Download - Phil 102 Descartes 1(1)
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The Enlightenment
An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, by Joseph Wright
of Derby, 1768,
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Knowledge of the External World
This lecture will help youunderstand:
• The Age of Enlightenment – Scientific Revolution (Galileo,
Kepler, and Newton) – French Encyclopedists
– Democracy and Liberalism
• Descartes’ “Geometrical”
Method• Metaphysical Doubt and the
Hypothesis of the Evil Genius
Rene Descartes
(1596-1650)
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Question 1:
What time, place, and person is most associatedwith “the Enlightenment”?
A. 6th century BC (India—the Buddha)
B. 6th century (China--Confucius)
C. 18th century (Europe--Newton)
D. 19th century (United States--Edison)
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The Enlightenment
– The Enlightenment (English) – Lumières (French)
– Aufklärung (German)
– Note the importance of the
metaphor of “light.”
Nature and Nature’s laws lay
hid in night:
God said, Let Newton be! And
all was light! (Alexander Pope
1688 – 1744)
The Alchemist in Search of the
Philosopher's Stone, by Joseph
Wright, 1771
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The Orrery
( mechanical model
of the solar system),
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Revolutionary
• This era begins in the 17th century and
continues into the 18th century.
• The Enlightnment is revolutionary in every
sense of the word.
1. Driving force behind the two great political
revolutions at the end of the 18th century.
2. Time of revolutionary ideas and liberal and
progressive thinking in the sciences . . . .
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The Scientific Revolution
– For the long centuries of the Middle Ages (500-
1350 AD) there was hardly any advance in
scientific knowledge. During this period there was
little scientific inquiry and experimentation.Rather, students of the sciences simply read the
works of the alleged authorities and accepted
their word as truth.
– However, during the Renaissance this doctrinalpassivity began to change, beginning with Nicolas
Copernicus . . .
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Heliocentricity
Nicolaus Copernicus
(1473-1543)
Polish astronomer who
advanced the theorythat the earth andother planets revolvearound the sun,
disrupting thePtolemaic system ofastronomy.
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Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)
• Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) provedthat Mars moved in an elliptical orbit.He went on to conclude that allplanets move in ellipses, with thesun at one focus. This became known
as Kepler's first law of planetarymotion.
• However, it did not offer an effectivemodel of the solar system based onobservational data.
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Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
• Galileo Galilei, who in
1630 published his
Dialogue on the Two
Chief Systems of the
World , in which he
supported the
Copernican, orheliocentric theory of
the universe.
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Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
• English mathematician and
scientist who invented
differential calculus and
formulated the theories ofuniversal gravitation,
terrestrial mechanics, and
color. His treatise on
gravitation was presented in
Principia Mathematica
(1687).
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• Gradually, as scientists and philosophers cameto discover more and more scientific andmechanical laws which could explain thenatural world, the old theological discussions
seemed out of date or passé.• Now it was now science, philosophy and
reason that could provide the tools necessaryto ensure progress and improvement of the
human condition.
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Encyclopédie
• Encyclopédie is famous for itsanticlericalism, its devotion to science,
its faith in the power of reason to bring
about societal change, and its
optimistic tone.
• Greatest expression of the idea of
progress ever written down.
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Les Philosophes
• Denis Diderot (1713-1784) was the main editor.
• Jean le Rond D’Alembert (1717-1783)
• Voltaire (pen name of François-Marie Arouet)
(1694-1778)
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
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“Optimism”
• If there is one word that could best
characterize the Enlightenment of the 17th
and 18th centuries, it is “optimism,” the belief
in progress, and the possibility of “man”
securing the means to his own salvation.
Human beings would do this not with God's
help but through their own reason andintellect.
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• In his essay, “Answering theQuestion: What is
Enlightenment?” Kant said the
Enlightenment was:
• “Mankind’s final coming of
age, the emancipation of the
human consciousness from an
immature state of ignorance
and error.”
Immanual Kant
(1724-1804)
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Universal Reason
• Everybody was to benefit from the
Enlightenment, because everybody was
considered to possess an innate, virtually
equal capacity for rational thinking.
• All that is required is the proper education
and political institutions to allow people to
realize their rational capacities and natures,and make for a better world.
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Democracy and Liberalism
• This optimistic faith in science, reason,freedom, progress and universal education is afundamental principle of American democraticthinking.
• It is the time of the emergence of Westerndemocracy, more than two thousand yearsafter the early experiment in Attic Greece.
• The framers of the American constitution—
people like Benjamin Franklin, ThomasJefferson, James Madison—were all “childrenof the Enlightenment.”
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René Descartes (1596-1650)
• Meditations on
First Philosophy
(1641)
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Error and Errancy
• According to Descartes, philosophy had strayed
from the path of certainty and true knowledge
in the Middle Ages.
