PHL 333 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Human Nature, Universal History
19 Jun 2018
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PHL333
Lecture 6
Descartes
- Thinking is certain of its self in a way it is not certain of anything else to that degree
- Nature of human mind- mind is better known than the body
- Descartes engages in meditational practice- asking himself how can I find a good
foundation for my beliefs one that will never crack- put beliefs I can doubt to the side and
find one that has no doubts
- End of meditation 1- finds nothing that he cannot doubt
- He notices that from point of view of core certainty you do not know for sure that this is a
dream or not, or that what your senses are telling you is there is 100% correct
- Senses offers illusions, and even in cases where illusions are not possible because you do
not know for sure that this is not a dream
- Worried by meditation 1 because most if not all his beliefs are put into question
- Realizes that even if everything is a deception, and I have reason to worry that even
things I have taken most certain are under question, there is one thing that I cannot
possibly doubt mainly that I am having those experiences
- Ex. I see buildings outside that could be product of an evil genius, but the deceiver cannot
deceive me that I have the experience of thinking that I see the building
- I cannot even doubt my thinking if I tried- I cannot doubt that I am thinking right now
because how can you do that without thinking
- You cannot doubt that there is thinking happening
- Even if you try to doubt it and think it is all false, you cannot doubt that you are
conscious
- Can doubt that you’re in a class room banging on the table, but know for sure you are
having the experience of being in the classroom banging on the table
- Very fact that you think can’t itself be a deception
- I think therefore I am, I exist
- Have some distance from those truths apart from the fact that you think- room for doubt
in truths but not that you think
- The mind is
- When it comes to my own thinking I cannot be wrong- what my mind tells me may be
false but that I have this experience cannot be taken away
- Know there is an I that thinks- which is to say who senses, who imagines, considers
rational possibilities, who has memories- this thinking self is what Descartes thinks as the
highest self
- To the extent you’re aware at all, you exist, you cannot doubt that
- I don’t know anything about the I besides that it is the activity doing the thinking, it is the
agent doing the thinking
- Descartes also say’s I’m a thinking thing which worried people
- There is a process of thinking, imagining existing
- The thinking is happening in the present, because there is potential doubts of the past
- Cannot doubt that thinking exists
- In thinking I exist, my existence is purely a thinking a process
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Document Summary
Thinking is certain of its self in a way it is not certain of anything else to that degree. Nature of human mind- mind is better known than the body. Descartes engages in meditational practice- asking himself how can i find a good foundation for my beliefs one that will never crack- put beliefs i can doubt to the side and find one that has no doubts. End of meditation 1- finds nothing that he cannot doubt. He notices that from point of view of core certainty you do not know for sure that this is a dream or not, or that what your senses are telling you is there is 100% correct. Senses offers illusions, and even in cases where illusions are not possible because you do not know for sure that this is not a dream. Worried by meditation 1 because most if not all his beliefs are put into question.
