First things first, conference signup for Friday. The schedule is a bit weird because I have a doctor's appointment and I have to sub for another section.
I think we are going to need one more day on Descartes. It won't be Monday, for obvious reasons, but perhaps we can integrate Descartes and Austen somehow next Wednesday. Let's cross that bridge when we get to it.
Right now, other than the Aristotle courage paper, you should be focusing on three things: a) How is Descartes different than Aristotle?, b) What is the basic structure of the Meditations, like can you follow the main argument? and c) What are some of the consequences of redefining philosophy in such a way.
*Paper 2 working draft due tonight... late... I dunno, 11, 12, 1, 2. Whatever your definition of late tonight is if you promise you'll do the Descartes stuff on Thursday.
*Re-read Meditations 4-6
*Take the midterm survey if you haven't.
*Do the last homework if you haven't... post it to the Class #17 entry... give either an attack against Descartes (that he blasphemes Christianity or undermines Aristotle) or a defense of Descartes (that he puts Christianity or Aristotle on a sounder philosophical foundation)
*Do today's homework... which one of D's two proofs of God do you find more convincing and why? You may find it necessary to restate in your own words. Then answer in what respects the God you derive from this proof resembles or does not resemble the Christian God. (Or some other God; a comparison might be interesting.)
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Haha okay so there is this song that reminds me of Descartes first two meditations its called "only" from nine inch nails you all should listen to it especially the beginning:}
Nine Inch Nails is more my generation than yours... Shae is an appreciator of the classics. But yeah, there's a lot of modern pop/rock music that considers the problem of "solipsism" (what it's like to be stuck inside your self; how that could be liberating an/or terrifying). That actually started with romantic poetry in the early 1800s, but that's a story for another time. RECOMMENDATION #2: Radiohead, "How to Disappear Completely"
I think that the cosmological proof of God is more convincing, because by looking at our world everything is in fact cause and effect and put into motion by a force. If one thing happens it leads to another and so and and so forth. But naturally there has to be a first cause that started the chain of the cause of events, which would ultimaly be God. I think that it somewhat follows the Christian belief of God because they believe that God was alone by himself and he created the world in 7 days, which would be the start of the chain. His act of creating the earth day and night the sky animals people is starting the chain of events that lead to where we are now.
Defense of DesCartes that he puts Aristotle on a sounder philosophical foundation: On page 47, we see that in order to prove or demonstrate that there is a God and a soul, DesCartes says that we have to focus on "philosophy rather than theology", in accordance to what Aristotle would have argued, knowing and proving them by natural reason.
I think that the Cosmological Proof of God is more convincing. I'm not exactly sure that I understand it completely, but it makes much more sense and, to me, has more reason than the Onotological Proof of God. I suppose it is also a more plausible argument because everything we do has an equal and opposite reaction, hence cause and effect. I believe that the only resemblance of this God compared to the Christian God is that it is a perfect being which "created" us. However, I believe that Christians seem to derive more than that from the Bible, etc.
Personally, Descartes cosmological proof is more persuasive than his ontological explanation. Honestly, this is because I was able to understand cosmo a lot better than onto AND that Descartes' statement that everything is either a cause of effect cannot readily be doubted, whereas in his onto proof there seem to be many loopholes. For example, "existence is an aspect of perfection, therefore god exists". Using Descartes' reasoning it's fairly easy to come to the conclusion that you personally exist, can you then label yourself a god, or an aspect of godliness? If you run with the cosmo proof it merely confirms the presence of a higher being. I doubt it resembles the Christian god at all, simply because it's very vague. There is no mention of his(/her) omniscient, omnipotent, etc. characteristics.
I believe the cosmological proof of god is more convincing because as everyone else has previously stated... everything has a cause and then an effect. also chains have to have an end to them at some point. we are born, grow, live life and then die... everyone always dies at some point and its the end of our personal chain...
I think the ontological proof that god exists makes more sense to me because it is true that whatever we think is real. But also, the ideas of a perfect being, I.e. God, are also real. The idea of him is already innate us and no one else could have put those ideas in us besides god himself. God gives us a choice in situation and we can choose to chose the good one or the bad one. It is true that we learn about God because of the bible or his followers. However, what about the ones who wrote the bible? Where did they get their ideas about God? They got them from God himself. It is like the Christian God. Christians believe that we were created by God and that he is the voice in us leading us towards a path in life. It’s like a Christian saying that they live their life for God and will only follows his own words. Doesn’t his words come to us in thoughts? So would it not be true that God puts his words as ideas in our head and that is the way he leads us in life?
