Understanding Certainty: Inspired by Professor Shahid Ali’s Class What We Read Is Meditations On First Philosophy by Descartes
Imagine living in a world where all your experiences are questionable. What if your senses can deceive you, your teachers can be wrong, and what you think are truths are actually complete lies? This is one of the most influential books in the world: Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy.
Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy is an influential book that is still relevant 4 centuries later?
First question has an easy response. First edition of Meditations on First Philosophy was
published in Latin in 1641. However,
it would be an oversimplification of the book. Meditations is a one of a kind artifact in the history of civilization, one that still allows engagement to this day. One that asks every individual to engage, rethink all that they know,
and all that they think they know, and reconstruct that knowledge. Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy is still relevant today in the world.
To get the most out of this experience, let’s be like a fictional super teacher,
Professor Shahid Ali.
He would use the Socratic method not just to lecture on the Meditations, but to make us live them. He would celebrate the doubts and question the assumptions,
helping us navigate through the convoluted logical passages of a Descartes. With the help of this imaginary master, we won’t just learn about the Meditations, we will perform them.
The Historical Stage: The Ideal Year of 1641 for Doubting
To start engaging with the Meditations, we first need to get a feel for the 17th century. The continent was undergoing massive transformations. The beginning of the Scientific Revolution was on the horizon, with voices like Galileo,
who challenged the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic view of the world which had dominated for centuries.
The criticism of the Church, ancient skepticism and questioning of authority were powerful.
In the field of philosophy and mathematics, Descartes was trying to find a new method to approach a topic the same way one would approach a problem in geometry.
Reasoning from ancient texts was not his favorite as it was with the scholastics. He was looking for one truth that could not be disputed and from that one truth, be able to recreate the whole world of philosophy and science.
From the book, Discourse of the Method that Descartes was able to publish in 1637, was the beginning of Descartes ideas for the book Meditations that was published in 1641. It laid down the ideas that Descartes wanted to communicate, and he did it in a systematic way. Since it was dedicated to the Sorbonne theologians and philosophers who he wrote it in Latin for, he had to be careful of the title he gave it. He called it, Meditations on First Philosophy, in which the existence of God and the immortality of the soul are demonstrated. This way he would not receive the same punishment that Galileo did in 1633 who the Church condemned for his ideas.
The Layout of the Mind: Self-Contained Architecture of the Mind – Part I of the Through the Ruins Journey Series: Six Days of Self-Contemplation
Professor Ali remarks that the arrangement of the Meditations is intentional; it is a journey, with each meditation designed to fall on the remaining metaphoric ashes after the previous one, and it entails the story of one’s mind being liberated from the bonds of error.
Meditation I: On What Can Be Called Into Doubt – The Demolition Project
“Class,” Professor Ali may begin, “as the construction of the pillars of knowledge is about to get underway, it is of utmost priority that a meticulous inspection of the base be carried out first. Is the foundation a solid piece of bedrock,
or some piece of quagmire? This is the invitation of Descartes: to be the architects of our own understanding, and it must start with radical demolition.”
In First Meditation, Descartes engages, to the world’s knowledge for the first time, The Method of Doubt. His aim is to deliberately set out to doubt everything that can be doubted, and in a scenario where he can be reasonably doubtful about a belief, he would fully treat that belief,
to the extent of being in a state where it is false.
The Fallibility of the Senses:
Because hot comes from the stove, loud comes from the speakers, and smells come
from the cookies, the senses are generally reliable. But the senses are not perfect. Water makes a stick look bent,
and the sides of most four sided objects look like squares from a distance, but the tops are rounded. Water, like the bending towers, can make us see things that are not there. Other than the dangers of the world, can we even trust the senses we are born with?
The Dream Argument:
People, including the most lucid of thinkers, can never know when they are dreaming. Inner worlds that we navigate can appear and disappear, completely inconceivable and not rooted in waking reality. But, without clear evidence to define the difference, every experience we perceive in life could just as easily be a constructed world unreality.
- The Evil Demon Hypothesis:
- Descartes ruminates, for the sake of argument, What of a demon, a deceptively powerful entity, bent solely on the destruction of the truth. What if we are all slaves, reliant on the characters of a petty universe, living to demolish all that we have of ourselves, even the purest mathematical truths,
- like the verification of two different counts, the addition of two single, independent entities, to manifest the total of three unique things, compiled from an independent integer, existing only to serve two. What if all of our inner and outer, completely valid, AUTHENTIC existences, hinge upon a destruction that we know to be neither pure, nor valid?
So reflections of the self and of all logic collapse on themselves and, anchored in reason, fall into darkness. The fall is complete. The dark is a void. The state of despair is profound.
Meditation II: The Discovery of the Archimedean Point – I Think, Therefore I Am
After reducing the rest of the world to a world of potential illusion, while Descartes continues to look for something, anything that can survive this hyperbolic skepticism,
we, the followers of Descartes, are in the same boat.
It is here that the Archimedean Pont,
the foundational point in the Archimedean point equilibrium, comes in. Professor Ali used to pause these moments and leave them to silence. Professor Ali used to say this softly, “What is the only thing that can stay in this black void? The demon can make me have doubts about the world, my body, and everything outside of me. But for me to be deceived, there must be something, a me that remains to be deceived.” During these moments of explanation, Professor Ali would illuminate the classroom by this flash of genius that is the starting point of Descartes reasoning, Cogito, ergo sum – “I think, therefore I am.”.
