René Descartes - Meditation #1 - The Method of Doubt

You definitely have hands, you just have a few of these six articles or chapters written by René Descartes in Latin originally in 1641. These are perhaps the most famous and influential works of philosophy from the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe. Well, let me tell you something about the author Renée. Descartes was a French mathematician and philosopher. His name is pronounced Descartes and when talking about things that have to do with him, philosophers often use the word Cartesian. Cartesian means similar or related to Renée Descartes. This French guy wrote in Latin. He wrote. six

meditation

s, these are six chapters, he calls them

meditation

s, but they are just chapters of a philosophy book and in this video in this video lecture we are going to talk about the first one and then in later lectures we are going to go over it. all six, so if you're going to understand what happens in this first meditation in this first chapter, then you're going to have to understand the distinction between beliefs that are probably true, things that you think are probably true, and things that you think are 100 guaranteed. that is true definitely true let me start with some examples here is an example of a belief that I have something that I believe is true and is probably true.

I believe the speed of light in a vacuum is 299 million meters. for a second, okay, that's something I believe, why do I believe that? Well, I believe it because I read it on Wikipedia this morning, so it's probably true, some very reliable scientists found out that using some experiments were good experiments and then Wikipedia has some very good procedures. They exist to verify the accuracy of the information in their online articles and some articles are less reliable than more articles like Wikipedia has this whole thing where you know they have problems with articles about people who are still alive, human beings who are still alive .

These articles get a lot of abuse and people write false things in them, but this is the speed of light, so it is very unlikely that the information in this Wikipedia article is false, hence my belief that the speed of light in a vacuum is 299 million meters per Second, that belief goes in the probably true category, it is not guaranteed to be true because there could be a typo or maybe the scientists made a mistake. Scientists can make mistakes. Every claim science makes apparently falls into this category because it is possible for any scientific basis. belief is false although probably not so probably true beliefs that's the kind of things that go in this category what kind of things go in this category well, we don't know, I can't tell you because it's part of Descartes' whole project in the meditations are to find out what's going on here, that's what you're going to try to do, in fact, you're going to try to see if you can back up all the important things that you believe in and prove that they belong in this category. prove, for example, that the existence of God, he was a French Christian religious in 1640.

Whatever the right, he will try to prove that the existence of God falls into this category and a lot of other ordinary things about his life, such as those lives. in France or whatever, he wants to prove that it is also in this category, if he can, to find out what happens in this category, Descartes will take all of his current beliefs and even if they fall into this category, he will go. to stop believing them, he will, as he says, treat them as if they were definitely false and what you do with definitely false beliefs is stop believing them, so all the things in this category he will stop believing them and get into that .

He will somehow erase all of his beliefs and then slowly rebuild his belief system. He will only believe the things that he believes he can prove with certainty. This is the safe word here, and this is the uncertain word. He will only believe. the things he knows for sure and little by little he will reconstruct all of his beliefs by believing in new things only if he can back up those new beliefs with 100 guaranteed infallible arguments, that is the plan now, this plan requires the six meditations. the first meditation that we are talking about today and that you read today in the first meditation just erases everything, that is, it shows that all these things that he believes are probably true and when he shows that they are probably true it is only possible to

doubt

them. , stop believing them, that's what you do in meditation, first you erase everything, you start with a clean slate, then, in meditations two, three, four, five and six, you bring everything back by demonstrating that all these beliefs. or almost all the correct ones, they are actually guaranteed to be true, so now I am going to read to you the two sentences at the beginning of the meditation, one in which Descartes explains that this is his plan, the plan that I just explained to you, explains it in two sentences here they are ready reason now leads me to think that I should stop my ascent to opinions that are not completely true and indubitable with the same care that I do to those that are evidently false, so the idea in this sentence is that well, what do you do with beliefs that are patently or obviously false?

You repress your belief in them. I mean, you don't believe in those things. If I told you I wrote a unicorn here this morning, you'd say well, that's obviously false. I'm not going to believe it well, that's what it's going to do for anything that can be

doubt

ed, reason now leads me to think, so this is what I have to do if I want to be rational, I really have to stop my rise of opinions that are not completely certain and indubitable statements as carefully as I do those that are patently false, so withhold my agreement or my belief in those statements, that's what he's going to do and then he says it for the purpose of rejecting all my opinions.