During discussion, the proof that I understood was the ontological proof of existence of God. No one could have just given us knowledge, someone had to give it to us. That someone must also be knowledgable and perfect in order to implant knowledge in order for my existence. That perfect being is God, in which God also stamped me with knowledge about himself. Thus, God exists.
I agree that the ontological argument is better. His approach is simple, question how the concept of God came into his mind. The idea of God is innate and since Descartes is not the source of it, God must be the one who put the idea there. Also, since his thoughts are real, and God gave him that thought, God must exist. I think this proof correlates with the Christian belief in God, especially the conviction of the holy spirit, which is the spirit of God living within everyone, guiding their thoughts and actions.
I also believe that the cosmological proof of God is the more convincing of the two proofs. This is because everything is a cause and effect. There is nothing that can happen without something to cause that event to occur. This does not resemble the Christian God because the Christian God is what created everything, however, in the cosmological proof it states that everything is made by something. And that something also has something to create it. Thus that leads us to question who created God.
I think the cosmological proof of god is more convincing because its moe concrete and makes more sense than thinking being clear and distinct and then saying we think of God as being clear and distinct and existing (because existence is a form of perfection and God is perfect). I like how in the cosmological definition of God, God is described as being the first cause that caused every otehr chain of cause and effect.
I think that the cosmological proof presents a beter argument for the existence of God. It makes sense that there must be a first principle, most religions believe that they were made by a higher being, by a cause. It's easier to believe that we are the effect of one thing. There is a chain of events and we are part of it. Its easier to reason that because we exist there must be something that made us that exists hence God.
I find that the cosmological argument of God is much more convincing. The cosmological argument seems to have more concrete reasoning behind it as opposed to the Ontological proof of "I think, so it must be true" train of thought. I agree with the concept of how everything in this world has a cause. Something had to have caused the universe, and the cause must be God.
The ontological view better explains Descartes ideas. By giving an ambiguous concept a name, it allows for the concept to be better understood. Similar to in science, by giving a thing a name, the thing can then be better defined.
I find the cosmological proof more convincing, as Descartes uses causality to attempt to explain God's existence. However, this argument still does not manage to convince me, as his premise that causal chains cannot be infinite cannot be proved. And kudos on the NIN reference :)
I think that the cosmo cause makes the most sense, because there always has to be a beginning. I feel we must answer the question where we bagan, how did we get here, There must be a supreme being that made us.
Honestly, I find neither of Descartes' proofs on God to be convincing because they draw more from the outside, assume things and are therefore not nearly as reliable as "I think, therefore I am." However, I find the cosmological proof slightly more convincing because the idea of causes is relevent. The problem I find with this is because while he proves to me that there must be a first cause, I am not entirely convinced that the first cause cannot be himself.
The ontological proof to me just seems unstable. I think God is exists, so he must be exists, because what I think must be true? Descartes just said that one errs in their thinking frequently. His argument just seems kind of inconsistent. As far as matching up with the Christian God, the cosmological cause doesn't really fit because I feel like that makes God into more of a Daist principle than a Christian one. A Christian God is an active one... The ontological cause wouldn't really work either because Christianity wouldn't be about "thinking" God existed but about "knowing" it.
Decartes says that being able to think makes him God, but is he God? No, becuase Decartes himself is not perfect yet God is. And as a being there are causes and effects to everything we do. So i think that Decartes cosmological proof is more reasonable.
Descartes's cosmological proof makes more sense to me since everything in the world has a cause and effect type of relationship: you're tired so then you sleep. There. God must've created the world as it is today so we now can live on it. This proof follows the Christian beliefs only because it is of this perfect being creating the world and eventually, us.
I believe the ontological proof of God makes more sense than the cosmological proof. I didn't really understand how God would automatically be the "First Cause", since the "First Cause" could actually just be a random event that caused everything else (ex: Big Bang?).
The ontological proof makes more sense to me because it seems more ordered and logical. If God is perfect, and in perfection there is existence, then God has to exist.
