exam question 2; descartes and elizabeth

READING: DESCARTES AND ELIZABETH OF BOHEMIA

• Fast forward 2k yrs. Descartes was influential; Epistemological slingshot. Mathematics too. 

  • Most famous for the opening passage in mediations (reading 4 tdy). Trying to discover a foundation for his beliefs. 

  • Can i build my beliefs on this foundation? This is foundationalism; 

  • Tries to cut out things he could possibly be wrong abt. Doubting weird stuff. 

    • Ex: narnia is not technically true, but its never 0%. 

    • Its possibly doubtable

The evil demon ex

• Imagine theres an all powerful demon who sets out to deceive me as much as he can. What could he deceive me abt? Well, my senses could be deceived. 

  • Why nott think that everything around me could be an illusion. The belief that there’s an outside, that canada exists, are based on my memories of other sensory experiences ive had. 

  • Therefore, most of my knowledge is gone if my knowledge is sensory. Not trustable. 

  • The brain in a vat! 

    • What if im a brain in vat; the vat is being pumped w the right signals to make me hallucinate everything. Kinda hte basis of the matrix. 

    • How do i know im not a brain in a vat!?

• What is he? 

  • Concludes that the only thing to know for sure is his existence. 

  • If i think i dont exist there must be something having that thought. So long as ur aware u exist, u have to exist. The demon can deceive u as much as he wants, but there has to be a U to deceive. 

    • I think therefore i am!

• Ontological argument; god argument. If i can think abt god, he exists. Weird, doesnt work, but its fun. 

• I am a thinking thing, that is my nature. 

Doubt of body, no doubt of thinking. This is all we can know. The way that he can differentiate a thinking thing from my body, then that differentiation alone means that i can separate myself from the body

Premise exercise (working backwards)

• c) i am separate from my body 

• p) i can understand myself and my body as distinct/separate

• p) if i can understand two things as distinct, then they are distinct/separate. 

  • Worry for p1

    • Someone can doubt the existence of one thing while knowing the existence of another. 

    • We can understand two things as distinct but we didnt know that tehy were identical yet.

    • What is it for two things to be separate/distinct? Like code-swtiching. Or switching between friend groups. 

    • How i can think abt those things vs the nature/essence of those things. 

Elisabeth of bohemia

Background

• Minor royalty, briefly king/queen of bohemia. Moved to holland. Aristocratic. Rich education. Met descartes. Became buds. He dedicated a book to her. Never married. Her objection isnt to the premises above, but to the conclusion. Pay attention to this; just giving a reason to deny the conclusion isnt enough. Identify where the issue is in the premises. 

• Women in philosophy

  • Western phil are dead white men. That demographic is way oversized. Partly cuz of patriarchal and racism in history, but recently we’ve been rediscoverring women in hisottry. 

  • Women didnt have as much opportunity to do phil. Were held back by social norms and other work expected to do. Housework n shit. 

  • Another reason, they were doing phil but they were overlooked by historians. A lot of it happened in letters. Not published treatises. Private correspondence of it all. 

• Super apologetic question: objection- question: if the view cant answer the question sensibly. That's a problem, a reason not to believe the view. 

• Her question:

  • Suppose ur right that my mind and soul arre immaterial and im not physical. I am distinct. And yet, i move my body. I tell my body to do stuff and it does it. I seem to be in control of my body, and vice versa. My body influences my mind; opinions from stuff i do with my body. How is that possible? How is it possible to for an immaterial thing to move a material thing?

• Raises a question challenging dualism: read above. My mind is affected by what happens to my body. How?

  • The problem is we know how physical stuff can move physical stuff. No idea how non-physical stuff moves physical stuff. 

• Elisabeths implicit arguments for physicalism

  • p1) only physical things can move physical things

  • p2) the mind can move physical things

  • c) the mind is a physical thing

• OR

  • P1) only physical things can be affected by physical things

  • p2) the mind can be affected by physical things

  • c) the mind is a physical thing

• If u cant refute a premise, then its a good premise. 

• Refuting p2

  • Mind does not = brain. Ur physical brain moves ur physical body and the mind is a third epiphenomenon(?)

• Reufting p1

  • Wb gravity? What constitutes as physical stuff? 

Descartes response; unsatisfying. 

• Look ur right, the mind is separate from the body, but i forgot theres a third thing; the union of the mind and body. Theres mind, body, union. 

• Theres some glue tying the mind and body tgth and its hard to think of these things at the same time. 

• This is just a description of the problem? But descartes describes it as the truth. Weirdo. 

Casper analogy!

• Looking at the comics, part of the time casper is immaterial. The other part hes material. At one point things go thru him, no weight on the scale, etc. at another point though, he intteractes with the physical world; talking to ppl, getting paint of him, being a sail on a boat, etc. 

• Caspers writers write him for whichever’s more convenient for the storyline, much like descartes. 

Elisabeth’s response

• I still dont get it idiot.