Kant: Math

According to Kant:

Math is analytic and synthetic.

Meaning you have to take two knowns and put them together to have math make sense. This doesn't make too much sense to the though. If someone had no knowledge of anything in the contemporary world, you still could teach them values and quantites of something. 1 egg and another egg is 2 eggs. Very simple. How is synthetic knowledge ever incorporated into that math problem? No knowledge of eggs, their producers or chickens are needed to understand that simple problem. Even if you were to know the information on the following, it would be useless to the subject of math.

Kant illusion

At one point, Kant goes into depth about illusions. Like all ideas, they originate from our minds and only our minds. If we witness something with our own eyes or visualize something someone tells us, we have our own images, kind of like a built in copyright. Noone could ever have the same interpretation. Illusions are these ideas in our own minds. He mentions time and space, space is the volume and capacity of our minds and ideas? how shallow or deep the thought is? how would you measure the shallowness of a thought though? and on what basis? Time could be the amount of time to put synthetic ideas together to formulate your...illusion. pretty cool if you ask me.

Kant is confusion

After reading Kant's book, I've realized that he is confusing like Descartes. Linking math and metaphysics, using sciences to prove the unproven in his own mind. He thinks cognition belongs all in a unified system with some type of organization. Whether or not we actually see this whole "unified" organized system is no mentioned in this book. Is it in our subconscience? I guess so because of his reasoning with totality, we go through life trying to stride for complete understanding of everything and the organization that goes with it.

Hume: Comparing notes with Locke

In this blog, I want to compare the existance of God between Locke and Hume because they're both empiricists. Locke claimed that all of our thoughts, ideas, concepts and actions came from perception and gained experience. All of these perceptions would add up to the proofs of our knowledge, like how you know the taste of lemonade is sweet and sometimes sour, because you tasted it for yourself. So back to the existance of god, I feel Locke completely shoots down the theory of god, we have no percetption of god its just a made up concept for people to believe in something, Hume seems to do the same exact thing. He might not link perception and the disbelief in god, but his arguments are similar to Lockes. I feel Hume is less convincing with his support. Locke makes more contemporary sense.

Hume: Existence of God

Hume mentions God, and how we think of one as perfect. If I read correctly, it seems Hume is disproving god because the world is imprefect. This quality of the world is something god cannot posess, therefore he does not exist? The thought of a god, or the concept of a god is a useless matter according to Hume. I beleive he brings up a good point, we do not need a god, if there is no god present. Challenging this problem more, Hume argues that we can infer a whole lot, for example one footprint in the sand infers that a whole man walked this path, not just some random human foot. So what proof do we have to infer today that there is some infinite being or god out there? Certainly nothing appearing to me. Unless you take into the account of the world, it might have been created by god, its his work in progress, science could be running the earth, his own creation, until it collapses and it needs to be started all over agian. Is god running a puppet show via the world? David Hume, you confuse me.

Unlike many philosophers, Kant believed that synthetic judgments could either be a posteriori or a priori, stating that however, analytic judgments are always a priori which holds the principle of contradiction. Kant uses the example, “all bodies are extended.” On the other hand, “all bodies have weight” would be counted as a synthetic judgment. To say all bodies do not have weight is not necessarily contradictory, although, it may be false.

Descartes and Kant are very similar. Descartes' cogito (think therefore I am) relates to Kant, in that we think with our minds, therefore we must exist. If we did not exist, there would be no way we could think, breath, or live with our minds. Kant also has a similar opinion. For example, we clearly know that 2+2=4 and willl always equal four no matter how you look at it. Mathematics and our minds would both appear to be existent, innate objects that we have.

Kant made a bold statement in believing that both rationalists and empiricists are mistaken, which would include our old buddies Hume, Descartes, and Locke . We already know that Kant believes in synthetic a priori knowledge, which ironically would be most likely challenged by the likes of Hume, Descartes, and Locke. Kant goes on to argue that geometry, science, arithmetic, and metaphysics are all synthetic a priori. He example 7 + 5 = 12 to demonstrate why arithmetic is synthetic a priori (there are no properties of 12 in 7 or 5). The empiricists on the other hand, which include Locke and Hume, would argue that the basis of all knowledge is a posteriori, but would agree that the basis of all knowledge is also synthetic, hence they believe knowledge is only obtained by observation and that the idea that synthetic knowledge is innate or a priori. Now, the rationalists, whom Descartes happens to be, would concur that the basis of all knowledge is a priori, but would dispute that synthetic knowledge is priori.