Like a math problem, cancel out all the variables
God = perfect
perfect = needs to exist
(cancel out perfect)
God = needs to exist
This relates to the Christian God because the word existing can relate to the soul, the body, or both. In that case, if God does not have a body, that does not mean he doesn't exist, but he could be floating around in spirit-form everywhere giving us knowledge about him. Either way, he exists.
Re: cosmological proof... remember the distinction we discussed previously between physics and metaphysics, or to put it another way between efficient causes and final causes. One reason this argument is compelling is because it is familiar; Jessica notes that it is very similar to the notion of creation in Genesis. And we saw a version of it in Aristotle as well, though Aristotle doesn't believe in a single moment of creation, just that there is a first cause operating beneath all intermediate causes at all times (even a first cause that is the cause of all telos-es). The Big Bang is indeed different, because there you have a creation event but you don't have the notion that it continues to exert causal influence on everything that happens. Certainly not in the sense of Aristotle's causes or the kind that Descartes is talking about. The Big Bang is just what happens when you regress a chain of purely efficient causes all the way back to the start. You are still left with the metaphysical question, which is what caused the Big Bang. The genius of empiricism, and its limitation, is that it restricts itself to efficient causes, which are the only kind of causes that can be tested by observation/experimentation. I cannot devise any sort of experiment to show if something has a telos. I cannot devise any sort of experiment to show if there is a perfect being that metaphysically created and sustains the universe. Therefore those things do not fall into the category of knowledge, according to empiricism, because there is no way I can have certitude about them. But the contra argument, raised by Descartes, is that unless you have a metaphysics you cannot be certain about anything. And that is why he (and Aristotle) have recourse to cosmological proofs. They give you a "why." The difference between Descartes and Aristotle is that in Descartes you have one big "why" but then the rest is efficient causes, whereas in Aristotle you have many smaller whys, final causes. Everything in the universe is teleological at every level. Not so in Descartes, where you have one universe made up of purely mathematical or logical relationships and another made of bodies that have spatial dimensions and duration in time but do not have an organic set of purposes.
Re: ontological proof... this one seems strange for a reason. You almost have to be a medieval monk to really get it. Most of you are getting a bit confused by Descartes' particular statement of the proof, in other words by the notion of innate ideas and where the come from. This is leading you to give a statement of the proof which is basically the cosmological proof in disguise ("What causes this idea I have of God?") This is why I gave you the classic version, which is often credited to St. Anselm. If I may restate it in very crude terms: "Which makes more sense: that a perfect being exists, or that it doesn't?" Causal reasoning has nothing to do with this. Either the concept is logical or it isn't. Anselm and Descartes think that the notion of something perfect existing is more logical than the notion of something perfect not existing. Kant was a very ruthless critic of this argument, because he considered "existence" to have nothing to do with perfection. Empiricists like John Locke or David Hume felt that the whole thing was nonsense because a perfect being cannot be empirically observed, nor could you devise any test to observe one.
That neither of these proofs give you many of the particular details about the biblical God is something I feel we established fairly well in class, and so far as Descartes and his legacy go it is very, very important. Think about this. If ethics is no longer grounded by a teleological universe, in Aristotle's sense, or by a personal, active God, in St. Paul's sense, then what is it grounded by? By human reason alone, which ought to help you understand where Kantian and utilitarian ethics come from.
As to their validity... in modern empiricism/science, one would say that both are invalid because they are not open to disconfirmation. There is nothing I could see with my eyes or with laboratory equipment that would disprove the idea of a perfect being. Therefore the theory is worthless, on this view, because even if it is true, there is no way to know that it is true. One of the effects of empiricism, as Schwab alluded, has been that we tend to cordon off science and religion to different areas in our brain. In the science area, we think empirically and don't believe anything that cannot be disconfirmed. In the religion area, we think in terms of teleological purposes and unseen causes.
I would wager that as human beings it is nearly impossible for us to think in a truly empirical fashion at all times. We have a tendency to animate even the most trivial objects in our world with purposes and causes, and we have a tendency to assign causes retroactively to any series of events ("narrative")... we often even retroactively revise our predictions of future events when they are wrong. But this does not speak to the question of whether teleology is actual "true." One of the skeptical questions one might ask Descartes, which philosophers begin to ask starting with Kant, is whether I have any real way of knowing whether the world really is the way it appears to us, the way we think about it, or whether we see it in a particular, and perhaps distorting, way.
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