Yeah I have an exam on Meditations next week and it’s the penultimate course I have before graduating. I listened to the audiobook and when I got to the third meditation I literally went “Well this is bollocks”
I've been reading Descartes for nearly 5 years now and have taken courses about him at university, and no one has been able to explain his theory as simply as you. Congrats, dude! You helped me understand this better than a university professor has.
I love this 😂😂 but for real in meditations 2 he says he can't be certain that 2+3 is 5 and in 5 he suddenly says "ah yeah i can imagine a triangle as a shape itself". And the best part is he says he can imagine lots of shapes that he has never seen to proof that some ideas are not from outside. However he does not give one example of a shape he can imagine that doesn't yet exist in our world. I was so excited reading the first 2 meditations, because he argued very carefully and step by step. Then in 3 and 5 he just jumps from one principle that he does not care to explain further (he just says this makes a lot of sense so it is true) to the other.
@@couch_philosoph3325 Isn't that because triangles having three sides is something true by definition? If you recall Kant's point about math being synthetic I think it starts to make more sense as to how he can in any way doubt arithmetic while not doubting the essences of things like triangles or God.
@@2tehnik This makes sense from a Kantian (or broadly German Idealist) perspective, but Descartes is not claiming that the existence of God is something outside our phenomenal reality. He says that all thought must originate from within, and that if we have the idea of God in our head then that must be based on some properties which we are thinking of (namely the properties of God) and since one of God's properties is to exist, he must exist.
@@georgepantzikis7988 > but Descartes is not claiming that the existence of God is something outside our phenomenal reality wdym? That aside, I'm not sure I see how your reply relates to my comment. Mind clarifying?
I often wonder if Descartes realised his philosophical insight and teaching of methodical doubt was so powerful that it could be used to disprove the existence of God and then thought sh..t I had better use it to prove the existence of God otherwise I am in big trouble with the Inquisitors.
im afraid descartes' methodical doubt gets nowhere near to disproving God's existence - all it does is give you a possibilty that nothing is real - and that there may be no way of proving harmony between the self and the world around it.
That one was just a version of the ontological argument, which was older than Descartes.. goes back to Anselm. I think Descartes was just throwing it in there to be thorough. Kant later destroyed it.
+Philosophy Tube Hi Thank you for your channel and for the light-hearted way you present these subjects - I find it energizing! Descartes' argument may be helped and become more logically valid, if we took levels of reality to mean: levels of power to cause, which also means levels of permanence or stability. A normal 3 year old and a normal 30 year old both seemingly live in the same reality - yet they do not: the abilities, understandings and emotional world of the 30 year old stretch far beyond those of the 3 year old. A 3 year old would be utterly at a loss at the 30 year old's office - while the 30 year old would know how to use it to produce value for others and income - the latter enabling the 3 year old to be fed. Also, the 30 year old's ability to differentiate the fleeting things (less substantial, of less reality-value) and the more permanent things (and therefore the more relevant). So practically the child and adult do live on different levels of power to cause, which Descartes calls levels of reality (since the power to cause means power to influence reality). This also applies to different adults with different talents and outlooks. In this sense, perceptions are caused by objects, which are caused by principles sustaining those objects, and so on. And so, the higher something is in the hierarchy of being a permanent cause - the more real that thing is. Also the finite does depend on the infinite, since all definable forms (both tangible and abstract) are defined by the formless around and within them. A triangle is defined by the angles - the spaces between its sides. Existence and movement are enabled by space - and enabling is an act, and that which acts - is, so space is an actual entity, albeit a formless one. The possible counter-argument that without objects there is no space - would fail - because there are no objects without space, while there is a lot of space without objects. So objects and movement require space, but space does not require them. Therefore the formless preceded all form, all matter, all energy. The formlessness actually contains all forms, is the source of all forms, and transcends all forms. Mind and will are also forms, contained within the formless. The formless is one and simple, so abilities such as awareness would be omnipresent to it. From here it's easy to prove God. Peace
The main thing about Descartes' attempt to prove God that stuck out to me since I first heard it was the 'I couldn't have thought of God unless he was real' part, I mean all you have to do is point to the concept of fiction, Tolkien thought of Middle Earth that isn't proof for Middle Earth existing.
Please do the ethics of suicide! I wrote a paper on euthanasia , stating the reasons why I am for it, and I would like to hear of any philosophers who may have given thought to the subject.
