- What is your initial point of view?
I really like the theory of doubting what is you’ve come to believe, testing one’s own beliefs is something I think everyone should do if what you believe in isn’t real then it shouldn’t be believed but Descartes seems to conveniently justify his belief in god rather shakily as opposed to giving voice to the obvious doubt he poses in a gods existence. It almost seems like he disproves god’s existence and then just fudges the results to prove the opposite.
2. How can you define your point of view more clearly?
Descartes argument in meditation one, which is his doubting of all that he knew up to this point. He understands a lot of his knowledge is derived from his senses and information passed down and both those sources can be called into question. So he starts by attacking the foundations of his knowledge so that he can begin a fresh and try to discern one factor which he knows without a doubt to be true from which he can build new beliefs on. So in his first meditation is he questions the validity of the beliefs he held up to that point.
Effectively stripping himself of this ingrained knowledge that we hold to be true but have no basis in fact, his basic perspective is ‘that which can be doubted, must be called into doubt’ from this perspective he tries to answer questions around the existence of god.
What he’s asking is basically; ‘Is what I believe a product of god or truth or does it come from false extraneous elements’. He wants to know if he believes in god because god is real or if simply he was raised to believe in god because he was ‘told’ god was real when all evidence points to him/her/it not existing at all.
3. What is an example of your point of view?
Descartes uses the example of a piece of wax to illustrate the point that we know our minds better than we know our bodies or the bodies that surround us. The wax appears to us first as a solid, it smells of flowers and may have a certain taste or feel but we also know it to take on the form of a liquid. Essentially doubt teaches us that although a substance can be defined one way at one time it can be completely different under a different set of circumstances.
4. What is the origin of your point of view?
Senses alone cannot derive the machinations of the physical world because they can be deceived; Descartes knows this because on occasion they have been deceived so by that example if they can be deceived once they can likely be deceived again. He comes to the conclusion that the mind is the only thing we can be certain of. Because of this argument if we can doubt even our own senses we can doubt almost all the information collected by them.
5. What are your assumptions?
Our obvious initial assumptions are that we our senses, which we rely on deliver accurate information about the world around but now that we understand that even they can deceive we must assume that they cannot be an accurate and reliable source for which to judge the physical world.
6. What are the reasons, evidence, and arguments that support yourpoint of view?
Although we see it as a solid before us we know it can also be something completely different to all of the senses. The origin of this information is our minds as our sensory information tells us that one or the other is true but our minds using understanding of transitional states know both is possible and that objects can take on different shapes and properties. On the other hand if we were to believe our senses alone and be without doubt we would have to believe that once the wax had changed from a solid to a liquid they were two separate substances and not the same substance in a different state.
7. What are other points of view on this issue?
A devil or an evil genius that may have the powers of god and may want us to believe we are real people when in fact we could just be concepts or brains floating in vats, he can deceive our minds into believing false claims such as two plus two equals five and we have no means to disprove that as we are blinded by this devil. He can make us believe wax is solid and then changes into a liquid.
8. What is your conclusion, decision, solution, or prediction?
The only argument Descartes poses against the idea of the devil tricking us is that for a loving god to exist this has to be false because a loving god who created us in his image would not want us to be deceived because by definition this god is good.
Still doubting in scientific terms is the only way really in finding the truth.
9. What are the consequences of your point of view?
If everyone were to be more critical and doubt and try to find the truth behind the lies perhaps the world would be a better clearer place or it could be worse, who knows?
Descartes, Rene (1641) Meditations on First Philosophy. Print
