For this reason alone the entire class of causes which people customarily derive from a thing's "end," I judge to be utterly useless in physics. It is not without rashness that I think myself capable of inquiring into the ends of God.
Descartes, Meditation Four, A&T 55
In the quoted passage, Descartes attempts to eliminate the Aristotelian procedure of determining a thing's use by its "end." Last time, Peter brought up neoplatonism as it relates to Descartes's "ideas" (cf. A&T83, about 6/16ths of the way down, for a possibly relevant passage). Plato looked up to the Forms, and Aristotle attempted to work more empirically; we see a somewhat similar situation here with Descartes and Bacon respectively.
Can we elaborate on this dialogue? In what ways is Descartes neoplatonic? How does his attempt to establish a basis of knowledge upon "clear and distinct perception" fit into the comparison to Plato? How would he respond to Bacon or Aristotle?
P.S. When I began reading Descartes for this class, I had forgotten how important he had been to me when I first read him Freshman year. I have always considered Descartes to be captivating: he is careful, logical, and apparently sensible. The thing he seeks is also enchanting: a pure basis for knowledge, obtained by mere meditation. I find "I think, therefore I am" to be a beautiful idea, even though I think it assumes more than he purports. His skepticism still strikes me deeply, but as much as I disagree that there is any basis for knowledge other than belief I find his notion of "clear and distinct perception," especially as described on the last two paragraphs of Meditation Four and on A&T 68-70, to be an excellent procedure by which one could determine what one truly believes and attain to it. Despite not actually agreeing with what he says, for what it's worth, I think Descartes is really worth paying close attention to.
For your convenience, a brief summation of my argument against the Cogito:
ReplyDeleteIt is supposed that "I think, therfore I am" cannot be doubted; that, regardless of one's understanding of one's mind, due to its self-affirming nature it must be true. For example, every time one thinks anything at all, one affirms it by thinking.
But suppose that the mind were defined by the summation of its current memories, propensities, etc., in the same way that an object, for example a ship, is defined by its components and their configuration.
In this understanding of the ship, every time one adds a sail, it is not the "same" ship; it has changed. In the same way, in this understanding of the mind, every time one adds a memory, it is not the "same" person.
By this, each time one thinks, one is sure that one exists, but not that each of the previous "I"s is the same "I." That is, the mind may exist at the moment of thought, but it has no temporal extension because it is always changing. By this, it is meaningless to say that the mind exists just because it has said "I think, therefore I am."
If we understand the mind by this definition (that every addition makes it something else), then "I think, therefore I am" does not hold true; but we understand it by Descartes's definition (as a substance whole in character, etc.) then it does hold true. By this, it should be clear that Descartes has made an assumption.
Of course, it would not be acceptable to say that if one understands the mind to be made of glass, then "I think, therefore I am" is untrue. But this "changing ship" model of the mind is plausible, if not platable. For it is not uncommon to say "You are no longer the same person" to someone whose inclinations or modes of acting have changed; we also suppose amnesia or dementia to have a transformative effect on the mind. So the idea that the mind can change in such a way that it is not the "same" as it was at an earlier time is plausible. But of course, that only matters in order to demonstrate Descartes' presupposition in the Cogito.
That was the argument I attempted to present. Now I think we have seen more on "clear and distinct perception," so that topic may be more useful to investigate anyway.