Up@dawn 2.0

Friday, November 17, 2017

Descartes- Chapter 1

Descartes: A Very Short Introduction by Tom Sorell

       Rene Descartes is most commonly known for his, “I think therefore I am” statement or “Cogito, ergo sum.” His entire theology is built upon this lone idea, that the only thing he can know for sure is that he exists, thus becoming the first principle in his metaphysics or first philosophy. With grounding his metaphysics to God as the primary cause of nature, he advocates for a geometrical physics where only properties such as length, depth and breadth were essential to matter (p.3). ‘Descartes’s physics was constructed out of mathematical facts about material things, facts about size, shape, composition, and speed that could be grasped by a mind with sense-experience different from ours, or by a mind with no sense-experience at all. Other sorts of facts about physical objects, such as their having colour and smell- facts that were relative to the sensory powers of human beings- were dealt with differently.’ (p.3). By posing this explanation to his physics, Descartes manages to cast doubt onto what we think we know. We can no longer call a rose red because our senses are notorious for deceiving us. So, by placing all sensory experiences aside and using only what is mathematically provable, we can finally begin to build a solid foundation of basic human knowledge, properties and/or principles we can prove to be true.

I found it interesting that, although Descartes was Catholic with deep ties to the church, his theory is the first of its kind by suggesting in an underlying tone that there may not be a God, or the idea of being agnostic. It is my understanding, take sensory out of your properties for determining what is real or what you know. Only consider the properties that can be proven mathematically. Can God be proven mathematically? If so, what does that look like? If not, is that proof enough that God does not exist?

2 comments:

  1. Interesting read. I was raised Catholic, but I share a lot of similar viewpoints with Descartes. Do we really have the means to prove the idea of God to be right or wrong? Yes I believe in God, but that is my own personal thought. Whether it is right or wrong, I may never know. This is one of the questions that one needs to find their own comfort in, and stick with it.

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  2. Have you decided to do Descartes, after all? That's fine, but as our semester winds down let's not forget the course is officially "Time and the Philosophy of Science" - need to get time into the equation, perhaps by addressing whether it is possible to doubt the reality of time-as-perceived duration etc.

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