Did you note in said paper how keeping euthanasia illegal is likely to decrease, over the next 50 or so years, the number of people wanting to commit suicide, nevermind euthanasia itself via improved palliative care? That's the best argument against euthanasia.
Where's the proof that keeping euthanasia illegal will help decrease the number of people who want to commit suicide? What about those people with terminal illnesses, who are told that the last moments of their lives will be excruciatingly painful? What if they don't want to live through that? I think it would be entirely unethical to keep them alive if they don't wish to, especially if doing so will only increase their suffering. I think that is the best argument FOR euthanasia.
Chris Solomon There is no empirical proof as we're talking about the future so obviously we can't prove it. Let me show you the argument: P1 - Good Palliative care reduces the desire of someone to want to die. P2 - Palliative care advances and progresses through funding gained from primarily governments but also some private firms, especially in other countries than England. P3 - If euthanasia is illegal then fewer people with terminal, painful illnesses will die. C1 - Therefore if euthanasia is illegal the demand for palliative care will increase relative to how much the demand for palliative care would change if euthanasia was made legal because more people with terminal painful illnesses would die. P4 - If the demand for palliative care is higher this means that the provision of palliative care is more profitable for private firms and more of a pertinent issue for governments. P5 - If provision of palliative care is more profitable then more money will be invested into research for it. P6 - More money invested in research will lead to better palliative care. C2 - therefore from P6 and by P1 in such a society where euthanasia was kept illegal we will end up having far better palliative care far sooner. This will result in a scenario in which we have people voluntarily living and contributing to society for far longer than before as opposed to the alternate society in which euthanasia was made legal and once someone hits 85 they have a very high chance of committing suicide via euthanasia. P7 - The second society is morally inferior to the first. C3 - We should not legalise euthanasia.
Chris Solomon If you're interested Mary Warnock, a peer in the house of lords, introduced me to this argument in her book "Dishonest to God" which elaborates on how clearly our legislative system is wholly dependent on morality to make sense and how because of that religion (specifically Christianity) manages to keep popping up and influencing our legislative system because, as we all know, the religious like to claim that only they are moral and they themselves have a special understanding of morality that the irreligious do not.
Thank you for this video!! We're reading all of Descartes' meditations and I have not been able to understand how he proved God's existence (plus my professor isn't really able to convey his knowledge properly) You've saved my grade!!
Well, I'm watching this "Old videos" from IRAQ! :D Surprise! But no seriously, thanks for putting up these videos! You made my essay sound much better! :D Greetings from AUI-S!
5:20 the more real argument, while it amuses me as much as you, is a call back to scholasticism's hierarchy of being and perhaps even Plato according to whom non-visible intelligible things (ideas) were definitely more real than the material world which was seen as merely a reflection of those ideas.
Do the suicide one. It's a much more taboo subject and therefore (at least in my opinion) a much more interesting one. I think it could generate a really fascinating discussion.
4:45 This discussion is in parallel with the arguments between Indian philosophers, very specifically between that of the samkhya and advaita tradition who believes in the law of pre-existing cause or sat karya vad, and the materialist school of the carvaka and the logicians(nyayikars) who believed that effect arising as an epiphenomenal quality(asat karya vad or aarambha vad).
This was always my least favorite argument to the point of irrational(?) rage. Thank you for this breakdown! Even though I am seeing it 7 years or so later….
Doesn't the IDEA of God have less formal reality than Descartes and therefore, isn't it consistent that, with his understanding of Formal and Objective Reality, he could be the cause of the IDEA of God since he has more Formal Reality than the IDEA of God? I understand that God has infinite formal reality and the IDEA of god has infinite objective reality however it seems that Descartes's mind only contains the IDEA of god and not god itself.
The funny thing is, even if you follow along his principles it still doesn't hold up, because there's some sort of fallacy of composition going on here : what Descartes is thinking about may be infinite, but that doesn't mean that the thought itself is, otherwise he'd have to conclude that the thought of a rock is solid, the thought of a brown table is brown, etc. So according to his own principles, the finite thought of infinite subtance can be caused by something as finite as the thought itself is. So... yeah, this argument fails on pretty much all levels.
visavis the 'properties' aspect... Sun=energy Animals=energy :. life (animals) can be produced by sun bc/ of the common property 'energy' Likewise Helium/Hydrogen may not act in similar properties However the proton/neutron/electron 'properties' are in common :. enabling the combination ?
