Posted on 05/03/2016 7:22:04 AM PDT by Salvation
Monsignor Pope Ping!
That is all that was certain for Descartes; everything else might have been a dream or deception.”
Complete rubbish.
There is plenty of certainty in Descartes...that’s sort of his whole point. It’s just that he wants to obtain certainty beginning on a firm foundation. He only doubts as a starting point, then begins anew.
Now...obviously...you can say that his certainties (which include, incidentaly, some of Newton’s laws....) are not grounded or do not follow. Or you can say that IN EFFECT as a matter of history that his beginning point brought about uncertainty.
But it’s simply wrong to say that Descartes had only one point of certainty.
This is half-assed philosophy. And it’s not helpful.
Incidentally, Descartes also sought the help of a Catholic seminary in his day to try to help him think about truth. He made a very eloquent plea, in fact, and if you read his letter it seems to be in good faith. He was ignored. So he gave it a shot on his own. And this is what he came up with.
So he was ignored then, and he is only partially read today. Very unhelpful.
“4. Man’s understanding of himself and the world has been in a downward spiral ever since. Only the mind and what the mind says is reality, is real.”
This is where Descartes went off the rails. The first 3 points are actually basically in agreement with the Biblical view, just arrived at through a different path.
Now if you rely on logic, alone, point four may seem to flow naturally from the first three, but if you posit point four, any further conclusions that you might draw are worthless, since you could never hope to determine if ANYTHING is real. If you let your subjective mind be the instrument of observation and the sole judge of reality, then everything you experience could be delusion, or fantasy, and you have no way of proving otherwise.
So logic would dictate that you must accept the existence of an external, objective reality as an a priori assumption, if you hope to draw logical conclusions farther than point 4. The failure of the modernists and postmodernists to realize that is what really causes the trouble.
You are confusing Descartes with his philosophy. Marx once said that he was not a marxist. The man is more than his philosophy. But the Philosophy lives on and its idealism morphs into something else. No longer method but a truth in itself. Something of the same happens with Hobbes. His philosophy is born of his exposure to an awful war. (Cromwell’s savagery in Ireland is much underplayed), But we than have Hume and in reaction the idealism of Kant, then Hegel, and then German atheism, made flesh by the followers of Marx and in reaction, by Hitler and, I dare say by the “Christian” Democracy of true EU.
Philosophers of the day found his doubts quite compelling, but not so much his proofs. The blowback from Cogito Ergo Sum seems to have been the unintended consequence of a well-intentioned Christian.
TLTR
Respectfully....I would say that I am making that mistake. The author is.
The author said that Descartes was uncertain.
Descartes was not uncertain, and his philosophy on the face of it leads to great certainty.
However...as it functions in the history of philosophy, some of the author’s points are correct. Descartes’ philosophy is clearly a turning point. But the statement, “Descartes was uncertain” is simply false.
The opposite is true. Descartes was SUPREMELY certain. He may well have been wrong, but he was not uncertain.
And Descartes was not very insightful in that he didn’t see how his starting point was going to unleash havoc in the world....precisely b/c peopel would make the mistake the author has apparently made. They stopped reading after Descartes says that the starting point where we must start is the Cogito. If you stop reading, it seems like that is where he ends, but it isn’t. He keeps going ...and going...and going...and going....and insisting every step of the way that his conclusions follow inexorably from what he just said in the previous section.
In any event...to be continued. :)
yes.
I have often found it very poignant that Descartes tried, apparently sincerely, pretty much on his own....and this is what he came up with.
Incidentally....but related....TS Eliot said the exact same thing about Tennyson’s In Memorium. He said the quality of the doubt is exquisite...but he didn’t buy Tennyson’s utterances which are in line with the orthodox Christian faith.
Why is it that collectively we find doubt more persuasive than proclamations of truth? Arrgh.....
I meant to say, of course, that I am NOT making that mistake.....ba ha ha.
I guess this is how misunderstandings happen when one philosophisizes.
At least Rene wasn’t posting on Free Republic.....and like me hitting post without proofreading....
“Let us pray that our reintroduction to reality will not be too harsh. But I am afraid that it will be.”
There is no separation between the physical and spirituality, the two are one.
Reality is a function of perception and our perception of reality is a function of the frequency of consciousness from which we view reality. I have found that by praying and tuning our consciousness to a higher level, consciousness itself, including thoughts and stored memories become physical objects. There is no dualism.
In fact, the “Tower of Babel” concept relates to the various levels of consciousness. There is much more to this than most understand.