As cazy as it sounds, Kant believes the basis of all knowledge is synthetic a priori. Aren’t we taught all academic knowledge in school and all other knowledge by observation? Kant seems to think that teachers almost serve as guides and that they help bring out the knowledge that you already have. Kant also argues that natural sciences, namely physics, are synthetic a priori. However, I must bring up how Hume points out the pool ball example, which contradicts this statement. Hume claims we do not know a priorily which angle the ball will move at until we observe the action, thus deeming this knowledge to be synthetic a posteriori.

Kant believes that arithmetic and numbers hold no meaning. He points out that numbers can be replaced by any other sign or symbols, to which as long as there is a set, known pattern, one can calculate an answer. The action of addition is the succession of items. Kant argues that a similar operation occurs when one talks about time. Time is the succession of items as well, hence knowing what occurred chronologically. Kant goes on to argue that geometry is the relation of items, such as the concept of space. Time and space are not a posteriori but rather are a priori. If time relates to arithmetic and space relates to geometry, would that then mean geometry and arithmetic are also be a priori knowledge? Knowledge of time and space is clearly not analytic but instead is synthetic.

Kant claims that there are 2 different styles of judgements, which happen to be polarities. There are judgments caused by one's perception and judgments caused by one's experience. Judgments from perception are simple impressions usually brought on by the senses and are synthetic a posteriori. Hume feels these certain judgments act as the centerpiece of one's knowledge as they do not do any further investigative research. This would mean that a perceptive judgment is noncontroversial to the empiricist while judgments brought on through experience are controversial. Kant states that judgments through experience is the separation of sensory information into categories, which also is synthetic a priori.

Hume points out a few similarities between animals and us humans, such as the concept of blood circulation and the ability to learn by experience. He points out one method of experience: the reward and punishment system. As far as rewards go, a child may get money for good grades on a report card, or a dog may get a treat if it performs a trick correctly. But as far as punishment goes, a child might get grounded if he gets bad grades, and a dog may be sent to it's crate if it misbehaves. Both species learn by experience that if they do something good, they will be rewarded. Hume goes on to say humans and animals alike also contain instinctive traits. This includes the ability to judge whether something is right or wrong such as a gut feeling before an iffy act. Whereas an example of an instinctive trait for an animal could be how Husky's have the natural instinct to run away, or a dog has a natural instinct to howl when it hears others. I think what Hume is trying to get at here is that we are more closely bonded to animals than we think we are. What do you think?

Probability and Chance

Section 6 of Hume's Enquiry goes over chance and probability. Hume claims that the concept of chance does not even exist. It is our ignorance of the real cause of any event that has similar influence on the understanding. On the other side of the spectrum, he does claim that probability is existant. But I see the subject a little differently. There is chance in probability. If something is in fact probably, it has a chance of occuring. Therefore chance does in fact exist, but chance relies on probability. But then we can look at it from a different angle and say that they are almost the same thing. This is really really confusing so please comment on this!

Of Miracles

Hume infers that miracles are violations of nature, seeing as when you pray to God, you are asking him to violate the natural pattern of something. According to Hume, evidence favoring that a miracle is in fact a miracle will always be proven wrong by evidence of a natural law which has supposedly been violated. This is a very controversial statement seeing the multiple medical "miracles" that have been witnessed over the years (Malignant brain tumors suddenly disappearing, terminal illnesses letting people live years longer than they've been expected to, etc.). Then again, one could say all of those are explainable if examined scientifically, so that statement Hume makes is truly up in the air.

