René Descartes - Meditation #4 - The Problem of Error

So there used to be these things called cassettes, first there were cassettes, exactly cassette tapes, that's how you bought and listened to music, and then there were CDs and then there was Napster, which was a website. Today we are talking about René's fourth

meditation

. Descartes, of course, you should take a look at my lecture videos on

meditation

s 1, 2 and 3, but here's a quick summary. The first thing we get in meditation 1 is the plan for the 6 meditations. The plan is that Descartes wants to know what he can know for sure, so he will stop believing anything, be able to doubt anything that is not 100% guaranteed to be true, and then try to start developing all his beliefs by only believing in things he knows with certainty. certainty, so the first meditation. is where you wipe the slate clean, doubt all these basic principles that underlie all your beliefs and then at the end of meditation 1, doubt everything, doubt all your beliefs, doubt your belief, that you have hands, that the earth exists, it is. doubtful mathematical beliefs, all at the beginning of meditation for Descartes he finds a statement that he believes he knows for sure must be true and that statement is that it exists because Descartes thinks that it needs to exist in order to go through this mental process in order to doubt all of his beliefs, that kind of thing, but at that stage, at the end of the meditation, Descartes only knows that it exists and that it is a mind that can doubt, then in meditation 3, Descartes believes that he has found something outside his own mind that he knows for certain that he exists and that he thinks he is God, so Descartes offers in meditation 3 this kind of rather complicated and strange proof of the existence of God, what we now get in meditation 4 is a kind of deviation The meditations so far have been like cleaning everything up and then rebuilding our belief system, but in Descartes' meditation there is a kind of pause to notice a potential

problem

with the last belief that has just been resurrected, so to speak, now to really understand what's going on. here you will need to understand the distinction between arguments and the conclusions of arguments, which is roughly the same distinction between a claim and an argument in favor of that claim.

Now I have another video about that distinction and I think the video is called something like you know the difference between arguments and conclusions explained with an example about the flat earth or whatever the video is called. I'll put a link in the description. What ended up happening with this video is that I posted it on the Internet and then all these flat earthers watched the video because the example I used to explain the difference between arguments and conclusions has to do with flat earth things, so all these flat earthers They appeared in the video and it was like I was assuming we're using this theory of gravity or whatever and things got pretty heated in that video in the comments anyway, that's relevant only because Descartes is in meditation to deal with with a

problem

to the conclusion he reached in meditation 3 and that conclusion was that God exists, but what you have to keep in mind is that Descartes is attacking in the meditation or he is considering an attack and then responds to that attack, he is Considering an attack on this claim, the claim that God exists is not. attacking his own argument in favor of that claim, there may be problems with the argument, in fact if this claim is false then there must be some problem with the argument, but what are we dealing with in meditation and is this important ? it's just an attack on this statement, this conclusion, the conclusion that God exists, so let's go right to it on page 80 53, we get a statement, this happens over the course of two and a half paragraphs, so we'll go over the two . one and a half paragraphs a problem statement the apparent problem with this conclusion to start I recognize that it is impossible for God to ever deceive me because in every case of deception or deception some imperfection can be found and although the ability to deceive seems to be an indication of intelligence or power the will to deceive is surely evidence of malice or weakness and therefore cannot be applied to God okay let's stop there so cartes point God just isn't the kind of creature if God exists God just isn't the kind of creature that would deceive anyone or anything about anything God doesn't deceive people no because deception isn't something God should be able to do yes, yes, if God is all powerful then God should be able to do it. deceive anyone, but if God is all good, then God would never want to deceive anyone, so God does not deceive, that is the first point and then in the next paragraph we come to the next point, the next kind of step that Descartes must give to present a problem for this statement below I know from experience that there is in me a Faculty of judgment that like everything that is in me I certainly received from God and since God does not want to deceive me surely He did not give me that kind of faculty that would ever allow me to be wrong if I use it correctly Descartes simply extends the idea that God is not a deceiver - to the claim that my my mind this is Descartes you know that thinking of itself my mind cannot be the kind of thing that tends to make mistakes because God gave me my mind, just as God would not deceive me, God would not give me a mind that would lead me to make mistakes, at least not as long as I used that mind correctly. then we address the problem immediately afterwards, in the next sentence or two, at the beginning of the next paragraph, we get a correct formulation of the problem.