Our reality changes when we cleanse our souls and/or receive the Holy Spirit. The “Born Again” or new way of perceiving is a direct result in the change in our consciousness. We can tune our consciousness so low that mole hills look like mountains or so high that mountains look like mole hills. When you tune to the higher levels of consciousness in prayer, not only are things previously invisible now visible, but you begin to perceive directly from your soul or spirit rather than just your five physical senses.
Just my humble opinion based upon my perception of past experiences
By the way, all thoughts manifest at different levels of physicality. Thus we must be careful what we think as we may as well have done it!!!
Very true what you say.
Descartes work was all about finding a defense of reality of what undeniably exists.
So, though the author is wrong in blaming Descartes for our departure from reality into delusion, he’s correct in saying that it has happened especially in academia.
Not to worry, though, reality will sooner than later get its revenge.
I wish I had a week with nothing else to do, so I could critique this point by point. Instead, I’ll just make one point.
There is reality, and then there is our perception of reality, and they are not the same. We know this because we have enough knowledge of the physical world, and of our own biology, to refute our own perceptions. A simple example: “color” is something we perceive in the world, but it does not exist in the world, only electromagnetic waves c.700-400 nanometers, which are reflected off objects, are absorbed by our eyeballs, and then transduced into electrical impulses sent to our brain, which then creates a conscious fiction that the objects have color—it’s a fiction because there is no such thing as color, and it is conscious because it occurs in our conscious mind. Except that the objects are not solid: we perceive that they are solid because they block our entry, but we also know that they are nothing more than a collection of electrical impulses (subatomic particles) that at any instant only fill one billionth the volume of the object. Except that the electrical impulses are not what they seem, as quantum physics and beyond shows us...
We make a distinction between practical decision-making and knowledge of reality on a regular basis: I don’t try to walk through a wall because I “know” it is only a collection of electrical impulses, because a combination of testimony (other people’s experiences) and personal experience leads me to not take the chance that my attempted walk-through would be successful. However, I also know that, if the electrical impulses that make up my body could be positioned in just the right locations as to not coincide with the electrical impulses that make up the wall, I could walk through the wall and come out the other side without injury to either myself or the wall.
So if I walked with God closely enough to have the faith of a grain of mustard seed, if God were to lead me to walk through the wall, I could walk through the wall, knowing that He is capable of positioning the electrical impulses exactly as necessary—just as I could command the mountain to remove itself and go into the sea, even if I don’t yet understand at all how it could be done, the way I can understand today how walking through a wall could be done.
This is part of the distinction that is made in I Corinthians 2:14, which distinguishes between the “natural man,” which in the Greek means the man of “psyche,” the logical-minded man, and the spirit of God. Ultimate truth can only be found in the spirit of God, because only the spirit of God fully understands the nature of all existence, having proceeded from the Father (and perhaps from the Son, that’s a topic for another time :> ). The best we can know about anything is either what our rational mind is capable of formulating based on reason and evidence—which is what Descartes was attempting to do—or what the spirit of God is willing to impart to us through revelation, which includes the recorded revelation of Scripture, and the present-day revelation of His Spirit to our spirit, which would be additional without being contradictory.
I have written much too much already, but the destruction of reason does not come from Descartes, but from Hegel, and it is in the post-Hegelian world that the antichrist spirit finds its greatest opening to spiral the world towards the end of the age.
I read this early this morning. It is right ON the mark!
Descarte walks into a bar. The bartender says, "Will you have your usual?" Descarte ponders a bit and says, "No, I think not." He then disappears in a puff of logic.
**There is much more to this than most understand.**
I’ll second that!
“There is reality, and then there is our perception of reality, and they are not the same.”
No... they are the same. However there is perception of reality and “false perception” of reality which can exist at the same level of reality or at different levels.
We are holding a conference on this in Chapel Hill NC June 8th to 12th
http://ascsi2.ning.com/page/pre-conference-events
Pre-Conference Workshop
Wednesday June 8 - 10:30 am to 5:00 pm
“The Future of the Science of Consciousness-—After We Awaken Our Experience to the New Paradigms for Reality”
Presented By:
Dr. Vernon Neppe and Dr. Edward Close
Two pioneering scientists, Dr Vernon Neppe and Dr Edward Close have literally applied science to change our understanding of reality by examining the major differences between our day to day experience and our true existence.
yes...the revenge of reality...the world does sort of seem to work like that, doesn’t it.....
Unfortunately, the revenge of reality won’t be pretty.
I love the last two stanza’s of Kipling’s “The Gods Of The Copybook Headings”...
“As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!”
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