Great Philosophers 笛卡尔英文介绍
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Great PhilosophersFriday October 7th
Rene Descartes Continued (Cla 3)
We left last cla in the depths of doubt.He had left us with nothing as he was able to doubt everything he learned through his senses due to the ‘evil spirit theory’ see page 40 of the text.
Doubt is a dangerous thing.Where does it end (pit of despair).The freedom to doubt is part of the modern self.Descartes’ doubt is fostered in science, he wants to find the one truth upon which he can turn the world (fulcrum theory)
It is I that doubt, it is I that am deceived.I may doubt that I have a body, but it is still I that doubt.The constant is I.It is I that thinks, (even if I am deceived or wrong, it is still I that is wrong) I am, every time I think.‘I think therefore I am’ or ‘I doubt therefore I am’.The one thing that I cannot refute (not subject to doubt) it is I that thinks, and therefore I exist (even if I am wrong).
This leads to the question; what am I? Descartes methodically breaks down this I.He breaks it down into two parts.1) The body, and 2) The soul.
Can I know the body? I am very familiar with it, but can I know it? It is there all the time, but Descartes says that he cannot know this for sure because he perceives his body through his senses (which he has proved false due to the great deceiver theory).Can he know himself through knowing his soul? The soul for Descartes animates the body.(From Aristotle’s philosophy of the soul as anima.) What are the activities of the soul; movement, feeding, sensation, and thinking.The first three activities of the soul are actually connected with the body.Therefore he cannot know the soul through these activities, because they are bodily activities.The body can be deceived, and it is also deceiving.
That leaves the fourth activity of the soul; thinking.This doesn’t require anything related to the body.Thinking is therefore the one certain activity of the soul.I know I am and I know I think but what am I? Descartes answer: I am a thing that thinks.
What is thinking? It is doubting, understanding, willing, imagining.Not just thinking in the sense of calculating, but mental activity.
Cla discuion; what do you think thinking is when you think?
-emotional feeling
-imagination
-logic
-analysis without sensory input.
-making sense of the world, making correlations, determining patterns and trends -synthesis
-subjective interpretation of the environment.
Proff: Thinking about thinking is an important aspect of thinking.Goes beyond
calculations, and the mechanics of the brain, and it takes on different dimension.It could be called thought, consciousne, or mind.
What it the difference between a computer that thinks and human thought.Can a
computer think about thinking? You can program a computer to make some kind of loop to resemble this action.But does it actually do it? NO.You program a computer to think.Individuals are capable of thinking freely of any intervention.This freedom is part of consciousne.
Cartesian philosophy; mind as something that is separate from body.He is arguing for an idea of thought that is eentially different from the material.We have to think of thought as self reflective, therefore conscious, an expreion of freedom, capable of doubt.(The whole proce began with this freedom to doubt).
Proff: I don’t want a computer that doubts.
Mind as separate from the substance of the material world.
For Descartes; reflecting on the self is the main goal.Questioning who am I? What does it mean to be a self? Asked to reflect upon oneself.
-Circle of self reflection
The modern self as coming out of Descartes (midterm question)
-self reflecting (self conscious)
-doubting
-free
These three things can be opposed to what a computer is thought to do.(a computer is just a complex calculator).A computer cannot do the things mentioned above.(Presumably)
Descartes is not talking about a machine, but rather a substance.There is something unique about thinking that is separate from other substances.For Descartes there are two substances 1) Thinking, and 2) material, bodily world… these two separate substances are not supposed to meet.
The idea of the self as free is incredibly significant for Descartes.(This will be important when we discu Kant later in the course).Eential to the ideas of ethics which will discued later as well.
The material stuff of nature is determined by natural laws of causation.There is no
freedom in the material world.It is all determined by the laws of physics, and causality.Freedom must be a separate substance, and it is called the mind.
Descartes asks how do we know the things of the world? Do I know the things of the world?Descartes chooses a piece of the world that is closest to him.A piece of wax.(pg.42/43) He says that because this piece of the world is so close to him, he must know it.
He realizes that he knows the wax through his senses (or what he knows about any object in the world) i.e.Taste, smell, touch etc.When he hold the wax up to the flame, everything that he knows about the wax changes.The smell is gone, the touch is no
longer the same, even the shape is no longer the same.If everything is changed about the wax, what remains? I cannot say that the wax has disappeared; it is still there even though it has changed.What remains? Descartes answer: it is a body occupying space.It is a true extension.
That is the best that he can know about the object.Its geometrical extension.It is arrived at not through the senses but through thought, and through judgment.The truth of external bodies is geometrical in terms of knowing.
I don’t know the world through my senses; to truly know it I must know it through geometry, Making judgments about the objects.(The senses themselves do not give us truth about the world, their characteristics change).Knowing the change in a geometrical way.
True extension
What is there as the wax is eentially different from the proce it takes for me to determine it.
Descartes is talking about knowing scientifically.Geometry teaches me the eence of extension.The senses don’t give me knowledge of extension (or it is false knowledge).
Science= knowledge of eences
Descartes and Plato are both mathematicians.It leads one to be le trusting of the senses and more trusting of mathematics for discovering truth.
Cartesian Dualism; substance of mind and substance of body.
Where do these two meet? There is no real answer to this in Descartes other than the Penile gland in the brain.Where does the mind end and the body begin.
Descartes;
Modern self, self reflecting, doubting, freedom, great invention.To the extension that this self becomes real- it is set of against otherne (something that is not the self)
The self and the world, here there is an absolute separation (completely opposed to the presocratics where there really was no self per say.)
The extent to which I make myself real and substantial, I make otherneunreal and abstract.Self as alienated.
Otherne seems to be something foreign.
The modern notion of selfhood has a danger of alienation and self absorption.
To the extent that I know myself, how can I be sure that other people are selves as well.They behave in a way that is familiar to me, but how do I know you are not (lets say robots or more sure to Descartes’ time machines- specifically clockwork which was at its height at the time that he was writing)
To the extent that we are modern selves, maybe this is our problem.We still live in a dualistic universe to a certain extent and it is reflected in our own attitudes toward ourselves, and to otherne.
-the body as a machine that we are in charge of.This is one of the ways that we view the mind as separate from the body.All very Cartesian way of thinking.
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