There would be no more doubts about this subject if it were not for the fact that what I have just said seems to imply that I am incapable of ever making a mistake because if everything that is in me comes from God and he did not endow me with the faculty of making a mistake, it seems that I can never make a mistake. make mistakes and certainly as long as I think only of God and direct all my attention to him, I cannot find any cause for

error

or falsehood, but when I come back to myself, I know from experience that I am prone to making innumerable mistakes, okay, right there Descartes it simply says, but I make mistakes, it seems impossible that Descartes could make mistakes if God exists and created Descartes gave Descartes his mind, then God wouldn't give him the kind of mind that would lead him to make mistakes, but he makes mistakes, so The bottom line is that God must not exist, so that's the problem.

What Descartes is going to do in the rest of the meditation is try to solve that problem. Descartes believes that God exists and thinks this is merely an apparent problem, but he believes it is serious enough to be worth a pause. The main thread of the meditations to address this potential problem or this problem that some people might think has arisen before moving on to Descartes' answer to the problem, it is worth saying that we will call this problem the problem of

error

. This problem is analogous to a much more famous problem in the philosophy of religion called the problem of evil, so very, very quickly, the problem of evil that Descartes doesn't talk about is simply that bad things happen in the world, things terrible, terrible, horrible. the world well if God exists and God knows about all the things in the world he has the power to stop all those things if God wants and God is benevolent if God is also good then God would want to stop all the bad things so that there would be no There will never be bad things, but there are bad things, so it must be that a God like that does not exist, that is the problem of evil, it is a very famous problem and a lot of philosophical work has been done discussing whether that problem really proves that or not. .

God does not exist the problem of error is analogous the same kind of things apply God if God is omniscient then God knows about all the mistakes that Descartes would make if God is all powerful then God could rearrange things so that Descartes does not make any mistakes and If God is all good then God does not want Descartes to make mistakes and that is why Descartes would never make mistakes but he does. God must not exist. A very analogous problem and all the solutions that Descartes is going to consider. They are going to be analogous to the solutions that have been proposed in the history of philosophy to solve the problem of evil.

Well, that was just a side note on the problem of evil. If you take a course in the philosophy of religion, you will undoubtedly spend a lot of time on that, so after presenting the problem on page 80 53 80 54 Descartes spends the following pages 1854 1855 discussing possible solutions to the problem of error, but their solutions don't really satisfy him. a solution that he thinks is good, Descartes is not infinite you know, but Descartes is nothing either, so Descartes is in the middle, so of course he won't be perfect because he's not as perfect as God, but Descartes thinks that that is not so. work that doesn't solve the problem because God could have created a kind of mid-level creature like Descartes, but one that doesn't make mistakes, it would still be, it would still be, you know, it's not as good as God, but it's nothing. satisfied with that answer, then also consider the somewhat familiar answer to the problem of evil, consider the thought that well, look, I'm not God, I don't have an infinite mind, so I don't understand things I don't understand. understand the ways of God or whatever I'm just a fool there is some solution to this problem I just don't know what Descartes considers that and he doesn't reject it outright but he seems clearly dissatisfied with it because it seems like an unsatisfactory answer he seems dissatisfied with it because does not know how to use it, he continues to give a different answer to this problem and that is the one he trusts, so what Descartes has to do to solve this problem is that he has to explain how error is possible in a world where there is an all God perfect and an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God, so you have to have some explanation of where the error comes from and you have an explanation like that and it's a little complicated. and we're going to read the passage on page 80 56 where he tells that story where he explains where he believes errors and wrong beliefs come from.

Next, I take a closer look at myself and investigate the nature of my mistakes, since these are the only evidence. of some imperfection in I noticed that they depend on two concurrent causes okay, let's pause there so we know that we haven't even finished the first sentence here we know that Descartes is going to explain his errors in terms of two things there are two causes that I agree in that that happened at the same time that they work together to make mistakes happen, so there will be two things, so before we read on we want to know that two things are coming and we want to know what those two things are. here are two points on the board to the right and we are going to put the two things that we know are going to come, they are going to explain the error.

