A salute to the philosophical hardcore!

Well done to all of you who are still 'with it'. We've achieved a lot this week ...

We have:
1. Sorted out Descartes' 3 arguments: illusion, dreaming and deception.

2. consolidated our understanding of 'a priori' and 'a posteriori' knowledge claims, not to mention the analytic / synthetic distinction.

3. Waded through the philosophical treacle of Descartes' third Meditation and seen how he tried to prove the existence of God.

4. Given some thought to the concepts of infinity, perfection, God etc. and ...

5 considered whether Descartes was right to think those concepts were innate with all that that would imply (the existence of God!!?? - possibly)

6. Then we started on John Locke - who thought Descartes was rubbish - we read his arguments against innate ideas - remember: 'no universal consent', 'children and idiots' and the 'circular argument' of 'assent when reason is reached'.

7. and we considered what a 'idea' might consist in.

Lots of you have said some very smart things and I'm very encouraged. I mustn't forget the biscuits!

By the way if any of you managed to get Philosophy the Classics yet you ought to read the chapters on Descartes and Locke.

Next week we will mainly be eating biscuits!

In honour of those who couldn't stand the philosophical heat! :)

I think therefore I homework!

So, the essay task is:

Try to explain how Descartes’ thoughts about:

A) ‘the cogito’ the ‘I’ that thinks and

B) his thoughts about the wax

lead him to his ideas about the separation of mind and body (Cartesian Dualism)

The blog below - 'Waxing Philosophical' should help you and there are other hopefully useful bits and pieces on my website at http://www.mrbrodie.com/ click on Descartes > wax essay (I'll put the Leibniz 'Superman thing in the 'Gallery of resources') use it if you think it's useful, but you don't have to)

This is must be completed by Friday 24th by which day you must have a well organised folder in which I will find the various handouts I've given you so far and the following:

Summary of wax - argument: (Yes and no arguments)

Summary of 3 arguments - illusion - dreaming - deception

Wax essay

(If you want to cover all of these in the wax essay that‘s fine)

Don't worry if you're finding this all a little confusing at the moment - if you stick with it it will begin to make sense! Probably :) If it doesn't you can always come and tell me - my door is always open (metaphorically) 

Ghosts in the machines

I thought I'd bored everybody to death with all the mind / brain business, but I'm happy to bore some more. And I think I might have to as lots of you still seem to think you're powered by some kind of weirdy ghost / spirit / mind / souly thing! (Obviously I utterly respect everybody's right to believe what they want to believe, but in Philosophy you have to either:
a) have a good 'rational' argument that atempts to justify your belief
Or
b) keep it in a quiet corner of your 'soul' away from the pollution of thought!

Descartes Waxing Philosophical

Below is a revised, redrafted and extended (hurrah! they cry) version of the various notes I have blogged on this wax business in the last couple of years. It's got quite long and I possibly repeat myself a little, but it has been useful to me to re-read and re-write it, so I hope it will help you.

Descartes’ ‘Meditations’ are an attempt to find the foundations of objective (certain, unchanging and universal) knowledge. Descartes believes that if he can find an ‘Archimedian point’ - just one thing about which there can be no doubt then he will be able to ‘ground’ all his other ideas. It is an attempt to construct a complete epistemology - a theory of knowledge - by building, piece by piece (brick by brick) on his foundation - his point of certainty the cogito. (I think therefore I am)

Believing he has found his one point of certainty - that he exists as a ‘thinking thing’ Descartes tries to work out the status and validity of the various thoughts and ideas that this ‘thinking thing’ has. In other words now he's certain that he is thinking thoughts he needs to know if the thoughts have any meaning or connection to the person he thought he was and the world he thought he lived in before he started doubting everything! 

His problem is that most of his ideas seem to come through his senses and he has already shown these to be unreliable and deceptive.

He decides that this thinking thing is ‘a thing that doubts, perceives, affirms, denies, wills, does not will, that imagines also and which feels.’ The less these activities of the mind have to do with the physical world the more Descartes thinks he can rely on them. Therefore the imagination, which seems to build its ideas from perceptions of the physical world is less trustworthy than, for example, the act of doubting, (Remember Descartes prefers geometry to geography for similar reasons.)

In his Second Meditation, having pushed his scepticism, his 'method of doubt', through various arguments concerning illusion and dreams and on to the point of considering that a malignant demon might be feeding him illusions about the world, Descartes, finally arrives at his point of certainty, 'I am, I exist', he claims, and goes on to say that this 'must be true whenever I assert it or think it.' To be thinking the thought of one's existence is, in itself, proof of that existence, he says.

