PHIL 1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Middle Ages, Moral Evil, U.S. Route 3
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Phil 1
Summer 2018
● Descartes - Father of modern philosophy
● DESCARTE, 1300 years after Aristotle and Augustine
● Universities and hospitals come into existence during these 1300 years
● Mathematics is the true concrete language of the universe
● The modern period begins in the middle ages
● The world at this point is dominated by the roman catholic church
● Just because you experience something one way, does not mean that that is completely
the truth. (people experienced the earth at the center of the universe)
● Skepticism – Descartes says that the proper stance in anything you’re studying has to be
skepticism. Have to have overwhelming evidence to reach a conclusion.
Experimentation is critical
● Descarte is very much associated with the branch of philosophy called epistemology
● Epistemology deals with the meaning of knowledge, what do you mean when you say
you KNOW something
● Descartes is concerned with real certainty
● He wants to know what is the reasonable standard for knowing
● the meditations – he asks himself “is there anything that I can be absolutely certain of?”
● first possibility - starts by thinking about the possibility of his reality just being a
dream. Uses this as a basis for saying he doesn’t know if its true
● second possibility – I could be crazy, crazy people see things all the time that aren’t real
● third possibility – there could be an evil godlike genius so powerful that he could be
causing me to believe things that simply are not so
● Could Descartes be deceived by the evil being into believing he exists, when he does
not?
● His answer to this is – no. because there would be no “you” that could be deceived if
you didn’t exist, there has to be a subject
● He sees this answer as a starting point, he is absolutely certain that he does exist
● “I think therefore I am”