Biography

1. Frenchman, 1596-1650; educated at the Jesuit College of La Fleche in which he was versed in scholastic philosophy and theology

2. 1618--moved to Holland and became an officer in the Dutch army

3. became a famous mathematician, which influenced him greatly throughout his philosophical writings in two ways:

a. methodological exactness and correctness is paramount to knowledge

b. truth can be demonstrated as conclusions are in mathematics

4. also was influenced both positively and negatively by the resurgence of Pyrrhonic skepticism in the writing of Michel de Montaigne ("Apology for Raymond Sebond" in Essaies);

a. positively, skepticism rejection of dogmatism moved him away from

scholasticism

b. negatively, though Montaigne argued that we suspend judgments about

our knowledge of reality, Descartes still search for certainty and clarity

5. on November 19^th, 1619, he had a crisis of knowledge in a "stove-heated" room as he was snowbound on the way to Ulm, Germany; he resolved not to leave the room until he had found philosophical certainty; he came up with his famous dictum--"Cogito, ergo sum."

6. in 1649, moved to Sweden to be the philosopher in residence of Queen Christina, but caught pneumonia and died within a year.

7. bibliography--Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy

A Brief Overview of the two books

I. Discourse on Method

A. Introduction--he wanted to provide a metaphysical basis for science; skepticism had undermined the certainty of science with its claims that we know only appearances of reality, not the realities themselves, and that it's impossible to give a absolute justification for our knowledge; it's written in elegant French and published in 1637.

B. Part One--his education had left him with more doubts than answer; "I held as well-nigh false everything that was merely probable."

1. we sought out knowledge without appealing to authority

2. knowledge comes only after one doubts what can be genuinely doubted

C. Part Two--the famous "stove-heated room experience;" he determined that truth and certainty can be found only by following a four-fold method:

1. knowledge of truth must be "clear and distinct"

2. first divide the difficult problems into clear parts

3. then progress from the simplest to the more complex problems

4. finally, give the most comprehensive answer.

D. Part Three--the moral code of a philosopher:

1. religious orthodoxy, moderate habits, and social conformity

2. firm resolutions and consistency

3. self-discipline and resignation (Stoical)

4. cultivation of reason

E. Part Four--his search for truth; the only thing that cannot be doubt is that you are the doubter; hence "I think, therefore I am;" ramifications of the cogito:

1. substance--the I as a thinking thing without a body

2. dualism--matter and self are different substances

3. existence--thinking

4. perfection--though matter is imperfect, we can think of a perfect thing--God

a. the thought of perfection cannot come from something imperfect or nothing

b. must come from God

c. based on the knowledge of God, we can know the world is not an

illusion

II. Meditations on First Philosophy

A. Introduction--it's a continuation of Discourses, but written in Latin and dedicated to the Sacred Faculty of Theology of the University of Paris; perhaps to protect himself against possible persecution; published in 1641

B. First Meditation--"What can be called into doubt"; the conclusions of physics, medicine, astronomy and most all other knowledge is not infallible; only math and geometry have a sense of indubitability; the greatest cause of doubt is the possibility that everything we know, even of ourselves as thinking thing, is the deceptive work of a "malicious demon."

C. Second Meditation--"The Nature of the human mind, and how it is better known than the body"; a partial answer to the malicious demon is that I can know that I'm the one being deceived; the body can be doubted; yet, it's may still be possible that the demon could even deceive me that I'm deceived.

D. Third Meditation--"The existence of God;" until we can be sure of God, we cannot really be sure of our knowledge of the self and the world, and this is important because the cogito has to be the basis of all knowledge; Descartes "ontological argument" (Kant said it)

1. we can have clear and distinct ideas of imageless realities;

2. we know them innately and not from experience

3. ideas are representations of what they are ideas about

4. ideas have a formal reality--the intrinsic reality to which they refer

an objective reality--representational content of the ideas

5. the cause of the objective reality of the idea of the Perfect Being (i.e., God) must

contain at least as much or more formal reality as the formal reality of the object of

the idea would have if it actually has formal reality.

E. Fourth Meditation--"The distinction between truth and falsity;" truth is the clear and distinct idea

F. Fifth Meditation--"The essence of material things and the existence of god considered a second time;" God is the most necessary being and hence the knowledge of God is the most necessary knowledge; it's clear and distinct; because God as the Perfect Being would not deceive us, then we can be certain of our knowledge of ourselves and the world

G. Sixth Meditation--"The existence of material things and the real distinction between the mind and body"; we know bodies are distinct from our ideas of them because is not a deceiver; the body/ matter is most clearly known at an "extended thing;"

There are three substances: 1. the self as a "thinking thing"

2. matter as an "extended thing"

3. and God as the "Perfect Thing"

A person is a combination of mind and matter joined at the pineal gland in the brain.