It will be enough if I find in each of them at least one reason to doubt, so that you know how to discover what is definitely true and to eliminate all merely probably true beliefs that he has everything that he has to do. What you need to do is find a little bit of doubt and that is enough if you find that you are going to throw away that belief, that is what will happen in the first meditation, but notice that there is already a problem, which is that we have many similar beliefs. too many to try each one how many beliefs do you have like a trillion trillion trillion?

I mean, now you believe I told you and you trust me. You believe that the speed of light in a vacuum is 299 million meters per second. and you think I don't know that North America includes several countries and you believe that the grass is green, you believe in many, many, many things and you can't go through each one of them and check, oh, is it possible to doubt? If there is even a hint of doubt, it's sure to take forever and then Descartes comes up with a plan, he has a

method

, a way to eliminate all these beliefs, which won't take forever, right, the name of this

method

.

It's method of doubt this is the method I wrote it consider large groups of beliefs and doubt all the beliefs in that group at once that's the plan so you're going to take whole swaths of beliefs and show that they can possibly be false. all the beliefs in that large group and then once you're done, you'll discard that entire group. Well, how are you going to identify the groups and rule them out? Well, this is what he says and to do this I won't need to go over them. all individually, which would be an endless task when he says them all, he means all my beliefs, well, it would take forever, it would be an endless task to go through all my beliefs and see if I can doubt each one once the fundamentals of a building is undermined, everything built on them collapses on its own, so I will go straight to the basic principles on which all my previous beliefs were based.

Well, those two sentences that's where he explains the method of doubt, so that's it, that's the only explanation of The method that we get is those two sentences now, if I read those two sentences and you're thinking, I don't really understand it. at all, don't worry, I'm just going to explain it to you right now, this is what it means. The method is to select groups of beliefs according to the basic principles on which they are based, how do we understand all these basic principles? I believe a lot of things, let's say, because my grandmother told me those things and I'm using a basic principle something like this trust everything my grandmother tells me that's a basic principle if I find out that my grandmother sometimes lies sometimes well then I have doubted this basic principle.

I have shown that even though my grandmother, you know, usually leads me toward the truth, she may have been lying to me and all the things that I believe because my grandmother told me those things fall into this category. of simply probably true and if they fall into this category then Descartes is going to discard them and so I am going to include them in this example correctly and, in doubting this basic principle, I have doubted a lot of beliefs like say a thousand, two thousand or ten thousand things I believe in because my grandmother told me those things. that is the method of doubt, so Descartes will try to find out what basic principles underlie all his beliefs and then he will see if he can doubt the basic principles and he will be able to doubt them, they will not be certain and then once he has done that, You will stop believing in all the things that are based on those basic principles and you will review enough basic principles to throw away all your beliefs.

That's the plan for this meditation, that's the method of doubt and in this quote these two sentences that I read about the method of doubt um he gives this metaphor with like a building and the foundation of the building this is what's happening. Let's say you have a house and the house is made of sticks these are the sticks of the house okay, there's the door I guess whatever okay, that's your house it's made of sticks it's a shitty house you don't like the roof It leaks and you know the wind is drafty whatever it is that you don't like this house you want a new house a firmer house a more resistant house well what do you do?

The first thing you have to do is demolish your old house and then you are going to build a new house with bricks or something better. It would take too long to remove each stick individually, so what you do is you go to the foundation, the foundation is the bottom of the house, you go to the bottom and find the sticks that all the other sticks rest on and if you just take this one out well then a bunch of other sticks are going to fall and then you find another one down here, you pull it out and then this side falls.

