prior knowledge to the ground and build it back up (Yoda-like). • This task is enormous, so he waits until later in life to undertake it. • He begins his assault on his opinions.

3. Section 19 • Descartes will throw any opinion away if it has the slightest bit of doubt, which they all do. • Everything he has known has come through his senses, which have been wrong before. • Senses have been accurate, but how can we tell we are not insane or dreaming?

4. Section 20 • Descartes assumes he is dreaming. • Even if dreaming, things must have an origin for your mind to conceive them. • For example (mine), you cannot dream about a tree if you have never seen a tree. • Descartes uses the analogy of a painter.

5. Section 21 • From this he concludes that anything dealing with composite things must be called into doubt (i.e. Astronomy, physics, medicine). • Math does not have to be doubted. • 2+3=5 and a square has 4 sides whether asleep or awake.

6. Section 21 Continued • Admits belief in God that created him. • Assume everything about God is fiction. • Must call God into doubt.

7. Section 22 • He must always be mindful of these doubts. • Opinions keep returning, weighing him down. • Better to have complete distrust than trust anything.

8. Section 23 • Concludes by saying he will assume God is trying to deceive him. • He says this task is tiring and overwhelming.

9. Meditation One: Focus Questions • Can we trust our senses? How are they useful to our knowledge of “self”? Is he right? • How do we know this is reality? • Is mankind happily ignorant? • Are we composed of our biases? How do these biases affect us? Where do they come from? Can we get rid of them?

10. Meditation Two Concerning the Nature of the Human Mind: That It Is Better Known Than the Body

11. Caution! • Descartes is essentially thinking out loud. At times, he may seem to be contradicting previous statements. This might be caused by a change in his thinking.

12. Sections 24-25 • Begins by summarizing his points in Meditation One about doubts. • Even if senses are false and God is a deceiver, he must exist since he thinks (I think, I exist). • Proceeds to determine what he is.

13. Section 26 • He used to think he was made of arms, legs, hands, etc. • He makes a distinction of his body and soul (Duality*). • Says that sensing and thinking are not part of body, but of soul.

14. Section 27 • He contemplates his body, but cannot bring himself to believe they exist. • Admits sensing cannot happen without body. • Concludes he is a thinking thing.

15. Section 28 • He is nothing physical since he assumes they are all false. • He will focus only on things known to him. • Whatever he is, it is not dependant on those things unknown to him. • Concludes he is a thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, imagines, and senses.

16. Section 29 • Reaffirms that even if a deceiving God exists, it is still “I” that is thinking. • If he is dreaming, then his senses are false. However, since he thinks he senses these things, his senses are part of his thinking.

17. Section 30 • He will attempt to contemplate corporeal things (i.e. bodies). • Uses wax as his “body.” • The wax has the qualities you would expect. • The wax changes when brought close to fire; yet, the wax remains wax despite changing properties. • He knows this not through his senses since his senses “sensed” its original form.

18. Section 31 • He knows the wax has innumerable changes possible even though his imagination cannot process these changes. • Therefore, his mind judges the qualities of the wax. • The mind’s inspection can be weak or strong depending on how closely the inspection is.

19. Section 32 • Since you describe the wax as was instead of describing its properties (as he would a man), his mind concludes the wax is wax, not his senses.

20. Sections 33-34 • By knowing the wax, or any body, one comes to know themselves even greater. • Objects (i.e. bodies) are perceived not through senses but by the intellect.

21. Meditation Two: Focus Questions • Are we separated by body and mind? Is our mind separate from our body? • How do you define man? Are we more than a thinking thing? Is someone in a coma no longer a man? • Is it our mind or senses that give us knowledge of a body? How might they work together rather than separately?

22. Meditation Three Concerning God, That He Exists

23. Part 1

24. Section 35-36 • Reaffirms his conclusions from Meditation Two. • Whatever he perceives clearly and distinctly must be true. • Must inquire whether God exists; if not, he can never be certain of anything.

25. Section 37 • Makes classifications: • Ideas : Man, sky, etc. • Volitions, Emotions, or Judgments : Idea PLUS something beyond the idea, such as a fear, affirmation, or denial.

26. Section 38 • Ideas cannot be false. • Judgments can be false if I judge the idea to conform with certain things outside me. • Adventitious things (coming from outside) definitely come from outside and not within. • These feelings come even if he wills against it.

27. Section 39 • Cannot put faith in natural impulses because they have led him astray before. • Even if outside ideas do not come from within, it does not follow necessarily that they are produced from things outside. • They may be produced by something unknown to him.