How would Dascarte's respond to mythological or pagan "god" concepts? Would his "proof" be just as apical to those gods as his own god? What of a foreign god idea to his own god idea?
His argument would vindicated that God is all good (As that's a crucial step in the argument), but I suppose you could perhaps believe that and be a Deist?
Thanks for you video! It really helped me understand the argument of Descartes if god really does exist or not! I have to write a paper on it and you really made it make more sense, and you cleared up some principles i was confused on! thanks!
I liked the pace of this video it was easier to follow. Also can i say I'm watching this on my day off of my philosophy class (*cough* nerd). As to Descartes I was impressed with meditations 1 and 2 but the entire notion of God threw it for me. I mean he knew 'I' existed but took the idea of God from others to build his argument. You did introduce Descartes' belief that only a strong thing can make a strong thing, etc. Even so human beings are finite. There's a slippery slope fallacy. But even so an infinite God would have to make a finite substance to make a finite person. Even to suppose the values of a good God and a bad deceiver I found to be weak. Although Kant built onto Descartes philosophy. So I can appreciate Descartes a little more from a Kantian standpoint.
I've been reading Med III and it's been driving me crazy because nothing of what he was saying made any god damn sense, and I felt like I was constantly missing something. Feels amazing to know for sure that it was him, not me.
Bro that book is not a good book at all. When I read it, I said to myself you got it wrong not him, but we are the ones that lives in 21st century not him. He got it all fucked up If u ask my opinion !! We all know that chance of god's existence can not be proven by philosophers, It can only be done by physicist.
Couldn't it be a little presumptive to state without apology from our perspective that things exist or don't? I'm no expert in quantum physics, but as I understand it, gravitons have been proposed to do just that: partially exist in this reality.
+Philosophy Tube if something doesn't need to have the same properties as the thing it causes to exist then why doesn't your friend's objection to theistic evolution fail in the same way Descartes' trademark argument for God does? If the causal adequacy principle is "bullocks" then saying that God is efficient therefore we should expect the evolutionary process to be efficient should be an incorrect assumption, since that would be assuming that God and the evolutionary mechanisms he might create have to have the same property, namely efficiency. What are your thoughts?
Couldnt one argue in favor of the causal adequacy principle, using the very examples used to refute it? For instance, the example of the cake is saying that the ingredients used to create the cake, do not share the same properties as the end: the said cake. However, thats not true at all. Although, on the surface it may seem that the cake is a new substance all together, it still doesnt change the fact that its components are still acting as they did before being combined. Its like saying that red and blue no longer act like themselves when combined because they've created a new color purple.... the fact is that purple is just an expression of both blue and red acting on the same space, and purple's "new properties" are just a composite property just as its components are composited. So to take it back to the cake example, the ingredients, when put together to make the cake, are not exibiting new properties,. just expressing their same properties in the same space. Thus creating a new "composite" property which is technically not a property at all, just our minds attempt at rationalizing the mixture. Just a theory... i would like to hear some feedback from anyone who has a perspective.
+Aqute Nolej Descartes can be somewhat excused not because he flunked highschool Chemistry class but because Chemistry hadn't been invented yet. Let's take a colorful, poison gas (chlorine) combine it with an unbelievably reactive metal that you can cut with a knife, burns spontaneously in air and explodes violently in water (sodium) and what do you get?? Exploding colorful poison? No, you get table salt. This is just one example, there are literally a thousand within your view right now. Elements do NOT retain their observable properties in compounds. Most solid things and many gases are compounds.
What about the concept of Chaos itself? Even in seemingly certain situations, it always exists(omnipotence & everlasting) and it's a fundamental property of the universe that we (as humans at least) couldn't rationalise out of nowhere in our structured day to day lives and desire for meaningfulness. Everything is also unreliable, as all sorts of systems and structures, man-made or no are influenced(trademarked) by chaos in their lack of complete dependency.
Maybe not levels of reality, but level of contingent existence. Brown can only existence as a property of something else. Just like a object sustains its properties what sustains the existence of objects. Perhaps seperately unsure, I am a imperfect being I can make mistakes and I can die. But I have knowledge that perfect being could exist though nothing in the universe is perfect. So were is my referent? imagination is powerful but it seems to me that only rearranges pre-existing ideas in seemingly new ways.