• This is because it lacked any firm foundation or
method by which it would be possible to attain
knowledge with the certainty and accuracy and
precision of mathematics.
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Follow the Leader: Geometry
• If philosophy is to arrive at knowledge, then it
must follow the example of mathematics and
geometry, which proceeds by a strict method
of deduction and proof.
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Rationalism
• Rationalism (from Latin, ratio, reason)—
sometimes called “innatism.” Belief that reason is
the prime source of knowledge, and that it is
possible to know things prior to experience.
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Empiricism
• Empiricism (from Gk, empeiria, experience)—
the view that all knowledge derives from
experience, and that all ideas can be traced
back to the senses (sight, touch, hearing, etc.).
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A Fresh Start
• As one of the first
thinkers of the
Enlightenment, René
Descartes’ (1596-1650)philosophical goal was to
make a fresh start and
putting philosophy backon track again.
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“It is now some years since I detected howmany were the false beliefs that I had frommy earliest youth admitted as true, andhow doubtful was everything I had since
constructed on this basis; and from thattime I was convinced that I must once andfor all seriously undertake to rid myself ofall the opinions which I had formerlyaccepted, and commence to build anewfrom the foundation, if I wanted to
establish any firm and permanentstructure in the sciences. But as thisenterprise appeared to be a very greatone, I waited until I had attained an age somature that I could not hope that at any
later date I should be better fitted toexecute my design. This reason caused meto delay so long that I should feel that Iwas doing wrong were I to occupy indeliberation the time that yet remains tome for action.” (IP 205)
Edifice of Knowledge
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Descartes’ Method
• By “method” Decartes means reliable rules
which are easy to apply and such that if one
follows them exactly one will never take
what is false to be true.
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Mathesis Universalis“The long chains of simple and easy reasonings by
means of which geometers are accustomed to reach theconclusions of their most difficult demonstrations, hadled me to imagine that all things, to the knowledge ofwhich man is competent, are mutually connected in thesame way, and that there is nothing so far removed from
us as to be beyond our reach, or so hidden that wecannot discover it, provided only we abstain fromaccepting the false for the true, and always preserve inour thoughts the order necessary for the deduction ofone truth from another.” (Discourse on Method ) (IP 204)
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Sub-method
– “methodological doubt”
– “metaphysical doubt”
– “hyperbolic doubt”
– “radical doubt”
– “radical skepticism”
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Method of Doubt
• This method is merely part—albeit an
important part—of Descartes’ more general
“mathematical method.”
• Doubt is his way of arriving at simple, self-
evident starting point or foundation on which
the world of knowledge is to be built anew.
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Demolition: “Upheaval of my
former opinions”
“To-day, then, since very opportunely for the planI have in view I have delivered my mind from
every care [and am happily agitated by no
passions] and since I have procured for myself anassured leisure in a peaceable retirement, I shall
at last seriously and freely address myself to the
general upheaval of all my former opinions.” (IP
205)
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Archimedean Point
“Archimedes, in order that hemight draw the terrestrialglobe out of its place, andtransport it elsewhere,demanded only that onepoint should be fixed andimmoveable; in the same wayI shall have the right toconceive high hopes if I am
happy enough to discover onething only which is certainand indubitable.” (IP 223)
Science
And
Knowledge
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• “ Indubitable” : not susceptible to doubt
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Objects of Doubt
Sense perception(Illusion)
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Duck or Rabbit?
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Fooled ya!
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“All that up to the present time I have
accepted as most true and certain I have
learned either from the senses or through the
senses; but it is sometimes proved to me thatthese senses are deceptive, and it is wiser not
to trust entirely to anything by which we have
once been deceived” (IP 205-206).
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Objects of Doubt
• Sense perception (Illusion)
• Sense perception (dreams)
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Objects of Doubt
• Sense perception (Illusion)
• Sense perception (dreams)
• The components of dreams
themselves
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Objects of Doubt
• Sense perception (Illusion)
• Sense perception (dreams)
• The components of dreams themselves
• Universals, Definitions, and
Mathematical truths, etc.
2 + 3 = 5?
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“For whether I am awake or asleep, two and
three together always form five, and the
square can never have more than four sides,
and it does not seem possible that truths soclear and apparent can be suspected of any
falsity [or uncertainty].” (IP 207)
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The Evil Genius
“I shall then suppose,
not that God who is
supremely good and the
fountain of truth, butsome evil genius not
less powerful than
deceitful, has employed
his whole energies indeceiving me” (IP 208)
Q ti 2
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Question 2:If Descartes were alone today, rather than the
evil genius, he would used the example of whichmovie to illustrate his point?
A. InterstellarB. Harry Potter
C. E.T.
D. The Matrix
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The Matrix . . . .