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.