Is reality binary? Why couldn't we look at reality as an inductive argument? The more you perceive as real the stronger reality is. If someone is slowly going crazy they would slowly drift into a new reality. The things that used to be real become less real with the more evidence they get that their new reality is more real. I am not very eloquent with my typing but I hope this makes sense.
But reality exists independent of a person's perception thereof. For instance, new planets are discovered every day, but it would be factually incorrect to say that they did not exist before the moment of their discovery. In order for reality to be dependent on perception, perception must have a sort of innate quality of creation, or else the creation of reality is what causes it to be perceived, which is far more ridiculous. Therefore, no matter how distorted the perception of something may be, it still exists in the same state for the same reasons. Perception is the variable, not reality.
In Descartes’ Third Meditation, after observing the wax in different physical states, he establishes that reality is based upon perception. This is because perception was found to be through the mind (the only thing he had undoubtedly proven the existence of), so Descartes and the original commenter are simply staying in line with his thinking.
Another point is that if God does not exist, the myth of God might be more of a property we tend to give the universe- the universe is the finite substance, and the story of creation is a property of it, in these same way a person is a substance and a relationship to that person or a shared past might be a property of that person (to you). A further obvious point is that properties are very clearly subjective- strong by whose measure? Delicious by whose tastebuds? So if properties are subjective, they are not created by the finite substance they occupy, but by the finite substance observing the other finite substance. In that case, if God exists, then the infinite substance could be given finite substance by its observer. In which case, I am God.
But I thought, unlike the cake example, that Descartes was talking ONLY about infinite things. In other words, Perfection cannot have anything added to it to make it exist. Perfection is just infinite. It just DOES exist. Therefore, everything else (that is not an absolute infinite property) CAN be subject to change. In other words, cake CAN therefore be made by things that don't have its exact property. Does that make sense?
Similar ideas of "more real" and "less real" are common in Eastern philosophy - and usually embraced with deeper understanding than in the West. Usually, an infinite substance is considered more real, because it is eternally unchanging. Then again, the finite substance - which is what the Western sciences mostly study and is equipped to study - is in a constant state of flux, therefore thought of as less real. Because they change all the time, they are more like illusion i.e. not what they are thought to be, less real.
Hi, do you think the concept of God was created or discovered? And can you do a video about recommending philosophy books that you find interesting (not the classical works). Thanks
one concern I have with Descartes' argument that I'm not sure is valid, is that it assumes that a "most" real thing exists. This need not follow from the existence of a hierarchy of reality if we're willing to accept an infinite chain of increasingly real objects. Each of these is more real than the things before it and less than the ones coming after it cannot meaningfully be called God (although one might be able to argue that they could be gods). It could just be turtles all the way down
I was wondering why I hadn't heard his argument for god before, it is pretty bad. But at the same time, it seem presupposotional apologetics is strongly influenced by this argument. It's interesting to watch the evolution of these arguments over time. Looking forward to the next video.
So I did something similar to Descartes with finding absolute certainty, and my professor pointed me out to him. I agree with you on it sounding very presuppositional. On top of that, it would seem we wouldn't have free will in this case either. If this god were real and making us think things that we have no control over otherwise.
Good video, really got me thinking. Inspires me to look into it more, which definitely means you are doing your job well :) As for the next video, I vote for both of them lol. They both seem very interesting.
This is Platonic Ideology (overall, it seems so). The premise behind reality is similar to the Theory of Forms. Besides being more real or less real, formal reality and representational reality are really the problems with Universals. Substances of a finite or infinite nature are in a ontological sense, a "Particular" set (hence the principle). It is an opposition of compositions (and similarities are included) based on what I've learned. Mathematics (most particularly in sets or pairs of numbers) plays at this a lot.
Nope, you're wrong. All 'g's are hard in Classical Latin, without exception. You might be thinking of Ecclesiastical Latin, which has different (and wonky, imo) pronunciations.
maggit Maggit and Purple Zart are correct. 'G's and 'C's are hard according to classical pronunciation. "Cicero" is pronounced Kick-uh-roh. "Caesar" is Kai-ser.
