picture: Cogito Ergo Sum 3, Susan Aldworth Record one of your reading observations from The Meditations below--you can answer or meditate on a question or on several questions or ask some of your own. Please check back to this post in the following week. After you have commented, please respond to at least one other comment as well. I will be checking and commenting as well. We will discuss questions/answers that are posed here in class on Wednesday November 7. I will check and record your participation in these postings at the end of the Descartes section on Wednesday November 14.
- What does Descartes mean when he says "clearly and distinctly"? What are "clear and distinct" perceptions?
- (from class today) What is "perfection"? What does it mean for Descartes' God to be "perfect"? For us?
- What is objective reality? How does it relate to formal reality and external reality? Reality?
- If human intellect is perfect, how is it that humans error (according to Descartes)?
- What is the "infirmity" that Descartes experiences, the reason why he says here he makes mistakes (M4 page 86)? How can he keep from making mistakes?
- How does Descartes characterize the difference between the mind and the body (M6, page 96)?
- Why is the faculty of sensing passive and the faculty of understanding active (M6, pages 96-97)? Descartes returns now to the importance of "sensing" (which he had pushed out from the beginning of the first meditation). How does he now understand sensing? What is the result of this understanding?
- How does the relationship between the body and the mind (not merely that of the sailor to a ship) get confused? How is being "taught by nature" different from "the light of nature" (M6, page 98-99)?
17 comments:
According to Descartes, since we are created by the "supreme being" we cannot be led to commit error, but yet we do. The reason why we do commit error according to Descartes is because our faculty of judging the truth (from God) is not infinite. Error, which is a defect doesn't depend on God even though we do.
In addition to Kevin's statement, Descartes believes it is our free will and free choice that people experience to be so great that they cannot grasp the idea of "any greater faculty." And since the will "extends further than the intellect," it extends to the things we do not understand. Therefore, the "power of willing, which [we] got from God, is not, taken by itself, the cause of my errors, for it is most ample as well as perfect in its kind."
so then what is perfection?
According to Descartes perfection is within something self-caused and needs to exist. If we had perfection then there would be no need for us to improve. Since God holds objective reality he has perfection, and is able to create us.
Im not exactly sure about this.
perfection is potentially in us, and knowledge increases more to infinity. God is infinite and perfect; therefore, he wouldn't deceive us for deceiving is imperfect.
According to Descartes perfection is within something self-caused and needs to exist. If we had perfection then there would be no need for us to improve. Since God holds objective reality he has perfection, and is able to create us.
Im not exactly sure about this.
According to Descartes, if we had perfection, then we would just be our own Gods, meaning we would be "a certain substance that is infinite, independent, supremely intelligent and supremely powerful". In that way, if we have reached perfection, we have become our own Gods?
Formal reality is the kind of reality things have in this world and objective reality is the reality of the objects represented by different ideas. An idea can have formal reality by being a mode of thought itself and can also be objective reality by representing something outside of itself
God is the only perfect being that exists, and Descartes essentially says that something MORE perfect cannot come out of something LESS perfect. "On the contrary, as I said before, it is obvious that there must be at least as much in the cause as there is in the effect" (79). Therefore, Descartes reasons, God MUST have created everything else that exists for he is the only perfect being and everything else has some sort of defect.
Error, as explained by Descartes, is not a positive thing. It is a lack or a defect. Only God is free of error, and these errors that us humans create are what separate us from God as the higher being.
I'm a bit confused as to what Descaretes is claiming when he says that human intellect is perfect. Can anyone help me out? :]
Perfection is the idea of something without fault.
Man is imperfect and needs the idea of perfection to be imperfect and according to Descartes, it is thus safe to assume that God exists because there needs to be a perfect being for us to exist.
i don't know about that, but the lecture today clarified something for me (I don't know how far off topic this is, but I thought it was important).
That our ability to CHOOSE is more powerfeul than our ability to judge what is right or wrong (i think?)....I just consider that I really cool observation, because it makes sense, and I like how Descartes comes to know that that is his problem as a human being.
This idea calls to mind a Dumbledore quote...
"It is our choices Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."
Okay, okay, so my mind hasn't completely wrapped itself around Descartes' idea about how that relates to God, but in his idea and the Harry Potter quote, I find interesting observation about human nature in general, and I admire Descartes for putting it into words.
My apologies, I really shouldn't blog when I have NO IDEA what I'm talking about ;)
(by the way, when I said "i don't know about that", I didn't mean that I don't AGREE, just that I literally don't know what to say in response. don't want to offend anyone!)
Objective reality is the reality of objects represented by different ideas. IN order for an object to have an objective reality it must represent something outside of itself.
Human intellect is perfect because God created it in humans...according to Descartes and the source of error in humans comes from free will and the ability of humans to make choices. Error comes in humans when they stray from God.
I agree with S. Lew
i had the funny thought inspired by amelia's mention of Harry Potter, and thinking about what happens when popular culture is brought into the classroom: some humcore instructors use popular culture to "explain" the ideas of Descartes/Aristotle in the same way as Descartes used god to "explain" his ideas of ...
All i remember is Schwab talking about Fatal Attraction when talking about passion. The only thought that can to my head was "he has seen that movie."
Descartes' distinction between mind and body also involves his distinction between understanding and imagining. Understanding, he says, takes place in the mind, and is part of the essential composition of himself as a thinking being. Imagining, however, supposedly takes place in the body, and is a faculty that can be separated from him without losing any of his essential function.
In addition, commenting on what daniel said, I agree with the idea of perfection, and also want to add the Descartes says that because he is imperfect, the only way he could have an idea of perfection would be if there existed a perfect being to instill the idea in him.
If human intellect is perfect, how is it that humans error (according to Descartes)?
Humans are prone to error. The mind in itself is perfectly fine but it's the outside societal influences and the negative influences of the heart that distract the mind from achieving it's maximum capability of perfection. Humans have the ability to achieve intellectual perfection but it's the roadblocks along the way that forever prevent us from doing so.
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