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20 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Reading the meditations: |
-wants reader to be active participant - self discovery - wants an audience who will take it seriously and withdraw from pre-conceived notions - The order of his ideas in his work matters- he's tearing down and building up again from the foundation |
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Descartes' Doubt: |
- What can be put into doubt, you should DUMP it. - Doubt is a state of withholding- neither affirm nor deny in a state of doubt - you don't know anything - you don't assent to knowing whether things are true or false - Generate hyperbolic doubt/ extreme or exaggerated doubt |
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Basket of apples: |
- you shouldn't pick out each bad apple from the basket and say Do i doubt this one? - you should dump out the entire basket and then put the good one's back in. - doubt everything from the foundation |
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3 Tools of Doubt 1. Deceptive Senses |
-On occasion our senses have deceived us - look out to a tower in the distance- it looks curved from a distance but once we get closer we see that it is squared - If at one time your senses have deceived you- do not TRUST your senses - things are NOT the way they appear |
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Cont'd (existence of external world left intact) |
- Throws into doubt the mirage, the distant sound/tower, the small object, things you can't see clearly- it doesn't throw into doubt what's up close, well illuminated nd under good sensing condition - DOESN'T throw into doubt the pen in hand, or things we can CLEARLY see up close. Throws into doubt things far away |
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Madmen example |
- I believe that my body is mine, but madmen believe that their heads are made of pumpkins, maybe I am mad, and by body is not mine. - it would be foolish to doubt the way madmen do- we should dismiss those doubts of the madmen - doubts are meant to rationalize to the clear meditator- not doubts of madness or insanity - rational, serious grounds for doubt that the clear minded meditator has |
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2. Dream argument |
- Dreams that feel real can deceive us into thinking those things are actually happening in the moment - lifelike and realistic so there are no sure signs to distinguish the dream from reality - Right now life could be a dream- no sure sign to tell the dream state apart from wake state |
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Cont'd |
- Throws into doubt things that are up close and intimate and personal - things that are under GOOD viewing and sensing conditions. Those things are thrown into doubt- the clothes on our body, the things in our hand, the ground we stand on and the surrounding we're in -Doesn't throw into doubt the existence of the external world |
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Painter's analogy |
- Dreams are like paintings - Painter paints fabulous, exotic scenes and creatures - dreams come from things that really exist- when painter draws the clocks dropping over trees he takes both from reality and puts them together - Painters take things from reality that really exist and creates fantastic things that don't actually exist- Dreams come from real things too |
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Cont'd |
-the colours of the painting are real- manipulating real parts to build something dreamlike. - takes bits and pieces of what really exists and reconfigure them into dream/painting |
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PA - |
- doesn't add any new doubt, but refines what is and isn't in doubt - WHATs IN doubt: nature of composite things. We don't know that those natures exist or what they are really like. - but something must exist that composes the composites- the SIMPLES exist even if the composite is in doubt |
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These simples are: |
- extension, shape, quantity, size- everything is quantitative not qualitative - no temperature, no feeling, no taste. -he supposed that samples that exist are just size, shape, motion and are purely quantitative. |
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3. Deceiving God Hypothesis |
- Omnipotent- all powerful - A) Intervention Hypothesis: God intervenes to plant and give us false thoughts. The deceiving God is implanting thoughts of trees into our mind God has created us with faulty nature: B) Defective Design Hypothesis: God has made us in such a way that we produce our own false thoughts |
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Cont'd |
- he now throws into doubt the existence of hose composites -not just the nature of composites but the EXISTENCE of the composites - shatters our confidence in those ideas hat we hold so dear and true - throws the existence of the external world into doubt - also the veracity of mathematical proposition- the truth of math |
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A) The intervention hypothesis |
- God makes me believe as true something that is not true. Throws into doubt - The existence of the material world, including my own body- God could actively deceive me into believing that i sense things that exist in the material world when really no such things exist. God places all the ideas in my mind without their being a corresponding reality. |
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B) Defective Design Hypothesis |
- God created me with a faulty nature that just goes wrong all the time even with regards to things that seem self- evidently true. EG. math -The veracity of math propositions- we may have been made defectively by God, and a defect of reason makes us always go wrong in simple addition or counting |
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Malicious Demon |
- reinforcement for doubt, tool of meditation - habit will keep us going back to our beliefs based on sensory experience and common sense - to combat it, it's useful to think of anything that is dubitable as utterly false - to keep ourselves in hyperbolic doubt we should imagine that there is a malicious demon who is bent on deceiving US. |
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At the end of the First Meditation ALL THAT IS IN DOUBT IS: |
- no certain knowledge of the three groups/ entities or foundation - no certain knowledge of the nature of the material world (sounds, colours, shapes, sizes- things at far or close to one's own body) - no certain knowledge of the existence of the material world- could be dreaming, we could just be minds having ideas - no certain knowledge of mathematical propositions |
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Cont'd |
- Throws math into doubt- establishes the degree of seriousness he is seeking- no mere certainty will do (shows how rigorous and demanding his level of uncertainty will be in his meditations) |
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What is not put into doubt in First MED |
- Doesn't prove the falsity of those things- or that they are false - also hasn't argued the truth - has not targeted practical life- only metaphysical - he has not made himself a skeptic - he has not called reason into doubt. |