The next thing you know, you've taken the first step, you've demolished the house, that's what Descartes is doing, except he's doing it with his beliefs in meditation one, he's finding the basic principles that the other ones are based on. beliefs, doubting that, everything falls down, you stop believing everything and then, starting in meditation two, you will rebuild everything again, but on a firmer foundation that is the idea so far we have only talked about four sentences of this entire meditation , right, we have the big plan for all the meditations that was in those first two sentences that I read and that appear in like the second paragraph or whatever we had. those two sentences and then we had the two sentences explaining the method of doubt in the next sentence, Descartes immediately begins to go over the basic principles of it.

He's not doing anything principled about his grandmother. That was just an example that I gave well. He will be well. he will immediately introduce a principle and immediately undermine it in the next two sentences, this is what he says, everything that until now I have accepted as most true I have acquired either from the senses or through the senses, okay, let's stop there , Alright. The first basic principle that you are going to consider is that you believe things because you discover those things, those facts, putative facts, you discover them through your senses, through the sense of sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing. and any other sense that exists. that is the first principle the first principle is to trust what my senses tell me okay in the next sentence he doubts this principle this is what he says to doubt it but from time to time I have discovered that the senses deceive and it is never prudent completely trust those who have deceived us even once the idea is that sometimes the senses are wrong I see a spider on the wall and I jump back because I see it with my eyes but then it turns out that the spider was not really a spider It was just a stain on the wall so my senses deceived me it looked like there was a spider there but then upon looking closer it turns out that it's not a spider the idea is that whatever Descartes believes because he sees it, hears it or smells it. or he tests it or touches it or something like that, well those things are not guaranteed to be true, they probably are true, the senses can be wrong and therefore he will erase those beliefs, which he will then do in the next couple . phrases actually withdraws says that it was too fast I don't want to get rid of everything that my senses tell me not at once because some things that my senses tell me are more reliable than other things this is what it still says although the senses sometimes tell us They deceive about very small or distant objects.

There are many other beliefs about which it is impossible to doubt even if they are derived from the senses, for example that I am sitting here by the fire in a winter robe holding this piece of paper.in my hands and so on again how can you deny that these hands or this whole body are mine what he says there is like look it is true that you know that I should not trust what my senses tell me he says like You know about small or distant things , so the spider in the example I gave before, the spider is a small thing and your senses can misunderstand things, you know about small things like spiders, but my hands I feel like I have hands well or Descartes is like a Frenchman rich, so he's in a situation like: I don't even know if he was rich, actually I'm sorry, forget that he was rich, but he's a Frenchman and he's sitting in his winter robe, whatever is right, like the fact that you are wearing clothes that are not like a little spider, something very far away that you can be wrong, you definitely have hands, you are just somewhat right, you are definitely wearing clothes sitting by the fire or sitting in your house or whatever. whatever, those kinds of things are correct. not undermined by those beliefs beliefs about the fact that you have hands those kinds of things that are not undermined by the fact that your senses can deceive you right, you only know only the things that you believe about small or distant things, so the first principle , you sort of revise it, you still doubted a lot of things that you've allowed, you doubted your beliefs about faraway things or whatever is correct and you've doubted them based on the fact that well, the senses can deceive, I spelled deceive right? ?, I don't know. no, anyway, so we have a principle, it was a revised principle and now we have doubted it, so we have erased Descartes, he has erased all his beliefs about small or distant things, things that he has seen only from one point of view. view. distance, but if you got close to something or if something was big and you could see it clearly or smell it clearly without anything getting in the way or hear it without any distortion or I guess or whatever, then you think you can trust it, that's right. .

The second principle, the next principle is that he can trust what his senses tell him about things big and close. We have already eliminated all this, all the beliefs that were based on this principle because we doubted this principle based on this and now we have understood this principle, so Descartes is looking to see if there is any reason to think about any doubt, any reason To think that this principle might not be a good one on which to acquire beliefs, trust what your senses tell you about big things nearby. he likes the fact that you have good hands he thinks there are reasons to doubt this basic principle and it happens just three or four sentences later this is what he says how often do I sleep at night am I convinced of events so familiar that I am here in bathrobe sitting by the fire when in reality I am lying naked in bed, right, the idea is that look we have dreams at night and it is possible to dream that you are sitting by the fire in a bathrobe when in reality you are not sitting by the fire and you are not in your robe you're really in bed and you're naked or maybe you're in French pajamas or whatever I don't know okay the idea is you know I could be dreaming we can't trust our senses for sure we can't be sure that Our senses are giving us guaranteed true beliefs even about big and close things because we could be dreaming and even point out that we have no way of knowing.

