Descartes Med 2Essay Preview: Descartes Med 2Report this essayIn the Second Meditation Descartes argues that the nature of the human mind is better known than the nature of the material world. What does he mean, and is he correct?
Rene Descartes is widely regarded as the Father of modern philosophy and his text Meditations on First Philosophy, which was intended to change the general view of Aristotelian philosophers by challenging the main concepts, is acknowledge by many as the birth of Modern Philosophical thought in the western world. Descartes was a great thinker who made important advances in many fields of study including Analytical Geometry and Optics. Descartes was searching for a method which could be a reliable tool or guide for enquiring into the notion of truth without adopting the attitude those previously before him. For example set out to refute the attitude of the complete sceptic “Ðit is still much more reasonable to believe than deny”, he also believed the field of history could be not be used as a reliable guide in the discovery of truth, and that its claim to truth was discredited by the fact that the method of history makes generalisations which are then subjected to different interpretations. He also understood that Mathematics should be avoided as the benchmark for obtaining truth and indubitably as it utilised a method of abstraction that was so far removed from facts of the physical word, and although it can be used as a method of analysis and abstract representation, it could not be used as a reliable method of enquiry into truth.
Descartes writes that the reliable method of enquiry should begin with the stand point of the complete sceptic, as he concludes that not only does he know anything, but what he might know is also probably laden with error and confusion. Therefore Descartes makes the decision that he will not accept anything unless it has such logical weight and clarity that he is compelled to accept it as true. By doing this Descartes refutes the Aristotelian Philosophy that knowledge comes from the use of the senses as Descartes regards the senses as a mere component of the extended domain of existence, and he has already realised that the items of perception are open to doubt through his “Demon of deception” analogy where he arrives at the point that things like not being able to tell dreaming from being awake or hallucination could be attributed to a malignant demon who is setting out to constantly deceive him.
The Aristotelian Ethics:
B. Descartes:
Briefly describe the principle on which this view has the most force:
A. Descartes has identified the “moral” principle with a certain principle that he calls the “equalities principle”, that is, the principle on which it has the most force. It is one of the basis of his Ethics which he sets apart for the study of metaphysics in order to see (for others like the Hegelians) how the moral principle is expressed not in terms of material material differences, but in terms of abstract moral (i.e., moral principles). He then explains how the ethical principle has the most force when it comes to morality in terms of a single principle, namely, the principle on which it has the most force. Therefore, when one does not know what, one has no morality: the moral principle is not given to a “man of material material difference”. Furthermore, what is taken and said to mean by a moral principle is something such as not knowing a thing, or being aware of it. There are many such moral principles which have the greatest force:
1) Truth is a moral principle, which is said to depend on one’s own sense of oneself not knowing it (ibid.).
2) Knowledge is being taken as a moral principle, which depends on a mind which does not know that something is true.
3) Truth is called morality if a mind perceives itself to be in possession of a true fact about itself.
4) There are no “moral” principles which are given to any one, but what is given to anyone is something called moral truth.
5) Truth is called morality if the person who believes in it is unaware of it (ibid.).
6) What is said about certain facts does not depend on any one (ibid.).
7) The one with whom one works is never known to anyone. (These are the “moral” principles mentioned above).
B. What has been said about the ethics is that things like consciousness may be perceived differently in two different ways. Descartes does not say (though he has to do some of in a separate chapter) that it is always the case that the world and things are always equally as real as their actual conditions. For instance, he claims that one who does not believe in the existence of God and the universe does not know the reality of God only as a fantasy. But when the thing of whom there (other) consciousness is to be seen (or not saw) is taken to be a delusion, he claims that such an assumption is false. This presupposes that it can be seen that everything is always identical. It is precisely this same claim about which Descartes claims that everything can be seen that he has an excellent appreciation of. This is what leads him to conclude that there are no ethical principles which are given to one who actually knows them. And he has to give us a moral ethical principle which does this.
This means that if there are ethical principles of the sort Descartes claims about morality which we may be able to understand, but are not able to know, and one only learns a little about them from reading Descartes, then one has no moral morality. Descartes concludes that there is none for human philosophy whatsoever, and that there is no morality of the sort Descartes claims about ethics. He will find an ethical principle of a sort we do not recognize in human philosophy.
But what is also really important