Rene Descartes Conclusion

Greetings and welcome everyone. I'm Dr. Chris L. Firestone and this is the Firestone Files. Over the past few months, we've been on quite a journey together, meeting the Fire Stones and celebrating the life of Charlie Kirk. And now, as we enter December, we embark on something new, a special series I'm calling Decart December. All through this month, borrowing any festive detour, we will turn our attention to one of the most significant figures in western thought, Renee Deart. Across five episodes, I'll guide you on an intellectual journey through Renee Deart's famous meditations on first philosophy. These lectures include an introduction, meditations 1 and 2, meditations 3 and 4, meditations 5 and six, and a conclusion.

So, I invite you to grab a notebook and a copy of the meditations if you have one, your favorite mug filled with your favorite drink, and settle in with me through December as we walk with Daycart through doubt, discovery, and deep reflection. This is Decart December. I am Dr. Chris L. Firestone, and this is the Firestone Files. Enjoy.

Hi, I'm Dr. Chris Firestone, professor of philosophy, and this is the fifth and final lecture on the philosophy of Renee Deart. Well, we've had quite a tour of his central uh philosophical arguments in the uh meditations on first philosophy. I'd like to review some of the things we've talked about and see if I can fulfill my promise to make Deart not only understandable but also to help you retain that knowledge and be able to share it with others. We'll see if we can get there. Here in this final lecture, you will recall that Deart comes on the scene at a very important time in philosophical history.

We've had um the the medieval period with many systems of of philosophical thought that had worked out three major themes into complex philosophical systems. They were the philosophy of Plato called idealism, the philosophy of Aristotle which is often called realism and of course Christianity and its uh revolutionary influence on the western philosophical tradition. Those things work themselves out in a variety of systems. You could trace those if you ever take a course on the history of western thought. Um I teach that course uh and it starts with the Greeks and goes really all the way up to the Renaissance where the rediscovery of Plato and Aristotle and so forth and the rise of modern science and the reformation and so forth. After that period, philosophy begins to come into a crisis.

And the crisis is started or it's it's initiated by the rise of science and mathematics and the rise of the skeptics who say that those types of truths have a kind of utility to them. kind of pristine access to the truth that is missing in philosophical discussions because we have lots of metaphysical systems which are a beauty to behold if you take a course let's say on Aquinus just a magnificent tour to force of metaphysical thinking many truths can be found there but there are also things that people disagree with like aam and so forth that say hold on a second I don't quite agree with your theory of language for example and how one grounds theological and philosophical discourse based on it.

And so science and mathematics are making progress, but the foundations, the philosophical foundations for them are shifting sands and we're not quite sure where to land the ship as it were philosophically. And so Deart trained in the scholastics, trained in the medievals, comes on the scene. He's a mathematician. He's a scientist. He's also a metaphysician and he is not happy with what he's been taught regarding the foundations of these disciplines. doesn't think that they give a good grounding for uh them and they certainly don't make the Christian worldview any more acceptable to skeptics because it's dependent upon testimony and it's dependent upon um uh revelation which is a situated kind of truth that not everybody has equal access to.

And so he sets about in the first meditation to clear these past traditions and authorities. I don't know if it's so much of a a clearing away as it is a bracketing of them so that we might go back someday to but in a better position to determine truth from falsity. It's hard to say exactly what it is, but the bottom line is I I called it a nuclear bomb. It sort of wipes away at least uh in our initial investigations all these past systems and teaches us to start a fresh and this is the um this is the method of doubt that we find in meditation. Number one, the method of doubt is established so that we can clear away all false beliefs.

Unfortunately, we have to clear away all true beliefs as well because they're collateral damage in this approach. We're doubting everything. We're going to assume as a thought experiment an evil demon is going to try to trick us at every turn. And so if knowledge can make it past the uh the spectre of this evil demon, then we'll have certainty. We'll have a foundation on which we can build the empirical sciences and mathematics and so forth and the university can march forward from there.

uh we say in meditation number two he wakes up that morning saying I've you know uh I've wiped away all things and I can be fooled of all these clear ideas that I seem to have like immediate sense perception mathematics and so forth but one thing I can't seem to be fooled of is that I'm thinking in order to fool me into thinking that I'm thinking I have to be a thinking thing and this is the famous uh I think therefore I am uh moment in Daycart. There's a couple of different times where he reiterates this and he tries to go over in his mind, how can an evil demon possibly get around this? He's got to have somebody to fool and that's me and I'm a mental substance capable of being manipulated perhaps, but I can't be manipulated into thinking that I'm thinking because I have to be thinking.

