Many of us in class found Descartes' foundational project to fail. Let's assume that he cannot justify all his claims to knowledge by an appeal to the Cogito. What can we learn from this failure? Should we look for a wider class of foundational beliefs? Should we avoid appeals to a God who is not a deceiver? Should we find a different way to justify beliefs that does not require an appeal to foundational beliefs?
I think that we can learn that if we approach all our thoughts with the viewpoint of skepticism then we must make sure that we doubt everything. Descartes doubts everything expect for God and in doing so he is ruining his skepticism approach. He is unable to start from the beginning because he cannot even think of doubting God’s existence. This also shows us that when we approach an argument, we must approach it with as little bias as possible because that ensures that we won't assume something is true when it isn't. This also means that foundational beliefs impact our ability to truly doubt every side of an argument causing our argument to appear true when it is false. Descartes approaches his view to the world with the foundational belief that God is real, this means that whenever an agreement as the premise of, “God is real” he will be unable to look at it with the level of doubt that is needed. However, this also applies the other way, if an atheist looks at an agreement with the premise “God is real” then they will focus all of their efforts on proving that wrong and be unable to look at any other premises with the right attention until the premise stating “God is real” is removed. All of this proves that for our class to be able to look at all arguments from a completely nonbiased viewpoint we would need to have someone who is nonbiased for every single viewpoint. Because there is infinitely many viewpoint, we would need infinitely many people. However, we can still look at the argument from a mostly nonbiased view.
ReplyDeleteDescartes makes the leap from proving that he must exist, to the Cartesian circle, where he "proves" an all-powerful, non-deceiving, and absolutely perfect God exists, which affirms that all else we perceive is real (as God does not deceive), in turn proving our perception of God real, and so forth. Even if he were able to logic his way out of the circle, as he claims to do in his responses to his fellow philosophers’ objections to his meditations, he still fails to prove that his concept of a God could be the result of a deceiver.
ReplyDeleteDescartes makes the leap from proving that he must exist, to the Cartesian circle, where he "proves" an all-powerful, non-deceiving, and absolutely perfect God exists, which affirms that all else we perceive is real (as God does not deceive), in turn proving our perception of God real, and so forth. Even if he were able to logic his way out of the circle, as he claims to do in his responses to his fellow philosophers’ objections to his meditations, he still fails to prove that his concept of a God could be the result of a deceiver.
What Descartes fails to do in his attempt to vindicate his Christian beliefs is to recognize the significance of the fact that there is anything outside of us. He might not be able to prove that a perfect and all-powerful god which created us exists, yet we know that something must cause us to perceive the world around us, even if we might not definitively be able to say whether it is a deceiver or mindless matter or something else entirely. In stepping back and trying not to use foundationalism to justify well- established but unjustified beliefs, we can form foundational beliefs that are more robust than those of Descartes’s. That said, there is no assurance that such broad foundational beliefs can justify anything. Since we have not considered in depth whether we can derive anything more from the fact that the actor knows they exist and that something else exists that interacts with them, it remains a possibility that we can derive from this further beliefs, but it concurrently seems possible that this statement is too broad- too fundamental- to prove anything else. If this is true, that would indicate we ought to abandon foundationalism as a source of justifying beliefs, or abandon our pursuit of beliefs.
(Sorry, I had trouble uploading properly. Disregard the other similar commonet.)
ReplyDeleteDescartes makes the leap from proving that he must exist, to the Cartesian circle, where he "proves" an all-powerful, non-deceiving, and absolutely perfect God exists, which affirms that all else we perceive is real (as God does not deceive), in turn proving our perception of God real, and so forth. Even if he were able to logic his way out of the circle, as he claims to do in his responses to his fellow philosophers’ objections to his meditations, he still fails to prove that his concept of a God could be the result of a deceiver.
What Descartes fails to do in his attempt to vindicate his Christian beliefs is to recognize the significance of the fact that there is anything outside of us. He might not be able to prove that a perfect and all-powerful god which created us exists, yet we know that something must cause us to perceive the world around us, even if we might not definitively be able to say whether it is a deceiver or mindless matter or something else entirely. In stepping back and trying not to use foundationalism to justify well- established but unjustified beliefs, we can form foundational beliefs that are more robust than those of Descartes’s. That said, there is no assurance that such broad foundational beliefs can justify anything. Since we have not considered in depth whether we can derive anything more from the fact that the actor knows they exist and that something else exists that interacts with them, it remains a possibility that we can derive from this further beliefs, but it concurrently seems possible that this statement is too broad- too fundamental- to prove anything else. If this is true, that would indicate we ought to abandon foundationalism as a source of justifying beliefs, or abandon our pursuit of beliefs.
We can learn that when practicing skepticism, you have to know nothing. Descartes practices skepticism by doubting everything. However, he fails to know nothing when he has to explain God’s existence. As soon as Descartes attempts to prove God’s existence, he violates his practice of skepticism. In fact, he only promotes God’s existence and never shows signs of doubting God’s existence. In addition, when encountering arguments and beliefs we have learned to go into those conversations without being gullible. Since there is not enough evidence to back up Descartes beliefs, we should look for a wider class of foundational beliefs. Descartes’ deep ambition to prove that God exists shows that foundational beliefs can have an impact on our process of thinking. With a strong foundational belief, you can believe anything without enough evidence to prove it. For example, Descartes displays his strong belief in God when he expresses a clear and distinct idea of someone or something existing without any question. He never approaches the idea that God may not be real. Instead, he strictly goes into depth on how can’t be fake and is purely real. Descartes' thinking and approach to ideas shows us that we should look at every idea with non-biased opinions or there will be flaws in our arguments because we are not thinking of how our ideas can be countered.
ReplyDeleteDescartes cannot find any knowledge that in infallible from the Cogito alone. A lever needs more than just a fulcrum. However if we are able to find another fundamental belief to combine with the fact that we exist then maybe we will be able to justify our belief in existence. Descartes has the right instinct (to appeal to another belief) however, he moved in the wrong direction. That is because appealing to god implies proving his existence, which is a very tall task. I am not qualified or educated enough to weigh in on whether god exists however; I believe we can still utilize foundational beliefs in order to elucidate larger truths about the world.
ReplyDeleteIt has been proven repeatedly that matter cannot be created or destroyed. This dovetails well with Descartes claim that every cause needs an effect. If we are to believe fundamental physics, (it could be viewed as fundamentally as geometry) then we know that energy and mass are equivalent. Therefore, no energy can be created or destroyed. From these two truths, we gain another very useful foundational belief. The idea that all matter or energy must be conserved. In other words, because energy cannot come from nowhere, every effect must have a cause. If we find a singular thing that moves (our mind) the we are able to conclude other things must exist in order to move it. If our mind perceives a flower and there can be no effect without a cause, there must be a cause of the perception of the flower. We have thus proved another fundamental truth. Something external form our self exists even if we do not know what that is. That is something even Descartes’s skepticism cannot rule out. Even he concedes there must be an evil genius external from us deceiving us.
Personally, I think this lesson shows that maybe you can't justify your foundational beliefs. Maybe that's a good thing. All of our beliefs are subjective, and I don't think we ever really need to justify what we believe in. Even if you believe in something completely out of this world or insane, you're still justified in your reasoning to believe it. Does it make it right or moral? That's in the eyes of society to decide, but as an individual, you should never need to make a belief justifiable in order to believe it. Everyone's free to believe whatever they want, just like Descartes is right to justify his belief in god with the Cogito. Everyone is entitled to have their own beliefs, regardless of it's defendable or not.
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