Of the Association of Ideas

Hume attempts to distinguish between relative ideas and matters of fact. Relative ideas are in a sense mathematical truths, so we cannot count them out without contradicting ourselves. Matters of fact are the truths we learn through experience. We comprehend matters of fact through cause and effect, seeing that an experience leads us to assume a cause unbenknownst to us yet. Hume argues that cause and effect assumptions involving two events aren't necessarily true. It is possible for a simple connection to be contradictory seeing that a simple connect is usually an assumption most likely without reason.

Of the Origin of Ideas

Hume points out that there is a the difference between impressions and ideas. Impressions start outside us and travel through our senses, our emotions, and other mental sense we may contain. On the other hand, our thoughts or ideas, beliefs and convictions, or any memories that we may have connect to or derive from our impressions. He claims that we construct our ideas from basic impressions either through effect, resemblance, or continuation.

Hume: Miracles

Hume defines a miracle as: "a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent."

Hume's definition means, that God can break his own rules in nature. But why would God break his own rules that he created himself? Why would he let something slide and make an exception, it would make him just as human as anyone else then. Simply, miracles don't exist, the believer most likely experienced something overwhelming, or storytelling a miracle severely mutilated down along the lines of communication. Furthermore some of the miracles, actually all of them are scientifically impossible or have some sort of thorn in the side of the story that seems far from ever being true.

Hume: Sceptical Ideas?

"that causes and effects are discoverable, not by reason but by experience" (p.17)

Probably one of the most given and used quotes ever, Hume lays it out simply: you need experience to know what the cause and effect are. Cause and effect can be predicted with sciences, evaluated with mathematical equations in some cases and theorized by many people; however you will never know the true outcome of the effect or even cause for that matter unless you preform an experiment and achieve the experience. Is Hume insecure? Does he think sciences and math can't prove a point? Does one really need to see it to believe it? In contemporary times, we believe some things we are told and never actually see proof. We are taught based on facts and built up data that makes logical sense.

Hume: Ideas

"All ideas, especially abstract ones, are naturally faint and obscure: the mind has but a slender hold of them: they are apt to be confounded with other resembling ideas; and when we have often employed any term, though without a distinct meaning, we are apt to imagine it has a determinate idea annexed to it. On the contrary, all impressions, that is, all sensations, either outward or inward, are strong and vivid: the limits between them are more exactly determined: nor is it easy to fall into any error or mistake with regard to them." (p.13)

After reading this segment in the origin of ideas section in Hume's book, I re-read it and analyzed it some more. I believe he is trying to point out that abstract ideas are suppose to be unclear and hazy. He seems to make it clear that it's okay for abstract thoughts to exist, it's a part of understanding. However, these abstract thoughts don't have many connections and memories in our minds, so we find come common connections to associate them with. By associating them with another concept, idea or object we can understand the abstract concept, even clarify it to the point of breaking free of the abstract unclear feeling of a thought.

Impressions and sensations, internal or external and definite and present. You know they exist and there is no unclear feeling about an impression because its your own opinion. Sensations are clear because there needs no clarifying about what you feel. You cannot mistake being nervous for being happy, I believe thats what Hume is trying to get across. Your view on someone is your own opinion and feelings towards them, therefore it is definite and has to exist because you are the creator.

book 2, chapter 33

"Something unreasonable in most men. There is scarce any one that does not observe something that seems odd to him, and is in itself really extravagant, in the opinions, reasonings, and actions of other men. The least flaw of this kind, if at all different from his own, every one is quick-sighted enough to espy in another, and will by the authority of reason forwardly condemn; though he be guilty of much greater unreasonableness in his own tenets and conduct, which he never perceives, and will very hardly, if at all, be convinced of."

Locke seems like he's trying to expalain that men have a flaw in picking apart themselves. At least how i percieved it. Women seem to pick apart themselves and over analyze their actions, personalities and apperance. Men however seem to give little attention when compared to women.


"Another instance. A man receives a sensible injury from another, thinks on the man and that action over and over, and by ruminating on them strongly, or much, in his mind, so cements those two ideas together, that he makes them almost one; never thinks on the man, but the pain and displeasure he suffered comes into his mind with it, so that he scarce distinguishes them, but has as much an aversion for the one as the other. Thus hatreds are often begotten from slight and innocent occasions, and quarrels propagated and continued in the world."

