PHIL10003 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Cogito Ergo Sum, Direct And Indirect Realism, Ontological Argument
15 Jun 2018
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Lecture 10: radical doubt, rationalism
Primacy of the self
• Modern subjectivity
• Soul becomes The Mind (cogito) -> non extended substance
• Rationalist response to skepticism
o Doubt as path to certainty
o Showing things that you do’t kow is a way to coe to thigs that you kow
o Senses are insufficient -> theory of the ideas
▪ There has to be a cognating faculty -> something that does the knowing
o Cartesian Epistemology - representationalist
• Proof of the existence of god
o Physics and metaphysics - efficient (cause) is sufficient
o Problem of foundations -> how do we know what are the foundations of knowledge
Descartes
• "the great book of the world"
• Cogito ergo sum -> I think therefore I am
• Radical doubt and the 'evil genius' ("brain in a vat")
• Innate ideas -> born w ideas
• "clear and distinct" idea = a true idea
• Formal reality vs objective reality
• Causal argument for God
• Ontological argument for god
• Cartesian dualism (substance dualism) -> mind is different from matter
(proximate) conditions of cartesianism
Aristotelian scholasticism
• 4 TYPES OF CAUSALITY in the world (aristotle) ->existence can be explained by these
causes
o Formal
o Material
o Efficient
o Final
• All entities are matters taking a form
• 4 elements -> everything in the world is made up of these four elements
o Earth
o Water
o Air
o Fire
• There are only three principles of natural things
o Form (actuality) -> for something to exist it has to have a form -> everything has a
form
o Matter (potentiality) -> all matter have the potential to take a form
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