ThinkBlog

Near the end of the Fifth Meditation, Descartes sets out for consideration the idea that if there were not all these sensory inputs crowding out rational contemplation, we would recognize at once that God exists.

I agree, for probably much different reasons than he postulates, and I’m not sure I’d call it rational alone. Isn’t this what prayer–which may perhaps be called focused God-ward meditation and active communion therewith–is in its simplest form, being “self-controlled enough” to block out the physiological stuff that crowds into our minds?

He also says that before he knew God, he could know nothing with certainty; but that since he does, he can know potentially infinite things with perfect clarity. This seems a kind of typical hyperbole in Descartes’ writings: is he really thinking this through? Perhaps it’s consistent with his mind-body dualism to think that we could know things perfectly, but Christians don’t even claim to know God Himself perfectly, i.e., wholly and without defect. The ones that do are usually the farthest from the truth. And the ones who claim to know things perfectly because they know God, well, that didn’t seem to be quite the case with René himself, did it?

Another annoying instance of imprecision is near the end of the Sixth Meditation. Take this sentence: “This makes the mind feel the same thing whenever it is in the same condition, even though the other parts of the body can be differently arranged, as is proved by an infinity of experiments which it is not necessary to describe here” (em. added). Come, come, good sir. An infinity? Not necessary to describe an infinity, or impossible?–or rather, could you not cite a single example?

Further back in the same Meditation, he mentions something that seems to anticipate Kant’s Ding an Sich (the unknowable, perceivable but ultimately impenetrable “thing in itself”): “[…] something that is actually found in objects […].” Locke comes even closer to this.

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References.
René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, translated by Laurence J. Laffleur (New York: Macmillan/Library of the Liberal Arts, 1951).

Near the end of the Fifth Meditation, Descartes sets out for consideration the idea that if there were not all these sensory inputs crowding out rational contemplation, we would recognize at once that God exists.

I agree, for probably much different reasons than he postulates, and I’m not sure I’d call it rational alone. Isn’t this what prayer–which may perhaps be called focused God-ward meditation and active communion therewith–is in its simplest form, being “self-controlled enough” to block out the physiological stuff that crowds into our minds?

He also says that before he knew God, he could know nothing with certainty; but that since he does, he can know potentially infinite things with perfect clarity. This seems a kind of typical hyperbole in Descartes’ writings: is he really thinking this through? Perhaps it’s consistent with his mind-body dualism to think that we could know things perfectly, but Christians don’t even claim to know God Himself perfectly, i.e., wholly and without defect. The ones that do are usually the farthest from the truth. And the ones who claim to know things perfectly because they know God, well, that didn’t seem to be quite the case with René himself, did it?

Another annoying instance of imprecision is near the end of the Sixth Meditation. Take this sentence: “This makes the mind feel the same thing whenever it is in the same condition, even though the other parts of the body can be differently arranged, as is proved by an infinity of experiments which it is not necessary to describe here” (em. added). Come, come, good sir. An infinity? Not necessary to describe an infinity, or impossible?–or rather, could you not cite a single example?

Further back in the same Meditation, he mentions something that seems to anticipate Kant’s Ding an Sich (the unknowable, perceivable but ultimately impenetrable “thing in itself”): “[…] something that is actually found in objects […].” Locke comes even closer to this.

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References.
René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, translated by Laurence J. Laffleur (New York: Macmillan/Library of the Liberal Arts, 1951).