A sittin' and a thinkin'
I've been sitting in a class that I may be a TA for. Its kinda fun watching people have their first exposure to works that I have been struggled with for years now. Today they had to read Descartes first meditation. I remember reading it back in my high school days thinking it held the antidote to all the jackassery going on in the lincoln douglas debates I took part in. I can now only look at it as an influence on Spinoza's thought, a necessary philosophy so that one can evaluate "philosophy" and where to begin. It's interesting how a text grows in significance as you no longer have to figure out what it means, but begin to see what it is intended to mean, the traps the author fell in, and the traps the author lays. What most interests me in Descartes is his initial starting point of doubt. He shows us how we can throw all our knowledge into doubt, and then shows the way back to a new secure knowledge that can't be doubted. He does this by means of a famous tautology- the "I think therefore I am".
His position of doubt hides a rich and obscure body of concepts that he must use before he can get to this tautology. He knows he is doubting. He knows what arguments CAUSE doubt, and what don't--for there must already be an epistemology and a system of indubitable meaning and logic at hand if he thinks he can SHOW, ARGUE, REVEAL, that WHAT we think to be TRUE can in fact be False. My annoying capitalization is to stress the conceptual richness that is implicit in the skeptical position-the supposed position of disbelief. To convince us of the legitimacy of the position of doubting he betrays his cause. The phenomological state of "doubting" is not something that can be understood freely floating disconnected without any other cognitions. No one can just know they are doubting without also knowing, and being sure of, a whole lot more.
Descartes is right then to the extent that he asserts there are things that cannot be doubted. But the significance of this discovery is lost because the preconditions for the cognition of his tautology remain obscure: he needs a system of propositions, facts, grammar, rules of implication and so on. So when he finds out he that he cannot will himself to doubt his own existence, he misses something of the implication: does not the knowledge of an indubitable tautology reveal that something prevents his "self( his "I think", his will) from doubting? Some cause, or existence, mechanism or property or law or being or truth or X must be distinct from his will. He cannot conceive of his proven "I think" as the totality of being- for something else provided the "therefore". Something else forces him to conclude "I am"
Spinoza starts with god (a tautology of being) and explains from this how doubt and certainty are possible. He explains the individuated self by first conceptualizing what it is to be a whole--we aren't a whole, but nature is- or at least that is his assertion. He posits an existence of a different kind than what Descartes unintentionally proved ours to be: the "I think" is finite--it is limited and effected causally by something else. Spinoza first explores how we perceive/concieve the infinite/the unbounded. Spinoza examines what follows from our conception of wholeness and Of totality. Spinoza is great here because he is interested in what follows from OUR CONCEPTION of wholeness--not what wholeness really is in and of itself. And this distinction removes the skeptical problem: for in his philosophy we are using OUR REASON, our language, to organize OUR CONCEPTION (our ideas) in a way that makes things clear, and removes OUR CONFUSION. He doesn't seek to gain knowledge what it is to BE infinite-and NEVER defines "knowledge" as the attainment of that goal. He is modest in the sense that the totality of "knowledge" for him is to clearly understand what is to BE a finite thing that observes and conceptualize the Whole, in otherwords, he seeks to understand what it is to BE a human. It is because he believes this to be possible, that he is mistakenly called arrogant.
His position of doubt hides a rich and obscure body of concepts that he must use before he can get to this tautology. He knows he is doubting. He knows what arguments CAUSE doubt, and what don't--for there must already be an epistemology and a system of indubitable meaning and logic at hand if he thinks he can SHOW, ARGUE, REVEAL, that WHAT we think to be TRUE can in fact be False. My annoying capitalization is to stress the conceptual richness that is implicit in the skeptical position-the supposed position of disbelief. To convince us of the legitimacy of the position of doubting he betrays his cause. The phenomological state of "doubting" is not something that can be understood freely floating disconnected without any other cognitions. No one can just know they are doubting without also knowing, and being sure of, a whole lot more.
Descartes is right then to the extent that he asserts there are things that cannot be doubted. But the significance of this discovery is lost because the preconditions for the cognition of his tautology remain obscure: he needs a system of propositions, facts, grammar, rules of implication and so on. So when he finds out he that he cannot will himself to doubt his own existence, he misses something of the implication: does not the knowledge of an indubitable tautology reveal that something prevents his "self( his "I think", his will) from doubting? Some cause, or existence, mechanism or property or law or being or truth or X must be distinct from his will. He cannot conceive of his proven "I think" as the totality of being- for something else provided the "therefore". Something else forces him to conclude "I am"
Spinoza starts with god (a tautology of being) and explains from this how doubt and certainty are possible. He explains the individuated self by first conceptualizing what it is to be a whole--we aren't a whole, but nature is- or at least that is his assertion. He posits an existence of a different kind than what Descartes unintentionally proved ours to be: the "I think" is finite--it is limited and effected causally by something else. Spinoza first explores how we perceive/concieve the infinite/the unbounded. Spinoza examines what follows from our conception of wholeness and Of totality. Spinoza is great here because he is interested in what follows from OUR CONCEPTION of wholeness--not what wholeness really is in and of itself. And this distinction removes the skeptical problem: for in his philosophy we are using OUR REASON, our language, to organize OUR CONCEPTION (our ideas) in a way that makes things clear, and removes OUR CONFUSION. He doesn't seek to gain knowledge what it is to BE infinite-and NEVER defines "knowledge" as the attainment of that goal. He is modest in the sense that the totality of "knowledge" for him is to clearly understand what is to BE a finite thing that observes and conceptualize the Whole, in otherwords, he seeks to understand what it is to BE a human. It is because he believes this to be possible, that he is mistakenly called arrogant.
posted by Old Stallion at 9:06 PM
2 Comments:
Dude, most of this shit was so completely over my head that my hair didn't even blow in the wind as it passed me by. But one thing that caught my eye(mind?) was when you said "So when he finds out he that he cannot will himself to doubt his own existence, he misses something of the implication..." This struck me as odd, because I have times when I doubt my own existance and there is no force of will involved at all. There is considerable dizziness and occasional gray-outs involved, but no force. I thought all people, let alone Decartes who, from what I understand, did some serious deep naval gazing, experienced this easily. Or it could be that I am just so totally thisclose to a psychotic break. Whatever.
Ooo! Look! Something shiny over there!
Most of this shit is shit. I haven't organized any of these "musings" into a coherent or meaningful thought. I just wanted to take a crack at writing it down, hear what anyone thought of it, and eventually work something out about the advantage of a top-down methodology for philosophy- rather than the bottom up approach. Thanks for your input.
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