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Notes in Meditation Meditation 1

The document summarizes key points from Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy: 1) In the first meditation, Descartes employs methodic doubt to question all beliefs that are not absolutely certain, including the reliability of senses which could be deceiving him like in dreams. He finds the only indubitable statement is "I think, therefore I am". 2) In the second meditation, Descartes establishes his own existence as a thinking thing, a res cognitans. He distinguishes this from a res extensa, an extended physical thing. 3) In the third meditation, Descartes provides his famous Cartesian proof of God's existence from his clear and distinct idea of a perfect,

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74 views

Notes in Meditation Meditation 1

The document summarizes key points from Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy: 1) In the first meditation, Descartes employs methodic doubt to question all beliefs that are not absolutely certain, including the reliability of senses which could be deceiving him like in dreams. He finds the only indubitable statement is "I think, therefore I am". 2) In the second meditation, Descartes establishes his own existence as a thinking thing, a res cognitans. He distinguishes this from a res extensa, an extended physical thing. 3) In the third meditation, Descartes provides his famous Cartesian proof of God's existence from his clear and distinct idea of a perfect,

Uploaded by

Amir Gabriel Ordas
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Notes in Meditation

Meditation 1
Methodic doubt “I should no less scrupulously withhold my assent from what is
not fully certain and indubitable than from what is blatantly false, then, in order to
reject them all, it will be sufficient to find some reason for doubting each one.”
Dream doubt “In my dreams I have all the same experiences as these madmen do
when they are awake.”
“When I think this over more carefully, I see so clearly that waking can never be
distinguished from sleep by any conclusive indications that I am stupefied; and this
very stupor comes close to persuading me that I am asleep at all.”
“so I of my own accord slip back into my former opinions and am scared to awake,
for fear that tranquil sleep will give way to laborious hours of waking, which from
now on I shall have to spend not in any kind of light but in the unrelenting
darkness of the difficulties just jirred up.”
Darkness= tenebras

Second meditation
The existence of oneself “I”
Title: Nature of the human mind: that is more easily known in the body.
“As if I had suddenly slipped into a deep whirlpool, I am in such difficulties that I
can neither touch bottom with my foot nor swim back into the surface.”
“if I can just find one little thing that is unshakeable.”
“I am, I exist” proposition. Whenever it is uttered by me or conceived in the mind.
“ego sum, ego existo”
Propositions= statements that can either be true or false.
3 major types of knowledge:
 Relational knowledge(bistado/kilala)
 Operational knowledge, know-how (tatao/marunong) “techne”
 Propositional knowledge, know-that (aram/alam) “episteme”
“to doubt is to think”
Two classes to Descartes:
Bodies= physical stuff
Soul= nonphysical stuff
“A way to exclude the presence of any other body within it.”
“what am i?” A thinking thing. A thing that doubts, that understands, that affirms,
that denies, that wishes to do this and does not wish to do that and also imagines
and perceives by the senses.

Res cognitas(thinking thing)


Res, thing (kuwan/ ano)
=Kuwan na nag iisip
Mental states.
Res extensa (extended thing)
Res extensa habet partes extra partes
An extended thing has parts outside of parts.

“Something extended, flexible, mutabl: certainly that is all.”


Idea clara et distincta= clear and distinct ideas
Third meditation
Cartesian proof
“I am certain that I am a thinking thing. But do I not therefore also know what is
required in order for me to be certain of something? For in this first act of
knowledge [cognitione] there is nothing other than a clear and distinct perception
of what I affirm to be the case; and this certainly would be insufficient to make me
certain of the truth of the matter, if it could ever come to pass that something I
perceived so clearly and distinctly was false. And therefore I seem already to be
able to lay down, as a general rule, that everything I very clearly and distinctly
perceive is true”
“Let whoever can deceive me as much as he likes: still he can never bring it about
that I am nothing, as long as I think I am something”
“Of these ideas, some seem to me to be innate, others adventitious,* others
produced by myself. For understanding what a thing is, what truth is, what thought
is, is something I seem to possess purely in virtue of my nature itself. But if I am
now hearing a noise, seeing the sun, feeling the heat of a fire,* up to now I have
judged that such sensations derive from things existing outside myself. Finally,
sirens, hippogriffs, and suchlike creatures are inventions of my own imagination.
But perhaps I can think that all my ideas are adventitious, or all innate, or all
produced by me: for I have not yet clearly discovered their true source.”
“The idea of the infinite” While he can doubt the existence of other things,
he cannot doubt the existence of God, since he has such a clear and distinct
perception of God's existence. The idea has infinite objective reality, and is
therefore more likely to be true than any other idea.
When I say “I am taught by nature” to think so, I mean only that I am
prompted to believe this by some spontaneous inclination, not that it is shown to
me to be true by some natural light.
Fourth meditation
Errors
“Faculty of knowledge and faculty of free-will, where in the faculty of free will is
greater than the knowledge, so the mind wonders to some things the mind has little
knowledge of”
Decision theory= stakes-odds-costs
Hermeneutic delay vs. the urgency of the decision

Fifth meditation
“I find in myself innumerable ideas of things which, though they may not
exist outside me, can't be said to be nothing. While I have some control over my
thoughts of these things, I do not make the things up: they have their own real and
immutable natures. Suppose, for example, that I have a mental image of a triangle.
While it may be that no figure of this sort does exist or ever has existed outside my
thought, the figure has a fixed nature (essence or form), immutable and eternal,
which hasn't been produced by me and isn't dependent of my mind.”
Simply put, the argument is framed as follows:

1. God is defined as an infinitely perfect being.


2. Perfection includes existence.
3. So God exists.

With a confirmed existence of God, all doubt that what one previously thought was
real and not a dream can be removed. Having made this realization, Descartes
asserts that without this sure knowledge in the existence of a supreme and perfect
being, assurance of any truth is impossible.
Thus I plainly see that the certainty and truth of all my knowledge derives from
one thing: my thought of the true God. Before I knew Him, I couldn't know
anything else perfectly. But now I can plainly and certainly know innumerable
things, not only about God and other mental beings, but also about the nature of
physical objects, insofar as it is the subject-matter of pure mathematics.
Sixth meditation
Proof of the body being distinct from the mind (mind–body dualism)

1. It is possible for God to create anything I can clearly and distinctly perceive.
2. If God creates something to be independent of another, they are distinct from
each other.
3. I clearly and distinctly understand my existence as a thinking thing (which
does not require the existence of a body).
4. So God can create a thinking thing independently of a body.
5. I clearly and distinctly understand my body as an extended thing (which
does not require a mind).
6. So God can create a body independently of a mind.
7. So my mind is a reality distinct from my body.
8. So I (a thinking thing) can exist without a body.
Proof of the reality of external material things

1. I have a "strong inclination" to believe in the reality of external material


things due to my senses.
2. God must have created me with this nature.
3. If independent material things do not exist, God is a deceiver.
4. But God is not a deceiver.
5. So material things exist and contain the properties essential to them.

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