Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Discourse Part 1
I really thought Descartes was clever calling his work a 'fable', telling everyone that this was not a how to guide that should be followed by everyone, but a story of how he came to certain conclusions. It seems like a very nice way to distance himself from a lot of the upcoming statements of fact that he was going to be making that might have angered some of the 'authorities' at the time, aka. church, governments, etc.
meditations part five
Descartes just can't get off the subject of god. In his fifth meditation, he argues that, much like a mountain cannot exist without a valley, man cannot exist without god. He goes on to say that, much like it is impossible to visualize a triangle with two right angles, it is impossible to visualize the absence of god. I honestly feel like he makes a weak argument in this chapter. I don't think that it's possible to use logic in order to determine the existence of god. You can construe convincing arguments for both sides, but in the end, there really is no way to ever truly find the answer. The existence of god can never be demonstrated, but it can also never be completely refuted either.
Monday, February 11, 2008
discourse part two
Part two of Descartes' Discourse primarily deals with explaining the actual method that he feels should be used when trying to logically examine anything, and divides the process into four steps.
His first step is, in my opinion, his most important one - which is essentially to be skeptical of all things. He says that when arriving to conclusions, one should "never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such". In other words, don't believe anything without sufficient backing - question everything. He emphasizes the need to be able to "exclude all ground of doubt". If there is even one anomaly, then according to Descartes, it is not a truth.
The other three rules deal with splitting the problem into smaller, more manageable parts, figuring out the easiest parts first, and finally producing a detailed and complete report (I felt like this was more common sense type stuff, whereas the first rule was more of a critique on ignorance and blind acceptance).
The greatest part about this seemingly simple method is that it is so broad and general, that it can be applied almost universally, anything from science to politics to history, etc.
One viewpoint that I disagreed with Descartes on was his suggestion that an isolated mind produced better results than collaborative efforts. He says, comparing it to architecture - "there is not usually so much perfection in works composed of several parts and produced by various different craftsmen as in the works of one man." To me, the saying 'two heads are better than one' holds more water than his argument. He says that multiple people tend to cloud each other's vision and judgment, but I would argue that perhaps many or all of those people would not have arrived at the correct judgment on their own, but instead by working together and bouncing ideas off one another.
In fact, Descartes goes on to contradict his own statement when he uses Sparta as an example. He says, "I believe that if one time Sparta was very flourishing, this was not because each of its laws in particular was good (seeing that some were very strange and contrary to good morals) but because they were devised by a single man and hence all tended to the same end". In essence, he is saying that, even though Sparta lived in a cruel, martial society, it was for the better because one man thought it up. This is why I think that his argument for the sole mind is flawed - what happens when that mind belongs to a despot, or worse?
His first step is, in my opinion, his most important one - which is essentially to be skeptical of all things. He says that when arriving to conclusions, one should "never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such". In other words, don't believe anything without sufficient backing - question everything. He emphasizes the need to be able to "exclude all ground of doubt". If there is even one anomaly, then according to Descartes, it is not a truth.
The other three rules deal with splitting the problem into smaller, more manageable parts, figuring out the easiest parts first, and finally producing a detailed and complete report (I felt like this was more common sense type stuff, whereas the first rule was more of a critique on ignorance and blind acceptance).
The greatest part about this seemingly simple method is that it is so broad and general, that it can be applied almost universally, anything from science to politics to history, etc.
One viewpoint that I disagreed with Descartes on was his suggestion that an isolated mind produced better results than collaborative efforts. He says, comparing it to architecture - "there is not usually so much perfection in works composed of several parts and produced by various different craftsmen as in the works of one man." To me, the saying 'two heads are better than one' holds more water than his argument. He says that multiple people tend to cloud each other's vision and judgment, but I would argue that perhaps many or all of those people would not have arrived at the correct judgment on their own, but instead by working together and bouncing ideas off one another.
In fact, Descartes goes on to contradict his own statement when he uses Sparta as an example. He says, "I believe that if one time Sparta was very flourishing, this was not because each of its laws in particular was good (seeing that some were very strange and contrary to good morals) but because they were devised by a single man and hence all tended to the same end". In essence, he is saying that, even though Sparta lived in a cruel, martial society, it was for the better because one man thought it up. This is why I think that his argument for the sole mind is flawed - what happens when that mind belongs to a despot, or worse?
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