Sunday, October 14, 2012
A Noble Failure?
Many of us in class found Descartes' foundational project to fail. Let's assume that he cannot justify all his claims to knowledge by an appeal to the Cogito. What can we learn from this failure? Should we look for a wider class of foundational beliefs? Should we avoid appeals to a God who is not a deceiver? Should we find a different way to justify beliefs that does not require an appeal to foundational beliefs?
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The problem I initially had with Descartes’s project wasn't so much the strength of his argument, but rather that the argument itself had no consequences one way or the other. I think before we can even begin ask whether or not Descartes is right we have to determine the significance of his argument. Otherwise it doesn't matter one way or the other.
ReplyDeleteThere is historical significance to Descartes’ work. The seventeenth century, when the meditations were written, was a time known as the scientific revolution. At this time Galileo had developed the scientific method and shown its effectiveness, Newton was modeling the physical world, and Copernicus had discovered that the solar system was heliocentric. At this time many believed that science threatened religion and was in competition with it. Descartes was concerned with this. This aim in publishing the meditations was to provide a sound basis for the scientific method by showing that the real source of scientific knowledge lies in the mind rather than the senses, and secondly, to show that science and religion could be compatible. This is the significance of the argument, being able to show that science and religion are compatible. His other aim I do not understand. Science is the study of trying to explain the things we observe with our senses. His other aim of trying to put science on a firm foundation by proving that the real source of scientific knowledge is lies in the mid seems counter-intuitive and misguided to me. Science by definition exists in the senses, if it exists in the mind it simply isn't science. None the less proving that science and religion are compatible would be extremely significant.
Now, having identified the significance of Descartes argument, we can determine whether or not he is successful in the Cartesian project. I think in his investigation he focuses more on proving that science has a firm foundation in the mind, which, as I previously mentioned, makes no sense. He is less concerned with what I think is the true significance; the idea that science and religion are compatible. The way to prove that science and religion are compatible is to say that they are answers to different questions. Science aims to answer the question, what do we have here? While religion aims to answer the question, why are we here? While they may overlap, and this too may very well be untrue, in the question of, how did we get here, one doesn't disprove the other. And so, science and religion are compatible.
The pyric victory of the foundational Cartesian project failing with the cogito argument sheds a lot of light on the difficulty of hypothesizing a true foundational project. The cogito argument is sound and makes a large impact in the realm of philosophy, but to continue, Descartes has to use shaky circular reasoning.
ReplyDeleteI would argue that we should not look to a non-deceiving for use in a foundational argument because foundationalism requires that each premise be definite and true. The argument involving a non-deceiving god is essentially that god is supremely perfect and good, and a good god would never deceive us. Like I brought up in a previous blog post, I dislike the reasoning of jumping straight to a perfect god existing because of a notion we may have in our heads. Secondly, even if we were to assume that a supremely perfect god exists, who is to say that god is not actually a supremely evil deceiver with the capability of appearing like a supremely perfect god? One could argue that a supremely evil god could never appear like a perfect one, or that if he is supremely evil, he can figure out a way of doing anything evil, but all that this dilemma boils down to is the age old question, “What happens if an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?” If we can argue the existence of a supremely perfect being, what’s stopping me from arguing the existence of a supremely evil being? I think that the next step is not to look to a non-deceiving god (because a deceiving one could exist just as easily), but instead to justify our beliefs in a way that does not require an appeal to foundational beliefs.