Another concept of men and their thought process, men seem to combine a tragic event and the person whom inflicted the harm as one. Feelings and emotions are later on ruptured when the thought or sight of the same person who previously inflicted the emotion or pain.

A third instance. A man has suffered pain or sickness in any place; he saw his friend die in such a room: though these have in nature nothing to do one with another, yet when the idea of the place occurs to his mind, it brings (the impression being once made) that of the pain and displeasure with it: he confounds them in his mind, and can as little bear the one as the other.

This seems to be a common issue in contemporary times, people are scared of rooms or places where people have died.

Locke. book 2, chapter 31

I don't quite understand Locke's definition of adequate. He breaks ideas into two groups. One seems to be "simple" depending on archtype and the other "a partial or incomplete representation of those archetypes". What is the difference between ideas being adequate or ideas of substances. I believe all educated ideas have substance to them simple or not. I feel Descartes was a little more clear when it came to concepts and ideas that were new to a reader.

Ideas referred to anything my be true or falsea

"Whenever the mind refers any of its ideas to anything extraneous to them, they are then capable to be called true or false." This is true, but only to a certain extent. Locked doesn't take into account the state of being unsure. There are obviously times in life when you cannot deem something to be true or false, therefore the in between marker would be uncertainty. To deem something either true or false everytime your mind analyzes something is a ridiculous concept because sometimes we are not presented with enough evidence to ascertain a conclusion.

Birds

Chapter 10 Section 10
He believes that birds have no idea how to retain or repeat song. However, that is exactly how most birds will learn to sing. By listening to the birds around them and repeat it as well as they can. Some birds even pick up new notes and add them year after year. He also says that it is a mechanism for self preservation and protection, the song is actually a sign to female birds of how "fit" the male bird is and how good its genes may be. Females will then choose a male bird with the best song to mate. Nice try Locke

Animals can't think??

Chapter 11
Locke talks about how animals do not have the ability to analyze ideas, or to put many ideas together as well as humans do. This is true, but he underestimates how smart animals can be. He says that maybe with some senses they will put some ideas together and grasp a semi large picture overall. But there are animals that have abilities to work together and form life long relationships as in the case with some apes. They stay with there mate all throughout their lives. They also become very protective and are able to bring together ideas of an enemy and protect what they need to protect. Prairie dogs have the ability to yelp when they see an enemy flying over head. However, when a young prairie dog yelps they will look up and determine for themselves if this is truly an enemy or just a young mistake. Even bees do waggle dances and release pheromones to point the rest of the colony in the direction of food. Although he is right that animals aren't as smart as humans, I believe he is horribly underestimating them. Then again the research and observations that had been done at his day in age are must less numersome than the info we have today.

Locke: Memory, Recalling Ideas

Book II Chapter 10
Locke talks about the mind retaining (retention he calls it) and recalling ideas, objects, and experiences, such as heat, light, yellow, sweet. He says there are two ways that the mind can bring these things to the front of the mind in the current time. One is by actually keep what you are retaining in your sight. The other he says, is the minds ability to pull it from "memory" which he calls the storehouse for ideas. The aability to recall an idea or experience is dependent on a couple things. He says that repetition has a significant effect, which is now the bases for teaching at all levels, so he was right on with that one. Furthermore, he says those events or sensations that have the strongest affect on us. For instance he believes the things that hit deepest are things that have to do with pleasure or pain. Which is true to some point but there may also be events that don't cause either that will make a lasting impression on our memories, so he has the right idea but that will not always be the case.
He also says that the reason infants do not remember any of that time of there life is because none of the events are repeated. However, I think it may be the fact that a childs brain is not able to assess all the information that is actually presented and there for does not possess the ability to store and recall all this information.

