Why Study
Early Modern Philosophy?
a) academic--steppingstone for later phil. studies. Nec. niche
in humanities degree.
b) philosophically interesting—touch on fundamental
themes:
1) problem of reality
2) problem of mind
3) problem of knowledge
[why study early modern phil continued:]
c) "transcendental" significance of modern
philosophical 'fundamental frameworks' (i.e. ways of
organizing the world and attempting to explain it).
Three of these operating since the 1600s:
–1) common sense approach: ignore origins or 'basic nature,' just
focus on immediate properties and uses, rely on perception chiefly (the
manifest image).
–2) scientific approach: look beyond the manifest image to some
underlying nature or structure which accounts for the surface
properties of the thing.
–3) religious/theological approach: explain by appeal to divine
causes/ends.
How do you explain the table from within each of these frameworks?
Give the sufficient reason for the table according to each.
[why study early mod. phil continued:]
d) it is necessary to understand the early modern
period of philosophy if one is to understand the
origins of the modern world.
The Frameworks Clash in the
Meditations
Meditations as an UR text
(grounding/fund'l/originating text) in philosophy:
–privileges the scientific framework
–twists the religious framework
–attacks the common sense framework
▸b) Watch both the content & the literary structure of the
Meditations:
–1) first-person perspective
–2) confessional format: "I lost my faith, but then found it again"
–3) 6 meditations is a trade on the religious framework in Genesis: it
took God six days to create the world, and Descartes six meditations to
establish a firm foundation for our knowledge of it.
c) RD's 'epiphany' (Nov. 10, 1619)....spent 3 days in a hut
("stove")....his vision of the "mathesis universalis" =
philosophy, queen of the sciences.
Meditation One
What is the objective of the Meditations?
Hint: look at second sentence of Med. I.
How do we know he is after Absolute Knowledge (K*)?
How do we get K*? How do we know when we have it?
RD’s Answer: ‘certainty of belief’
1) JP: what is this "certainty"? Confidence? Lots of extreme
confidence?
2) Then does certain belief = "verified belief"? Maybe, but
what provides verification that overcomes the possibility of
error?
RD: one way of getting at certainty is to show what abs.
knowl. looks like, then say "that's what certainty gets at."
The via negativa: first look at what abs. knowl is not.
–i) It is not false (truth seems to be a property of known assertions).
–ii) It is not what I do not believe. But is true belief knowledge?
–iii) No. Is justified true belief knowledge?
–iv) No, since my belief that it was 2:51 last Thursday was justified,
and true, but we decided it was not K*.
3) What more do we need in order to convert JTB
into knowledge? Well, it must be some additional
property of the belief. Call this property X. So K* =
JTB + X.
4) How do we discover what "X" is? Well, RD
thinks certainty is the mark of K*, and it seems like
certainty is just 'indubitability of belief', so perhaps
X = 'indubitability of the justified true belief'.
5) Is this indubitability just the name for a
psychological state we fall into when believing some
things...an inability to bring ourselves to the
psychological attitude of doubting?
–No. The inability to doubt must be something arising in the intellect
alone. It is not a psychological state, but rather a property of a belief
such that it is conceptually beyond doubting, for example. The
impossibility of this doubt is rather more like the impossibility of
completing the concept of a round square (RD has argument for the
claim that any indubitable belief is true)
RD’s Method of Doubt
Find some principles which are indubitable, then
derive, as in a geometric deduction, the rest of the
true beliefs about the world from these. Method of
doubt acts as a filter for our dubitable beliefs. Note
that RD finds actual geometry dubitable (Meditation
#1).
RD generates general doubt about our common
beliefs with a Three Step sceptical attack
that comes in Two Phases
Phase 1
Generate a fully general doubt about all sensory beliefs.
(i) ordinary (insecure) sense beliefs—perceptual
errors and perceptual illusions
(ii) secure sense beliefs—vivid dreams (the dream
hypothesis)
Does this place all sensory beliefs in doubt?
NO. The Dreamer’s Palette remains (what’s that?)
Phase 2
Generate a fully general doubt about all sensory beliefs that remain
unchallenged by the dream hypothesis AND a fully general doubt
about all mathematical beliefs
(iii) beliefs about simple natures/general things (i.e.,
our dream-immune beliefs about the ‘sensory
palette’ and all mathematical / geometrical beliefs—
Evil Demon Hypothesis
What beliefs remain intact?
NONE.
Epistemic Vertigo.
Maximus scepticus.
Cognitive despair sets in.
The Plan of the Meditations
1. Use the method of doubt (EDH) to find a criterion for absolute
knowledge (by isolating some belief that cannot be doubted)
2. Use that criterion to discover some true beliefs that can be joined
in arguments that logically establish conclusions that defeat evil
demon skepticism skepticism.
How to do That:
A. prove God exists as the creator of the world and my mind and all
its powers. (Med. III)
B. prove that God is not a deceiver (is not an Evil Demon that
would mislead me in my belief-forming practices) (Med IV)
C. prove that all mathematical truths are instances of absolute
knowledge. (Med V)
D. prove that these truths describe the real nature of any possible
world consisting of bodies in space. (Med V)