Reading Descartes Closely
a.k.a.Thirteen Ways of Looking at Descartes
a.k.a. Creating my Own Study Page for Meditation #3
a.k.a.Thirteen Ways of Looking at Descartes
a.k.a. Creating my Own Study Page for Meditation #3
1. The Meditator reviews his situation and re-enacts his rejection of the senses.
He—
►shuts his eyes,
►stops up his ears,
►withdraws all his senses, and
►blots all images of corporeal things out of his mind.
Looking deeply within, he restates what he knows: I am a thing that thinks.
2. Next, he wants to know what is required for him to be certain of something (70).
He then realizes that he already has a general rule: everything I very clearly and distinctly perceive is true (70).
HOWEVER-- the problem is that he has in the past believed (out of habit)
a) that things outside himself existed;But now he realizes that he was mistaken. Or perhaps his judgment was right but his judgment didn’t come from his perception. [Descartes seems uncertain here, but he isn't. We should give more weight to the second of these options.]
b) that those ‘outside things’ were the source of his ideas;
c) that his ideas resembled those ‘outside things.’
3. He then asks himself about a kind of knowledge that seems more certain: 2+3=5. He knows he agreed to doubt even such simple things, using the fiction of the deceiver. BUT every time he turns his attention to those things he thinks he perceives “with such great clarity,” he “spontaneously blurt[s] out these words: ‘let anyone who can do so deceive me; so long as I think that I am something, he will never bring it about that I am nothing’” (71).
4. This repetition of the “I exist” moment seems to carry him forward to certainty about 2+3=5. Even a deceiver cannot make contradictions possible.
5. Although for the purpose of his project he entertained the idea that there could be an all-powerful deceiver, he thinks that now is the time to ask “whether there is a God, and, if there is, whether or not he can be a deceiver” (71). [He takes what looks like a detour and gets back to answering this question on p.76.]
6. Now, “for the sake of order,” the Meditator says he ought to put his thoughts into certain classes.
• mental images: e.g., of a man, a chimera, heaven, angel, God
• other: volitions, emotions, judgments
►These ideas simply exist in the mind. ►They are neither true nor false until he makes a judgment about them. So it’s the judgment that he has to pay attention to (71).
His big problem is that he often judges that the ideas in himself “are similar to or in conformity with certain things outside” himself.
7. Among his ideas,
a) some appear to be innate;(Those ideas that appear to come from an outside source deserve special attention.)
b) others appear to be derived from an external source;
c) others seem to be made up by himself. These last are fantastical things, like sirens and hippogriffs.
The idea of heat is one of those ideas. It does not come from his will. He feels heat whether he wants to or not. Now why does he think this feeling of heat comes from and resembles the fire by which he is sitting? He says he’s been taught this by nature, which means that he is “driven by a spontaneous impulse to believe” it (71).
► Spontaneous impulse is not reliable. The ►light of nature (by which he knows he exists) is reliable. [The light of nature reveals clear & distinct ideas.]
Even if the ideas (like heat) did come from sources other than himself, it does not follow that the ideas resemble those sources.
►For example, Descartes’ Meditator has two ideas of the Sun. One that appears to come from the senses makes the sun seem small . The other, which comes from astronomical reasoning, makes the sun seem very big.
►Reason convinces him that the idea that comes from the senses needs to be corrected (73).
8. Next he thinks of another way to test whether the ideas in him come from something outside himself (73). [This part of his discussion depends on a distinction between “objective reality” and “formal reality.” Objective reality is the “amount” of reality a thing has when it is an object in the mind. Formal reality is the “amount” of reality required for independent existence.]
Ideas of substance
vs.
Ideas of modes or accidents
His ideas of substances are different from his ideas of modes or accidents. Ideas of substances have more objective reality.
►Furthermore, the idea of God (eternal, infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, and creator of all things other than himself) has more objective reality than ideas of finite substances have.
► If one idea has more or less objective reality than another, that difference in objective reality points to a difference in the formal reality of the causes of the ideas.
► For any idea to exist in the mind as an object, it must have a “cause in which there is at least as much formal reality as there is objective reality contained in the idea.”“[A]s imperfect a mode of being as this is by which a thing exists in the intellect objectively through an idea, nevertheless it is plainly not nothing; hence it cannot get its being from nothing."
Descartes’ Meditator then explains that if he has an idea that has more objective reality than he himself has (of formal reality), then ►“it necessarily follows that [he is] not alone in the world, but that something else, which is the cause of this idea, also exists” (74).
9. Descartes inspects his own ideas and realizes that he could himself account for his ideas of angels, animals, and other men (75). But the idea of God is different. His idea of God “is a certain substance that is infinite, independent, supremely intelligent and supremely powerful.” This idea could not have come from himself; therefore he concludes that “God necessarily exists” (76).
It is not from the negation of the finite that the Meditator’s idea of the infinite derives. “[T]he perception of the infinite is somehow prior in me to the perception of the finite” (76).
No other idea is so clear and distinct; no other idea has so much objective reality (77).
10. The argument concerning potentiality also proves that Descartes couldn’t have invented God, since in God all is actual, nothing potential; the objective being of an idea cannot be produced by a potential being; it must be produced by an actual or formal being (77-78).
11. Descartes next comes to an important question. When he is fully attentive, he understands why the idea of a perfect being comes from a being who is really perfect. But he can easily slip back into forgetting why this is. So he must ask whether he himself who has this idea could exist without the existence of this being (78).
So he begins by asking how he can derive his own existence.He couldn’t have created himself. He would not have given himself so many imperfections.
Maybe he has always existed and no author of his being need be found. But conservation, like creation, needs to be accounted for. And he has no power to conserve himself (78).
Perhaps some being less perfect than God created him.
12. Well, whatever God is, he must be a thinking being, and he must have all the perfections of the objective reality of Descartes’ idea of God (79).
13. So now, he only needs to ask how he got his idea of God: “the only option remaining is that this idea is innate in me, just as the idea of myself is innate in me” (80).
►A maker's mark: The idea of God is like the mark of a craftsman, showing his work, claiming his work:
“[I]t is not astonishing that in creating me, God should have endowed me with this idea, so that it would be like the mark of the craftsman impressed on his work.”
Commentary on Meditation #3 to follow examination of study page