Meditations 4 Flashcards
Problem Descartes faces after Meditation 3
“by my experience I am prone to countless errors” but “it is impossible for God to deceive me”
Possibilities for the origin of error
“depends on two concurrent causes, namely the faculty of knowledge which is in me, and on the faculty of freedom and the will”
The intellect’s role in error
“all the intellect does is enable to perceive ideas which are subjects for possible judgments…turns out to contain no error in the proper sense of that term”
The Cartesian will
“the will, of the freedom of choice, which I experience within me to be so great that the idea of any greater faculty is beyond my grasp”
The will is the ability to affirm or deny the truth of ideas which are received in the intellect from sense perception.
This forms judgments.
The passive acceptance of truth is because you can’t really avoid but to accept the truth-containing nature of clear ideas and CDPs.
In 1648, the Aristotelian convention whereby every belief requires predication – something to be said of the concept – existed, Descartes argues that existence is a predicate (“X” implies that “X exists”).
Relationship between will and intellect
“the scope of the will is wider than that of the intellect…extend its use to matters which I do not understand”
Descartes is operating within a contemporary debate:
Oratarians – 1611. Advocated the liberty of indifference – positive freedom controlled by the agent.
Jesuits – 1540. Voluntarism – negative freedom from constraints.
But, Descartes is able to sidestep this debate by exacerbating that….
“the scope of the will is wider than that of the intellect” “extend its use to matters which I do not understand”. –> Reminiscent of Augustine’s free will defence of evil. Means that the Jesuit/Oratiarn debate isn’t important in Descartes’s philosophy.
“the more widely my will exists, the more thanks I owe to him who gave it to me” This is just Descartes pre-empting the potential criticism that if God was omnibenevolent, then he would have made a perfect will for Descartes.
What is error dependent on?
“depend[s] on two concurrent causes, namely the faculty of knowledge which is in me, and on the faculty of choice of freedom of the will”
Hence, the intellect being passive means that error cannot come from the intellect itself.
How does God come into play?
it is surely no imperfection in God that he has given me the freedom to assent or not to assent in these cases where he did not endow my intellect with clear and distinct perception; but it is undoubtedly an imperfection in me to misuse that freedom”.
Emphasis on error being in humans and NOT in God in the slightest sense.
Gassendi Objection
Gassendi questions whether the scope of the mind is truly greater than that of the intellect, because the intellect seems to receive ideas on which no judgment is passed. We don’t necessarily think “that chair is blue”, we just notice it.
DESCARTES REPLIES (using the example of an apple) that this is a misunderstanding of his argument.
Our will overextends within the context of sense perception, and the fact that is doesn’t act all the time doesn’t mean that it’s more limited than the intellect.
Pretty persuasive reply.
Mersenne
Incoherent with rest of Meditations. If we accept this to be true, then there is almost nothing which the will is allowed to embrace. We then know nothing for certain.
DESCARTES REPLIES – we still know CDP’s BUT – don’t provide enough knowledge to know the existence of God, which is the objective of the 3rd meditation. Descartes is forced to rely on divine grace – purely theological justification.
Ryle Criticisms of Dualism
Ryle’s main argument was that Descartes’ dualism was based on a category mistake, which occurs when we try to apply a category to something that doesn’t fit. He argued that the mind and body are not two separate substances, as Descartes claimed, but rather two different ways of talking about the same thing.
Ryle used the example of a person who is shown around a university campus for the first time. The person might be shown the buildings, the lecture halls, the library, and so on. But if they ask where the university is, the question would be a category mistake because the university is not a physical object that can be pointed to, but rather a complex of buildings, people, and activities.
Similarly, Ryle argued that the mind is not a separate substance that can be located in the brain or elsewhere, but rather a set of capacities and abilities that are exhibited by the body. Mental states like beliefs, desires, and intentions are not separate from the body, but rather are part of the way that the body behaves and interacts with the world.
Divisibility Argument
‘body always divisible’ ‘mind utterly non divisible’
Wax argument
. He states, “Its color, shape, and size are apparent, it is hard, cold, easily handled, and if you rap it with your knuckle it makes a sound.”
- Wax is “of intellect alone”
Interaction between the Mind and the Body (QUOTE0 how are they connected
“Although I am only a thinking thing, I have a body that is somehow intimately connected with me”
Motion
‘body was fundamentally different from the mind because it was a material substance, and that the mind was a non-material or immaterial substance’
“I see nothing in the body but a certain disposition of limbs, which could have been produced by no other means than the motion which they received from the will”
- , ‘but we cannot say that we move any part of our body in sleep as we do when awake.”
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Imagination
Imagination vs understanding
Imag -“turns to towards the body” whereas the “mind turns towards itself when it understands”