We are dreaming while we are dreaming, so we can't just check if we are dreaming and then based on that you know if the test goes well, then just believe everything related to big and close things, this is what he says while I think about This more closely I see clearly that there are never sure signs by which you can distinguish being awake from being asleep there are never sure signs there is nothing you can do while you are dreaming like pinching yourself or whatever that proves that you are dreaming or awake or whatever because this is what you can always dream that you pinch yourself whatever test you try to take to determine that you know oh I'm not dreaming and I can trust my senses or whatever you could just dream that you took that test so The fact that it is possible to dream means that this basic principle is undermined and now Descartes has doubted all the things he believes based on his senses, such as that he owns a dressing gown. and lives in France all those things are gone oh I forgot some things I was going to mention earlier in the video and I just remembered them now so I'll say them now and maybe edit the video so this comes at the beginning or maybe not, I don't know anyway, um, that quote I just read that comes from page 1819 to 19.

Let me tell you about this, these page numbers, which I will occasionally refer to, right? Adam and Tannery were two French guys in 1890, something I don't know, they were the editors of a big, long multi-volume book in French of all of Descartes' writings. Well, so they wrote this book and the book had page numbers. and modern scholars, modern philosophers, when they talk about Descartes, they all use different translations and different versions of Descartes' writings that were different publications and all that kind of stuff in all these different languages ​​and they need to know that they are on the same page for everyone to use the page numbering of this edition this adam and tannery these are two people I can't remember their names whatever one guy's name his last name is adam and the other's last name is tannery right and then they let's say 1819. that means in the Adam and Tannery volume it was published in any year or it could have been a little later, I think the volumes were published over the course of a decade or whatever anyway in that book it's on the page 19 of that book. and so all of the, well, all of the decent current translations of Descartes work in Latin, all of them will note the 80 page numbers, and from time to time I'll note the 80 page numbers.

Notice something we've been through very much like a lot has already happened, we're not done with meditation one yet, but we have Descartes' plan for the full six meditations. Then we have Descartes' method of doubt that he is going to use in the first meditation to doubt all of his beliefs. correct and then we got the correct identification and that was the idea that you will use first principles, undermine the first principles or doubt them and that will allow you to doubt all the beliefs that were based on those first principles, so we got the plan for the six meditations we have the plan for meditation one and then we are most of the way through executing this plan we already have two basic principles and the reasons to doubt those two basic principles all of this so far has happened in like eight sentences, so The work is dense, and occasionally when I teach this material in a regular classroom in person, which is how most of my teaching happens, you know, I try to chat with students in the first few minutes of class before they everyone arrives everyone comes into the room and I will tell you how the reading was.

What did you think of today's reading? Students will often say that it was repetitive, but it is not. In fact, the text moves very quickly. Things change. One or two sentences he's giving us the plan for all the meditations, then he's done with that and he's on to the next thing, which is explaining the method he's going to use in this first meditation, so the pace is actually very fast. don't repeat, they move on to the next thing, but it seems that they are repetitive. The reason they seem repetitive is that, for example, Descartes will keep talking about deception over and over again, but it seems fine. it's the same as saying deception and deception it's about deception and deception yes, it's true, it's about deception and deception and the possibility that you're wrong or whatever, but it's saying very different things and this is true not only of Descartes, but of all the philosophy that we are going to read in this course, very different things at very different points, so you will have to read these texts with an incredible degree of concentration, because if you missed a sentence, we could still have moved on to something very important, that's just a side note, now we've doubted, we have two principles on the board and we've doubted each of them correctly, so I'm building sort of a little graph here on the right and This little graph on this side has the principles and then here you have the reasons to doubt those principles and therefore doubt the beliefs that are based on those principles.

