Descartes unit 2

11. Descartes had come into philosophy at an interesting time, the church still had control over knowledge but science was slowly on the rise. Philosophy was a mess and it had no real foundations, the scholastic philosopher's just used the bible as the Assumed Truth to base all other knowledge on. Descartes wanted to change the way philosophy was being done by trying to find a foundation on which all earthly knowledge could be built. Thus Descartes methodically worked his way through previous foundations of knowledge until he hit bedrock, Something that couldn't be doubted, something that had to be true.

12. Descartes wanted bedrock, He wanted a form of knowledge that could never be doubted. Once Descartes had found a form of knowledge that couldn't be doubted he wanted able to deduce truth from it. Descartes used a thought experiment called "the wax candle" argument to show that empirical evidence is not something to base the foundations of knowledge on. His argument summed up basically states that you have a wax candle and you can sense that it is a wax candle through touch, smell, taste, etc. But as you get closer to a fire the wax melts and it becomes something completely different then what you first "sensed" it to be. Descartes thus concludes that the sense are unreliable and there must be some sort of innate idea of what a candle is that allows to know that these two different forms are the same thing.

13. Mathematics is a form of deductive knowledge. We have to assume something to be true in order to deduce other truths. Descartes did not want to assume anything to be true, he wanted to base the foundation of knowlegde on absolute certainty. Mathematics has the ability to be true as along as the first assumed premise is true, since every other premise relies on the one before it to be true. Observational facts on the other hand only can work on probability, we can either have a strong case for a fact that has been observed, or a weak case for a fact observed, not all observations logically deduce from one another like mathematics. This simple "observation" lead descartes to favor reason over empirical evidence as to how we get our knowledge.

14. Explain Descartes's famous "Cogito ergo sum" argument.
What imaginary being does Descartes postulate in order to begin this argument? Why does he postulate this being? What kinds of beliefs are undermined by postulating this being? What exactly is proved by Descartes argument? Would you prove the same thing if you used the same argument? Explain in detail how Descartes proves what he proves. (This question won't have hints on the exam.)

Descartes finally comes to bedrock while thinking about thinking. He comes up with the thought experiment of a evil genius who uses trickery and magic to make our senses fool us. Descartes postulates "How can we ever know truth if such a dastardly being exists! If everything can be doubted how do we know we even exist?" and thus bedrock was hit and Descartes realized that with all of his thinking he realized he was thinking even when he was doubting, He could doubt that he was thinking, but he was still thinking about doubting. When this conclusion was finally reasoned Descartes screamed in frenzied ecstasy "I THINK, THEREFORE I AM!!!" Thinking was the foundation of absolute certainty that Descartes was searching for.

15. Descartes now knew that the only thing certain in the world was thinking, and he now knew our existence is proof of that. He knew we had an idea of perfection and that this Idea had to come from somewhere. Since perfection according to Descartes doesn't occur in nature, perfection must come from a perfect being that gives us the innate idea of perfection. Innate ideas didn't just come from perfection, everything in the world had a "substance" (an invisible force which is like a universal) which bonds it together with other things. This idea is also transmuted through "The Wax Candle" experiment. As Descartes senses the candle and sees the transition from wax candle to puddle of wax, the only thing that holds those two states together he says is his innate idea of what a candle is. This argument has holes, then though he saw the transition between candle and wax puddle and can attribute the transition based upon empirical evidence, He needed his innate idea concept to be true in order for the rest of his argument to work.

16. Since there is such a thing as perfection as Descartes as shown, and that perfection has to come from a perfect being, that is perfect in everyday so it has no malevolence. Therefore we know that such a being would never let an evil genius mess with our senses. Logically if there is no evil genius around to mess with us, then we can trust our observations in the world because the perfect being loves us, or at least doesn't want to trick us. Descartes calls this perfect being god and he uses this argument to prove that god exists.

17. Now Descartes has proved that we exist and a perfect being who wants to exist, exists and therefore the world must exist. Since Descartes has now deduced that our senses are reliable because a perfect being exists we can conclude that all our most certain observations must be true because the perfect being is perfect.