By the way, this is how you have to read the whole philosophy, that is, you have to stop halfway through. each sentence and think, well, what did he just say and what's coming next because the material is dense enough that if you don't read in this very active way it will be very difficult to understand what is happening, so let's start with this selection. since 1856 again, this is where we get the explanation of how error occurs when I look more closely at myself and inquire into the nature of my errors as these are the only evidence of any imperfection in me.

I realized that they expect who we are. I have not even returned to these two causes of error, but who are Descartes talking about when he says that next time, when I look more closely and inquire into the nature of my errors, since these are the only evidence of any imperfection? In me I realized that my errors depend on two concurrent causes okay here we go that is to say on the Faculty of knowledge that is in me okay that is the first cause of error the Faculty of knowledge well let's move on and the Faculty of choice or freedom of will, okay, that is the second cause, the faculty of choice or freedom of will, that is, they depend on both the intellect and the will simultaneously, oh, okay, so we have another name for this one, okay, so this is the Faculty of knowledge. or intellect and this is the faculty of choice or I will just add that Descartes not only has multiple names in just this sentence, he has multiple names for this faculty and multiple names for this faculty, there is another name that he uses for this one which is what he calls understanding, so I should say something about which faculty is my faculty.

Descartes simply refers to a portion of his mind or as a component of his mind, so he thinks that his mind has two components or two parts, there is the knowledge of understanding. part of the intellect and then there is the choice or we will part. Let me try to explain this with an analogy. I'm old enough to remember I was in my teens and there was this new thing that became available and it was called the iPod, so they used to be these things called cassettes, first there were cassettes, exactly cassette tapes, that's how you bought and listened to music and then there were CDs and then there was Napster, which was a website that allowed you to illegally download music from someone else and then you would burn that music to a CD, either a wav file or an mp3 file, but it had to be a WAV yesYou were using some CD players, but there were much more cumbersome files that only fit like 10 songs on a CD or Anyway, I guess in the early 2000s or something there was this thing from Apple called the iPod and the iPod was like a brick, big and heavy, it's thick and it looks like what a smartphone looks like now, um and anyway, all it did was just store music files and you could listen to the music files, but it fits hundreds of them, many of which you still had when you were downloading them illegally through Napster, but then Napster was gone when this happened.

I think you'd have an iPod and an iPod anyway. it had a limited amount of memory, even if it could fit, you know many more songs than a CD or a cassette, you had an iPod and it had some songs or you downloaded some songs and then put them on the iPod, that's what the faculty of knowledge is like or intellect, so I really should have written this on the other side of the board anyway, the faculty of knowledge or intellect is something like for Descartes it is a repository of ideas in which you experience things in the world or maybe not, maybe the ideas don't come from the world, maybe they're just given to you, but the point is that you have all these ideas and they just sit in your knowledge, intellect or understanding, like in the memory banks of your iPod now, so Crucial to keep in mind is that, like an iPod, the faculty of knowledge, our intellect, can only hold a limited amount and has a limited number of ideas, but the fact is that it is finite in that sense. that it only has certain ideas that have been loaded into it, that fact doesn't mean it's defective or bad, like if I gave you back an iPod in 2002, I don't know, if I give you an iPod, you can't come back and say: Hey , this doesn't have literally every song ever recorded, yeah, of course not, but it has hundreds of songs and iPods are the kind of things that hold hundreds, but not all of them, so I do.

I haven't given you a defective iPod if I give you an iPod with only a few songs. God has not given Descartes a defective Faculty of Knowledge if this Faculty only has some ideas, so we have the Faculty of Knowledge. It is just a repository of ideas and it is perfectly good, it is not defective, but it only contains some ideas; On the contrary, there is the power to choose or the will. Descartes thinks that the faculty of will is the kind of thing you have. or not, it's not like you know an iPod or a faculty of knowledge that could get bigger or smaller, could hold more or less things, you could get a bigger one, you could get an iPod that full, that's what you know , I don't know.

