Philosophy: Epistemology

Epistemology

• study on knowledge; ideals with the nature of human world/consciousness -> gain knowledge about the truth
• 3 Questions
  • What is knowledge/wisdom/certainty? [facts, reality, opinions, and knowledge]
  • What is the nature of knowledge? [criteria, defining points of knowledge]
  • How can one know reality? [how a human mind logically gain/understand reality]
• 3 Philosophical Systems of Epistemology: rationalism, empiricism, critical philosophy

Rationalism

• human intelligence is universal in all human minds
  • Regardless of differences
  • Optimistic
• Human reason is a defining element of a human person
• Human reason is the only means to certainty in knowledge
  • Human reason is not unruly
  • Logical way of thinking
• Reason is the only way to determine what is morally right and good and what constitutes a good society
  • Reason is the gateway to reality
  • Makes us distinguish good from bad — can promote just and orderly society

Rene Descartes

• supports reason as the only viable reason for the truth about life
• Paris, France (1596-1650)
• Elite society Father of Modern Philosophy

Modern Philosophy

• based on the spectrum of science
• Empowers the existence of men; prove God through human reason
• Europe (17th-19th century) -> origin [France and Germany]
• Epistemology and Metaphysics -> center
• Direct reason to the “Medieval Period” (theocentric)
  • Medieval Period: man is finite-> cannot gain access to the truth; everyone glorified God as absolute truth; God-centered
• Descartes wants to restore faith in humanity (make humans progress)
• Rise of science -> step by step discipline
• Galileo exterminated from Christian society: “Can the physical world be understood mathematically without reference to God?”

Rene Descartes (cont’d)

• studied at “La Fleche” University (Jesuit order)
• One of the founders of Analytic Geometry
• Mathematics (i.e. Geometry)
  • Intuition and Deduction
  • Clear and Distinct

Theology is wrong

• based on faith which is blind
• Glorifies fiction instead of facts
• Serves as blockage/limitation to human reasoning
  • Prevents men about learning new things in life

Intuition

• ability of the mind/human reason to arrive at something that is really true/certain
• Mind cannot help but accept it as true

Deduction

• the capacity of the mind that complements intuition
• To arrange certain truths in a logical sequence/hierarchy/ chronological
  • Comprehensive wisdom about life
  • 1–2–3
• Mathematics is ^^clear and distinct^^->test for the truth
  • Which is inevitably true

DESCARTES’ EPISTEMOLOGY: The Meditation

• Main Objective: Total demolition and Reconstruction of human knowledge

FOUNDATIONAL PRINCIPLE: starting point/basis for certainty

• clear and distinct -> free of error
• Independent
  • Autonomous; not dependent on anything; free from other truths to be certain
  • The principle is a certain thing whose existence does not (…)
• Existence
  • About something which is real/reality

Epistemology

• rework knowledge of the past [inadequate]
• Restructure based on own foundations and principles
• System-builders
• Mind-based

Best Philosophy - rigidly structured/uniformed at arriving at the truth

• Philosophy-Mathematics -> complementary at arriving at the truth

METHOD OF DOUBT: SKEPTICISM

• Doubt
  • unsure about life
  • Uncertainty
  • Descartes reworked concept of skepticism
• Sophists - early skeptics

Descartes [“Skepticism”]

• attitude that questions the reliability of the knowledge

Methodological Skepticism

• methodical
• Doubt as prerequisite at arriving at the truth
• Doubting is the beginning of wisdom

1. Senses/Sense Perception - deceiving; can be misleading “Plato’s Allegory of the Cave”; Father->God — chauvinistic society
2. Material Bodies -> physical things; based on sense perception
3. Natural Sciences - scientific disciplines study of nature/world; Chemistry, Physics; based upon sense perception
   • related/unified with each other

Objective - Descartes wants to doubt personal sentiments

4. Tries to falsify Mathematics [true and certain for Descartes]
   • truths of human reasons -> should be falsified
     • Appears to be true
   • Should not be based on finite minds
   • Hypothetical malevolent Demon Argument -> constantly deceiving us
     • Falsify existence of God [all powerful and can deceive us]
     • Substitutes God as Demon (nullify truths) ^^HYPOTHETICAL^^ = uncertainty

“Even if I am deceived in all my beliefs, I must exist in order to be deceived.”

I think, therefore, I am/Cogito ergo sum

• act of doubting/thinking confirms self to be real

DESCARTES’ MAIN OBJECTIVE IN HIS EPISTEMOLOGY (THE MEDITATIONS)

“Total Demolition and Reconstruction of Human Knowledge”

1. Traditional knowledge is inadequate. It should be falsified.
   • destroy knowledge inadequate of the past
2. Once falsified, knowledge must be reconstructed according to principles known by “Reason”.
   • recreate knowledge based on REASON-> best way to arrive at certain knowledge in life
3. Descartes was a “system builder of knowledge”

*abandon old knowledge and reconstruct based on a better foundations (Reason)
*Thinking = affirming and negating
Doubting=thinking

COGITO ERGO SUM

• Latin
• Act of thinking = I/self = mind/mental entity
• Cannot be body = sense perception
• Foundational principle
• What truly exists is the mind/self
• Existence of self/real

*Clear and distinct - the more you doubt, the more you affirm it

*Independent - universally true in all human minds

*Existence - must pertain to the existence of self/mind

“I” (mind/cogito) - thinking, ideas, free will, (choice/decision), soul (spiritual soul that can exist independently in the body)

