Posted on 11/04/2002 7:52:21 AM PST by thinktwice
Descartes was a geometrician. He found only in mathematics and geometry the certainty that he required. Therefore, he used the methods of geometry to think about the world. Now, in geometry, one begins with a search for axioms, simple undeniable truths – for example, the axiom that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. On the foundations of such “self-evident” propositions, whole geometrical systems can be built.
Following his geometrical model, Descartes proceeds to doubt everything – de onmibus dubitandum. He will suspend belief in the knowledge he learned from childhood, all those things “which I allowed myself in youth to be persuaded without having inquired into their truth.” Doubt will be his method, a deliberate strategy for proceeding toward certainty. (Descartes is a doubter not by nature, but by necessity. What he really wants is secure understanding so he can stop doubting.)
Descartes finds that he has no trouble doubting the existence of real objects/events – our senses too easily deceive us. And we can doubt the existence of a supernatural realm of reality – figments and fantasies are too often conjured by our native imaginations. But now his geometrical model pays off: in trying to doubt everything, he discovers something that he can’t doubt. What he can’t doubt is that he is doubting. Obviously, I exist if I doubt that I exist. My doubt that I exist proves that I exist, for I have to exist to be able to doubt. Therefore I can’t doubt that I exist. Hence, there is at least one fact in the universe that is beyond doubt. “I am, I exist is necessarily true each time that I pronounce it, or that I mentally conceive it.
Descartes thus becomes the author of the most famous phrase in Western philosophy: Cognito ergo sum, or, in his original French, Je pense, donc je suis. – I think, therefore I exist. With roots in St. Augustine, this is certainly one of the catchiest ideas yet created by the human mind.
"Truth is the product of the recognition (i.e., identification) of the facts of reality. Man identifies and integrates the facts of reality by means of concepts. He retains concepts in his mind by means of definitions. He organizes concepts into propositions -- and the truth or falsehood of his propositions rests, not only on their relation to the facts he asserts, but also on the truth or falsehood of the definitions of the concepts he uses to assert them, which rests on the truth or falsehood of his designations of essential characteristics."
Ayn Rand -- Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (1979, page 63)
A particular sense cannot err in sensing its proper object. Our perceptions regarding our sensations are fallible, however.
Otherwise, how could I ever know that fake apples exist?
Thanks, I think. Can you translate this? I can't make heads or tails out of it.
Aquinas would have reversed Descarte's axiom, making it "I am, therefore I think." In the theophany of the burning bush God revealed his name to us: "I AM." We too can say "I am," reflecting in a mysterious way the essential truth that we are created in the image and likeness of God.
Also, since we are spiritual/material composite beings, it is possible for us to objectify our own bodies because the soul is in a sense "outside" the body. Perhaps it would be better to say that the soul encompasses the body. Regardless, for this reason it is impossible for the soul to "turn around" and "observe" itself. That is why it is impossible to observe our own consciousness from "the outside."
And if you only knew how much Descartes is found in Augustine!
You never know where you're going to encounter a gratuitous swipe at Catholicism. You can read St. Thomas' account of animal soul here.
Perhaps Rene should have spent more time studying Aquinas.
Are the ratings going UP? Where can I freep?
Why not dispense with the thinking bit altogether and posit that "I exist." It's tough to refute yourself on that one.
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Interesting, but is Ayn Rand's original starting point for HER philosophy the contrapositive of Descartes?
Descartes = I think, therefore I am.
Ayn Rand = I am, therefore I think.
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My dog might have that problem, but I don't.
If your mind has no purpose, where does that place your soul?
Who on this thread has specifically attacked Catholicism?
Ayn Rand -- Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (1979, page 63)
But how is all of this done in a strictly material way?
I sometimes wonder whether she read Aristotle at all. Rand has the same problem that all empiricists do: bridging the gap between the knower and the thing known.
This other theory (ala John Locke) is often called "indirect realism" because it claims that we do not have direct access to extra-mental reality, but only indirect access, through impressions and ideas. Thus, on the Lockean view, there is a chain of causality: things affect us and our senses producing sense impressions and ideas, and these produce knowledge.There is, then, the obvious problem of knowing that our impressions are true representations of reality. There is no way to check them that does not itself rely on sensation and so is open to the same possibility of error. And since, on this view, one cannot tell if one's senses are delivering accurate information, one has reason to doubt that there is any referent for what one senses. One can reasonably (?) say that there is no extramental object (solipsism), or that there may or may not be an object, and we may or may not observe it accurately (relativism). The Thomistic theory cuts off bad consequences like these before they begin by denying that what we directly (and properly) perceive or know are sense impressions or our own ideas. Instead, what we perceive is the thing, and the sensible species (in the sense organ) is that by which the identity that is perception comes about. It works in an analogous manner for the intellect: what we know is the universal existing in the thing; the idea is that by which we know the universal.
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