DISCUSSION: Descartes

We had a guest lecturer for Descartes tonight, Dr. Lisa Shapiro.

We ended up not having enough time to discuss Bacon so will have to do that at a future class.

Some background about the late 16^th/early 17^th c. – Montaigne is helpful to reading Descartes but we had to flip our weeks around so we are reading Montaigne on Saturday.  I haven't started it yet.

BACKGROUND

A lot happening in the 16th c.– a few major themes: 

Protestant Reformation (leads to a lot of religious wars incl 30 years War 1618-1648, starts with Defenestration of Prague (Archduke Ferdinand); protestant nobles trying to seize power in the vestiges of Holy Roman Empire. 
Holy Roman Empire lead by Frederick V, married to Elizabeth, daughter of Charles I of England.

Around 1645 Charles beheaded as part of English civil war and Cromwell takes over – Elizabeth and Frederick have son and daughter (among many children).

Daughter Princess Elizabeth corresponds with Descartes as he fleshes out his metaphysics and moral philosophy.

She and her brother involved in Treaty of Westphalia to resolve 30 Years War, Archduke Ferdinand aligned with Spain who end the war; family goes into exile in Netherlands.

Descartes dedicates some of his work to Elizabeth, she was very interested in Science.

Elizabeth ends up being an Abbess in Germany.

Charles Lewis, older son, responsible for rehabilitation of University at Heidelberg.

Cromwell’s reign ends and restoration of monarchy, James I 

Another son Prince Rupert (namesake of BC town)

Rupert great battlefield tactician, interested in new field of chemistry, also interested in trade, Hudson’s Bay did a lot of trade between Netherlands and Canada, Hudson's Bay Company (fur traders) originated in Netherlands.

Another daughter Louise Hollandene, painter, accurate representation.

Youngest daughter Sophie married Elector of Germany, her big project was to have a rich intellectual life in court, patron of Leibnitz - calculus.

•    1.     Deep political unrest focused on wars of religion (Catholic vs Protestant)

•    2.     Scientific concern with development of math and sciences – Copernicus, Galileo, 17^th c. development of scientific world view that is ongoing today – in 15^th c. animate vs inanimate (anima latin for soul) – different types of soul: rational, animal; in 17^th c. principle of life changes.  For Descartes what makes something living is not having a soul BUT he does feel that humans have a soul – union of mind and body.  They are really distinct substances – means anything that happens in body can be explained by body alone – by nature of matter, workings of matter – no involvement of mind – similarly body can’t explain anything about the nature of the mind (nature of mind is to have thoughts) – sensory experiences bring body into it.  Aristotelian said to be living meant to be ensouled: 3 different types of soul: Humans have all 3: vegetative, sensitive and rational, animals vegetative and sensitive, plants just have vegetative.  Soul explains how/why body works.  Descartes derived a mechanistic view of living vs non-moving (motion).  Body works just because it is a body.  For Aristotle it was power to reproduce (vegetative soul).  Prior to Protestant reformation human post-mortems were a sacrilege, after reformation human post-mortems allowed – Increased interest at the time in complicated and elaborate mechanical objects. 

•    3.     In Middle Ages main type of philosophy was Aristotelian, interest in Christianizing Aristotle – Crusades brought other thinkers to western attention including Plato and Stoics, Sceptics which had been lost to west – Plato translated into latin, mid-16^th c.  – influx of new philosophical texts into Europe – Montaigne appropriates skepticism, new way of looking at things, Descartes followed this approach (especially in his Meditations)– method to start anew and build a body of knowledge; Stoics (1^st text brought to west in 1609/1611 translated Moral Philosophy, Stoic physics (very materialistic) – want to explain natural phenomena simply by nature of matter alone without any animating force; also epicurean tradition – materialist view.  One central problem was explaining the sky/heavens – earth centric view, Copernican revolution, Aristotle shaky on astronomical things, also how heavy bodies fall.  Galileo showed how heavy and light bodies fall at same rate – new scientific models arising from re-discovered philosophical ways of thinking

Cogitum ergo sum – Part 4

Pg 29 – This I, that is to say, the Soul by which I am what I am, is entirely distinct from the body…

For Descartes:

•    thinking is being aware

•    existence is not same as being a living thing

•    consciousness is part of thinking

•    self-awareness, reflection takes you to differentiating true from false

The “I” is the experiencing, the awareness

“things we conceive of very clearly and distinctly are all true, but that there is some difficulty in being able to identify those which we conceive of distinctly”

So thinking is NOT just being aware – it is reason

Imperfection – “I saw clearly that it was a greater perfection to know than to doubt” – pg 29 “I decided to look for the source from which I had learned to think of something more perfect than I was myself, and I came to the incontrovertible realization that this must be from some nature that was in fact more perfect.

Pg 30 –

One argument for god is that I am having an idea of a perfect being and since I am not perfect I could not think of a perfect being on my own therefore god must exist

Byron noted that one problem with Descartes' premise is how do we know whether his idea of a perfect being is in fact perfect?

What is perfection?  Perfect tense ie: past perfect is something that started in past and COMPLETED in past – perfection is something complete missing nothing

Humans imperfect – missing knowledge

Descartes is working towards having full knowledge (he doesn’t have it so he is incomplete, imperfect) and this goal pre-supposes that there is the possibility of complete knowledge

I have trouble with saying that perfection exists - as a 1st principle.  Even if we could agree on a definition of perfection, who is to say that perfection actually ever exists or could exist?  It's a bit like the challenge of thinking about the biggest number you can possibly think of...now add 1.
Who is to say that there ever is an endpoint?

And even if it exists, perfection is hard to define.  A perfect square is only as perfect as the fineness of your measuring but at least this would be an objective measurement.  If I measure a square to the micron, then there is measuring to the millimicron and so on.

If you try to conceive of the perfect truth or the perfect person, the concept is too large to try and get a handle on what perfection might look like.  If I try to break it down to something smaller I could argue that somewhere, sometime, a human musician has struck a perfect note - but what is a perfect note? A note perfect to someone's ears? What makes that note perfect? You can measure notes using equipment (and again get into the fineness of your ability to measure) but if you were to speak about complex music such as a song or symphony then you get away from objective measurements of sound waves and harmonics and into taste.
When you get into taste - beauty, the senses etc - it is subjective and even harder to try and define perfection.  The perfect cup of tea, the perfect croissant, the perfect sonnet - completely dependent on taste. 

Bruce made the point that Descartes based some of his conclusions on the certainty of certain principles citing geometry – Euclidian geometry says that all angles of a triangle will add up to 180° (Euclid's Fifth Postulate) BUT  200 years later we saw the discovery of non-Euclidian geometry where if you examine triangles on a sphere, you can get an angle of 270°.


Regarding the question about whether Descartes truly believed in God or was covering his bases, the problem I have in this course, in trying to determine whether someone is being self-protective (Descartes including God in his argument to avoid Galileo's fate) or ironic in their writings, is that I'm only going by one of their texts rather than the whole body of their work to try and make that determination.

Right now, I would probably vote for the 'tactical nod' theory only because the God argument seems so weak to me.  I'll have to reread the text to be able to see if Descartes can convince me.  I'm likely wrong about whether he believed in God (since the background and intro to Descartes didn't seem to doubt that he believed in God) but he didn't convince me on a first reading.