getting old

Found this to be interesting, from book 2 chapter 9 part 14

"Decay of perception in old age. But yet I cannot but think there is some small dull perception, whereby they are distinguished from perfect insensibility. And that this may be so, we have plain instances, even in mankind itself. Take one in whom decrepit old age has blotted out the memory of his past knowledge, and clearly wiped out the ideas his mind was formerly stored with, and has, by destroying his sight, hearing, and smell quite, and his taste to a great degree, stopped up almost all the passages for new ones to enter; or if there be some of the inlets yet half open, the impressions made are scarcely perceived, or not at all retained. How far such an one (notwithstanding all that is boasted of innate principles) is in his knowledge and intellectual faculties above the condition of a cockle or an oyster, I leave to be considered. And if a man had passed sixty years in such a state, as it is possible he might, as well as three days, I wonder what difference there would be, in any intellectual perfections, between him and the lowest degree of animals."

I find it to be really true, we weather away and our senses gain insensitivity. There's no preventing it from happening, it's a way for us to get weak and die due to the lack of sharp senses we could have had. Locke in the end of this rant seems to say that having dulled senses makes us just like the animals. Going back to Descartes, he says the same thing almost. The only thing that separates us from the animals is that we have a mind and we can think. Not the same exact note, but with dulled senses we cannot function like normal humans, our minds are slower because we cannot feel the stimulation.

8. Idea of God not innate (aka more confusion)

"...since it is hard to conceive how there should be innate morals principles without an innate idea of a deity." This is a true statement but that doesn't signify that god exists. I don't sell drugs because the law says it's illegal andI'll go to jail. This isn't innate, through my lifelong learning experiences, the law told me it was illegal. But now I'm confused because I thought Locke believed that God is not innate when he just inferred that he is innate.

Confused... How unusual

I was going through book 2 again and I decided that I am officially confused as to what I believe out of Locke's mouth. Now, as we all know, Locke's not a big fan of the concept of innate principles, which by definition are inherent or intrinsic characteristics or properties of some thing, such as a quality or capability which is possessed since birth. But in Book 2, it appears to me that he is contradicting one of his strongest beliefs.

Locke brings up the argument of tabula rasa, where he infers that the mind is a blank sheet which through experience attains simple ideas that stand as a basis for our more complex ideas to grow off of. He explains how the mind does this through complex ideas, subjects, and modes. This makes sense and all, but wouldn't these three things count as innate principles, since they are all basises? The mind naturally functions this way, it is not taught to function this way, hence they would seem to be innate. That's how I feel although I may not be right, comment and let me know what you think because I'm confused.

While Descartes goes on about how God is real beacause a triangle has three angles, Locke seems to come to rational conclusions desiphering faith and reason. I especially enjoy and woud like to point out one part that stretches all the way into book 4. Locked points out that it is only right to use understanding and reason to find the truth. "he that takes away reason to make way for revelation, puts out the light of both, and does much of the same, as if he would persuade a man to put out his eyes, the better to recieve the remote light of an invisible star by a telescope." This basically targets people who believe that their immediate religious revelations are correct without using reason or rationality to truly find out. Locke in turn seems to believe that people that do this usually end up with opinions and explanations that make no sense.

As far as innate principles go, I always had assumed that everyone was born with them. But Locke brings up a rational argument in this aspect. He believes that people are not born with innate principles, because if we were, they would be immediately percieved at birth, and a human being must grow up, learn, and undergo experiences for any principle to become apparent to them; knowledge is learned in life, not innate. I like this argument very much because it is rational and makes sense unlike many of Descartes arguments. Descartes on the other hand believed that we have innated principles which are the basis for how we learn everything else. I believe Locke's rational is that when you are a baby, you can't talk, you don't know what anything is, and you don't have words or items to associate your thoughts with, therefore you have pretty much no memory of the time before you learned to speak and comprehend what is around you.

Locke: Book 2, Chapter 1

moving onto book two, i've noticed that Locke seems to write more reader friendly. Locke makes his concepts and ideas clear without rereading multiple times. In chapter one of book two, he gets into thoughts and ideas. Knowledge is formed from experience, reflecting is a process of thinking and operating on pieces of an idea. When sleeping we perceive the events of our unconscious? From infant to elder, your mind progressively grows and so do your senses. Senses and sensations trigger new thought.