It is the one thing that can never be doubted. With this in mind, Descartes reasoning concludes that the very action of doubting cannot be the first thing that one can do. This is a building block of Descartes reasoning.
So this demon we speak about cannot be used to deceive my mind. The very act of doubt requires a “thing” possessing the very act of doubt. This thing cannot be something physical, the thing cannot be a body, because the body is simply a vessel. The “I” that remains is the mind or a consciousness.
The Wax Argument:
One work by Descartes is also called The Wax Argument’. The Wax Argument states that freshly harvested honey from the center of the hive has the following properties: taste, smell, hardness, and color.
When the honey is heated over the fire, all of aforementioned properties change. When all of the qualities of an object change, how do we know that it is the same object?
The answer is the intellect, we know it’s wax due to extension, capacity to bend, and mutability. Descartes believes that this is an example of how knowledge is not actually derived from the external senses, it is from the mind.
Medidations 3, 4 and 5: God and Certainty
The Cogito is the starting point for Descartes to begin building everything from ground zero. However, how does one get from the one absolute certain fact, that I exist, to the fact that the external world exists? It would seem that the God is the answer to that.
God is not only the bridge for Descartes, but also the object of his quest. In this meditation, Descartes identifies the ideas that are imprinted in his mind, the idea of a perfect, infinite, and eternal being.
Descartes believes that since the non-imperfect being does not exist in the world, the perfect being must exist in this world. In other words, to create something, the creator has to exist, otherwise, the work cannot exist.
Meditation IV: The Problem of Error
Why do we commit mistakes if God is perfect and cannot be wrong? There is a gap that Descartes identifies between the will and the understanding,
which is where the gap includes a person’s ability to commit a mistake, and that keeps this person from understanding the entirety of the thing s/he is judging.
Meditation V:
The Essence of Material Things and Another Proof of God
With respect to Descartes’ God is (ontological) argument,
he concludes that the essence of a perfect being must exist, just like the essence of a triangle must exist to have three angles equal to 180 degrees. And,
even if we do not have clear and distinct knowledge of the essence of material things, we do have knowledge of the essence of material things (like, we know things in the same degree as in objects of geometry) to the point that we may even have doubts that such things exist.
Meditation VI:
The Return to the Senses and the Mind-Body Problem
First, we allow Descartes the positive knowledge the material world exists. Given that God is not a deceiver, and should thus be allowed the presumption that he is adequately constituted, and given that he has given strong inclinations to people; given this, he should be allowed the presumption that a material world exists, to the extent people should include in their knowledge the place. However, their knowledge or understanding is only partial; the material world must be best understood in terms of mathematics. And it is only in the material world that we must include this understanding.
This leads to Descartes’ most controversial and enduring legacy:
Cartesian Dualism.
He states that reality is made of two radically different substances:
Res Cogitans (Thinking Substance):
The mind that is unextended, indivisible, and conscious.
Res Extensa (Extended Substance):
The body and everything else that is physical. It is extended through space, is divisible, and follows the laws of mechanics.
This “ghost in the machine”
model creates the notorious
Mind-Body Problem:
How does an immaterial, non-physical mind interact and control a body that is physical and mechanical? This question has been a problem ever since in the realms of philosophy and cognitive science.
The Logical Legacy:
How the Meditations Shaped Our World
Professor Ali would step back from the text to show its huge shadow, saying, “Descartes, for better and for worse, gave us the very tools of modern critical thought.”
The Birth of Modern Philosophy:
The Meditations changed the most important question of philosophy from, “What is truly the world?” to, “What can I know about the world?” This was the ground for the field of epistemology, which was the starting point for all philosophy.
Laying the Ground Work for Science:
Descartes was the first to take a step back and look at the world. By separating the world into the predictable and the subjective, Descartes showed the world the future of mechanical science. Unlike before, when science would take constant reference to the divine and the soul, Descartes showed that the universe was simply a mechanism that could be studied.
Lost Individuality:
Placing the individual at the core of the Cogito represents the radicalization of autonomy and the power of individual reason.
This focus on individual reason and autonomy would go on to become a fundamental part of the enlightenment.
Lasting issues:
Several of the issues that Descartes refers to in the Meditations include the mind-body problem, the problem of skepticism, and the absence of fundamental knowledge. Every philosopher after Descartes such as Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, and Kant, had to contend with the issues that Descartes put forth.
Conclusion: A Living Text For Digital Age
So when and what is Meditations on First Philosophy? It is published in 1641. But its true ‘when’ is every time a reader embarks on its journey.
In this age of deepfakes, algorithmic bubbles, and digital trickery, the quest Cartesian quest for certainty is most applicable than ever. What do we know to be true? How do we earn knowledge on a sea of misinformation?
The Meditations provides no easy path. It is a method. Restores faith in the weak in rigor to find a stone to build one’s foundation and recognize the limits of one’s understanding.
In the spirit of Professor Shahid Ali, the last lesson is simply this: Do not just read Descartes. Meditate with him. Engage in the dialogue. Perform the doubt. In that, you will not just be understanding a 17th-century text; in that, you will be contributing to the ever so alive and, most importantly, human quest for the truth.
