The First meditation of Descartes establishes his doubt of sense, body, the world around him and god. His doubt is methodical, he does not doubt every single thing he sees, but like a house of cards once the base is destroyed everything else crumbles down. The senses are unreliable, however, only for certain things like the process of burning wood or the nature of light, even on the size of the sun relative to earth. We see the sun as a tiny ball in the sky when in reality it is thousands of times bigger than the earth. How often do you doubt that your heart beats or that you feel the clothes on your skin? Descartes considers that only the insane could doubt their senses, but given that he was sure he was not insane, he considers dreams instead. But how did he not know he was insane as well?
If we do not know whether we are awake nor asleep, can we be certain that even our most basic senses are not fooling us? First, we must ask the question of whether we have the knowledge to tell dream from reality. Since we cannot, and if we accept that premise, then we can doubt all our senses. Let's turn towards the physical world and extended objects. Even in our dreams, shapes and colors are based from real true colors and basic shapes. People on acid claim to have seen snakes growing from their fingers, or humanlike aliens with eyes, ears, noses and mouths take them on trips to other galaxies. The Minotaur, unicorn and every other myth is something cut and pasted from a real animal. But, even if taken from reality, in our dreamlike state we do not know what is real and what is not. Everything that is extended can be doubted. That is why, as he describes here.
…arithmetic, geometry, and other such disciplines, which treat of nothing but the simplest and most general things and which are indifferent as to whether these things do or do not in fact exist, contain something certain and indubitable. For whether I am awake or asleep, two plus three make five.
Moreover, even these disciplines can be wrong if we can imagine that a supreme being is deceiving us. Let us suppose that god has fooled us of even our own thoughts. Is there nothing then that can be trusted? If that were true then we couldn’t come up with that idea. An all powerful god would see that we do not ever have that idea. Then our thoughts are our own, and god can’t control them. The only thing that is true is then that I can think, I can’t doubt that I am thinking because thinking about my own doubt proves that I DO think. This does not explain if others exist or if the universe exists. Neither does it answer if I have a body or a sense. From here, Descartes continues on his meditations and onto proving the existence of god based on his “I think, therefore I am” premise.
“An all powerful god would see that we do not ever have that idea.”
ReplyDeleteI don’t necessarily agree. An all-powerful God may want to confuse us. I understand this is ad-hoc, but it is possible nonetheless. If a God exists that is all-powerful, there is no correct way in which to guess what he is up to. He may not be logical at all, but whimsical, and thus it is redundant to find any pattern in his work. I guess that’s why in the bible God is described to an extent so we can find reason in the world and not subscribe to the idea of a meaningless existence-a conclusion reached if God acted on his whims.
Another problem I have is with the asleep/awake uncertainty. There is no uncertainty as far as I am concerned. It will be difficult to prove and I may not complete such a task myself but can only provide an example. Do we access memory in our sleep? The answer is yes but in a different form. In our sleep we don’t recall memories, but experience them. I am certain I am awake because I think about my childhood now yet I am reliving it. My environment isn’t changing and people aren’t appearing from nowhere. My examples of dreams are limited to my own obviously. Does anyone have counterexamples?
"Be that as it may, here 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".
ReplyDeleteGod only created us in his image and likeness not in his "power". There can be only one "supreme" being. I suppose this is where the Evil Genius comes about. Descartes talks about how he distrusts some things about the senses but he does not distrust them all. So if God can let us be deceived some of the time and still be a good and powerful God then the senses may work in the same manner.
In reference to dreams, I think we all have had a little deja vu from time to time and most of us swear that we've had some crazy premonition and we wait for it. What makes us think that what we are seeing in our dreams is real? Can a peanut butter sandwich really chase me down the hall or did my hunger take over during my sleep hour because I went to bed without dinner? This sort of goes along with Descartes thinking that when you are in a bad situation, you can't really tell that you are, and when you are in a good situation you can't really tell if your not in the bad situation.