Locke & God's Existence

Locke's views of god are quite different from Descartes. From what I've gathered, it seems Locke questions and examines weather knowledge is certain. In (25 & 26) he breaks he tries to explain that knowledge is gained not innate. However, Descartes seems to be opposing this idea based on the fact that there is certain knowledge we know since the day we enter this world (that being the source of our basic knowledge that we grow from). Both philosophers seem to be really positive on their ideas of thought and innateness, however I feel they beat around the bush when it comes to god, they really dont get into depth about what they think. They are both on opposite pages of the argument it seems, Descartes seems to deny the gradual gain of knowledge (and existence of god?) and Locke would deny the innate existence of ideas in the mind. Locke's ideas may change though.

In all of my hating on Descartes, I found a quote that made me think, which surprised me." For it is obvious that whatever is true is something, and I have already demonstrated at some length that all I know clearly is true." At first I thought I would be able to go off on a field day tearing Descartes apart about how stupid and obvious this statement is and how this statement is obviously true when referring to Descartes because his conclusions and epiphanies are so simple and primative so they would be impossible to be false. But it is actually a well thought out analysis of what one clearly knows. Think about it, if you have the thought that a certain person is a nice truthful human being, and on every encounter this is the vibe that they gave off to you, but you don't know the person in actuality is a backstabbing liar, you obviously don't know the person is nice, you think the person is nice. But, there is a "know" about this fact. You know it is true that you think the person is nice. And this rule can be applied to any thought really. That is why that statement caught my eye. It's not the world's greatest discovery, but I got something out of it.

Descartes' Overall Brainbusters in Method 5

One thing I forgot to point out was how Descartes focuses on the human perception and what we percieve as true and not true in Meditation 5. "But once I percieved that there is a God, and also understood at the same time that everything else depend son him, and that he is not a deceiver, I then concluded that everything that I clearly and distinctly perceive is necessarily true." Well Rene, I guess if something is clearly true, then it makes sense that you would percieve it as clearly true. What a brain buster, he must have had to think real hard to come up with that one. "But I now know that I cannot be mistaken in matters I plainly understand." I guess this also would make sense. You know what else makes sense? The color red, is red! This is about the complexity of these brainbusting epiphanies that Descartes has come to. If I recall correction the title of this part is MEDITATION 5: Concerning the Essence of Material things, and Again Concerning God, That He Exists. So what I've concluded about the essence of a material is that a triangle has 3 angles that equals 180 degrees, and that God's existence is as much an essential property of God's as having three angles that add up to 180 degrees is an essential property of triangles. AKA since triangles have three angles, God exists. Sorry, that's not good enough for me. How about you analyze the three religions. Find out their origins, their icons, their holy books, and their histories, then critically analyze the credibility of each religion and tie that into the existence of God. That's how you will percieve whether God is real or not. And the other main point that I learned in this Meditation: I cannot be mistaken in matters I plainly understand. So if I know something's true, then it's true. A little obvious wouldn't you think? Rene Descartes has officially unimpressed me, hopefully John Locke will give me something to think about.

triangles? med 5

For almost 2 pages, Descartes talks about triangles. He compares god to a triangle. What really gets me is that he talks about a right triangle but he never mentions an equilateral triangle. Is he saying god is unequal?? With that said, he then talks about the thought of a mountain but with that you also need a valley. I believe he's trying to put the point across that he know the mountain and valley exist but how does he know god exists. But in the next sentence he goes on explaining that existence is inseparable from god, therefore he must exist? or god forces him to think that he exists? complete confusion.