REVERSAL OF DOUBT

• replace doubt with certainty
• Prove other truths->mind and body
• Must investigate features of the mind
• Rebuild and reprove everything from the standpoint of Cogito

*Self - abstract/can exist out of body

SUBJECTIVISM (P.99)

• I can only know with certainty = my own mind and my thoughts [mind + ideas about reality]
• Viewpoint — truth=> mind and our thinking
• Everything outside the mind is uncertain

2 MAJOR IMPLICATIONS OF SUBJECTIVISM

1. Knowledge of things outside the mind — mind and/or self -> basis for reconstruction
2. If mind is certain, outside the mind is uncertain; mind is detached from social world/human beings/physical nature
   • find not your own person - own standpoint
   • Break away from social norms

Solipsism

• only the self exists and the ideas -> tries to prove material bodies
• Enclosed standpoint
• To overcome, other things exist along with the existence of the mind
• My mind with its thoughts it the only thing that exists, the only reality

Test of Truth

• self-evidently clear and distinct in the mind for it to be true
• “Mathematics” X God
• Prove there is a God to prove Mathematics->material world
• Mathematics - universally true
• Reconstruct God based on reason and logic

THEORY OF IDEAS:

• idea: a concept which we are conscious of; definition of things
• 3 types of ideas:
• Innate
  • Naturally born with
  • Mathematics, logic, God (perfect Supreme being)
  • Self-evident to human reason
  • Descartes agrees, from human reason and clear and distinct
• Factitious/Fictitious
  • Human imagination
  • Futuristic world
• Adventitious
  • Caused by sense experience/outside human mind ->sense perception
  • Buildings, trees

*factitious and adventitious = illusion and sense perception

• Ideas have 2 kinds of realities [function/objectives]
  • Actual/Formal Reality
  • Presence of ideas in the mind/the definition of an object
  • Ideas not found outside the mind; all definitions are in the mind but not all are clear and distinct
  • Objective Reality
  • Ideas refer to objects
  • Functions of ideas in reference to outside of mind
  • Correspondence of ideas to external objects
  • Natural function of ideas (hierarchical)

*”7”- what makes 7 a 7 — actual reality [concept]

• idea + objects — objective reality

*For something to exist outside the mind, it should be clear and distinct

THEORY OF CAUSES (p.103)

“All ideas are the effects of causes => all thing do not happen out of the blue

3 Self Evident Propositions about Causes

1. There must be as much reality in the cause as in the effect
2. Something cannot come from nothing
   • must come from certain explanation/thing which is real
3. What is perfect cannot proceed from the imperfect
   • concept of perfection must come from something perfect

Cause and Effect

• nature of cause should be the same as the nature of effect
• Not merely a connection

DESCARTES RATIONALISTIC PROOFS FOR GOD

1. First Proof (p. 105) “Doctrine of Ideas”
   • God is the cause and we are the effect
   • CRITICISMS:
     • Ludwig Feuerbach
     • “God is a projection of the human mind”
     • Create “perfect being”/ false illusion to escape imperfections of the world
     • Perfection is manmade
     • Postmodernism
     • Criticizes modern structures/idea of humanity
     • Concept of perfection => social construct
     • Perfection makes us stagnant, limited in our lives
     • Assumes that the “innate idea of God is universal” but it is relative
2. Second Proof (p. 106)
   • I cannot be the cause of my own existence
   • Infinite regress - other selves cannot be the cause of our existence [no starting point]
   • God - first uncaused cause which makes Cogito exist [1st uncaused cause = matter/energy]
   • Process of elimination
3. Third Proof (p. 107)
   • ontological argument
   • Developed by Saint Anselm
   • Definition/idea of God as a perfect being -> prove existence -> investigate God as a perfect being
   • Political reasons in personal life (Galileo excommunicated)
     • Appease the church
     • Extra proof to be politically correct
   • If God is complete and perfect, then He must exist Proves God through the definition of God
   • God exists because He is conceptualized as a perfect being
   • To be perfect is to be complete
   • A perfect being must have the attribute of existence

AFTERMATH OF PROVING GOD

1. God is the ultimate cause of the “self”
   • the reason we exist is because of an ultimate creator
2. On “human error” — misuse of “free will”
   • human mistakes is not based on God
   • Free will -> arbitrary, can mislead you from the truth
3. God as the basis for the ideas of Math and logical reasoning

DESCARTES’ PROOF FOR MATERIAL BODIES/PHYSICAL SUBSTANCES (pp.112-113)

“Can the mind be the cause of the idea of a material body?”

Idea of material bodies X mind; X free will

*God cannot be the cause of physical things - God-> all good nature-> idea must come from actual material bodies

“Clear and Distinct” and “Objective”

• objective: exists independently from the human senses

Primary Qualities

1. Size and shapes/^^figures^^
2. Capacity for ^^motion^^/change [motion based on human reason]
3. Volume and space/^^spatial extension^^

*thorough understanding of math/geometry, you will have a thorough understanding of the world.

DESCARTES’ VIEW OF THE UNIVERSE

• Theory on Mechanism (pp. 117-118) -> scientific view of the universe

Clockwork Universe

• infinite extension
• Constant motion
• ^^Physical World^^: works like a clock, determined
• ^^Animals^^: matter in motion; operate on instinct than free will

*Conscience, human reason, and free will sets humans apart from animals