28. Section 40 • Even if these ideas do come from outside of me, it does not mean they resemble those things (i.e. in reality a fire may not actually emit heat). • Sun example – Math vs. Senses – Senses perceive the sun least resembling of its reality. • Ergo, blind impulse, not judgment, formed basis of belief that things outside him send images of themselves.

29. Meditation Three: Part 1 Focus Questions • How might Descartes be mistaken in his assertion that no idea may be false? Are there moments when ideas are false? • How might common sense provide criticism for Descartes? Can common sense (i.e. impulses) be a philosophical concept? • How might Descartes contradict himself with the sun example?

30. Part 2

31. Section 41 • There is as much reality in the cause as in the effect (i.e. if a thing exists, then the product of that thing exists). • Ergo, something cannot come from nothing. • Ergo, again, he cannot possess the thought of a stone (or any thing) without that thing existing somewhere in reality.

32. Section 42 • All ideas stem from one another, but there is no infinite regress. • If you go back through ideas long enough, you will eventually get to one archetype of that idea. • Ideas in you are images of a greater, perfect thing from which your ideas were drawn.

33. Section 42 Cont… • He cannot be the cause of an idea (assumption). • Therefore, he must not be alone in this world. • Something which is the cause of his ideas also exists.

34. Section 43 • His ideas consist of himself, God, corporeal things, angels, animals and men. • Ideas about men, animals, or angels can originate from ideas of himself, corporeal things or God (assumption). • Ideas of corporeal things cannot originate from him because he can never be sure about their qualities. • Heat/Cold Example (absence of heat = cold, or absence of cold = heat?).

35. Section 44 • The little he does know about corporeal things can come from ideas within him. • About the other ideas of a corporeal object he does not know (i.e. extension, shape, position, motion) may not be in him formally, but they may be in him eminently because he is a substance, and the other ideas are modes.

36. Section 44 Definitions • Substance- Anything that is self-subsisting. • Principal Attribute- The attribute of a substance that makes it a substance. • Mode- Any other attribute that is NOT the Principal Attribute.

37. Section 45 • Must determine if any trait of God could have come from within. • God to him is infinite, independent, supremely intelligent and powerful, and created everything. • Since he “probably” could not have come to those ideas from within, God exists. • He is finite, so the idea of infinite could not have come from within (assumption).

38. Meditation Three, Part 2 Focus Questions. • Descartes says since he is finite he cannot know infinite. Can we know opposites without seeing the opposite (i.e. can I know cold by only feeling heat?)? • Does man possess the ability to conceive of an idea from nothing? Can we accidentally create an idea (i.e. origins of fire)? • Can man be the cause of his own idea?

39. Meditation Three Part 3

40. Section 46 • Clearly understands that more reality exists in infinite object than finite object (assumption). • Therefore, idea of infinity does not come from knowing opposite, but rather idea is inside him. • God must then exist How can he know his defects if not for a perfect being to compare it to?

41. Section 46 Cont. • Idea of God contains more objective reality than any other idea. • The idea of God has is most true. True to the highest degree.

42. Section 47 • What if, though, these same perfect truths are in me without my knowledge? • I am gaining more knowledge all the time. • If potential is in me, I can at a future time have all the power of God.

43. Section 47 Cont. • That’s all baloney. • First, God contains no potential. • Second, nothing can ever be added to God’s knowledge like it can with mine. • Third, objective being cannot be perceived by potential being, only actual being.

44. Section 48-49 • Could I exist without this God existing? • If I came from myself, I would not have denied myself those things I do not possess. • A being is needed to create myself at every point in my life. There needs to be a cause for me being here now, and that cause is God, not myself.

45. Section 50 • Whatever created me must also be a thinking thing with same ideas of perfection. • What created me must be God. Or, if a thinking thing other than God created me, God must have created them, ad infinitum. • No infinite progress (i.e. you eventually get to God) since that thing also preserves you at every point in existence.

46. Section 51 • Perhaps several units hold various aspects of perfection, which all came to together to create me. • Impossible since I have an idea of the unified perfection of God. • (But he HAS the idea of several perfect units coming together, so according to Descartes, then, that must also exist.)

47. Section 51 (cont) through 52 • Parents cannot be the creator since they do not preserve me; they merely gave me the matter I perceive to be me. • Concludes, I have idea of perfect thing (God), therefore God must exist.

48. Meditation Three Part 3 Focus Questions • What assumptions does Descartes make in his argument for the existence of God? • What leaps of logic does Descartes make in his argument for the existence of God?

49. Meditation Four Concerning the True and the False.

50. Section 53-55 • Idea of the mind is greater than the idea of corporeal things. • God cannot deceive since deception and trickery are part of imperfect beings. • Man errs not because God is imperfect, but because man’s imperfection is part of God’s perfect reality, which we can never know.