Finally, Meditations 5

Going into Meditations 5 "Concerning the Essence of Material Things, and Again Concerning God, That He Exists", he talks about the the ability of things, upon noticing them, to recall something that he has already known for some time. Furthermore, if he can think of something without seeing it, the essence of it exists and therefore, because in his mind it has characteristics that are unchangeable, such as a triangle with 3 angles = 2 right angles, and he must accept it as existing. He also talks about God. At first I thought he didn't talk about existence at all, just abunch of nonsense about triangles, and winged horses. And just like we had the conversation about God, whether he believes or not, its almost in this that he is saying literally, God does not exist but because we can think of a perfect being, he must. He goes on to talk about if he can bring forth the idea of something from his thoughts, and everything he thinks about it is true, can't he reason that you can explain God this way. Furthermore he goes on to say "And just as one may imagine a winged horse, without there being such a horse that has wings, in the same way perhaps I can attach existence to God, even though no God exists." I think it further supports that he believes there is no God, just the idea of God. And because we can think it, it means it exists. Although I don't agree with that( I can picture $100,000,000 and that shit isn't going to be in my room when I get home) it shows that he believes God really does not exist and that it is all in peoples heads, which he says makes it real, only to avoid persecution probably. That sounds pretty resonable.

What Descartes is essentially doing in meditation 5 is going about what is clearly, distinctively true and what is not. He believes anything that leaves you in the least bit doubtful must not be 100% true, whereas early he would act decisive even if his thoughts were essentially uncertain. At one point he questioned his own existence, and came to the conclusion that doubt requires thought, and thorugh requires existence, therefore he is thinking, which means he exists. Althought I do not agree with his theory on God's existence. He doesn't really explain why he thinks God exists. He just claims that a triangle has 3 angles that equals 180 degrees, and that God's existence is as much an essential property of God's as having three angles that add up to 180 degrees is an essential property of triangles. That makes no sense.

Med 5

Meditation 5 from my perspective felt like repetition of the discourse. However, I pulled out some points i think Descartes was trying to get across: Comparing God to the knowledge of math, Knowledge of God & knowledge of math are clear and distinct, there is no physical evidence of God (unlike math), God is only an idea that is passed down through belief and teaching? At the end of the meditation he has a set foundation of mathematical and scientific knowledge, "But now it is possible for me to achieve full and certain knowledge about countless things, both about God and other intellectual things (math & sciences), as well as about the entirety of that corporeal nature which is the object of pure mathematics"(p 92). I think Descartes is trying to push God aside and give mathematics and sciences a chance. He doesn't assert his view, probably due to the fact of getting killed for thinking such thoughts. Just my 2 cents.

So I was thoroughly dissappointed when I read Meditation 5. I was under the impression that he was going to go deep into the analyzation of the existence of God, but he simply stayed on the surface with basic obvious conclusions while repeating himself over and over again. "But once I perceived that there is a God, and also understood at the same time that everything else depends on him, and that he is not a deceiver, I then concluded that everything that I clearly and distincly perceive is necessarily true." I'm going to break this into pieces, so first I'll go over "But once... that he is not a deceiver." First of all, he doesn't know this for a fact. No one knows this for a fact because no one has actually had an interaction with or has seen god. He bases the existence off God off of the mechanics of nature and a few ideas he has in his head. There is no real hard evidence that God exists so he can't be so sure of that statement. Now I'll go over "I then concluded... is necessarily true." What he's saying there is one of the most obvious things I've ever heard. What he is saying is things that I know are true, are true. Thats like looking at a tree outside and saying, "That's a tree," and in turn feeling smart since you came to that conclusion.

I was hoping for him to look deeper into the existence of God and question it and analyze it for what it's worth. Instead, he went over how his own thoughts ideas deem that God exists. Not impressed Descartes, not impressed.

Random Philosophy Thoughts

So, I presented an idea about how "God" could actually mean mother nature, then Mark and Keith both had equally logical ideas about how the same reading could not mean this but instead mean that. So I want to express how frustrating it is to think about all this, come up with ideas listen to other peoples ideas, think about what was known and not known in there time, think about what was popular/accepted thoughts as opposed to unpopular/forbidden thoughts at that time, discuss all our thoughts about their thoughts, change our thoughts, talk about our changed thoughts, then in the end, not even know if we are right about those thoughts, or more simply, close to what the actual thoughts were. What the flip???

I kind of agree with Mark in the sense that he may be looking at mother nature as a god-like figure, but not necessarily god. He seems to look to nature for explanations and methods of how things work, the laws of nature, the sun and stars, the idea of the moon being the cause of ebb and flood, gravitation, and the motion of the blood in the heart and arteries.