And so he believes he has found that Archimedian reference point, that immovable point that not even an evil demon could fool him of. And it's from that that he can move the world of philosophical ideas. And that's where we get now to meditation three. In meditation three, we see he wakes up in the morning. He's delighted that he's found the Archimedian reference point, the the cornerstone for all knowledge. But he has a query in his mind and that is he has ideas. He has all sorts of ideas going around in his head. And if I were just merely a mental substance of tabarazza, a thinking thing, I can't account for the quantity and quality of ideas that I have.

Some of these ideas surprise me. Now there are ideas of the imagination that I seem to have some control over. There are certain operations of the mind that seem to be an act of the will and so forth. But there are other things that just happen to me. They come into my horizon. I don't seem to have any way of controlling them. And in order to account for this, I have to realize that I've only proven that I'm a mental substance, a thinking thing. But I'm also compelled to believe that I'm not alone. That there must be some other thing out there causing the quantity and quality of ideas that I have.

That other thing must be mental, thinks Daycart. Otherwise, it couldn't interact with me as a mental substance. And it also has to be a cause sufficient to the effect of the ideas both in quantity and quality that I have. And this is where we get that rationalist conception or notion of God as the unrealism the all the uh all predicate uh nature of God that God alone is the cause necessary for the condition of having the ideas of say infinity and perfection otherwise we don't have um explanations of the ideas that we have in our in our mind.

This leads him in meditation four to stop to to hold the horse to stop things here because we've made one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. We've proven the existence of the self and now we've proven the existence of God. Have we moved too quickly? Can we trust our judgment? It does seem like judgment is that third component that must be present for us to have discursive reasoning at all. And he suggests that because God is trustworthy, um reason itself uh must likewise have that kind of quality. So he's beginning to vanquish the evil demon at this point.

Uh if the if if if God's real, which we've already shown, then the intellect must be a gift of God that is in a sense pristine. So he has no knowetic effects of sin with regards to the intellect. He argues that if the intellect is going to go wrong, it's going to be go wrong because of the will. Either we're not getting enough sleep or we're on drugs or we're lazy or some other reason why the will leads the intellect astray. And so he argues in a very famous sentence toward the end of meditation 4 and I call this the most important sentence in the history of western thought perhaps and that is that reason is the measure of all truth.

That is if I have a disciplined use of my judgment, reason's trustworthy and can get us where we want to go. Okay. So from that newfound optimism, that reiteration of his trust in reason, he's able to march forward in meditation five to the consideration of the external world. There are clear and distinct perceptions that I have of the camera right in front of me, of these papers sitting here, of this office, of the natural world outside that now I can I've been fooled in the past of things.

He uses the example of uh of a tower. We talked about that example that I've been fooled that it was round and as I got closer I saw it was rectangular and so forth. but with a careful and critical use of reason. There are things that just are so clear and distinct that I don't seem to be fooled of them. Um, and God wouldn't wouldn't have any reason. Deception is a weakness. And God's not weak. He's all powerful. He's all good. He has no reason to deceive me. Think stake heart. And therefore, clear and distinct perceptions are in fact trustworthy.

And there's no clearer and distinct a more clear and distinct perception than that of my own body that I I can not only see and feel my own body, but I also can move it. I can manipulate the world and so forth. And this testifies to the reality of my body. So we have a distinct mind and we have a distinct body and we have this mindbody relationship that harmoniously works together.

and Decartis marvels at this as we all should marvel at it because it really is something but how does that work exactly and so we pointed out two problems that emerge out of cons uh cons I'm sorry Deart's philosophy one is the mind body problem um if the mind is distinct from the body then how is it that they in fact relate to each other they seem to I can think of moving my hand but it not move and then I can move my hand. And what's the difference between thinking of moving your hand and actually moving your hand? You might say, "Well, the will is."

But how does the mind and the body actually touch one another? How how do they actually relate to one another? And Deart's answers to these have not been satisfactory to many philosophers that have followed him. Doesn't mean he's not right. It means that we haven't solved that mystery of that interconnectedness between the mind and body. The other problem that we talked briefly about with this was was the Cartisian circle.

