Day 5: Mind & Body; God & Method

•           Return and Discuss Test 1

•           Review/Questions

•           Doubt; Mind and Body

•           Some Background

•           The Wax Experiment & Argument; Evaluation of the Wax Argument

•           Argument for the Existence of God

•           Clear and Distinct Ideas

•           Read Meditations 5 & 6 for next time

 

Doubt

•           In Meditation One, what does Descartes doubt?

•           In Meditation Two, what does Descartes say cannot be doubted?

 

Mind and Body

•           So I exist.  According to Descartes, what am I?

•           Why does Descartes answer the above question the way he does?  What are his reasons?

•           What is body?

 

Mind & Body

•           Two senses of the word “body”

     –      The way we generally use it today

     –      Body as corporeal nature or extended (physical) stuff or res extensa (extended substance)

•           Mind: res cogitans (thinking substance)

•           Which do we know better, mind or body?

 

Some Background

•           Aristotle’s four causes: efficient, final, material, and formal

•           Aristotelian emphasis on qualities

•           Descartes’ reaction to the above

 

The Wax Experiment

•           A Digression (sort of)

•           What is the wax like before it is heated?

•           What is the wax like after it is heated?

•           How does Descartes make use of the above information?  What kind of argument does he run?

 

The Wax Argument

•           (1) All the information offered by the senses about the wax has changed.

•           (2) The wax present after the heating is the same wax that was there before the heating.

•           (3) Therefore, we cannot know what the wax is with the senses.

•           What claim/s is/are needed to make the premises support the conclusion?

 

The Wax Argument

•           Some possible candidates for missing claims:

•           (a) That which makes something what it is, is a property or relation that does not change; and

•           (b) To have knowledge of what something is, is to have knowledge of what doesn’t change in it.

•           Does any of this sound familiar?

 

The Wax Argument

•           What does Descartes say the wax is?

•           If the senses cannot give us knowledge of the wax, what are the other possible sources of knowledge?

 

The Wax Argument

•           Why is it that imagination cannot give us knowledge of the wax?

•           (4) We understand that the wax can take on an infinite number of shapes.

•           (5) We can only imagine a finite number of shapes with our imagination.

•           (6) Therefore, we cannot know the wax with the imagination.

 

The Wax Argument

•           How do we know the wax?

 

Evaluating the Wax Argument

•            (1) All the information offered by the senses about the wax has changed.

•            (2) The wax present after the heating is the same wax that was there before the heating.

•            (a) That which makes something what it is, is a property or relation that does not change; and

•            (b) To have knowledge of what something is, involves grasping what doesn’t change in it.

•            (3) Therefore, we cannot know what the wax is with the senses.

 

Argument for the Existence of God

•           Why is Descartes arguing for the existence of God?

•           In Meditation Three, how does Descartes Argue for the existence of God?  What are the premises of his argument?

•           At the end of Meditation Three, what does Descartes say about God?

 

Clear and Distinct Ideas

•           How is it that I am deceived if God is no deceiver?

•           According to Descartes, what are the two principal causes of error?

•           How do we avoid error?