Okay, so I have the principles and the doubt on this one. period, we've doubted a lot, we've doubted everything that you believe based on your senses, so we've doubted, uh, you know that you, um, I don't know, you're wearing clothes that you've ever worn, clothes that we're doubting that you have a family we are doubting that the continents exist we are doubting everything because in all those things you only believe those things because you have seen them or you have seen someone who told you about them I believe that the speed of light in a vacuum is 299 million meters per second.

Yes, I believe it, but I believe it because I like to listen to an audiobook or read the Wikipedia entry and all of that requires my senses, so we have hesitated a lot. We do not know that we have hands We do not know that we have clothes We do not know that the earth exists We do not know that the speed of light is 299 million meters per second What are we left with What are the beliefs that Descartes has not yet doubted so far in this point a few paragraphs of the meditation one then lists some things that he has not yet doubted here is the list the first thing he thinks he has not yet doubted this happens by the way, in 1819, he points out that colors exist, colors exist Now, he's not saying that any specific thing has specific colors, he just thinks that you couldn't dream that there was some color that didn't exist, you could only dream about one color, if such a color really existed, he thinks that's okay, so he thinks that the fact that some colors exist is not something that one knows well, one only discovers thanks to the senses and that and that dreaming could, well, deceive.

So he thinks that he still knows that corporeal corporeal means that it comes from the corpse or from a body. Corporeal or material things are extended corporeal things, physical things like a human body, a table, a chair, a mountain or anything that extends. this will be a very important term in this course extended means extended in space located and distributed across space as you know, this marker is extended it's like it's extended from here to here like it's extended and then it's extended from here to here that is its extension, that is what Descartes means by extended extension in space, he is not saying that he knows any specific physical thing, any specific body, human bodies, tables, chairs or anything else, he is not even really saying That some physical thing exists, it is just that it exists.

It takes up space, right, and he thinks that's just because it's the definition of corporeal or material things. This all happens on 80 20 page 80 20 reading anyway, so that's true by definition, and that's why he didn't do it. learn it through his senses he also thinks that the truths of arithmetic and geometry those truths are not yet in doubt he thinks that we do not learn he is right about this because of the way we do not learn arithmetic or geometric truths do not prove that they are true to through the senses now this might seem strange to you, as if you think, look how I know or prove, uh, or come to believe truths of arithmetic as if you knew that one plus two equals three the way you came to know that It's through your senses like you heard in grade school or whatever when the teacher told you that one plus two equals three and that's how you came to learn this fact so why aren't arithmetic truths called into question by the fact that you could be dreaming maybe you were dreaming when your teacher said this, Descartes thinks and he is right, by the way, although that is the way we learn about mathematical facts, it is not the way we support them, that is not it's the way we prove they're true we don't prove they're true through the senses this here this is not the number three look it's not the number the the the the Arabic numeral three the Arabic numeral three that represents the number itself , the number three, you've never seen the number three, the number three is not in space, you can't find it in your nightstand drawer or whatever, the number three, if it exists, whatever That means it doesn't exist. in space this is a number this is a pile of ink on a board here is another number this is called a roman numeral you may be familiar with these from the super bowl or any roman numeral three arabic numeral three the number three is a totally different thing when we discover facts about the number three, we calculate themThe facts are not discovered by smelling a number or whatever, we discover these facts simply by defining what three is in our minds and then thinking very, very clearly in a way that does not depend on the senses, thinking very, very clearly about the nature of the number three and the number two and one and addition and any right so arithmetic and geometric truths the same is true for a triangle like this is not a triangle this is a drawing of a triangleTriangles don't exist in the world because they are Well, triangles are supposed to be two-dimensional closed polygons or whatever, but this isn't two-dimensional, it's just a bunch of ink and ink has depth.

Anyway, this is not a triangle. The facts about triangles and the facts about numbers. triangles and numbers we discover those facts not through the senses or we demonstrate that they are true not through the senses but through pure thought, Descartes claims, so we have all these beliefs that have not yet been questioned. This is what Descartes says. Next, but firmly ingrained in my mind, is the long-held view that there is an omnipotent god who made me the kind of creature I am. How do I know that he has not caused there to be no earth, no sky, no extension? thing without form or size or place and at the same time I make sure that all these things appear to me to exist as they exist.