I know in the past it was probably like a hundred megabytes or like 200 megabytes, those were the size amounts of whatever was right, it wasn't like today, where there are bites and stuff, well, unlike that, where there are powers of different sizes. knowledge or iPods of different sizes the faculty of whether you will have it or not is the faculty that allows you to choose what to do and choose what and this is important what to believe if you have the faculty of will they carry things then you are the kind of thing that can decide what think based on the knowledge you have accumulated, so what we have at this point are two faculties, two parts of the mind, a car thinks and each of them works correctly. he was given faculties that were functioning correctly and not defective, he was given a faculty of knowledge that is like an iPod and then he was given a faculty of will which, since I don't know, I don't have an analogy and the metaphor of the iPod for that, but whatever it is, we have two perfectly good faculties.

Descartes believes that error occurs when we misuse these two faculties in combination with each other, it's like if you had an iPod and a pair of headphones, there used to be these things called headphones and they had to wire them up and then you would connect them to the iPod or your phone or whatever. whatever it is or your discoman your CD player or your walkman your cassette player, well, you would connect the cable that comes from the headphones to the music player and then you would listen to the sound in the headphones, you could get an iPod in perfect condition and some headphones in perfect condition and you just don't know how to use them, you just don't know how to plug them in if that's the case you haven't been given faulty equipment, you just don't know how to use the equipment in combination, that's what Descartes believes happens when makes a mistake, you were given a perfectly good faculty of knowledge, a perfectly good reservoir of ideas or understanding, and then you were given a perfectly good faculty of will that allows you to choose what to believe and what not to believe.

The error is that you combine them in a way that causes the error. This happens on page t58 of 1858. An error is when he chooses to believe something that goes beyond the limits of his understanding, there are all the things that he understands, it is the domain of the things that he understands, but he can choose to use his mind, his willingness to believe something he doesn't really understand when he does that, that's what allows him to make mistakes and the crucial thing is that when he makes mistakes like that, it's his fault, it's not that God gave him some faulty equipment. because if God had given him some defective equipment, then God would not be a perfect being. and then God wouldn't be God, there wouldn't be a totally perfect God, but if God gives you a perfectly good iPod and anything perfectly good, it's analogous to the Faculty of Will in the iPod analogy, I guess headphones, but it That it is God gave him perfectly good equipment, a perfectly good faculty of knowledge, and a perfectly good faculty of choice, and then he makes a mistake with it, that doesn't prove that God is imperfect, that is Descartes' solution to the problem of error. , then on page 80 59 Descartes draws a sort of conclusion from this solution about how he will have to proceed in meditations five and six, this is what he says, but if I simply refrain from making a judgment in cases where I don't I perceive the truth with sufficient clarity and distinctness, then it is clear that I am behaving correctly and avoiding error, but if in such cases I affirm or deny it, then I am not using my free will correctly.

Descartes thinks, look, there are the questions that he knows with clarity and distinction. These are technical terms for Descartes and it's not necessary to go into too much detail about exactly what he means by them, but basically the point is that there are some things that Descartes understands very well, he understands them very well, this understanding, this knowledge gives him was given directly from God, those are the things you can rely on: clear and distinct ideas or clear and stinking perceptions and you decide, in the future, that you are not going to believe anything you don't know clearly and distinctly if you don't. knows clearly and distinctly then he will not believe it and then he will be able to avoid making mistakes.

Well, that is meditation because primarily it is a solution or an attempted solution to an apparent problem that arises based on the conclusion you came to in meditation 3, in meditation 5, this is what happens next in meditation 5 Descartes gives another proof of the existence of God this is a more famous type of proof it is called ontological proof which we will get to when we read in meditation 5 then in meditation 6 Descartes is going to do a kind of To make his grand finale, then he will prove from his own existence and the existence and nature of God.

He will use them to show that he believes almost all of the big important beliefs that he started with that he erased in meditation. He is also guaranteed that they are true, so he comes to believe that he has a physical body and that most things around him are more or less as they appear to be you.