Post 4

It's a possibility, that he is referring to mother nature as god. The pressures of chaos are natural selection and the delicately used term "survival of the fittest". Its not clear enough if he actually had these ideas, we only assume he does because we already have the concepts and information on evolution, natural selection, natures interactions..ect. We might just be completely misinterpreting this whole idea. Maybe he's talking about the evolution of the human race, how dominant we are and have become.

Discourse Part 5 Post 3

Since we talked the other day about how Descartes, by believing in God, is actually contradicting himself, is it possible for "God" to be perhaps Mother Nature. In part 5 he talks about how "God" creates chaos and imposes upon it, Laws, that shall govern the way everything works. Eventually the chaotic matter will sort itself out to how it is today. Perhaps what is included in that original chaos, isn't animals, but instead the very basic forms of life. And the laws are actually, say ... stuff like survival of the fittest, or the animals that deal with the selective pressures of the environment are the ones that shall live long enough to reproduce. Although I know about part 5 the best, other ideas in other parts could contradict what I am saying, however, it would be understandable for him to use "God" to explain mother nature just so he didn't piss anyone off at the church.

(I use mother nature for lack of a better word to describe just the basic principles of Evolution. But I think you get what I mean. I don't believe there is actually some woman out there controlling everything, like how people believed God did at that time.)

Discours Part 5 Post 2

In response to Gabrielle, the ability to speak comes from our soul, which Descartes believes is a gift of God. He explains how speech is harder to explain then the blood flow ideas, so he believes it must be a gift from God, and that that gift is strictly for humans. Explaining furthermore, that animals do not have the abitlity to speak, therefore, are not intellegent.

In discourse five Descartes cleverly speaks of an imaginary world rather than the one we live in. This is a clever way of Descartes avoiding controversy with the church. This imaginary world he claims was created by God as a random chaos of matter. He then goes on to explain that God then induces certain laws of nature that puppet the behavior of this matter, while at the same time leaving this imaginary world he speaks of untouched. Philosphers were quite clever apparently. Or was it that people were just stupid back then? Who knows. He then proceeds by going over the mechanics of nature. Such as the veins and arteries in our bodies, and the blood-flow to our vital organs. Blood, he makes seem, is the essence to life. His explaining paints an almost machine-like picture of the human body. But he does make sure that he clarifies the fact that the body is far greater and more complex than any normal machine man could create. What I found most interesting was the fact that he claimed that all living things go to the same place when we perish, but what separates us from those things is our soul. I believe he came to this conclusion from analyzing the mechanics of the human body.

Discourse Part 5

Discourse 5 begins by explaining how and why Descartes' treatise, "The World" was not published. Reasons being that Galileo was being tried at the time by the church for his support of heliocentricity. Therefore Descartes did not want to get in trouble so he talks about the ideas of his book, but he changes the setting to a world, somewhere in space. He then goes on to talk about God and how he creates everything on that world, and establishes his laws. From that point on he has no control over what happens, and the laws he established will determine how the chaos he created sorts itself out and becomes what it is today. He then goes on to explain, how we are different from animals because we have the ability to speak to each other and have other levels of higher thinking. As Mark said he talks about blood a lot, and finishes with explaining how when we die we go to the same place as all other animals, however it is our soul that makes us different, which states that our body and soul are completely seperate.

Discourse 5: Key Points

Given in class: circulation, mechanical biology, animals/humans

In group: cycles & organization, natures course, machine like quality of nature, god creation/science, soul differ from body

In the middle of discourse 5, Descartes explains that god formed our physical bodies, he created our rational souls making us different from animals because we have the gift of intelligence. Furthermore because we can communicate and express ourselves, we have the upper hand. The constant themes in my selection of discourse 5 seemed to be cycles and circulation. Descartes goes into depth about the human circulatory system. From what i could perceive, blood is life according to him, it produces heat that keeps us warm...ect. The size of veins and arteries seem to be significant. (don't really understand why though)

- Mark