He seems to require clear and distinct perceptions to prove the existence of God. That there are certain ideas that have to be accounted for by a cause sufficient to the effect. And yet he then uses the existence of God and his perfection and his power and his goodness to prove the existence of the external world leading to the existence also of my own body. And there's a question as to whether or not um this is in fact a a circular argument in some way or whether or not it is um you know viciously circular or if it's somehow virtuously circular that there's some kind of interplay reciprocal relationship that is legitimate in in terms of philosophical argumentation.

So, if we look now, I I got to I want to show you a sheet that I oftentimes will use in class and I I don't know of how clear this will be, but it's an hourglass shaped sheet trying to show the shape of Decart's argument. So, I have taken the liberty of um putting a few more words to this so that you can easily see this uh this hourglass shaped design. So, what I did was I wrote over it. Look, look at what we have here. First of all, we have the method of of doubt right up at the top here that establishes his methodology for making philosophical determinations.

Then we have the proof of the existence of the self, the existence of God, then the uh you know the trustworthy nature of reason, then the existence of God again, and then the existence of the self. And hopefully you can see the hourglass shaped structure of this argument makes it real easy to understand and articulate. I exist as a mental substance. I think therefore I am in meditation too. God exists as an infinite mental substance in meditation three. In meditation four we see uh disciplined reason is trustworthy. You remember he stopped for a moment to say, "Hold on, I'm making I'm making judgments. How do I know reason's trustworthy?"

Well, he says that it is trustworthy because God wouldn't deceive us of that. Then he gets back to the necessary existence of God and as as the ground of all clear and distinct perceptions. This is where we get his uh the trustworthiness of the existence of the external world and in particular my own body in meditation six. So hopefully that's a pretty clear um way to remember it. Just remember the hourglass shape of the argument. You got the methodology of doubt in the quest for certainty. Then the establishment of this certain foundation, the existence of the self and the existence of God, the exist the necessary existence of God, the existence of the external world and of course the existence of my own body.

And there's evening and there's morning on day six and he rested after all of his meditations. So here we have in this really this very famous book and honestly I reread it in preparation for these lectures and I was amazed at how quick a read it is. You could probably go into an hour or two depending on how carefully you're reading and of course Deart is going to come in that you read all philosophers very carefully and look at their arguments very specifically and and and with judicious judgment and uh and that that's what I've suggested that you should do or we should do. And when you do that, it comes out with a clear kind of almost poetic shape to it.

The method of doubt, the existence of the self as a mental substance, the existence of God as an infinite mental substance, the trustworthiness of reason, the necessary existence of God, and the trustworthiness of our belief in the external world. And this includes our own bodies and we as human beings our minds and bodies in a kind of composite and harmonious relationship and that's the revolution that was Renee Deart's philosophy. Decart had his dissenters. So if we look forward to that, there was this contemporary Thomas Hobbes who wrote a an essay critiquing uh Decart and Decart responds to his essay in subsequent uh uh publications of the meditations.

But he had a profound impact. He's going to lead an entire group of rationalist philosophers. So after Decart, you're going to find um Spinosa who moves into a kind of substance monism. And then we're going to go back to a kind of dualism that we see in linenets and we're going to go all the way on eventually to Emanuel Kant who I talk about in another lecture and how he is sort of on this trajectory of the cartisians.

But Khan's also of course going to be interested in the empiricist insight and some of the insights that start with Thomas Hobbes in response to Decart move into uh John Lockach and all the way in Bishop Barkley and all the way into David Hume's philosophy and till we get to that great watershed that is God's philosophy. So perhaps I'll have another chance to look at some of these other really important figures.

Decart's a big one. I hope these lectures have been useful to you. Let me know if you have any questions about Decard or um would like to hear on hear more about other philosophers. Looking forward to it. That's all for now. All the best. Thanks for stopping by to spend some time with me here on the Firestone Files. I hope today's reflections offered you some new insights and perspective on life. If you enjoyed the episode or found it valuable, I'd appreciate it if you'd take a moment to like, subscribe, and share it with someone you care about. I'd also love to hear your thoughts. What resonated with you?

What challenged you? Or what would you like to hear more about in future episodes? Drop a comment below or send in your suggestions to the email in the description. Your input helps shape where we go next. This has been Dr. Chris Firestone. Until next time, keep asking the big questions and remember the kingdom journey is always best with your friends. Further up and further in. Bye for now.