Now Descartes points out that it is possible for a creature to deceive him. Even think about all these things. I don't actually go through these three as clearly as I would have liked, but the idea is that if there were a creature powerful enough as a god, then that creature could trick Descartes into believing that colors exist even if colors don't exist or that there are. material things that extend when in reality there are no material things and nothing extends and that kind of thing and also Descartes does not say this in that passage, but he also thinks that God could deceive him about arithmetic in geometry, although he does not believe those things because of his senses, he does come to believe them because he thinks about them and a sufficiently powerful creature could plant some incorrect geometric or mathematical thoughts in his mind, Descartes, you know, think well, God, God would do it.

I'm not fooling him, but he realizes that it is at least coherent to imagine a creature that is as powerful as God but is not good, so this is what he says, this is one of the most famous passages of the meditations, here Goes, I guess therefore. That is not God, who is supremely good and the source of truth, but rather a malicious demon of supreme power and cunning who has used all his energies to deceive me. Well, let me pause. Actually, the idea is that well, we have this. persistent principle and that persistent principle is going to be doubted because of the possibility that there is a malicious demon who is as powerful as god but not as good as god and who is trying to deceive him, so here is the remaining principle that all his remaining beliefs are based on, okay, this is the last basic principle, trust in the truths of arithmetic geometry, the general nature of corporeal objects, the existence of shapes and colors and that kind of thing, that's it, okay, that is the persistent principle and he thinks he can doubt this principle. also and the way he doubts it is considering the fact that he might currently be under the delusion of some almighty malicious demon, so now he has doubted everything, he has even doubted these things because he might be wrong about all of this . things not because he came to these beliefs because of his senses but because he came to these beliefs because of something in his mind and that's all that a malicious demon an almighty creature that was evil that's all that that type of creature could deceive him and there could be such a creature, he does not believe that such a creature exists, he is operating under the assumption that such a creature exists, he is assuming that such a creature exists and when you assume that you get rid of all these beliefs Just like when you assume that you are dreaming, you get rid of all these beliefs. you get rid of all the beliefs that are based on your senses, like the belief that you are wearing your robe by the fire or whatever.

I just read this last passage. It's kind of a longer passage and I just read the first sentence, but here it goes. Therefore, I will assume that it is not God, who is supremely good and source of truth, but rather some malicious demon of the greatest power and cunning who has employed all his energies to deceive me, I will think that the sky, the air, the colors of the earth, give shape to sounds and that all external things are mere delusions of dreams that he has devised to trap my judgment. I will consider myself as having no hands, no eyes, no flesh, no blood, no senses, but Falsely believing that I have all these things, I will stubbornly and firmly persist in this meditation and even if it is not in my power to know any truth, at the same time much less will I do what is in my power to resolutely protect myself from accepting any falsehood. that the deceiver, no matter how powerful and cunning he may be, will not be able to impose an imposition on me in the slightest, he will stop believing all these things, that is where the meditation ends, one stops believing everything and so if there were a malicious demon in At least this demon malicious would not be deceiving Descartes into believing in the existence of things that do not exist.

We are at the end of meditation one and Descartes has eliminated all beliefs from him. This is all. He has nothing left. What happens at the beginning of meditation 2 is that Descartes is going to find a belief, a statement that he believes that a malicious demon could not deceive him. He couldn't fool him. There is one thing he thinks he knows and it has to be 100% guaranteed. It has to be true, there will also be one thing at the beginning of the meditation and then from that thing he will try to develop all the beliefs that he just now doubted.

One last note before finishing this video on meditation. One notices that there are different basic principles and that they were doubted on the basis of different doubts, so, like his belief in geometry and arithmetic, he did not undermine those beliefs because he could be dreaming, no, he undermined them because he could there is a malicious demon and the beliefs that your senses are reliable sources of truths about big and close things that were not doubted based on the malicious demon or that the census can deceive but you could be dreaming, so make sure you have everything this clear. which principles underlie which beliefs and then which doubts undermine which principles clarify all of this I'm definitely going to put some questions on the exam about that.