Hi I'm Dr. Anadale.
In this video I'd like to talk about the overall movement of Meditation One by Descartes.
I'd like to take a look at the overall progression of his argument by looking through the Meditation
paragraph by paragraph.
To begin with let's take a look at what Descartes says about Meditation One in his “Synopsis
of the Meditations.” This is on page 54 in this edition.
Descartes says, in describing what he's going to do in the Meditations, he writes “In
the first meditation the reasons are given why we can doubt all things, especially material
things, so long that is of course as we have no other foundations for the sciences than
the ones we have had up until now.”
Pause. My first comment: What is he telling us?
The first thing he's going to be talking about in Meditation One is the fact that all things,
and especially material things, are going to be doubtful unless the sciences can be
placed upon a more secure foundation.
That's going to be the major theme of the Meditations.
He continues: “Although the utility of so extensive a doubt is not readily apparent,
nevertheless its greatest utility lies in freeing us of all prejudices, in preparing
the easiest way for us to withdraw the mind from the senses, and finally in making it
impossible for us to doubt any further those things that we later discover to be true.”
So he's giving us here three benefits of this doubt that he's going to be walking us through
in Meditation One.
Namely, that it makes us open-minded, frees us from hasty judgment about our senses, it
allows us to withdraw the mind from the senses more effectively, and it makes it impossible
to doubt the things that we learn later on, it gives us absolute certainty about the things
that we will learn on a more secure foundation.
With that finished let's turn now to Meditation One and take a look at the text.
Meditation One is 12 paragraphs long in this edition, over about 4 pages of text.
I'm just going to walk through the 12 paragraphs in order and say a bit about what Descartes
is doing in each one, with an idea of giving you an idea giving you a sense of the overall
flow or progression of Meditation One.
In the first paragraph Descartes notes again the false opinions that he has had since his
youth and his determination to simply raze to the ground, to utterly demolish, the entire
system of his beliefs in order to rebuild again on new foundations.
So we have this idea of refounding his beliefs after clearing the space away of his mixture
of true and false beliefs.
In paragraph 2 Descartes announces a new rule.
He says, I'm going to set aside not just my false beliefs but also my doubtful beliefs.
Why? Because a belief that is doubtful is open to challenge and cannot serve as the kind
of new foundation that he's seeking.
The third paragraph is very short and in it Descartes deals with sense knowing.
He says sense knowledge should be set aside.
It's not our new foundation we're seeking because it's deceptive and we shouldn't trust
something that's a thing or a person that has deceived us once previously.
In paragraph four Descartes addresses a possible objection.
He notes that someone might say that perhaps my senses are reliable as a whole, even though
I might be deceived in some individual aspect, deceived
about this or that particular sensory conclusion.
Perhaps it's the case that my senses as a whole are reliable.
In paragraph five he addresses this objection by noting his dreams argument.
He says, I have dreams and in my dreams I have vivid experiences and now that I reflect
on them I realize that I cannot tell for certain from within a dream experience that it is
a dream experience and not a real experience.
There's no sure sign, he says, that allows me to tell from within the dream that the
dream is in fact not real.
In paragraph six Descartes then moves forward with his argument.
He says, so I'm going to assume that I don't have my senses, that I don't have a body,
because these are things that I could be dreaming.
But he does know that if that's the case then I seem to be imagining things and my imagination
seems to be combining many simpler components.
So we might ask, components of what?
If I'm combining things in my deceived experience, then what are these things, what are these
simpler components of which my experience is made?
In the short paragraph, paragraph 7, Descartes says the simple components seem to include
things like extension, shape, and number.
And these should ring a bell because these are some of the primary qualities that Galileo
is writing about.
In paragraph 8 Descartes says, so it looks like I'm going to have to set aside complex
sciences like physics, sciences that deal with complex things.
Why? Because these complex things themselves could be deceptive, as being deceptive combinations
of these simpler components.
It looks like maybe the simpler sciences might remain, sciences like arithmetic and geometry.
For as Descartes says, whether I'm asleep or awake, two and two make four, whether I'm
asleep or awake a triangle has only three sides.
So maybe the abstract sciences which don't deal with complex bodies, maybe those I can
still believe in.
But all of the complex sciences, things like physics and chemistry and biology, I have
to set aside.
In paragraph 9, in paragraphs 9 through 12, Descartes then turns to the question of God.
And he reasons in this way: he says, I do have an idea of God.
My idea of God is of a supremely powerful being.
Now if there is a supremely powerful being out there, he might bring it to be the case
that reality is very very different from what I think reality is.
God could have made the world very other than what I think it is.
But, he says, I do also know that God is good, I've been taught since I was a child that
God is a good and benevolent God and wants the best for me.
So he's going to be reasoning from this point of view.
In paragraphs 10 and 11 Descartes really sets up the thought experiment in paragraph 12.
He notes that people who would wish to deny a God like this are really just making it
more likely that I will be deceived because the less perfect my creator is the more imperfect
I will be.
And then he goes on the process of setting up a thought experiment which he conducts
in paragraph 12, the last paragraph of Meditation One.
He says, I'm going to suppose now, going to the opposite extreme, that there is a supremely
powerful but also evil God who dedicates all of his attention and all of his great power
to deceiving me. Suppose that were the case.
Well, in that case, if an evil God wishes me to be deceived, then I will be deceived.
There is no possibility of my escaping from that kind of awesome power.
So he concludes at the end of Meditation One, at the top of the final page, that I can do
nothing at this point than withhold my assent from anything that is or might be false.
That's the only thing I can do in terms of governing my mind.
I can't do use any sort of test to determine whether something is true, because any test
I use could be manipulated or made deceptive by this evil demon that I'm hypothesizing
in the place of God.
That's the place where Meditation One ends, and even that conclusion has a sort of hint
of what's to come.
Because what is the power that remains to me, even when I'm in the presence of the evil demon?
It's the power of withholding my assent from any possible claim that's presented to me.
So Meditation Two will pick up from this point and then bring us down to the question of
the “I think therefore I am,” which is where we're going next.
That's all for right now. Thanks for watching today; goodbye.