Although Descartes is now certain of his existence as a mental entity he is still in doubt about the thoughts and ideas that he has as a thinking thing. (where do they come from? how trustworthy are they? are some more trustworthy than others?) He thinks again about the ideas that seem to come to him through the senses and begins to reconsider the physical world and the way he perceives it in order to understand how it is that he can be certain about his mental existence, but in doubt about the physical world.

In a famous passage he considers the way his senses give him perceptions of a piece of wax, and how those perceptions are utterly different and distinct depending on whether the wax is hard or melted. He concludes that although we normally understand our senses as providing us with understanding - to 'see' something is to understand it - the example of the wax shows Descartes that 'Something that I thought I saw with my eyes ... was really grasped solely by my mind’s faculty of judgment.

Descartes discussion of the wax is central to understanding his notion of what it is to be a human being. It is his ability to conceive of (have a concept of) the wax - grasp its essence - that, for him, demonstrates the power of rational thought. He concludes that because the information given to him by his senses about the wax is insufficient to allow him to know that the wax remains the same thing after it changes all its 'sensible qualities', it must therefore be his 'reason', his faculty of judgement that gives him knowledge of the wax. It is as if through the power of rational thought the sum of his understanding is greater than the understanding his senses alone could provide. This 'added power' provided by ‘reason’ is the underlying principle of Rationalist philosophy.

Descartes believes that knowledge of the external world is gained through the mind’s understanding (judgement) of the information we receive through the senses. The faculty of judgement is a mental capacity (ability) that brings together the ‘raw’ and potentially incoherent information of the senses and allows us to understand.  This makes him a rationalist as opposed to an empiricist. (we're doing them next).

For Descartes, this wax business confirms his belief that, he can know his internal world - his mental processes - better and more certainly than he can the external physical world. This emphasises the separation and the difference of the two ‘stuffs’ mental and physical and makes clear his ‘dualism’ - his Cartesian dualism!

Jigsaw Bits & and two 'Pieces' of Descartes

We've done an awful lot for the first week, so well done if you haven't weakened yet!

First of all we read the 'First Meditation' from Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy' (probably the most read philosophy book ever written - but not the best!) and we saw how Descartes sets out to test the validity of the 'knowledge' he thinks he has. He decides to use a form of extreme scepticism: everything he thinks he knows is subjected to the test 'can I be completely certain it is true?' 

He gives examples of three different ways in which he may be wrong about how he perceives the world. Firstly he uses the argument from illusion; (sticks appearing bent in water etc.) to show that his senses are not reliable. Secondly he suggests he could be dreaming: the argument from dreaming. And thirdly he considers that a malignant demon may be deceiving him deliberately about everything: the argument from deception. (The Matrix / brain in a vat business)'

In the Second Meditation he goes on a bit more about all the doubt stuff (Cartesian doubt / extreme scepticism) and then fairly quickly arrives at the point where he concludes that all he can really be sure of is that he is a 'thinking thing' an 'I" that thinks. This is the famous 'cogito' 'I think therefore I am' (cogito ergo sum) Even if he is being fed all his thoughts by the 'malignant demon' he can still be sure that it is him he must exist in order to think these thoughts. So he can't be certain that anything he thinks is true, but he can be certain he is thinking those thoughts! :)

We also learned the meaning of ‘epistemology’, it is the study of knowledge: what can we know and how can we know it? And how can we know we know it!! :) 


We also learned how to distinguish 'a priori' statements of knowledge from 'a posteriori' ones: think of 'a priori' as meaning 'independent of experience'. If you could lie in a floatation tank, deprived of all sensory input, and still be certain a statement is true, then you know it 'a priori'. You don't need to and check. If you need to check the truth of a statement (even if you couldn't actually check it e.g. there is genuinely a creature that lives deep in the Atlantic Ocean that bears an uncanny resemblance to 'Spongebob Square-Pants') then it's claim is 'a posteriori'. 


These terms, and the distinction between 'analytic' and 'synthetic' propositions will become very important very soon. 


HOMEWORK:

Read to end of Meditation 2.                                                                 

Write brief summary of Descartes ‘wax’ example': what is the point he's trying to make? Use Philosophy online summary if you're stuck. 

Due Monday   

BUY BOOKS  

If you are serious about doing Philosophy you really ought to try to buy (and read) these two books. They will be useful throughout the A Level - course. 'The Classics' is probably the first one to get as it's a fairly gentle introduction,  but 'The basics' is also very, very useful. Get them both if you possibly can! 

They seem to be cheapest here (but I hate Amazon!) 

Philosophy: The Classics

Philosophy: The Basics