(Cracks the Classical Latin Major knuckles) The history of pronunciation and linguistics is important for a fuller understanding of the words we work with and the affect of their communication. In that, one could argue that the classical Latin pronunciation is relevant because of the culture which actually spoke the language as its main form of communication. Yet: given we are speaking of Descartes in this case, and at that time Latin was used as a good way to communicate between languages (that is to say it was no one's first language), and that this form of Latin was indeed Ecclesiastical Latin, then we have a valid argument to that pronunciation. However! Ladies and Gentlesirs, despite whatever language is your personal native language we are currently communicating in English. Specifically, given our kind host is PhilosophyTube, British English which means two things: One, the correct pronunciation could be that Latin, Ecclsiastical Latin, *or* British English. And two, by that argument all my American spellings are technically wrong.
In the classical model essence precedes existence. Every prior philosopher had already thought that there was meaning to being human prior to the first human "painting." But that required God to have existed. Jean Paul Sarte believes God to not exist. So any theory that implies that essence precedes existence, since it depends upon God must not be true which means then existence must precede essence. Which means that I have to first exist and only then do human beings start to define what it means to be human, but there is no set in stone definition of what a human is or what a good human is. There aren't any a priori values only man made values. With this profound responsibility comes three accompanying emotions that we are accountable for. Once we become aware of the necessity to construct values, since we can't find any values in the world, we must build them. We feel anguish, abandonment, and despair. Now that existence precedes essence, since God does not exist, each person is responsible for the construction of good and evil or values and they insert those values for other people to see. Mankind's responsibility to fashion meaning stems from the fact that there is no objective meaning, no objective meaning to human existence because there was no God to conceive of.
shaun Brown Well I think that we currently live in the type of society that I just mentioned. We have the responsibility to create our own or follow someone else's "painting" of what the good life is because as I said there is no set in stone definition of what it means to be a good/moral human.
It seems that if you take causal adequacy to mean that whatever is in the effect must be in the total cause, it remains perfectly defensible. After all, the power to make cake must SOMEHOW exist within the causes leading up to it, or else they wouldn't have caused a cake at all. Surely Descartes saw baked goods being made, and could see the "cakeness" existing eminently or virtually within the ingredients, the heat of the oven, etc.
... doesnt matter what every living entity choose to do... at the end of a given material time, each entity inquire about the cycle of birth and death...
The only thing that I could not logically defend was that God existed, because he "trademarked" himself on us. To his defense, where did we even get the idea of God? It has to be from him himself
About living versus not living.The idea that animals and plants aren't living is not that wrong.Though it's usually presented the other way around.Because yes, if we look deep enough, all we find is patterns, laws, reactions. And we can see that in everything. Dogs, grass, water, planets, and even the Universe as a whole (though infinite, which could open up to ways to disprove many things discussed here, be it by including God in some finite way, or simply piling up infinity as a statistical way of saying "nobody can prove or disprove anything, ever, nothing is constant when part of an infinite world"). Everything, at small and large scales, is exclusively made out of the same material and laws. Humans are nothing more than a bubble full of rythmic reactions that keep on repeating for years and years and then shape other similar beings and keep on doing it for practically ever. Masses in space, bumping into each other, splitting in smaller stuff, then rearranging into bigger stuff, to again smash and divide. There is no difference. Life is composed of very simple laws/mechanics, and everything is alive, or the concept of life is flawed and then nothing is alive because it's pointless to compare stuff when we look at the infinitly small. Also, cake. Cake is not simply made out of egss and flour (let's keep it to two ingredients). It's made out of ingredients with specific properties that they do share with the cake. The cake is not just egg and flour. It's egg and flour, but baked. Heated. Which influences the ingredients. Cooked egg and cooked flour do share properties with the cake. And that's excluding how the ingredients interact with one another under those circumstances. And I am not a physicist or a quantum physisist, but I'm pretty sure the same reasoning can be applied to hydrogen and helium. And also, we can keep on going smaller when we try to compare thing with what they are made off. And eventually we get to the point where every single thing is just a complex accumulation of the exact same matter and energy, following the same rules and sharing all properties, rendering useless seeing any difference between the cake and the eggs.
X's interaction with Y cause Z to occur in X! Y is not the cause! Y is an expression of a property! The effect of Z is the outcome of by X and Y! However: how X reacts is X's property!
Descartes was a fool, suffering from cognitive dissonance, between what he saw, and what he wanted to believe about himself and his kind. So, instead of using reality as the source of forming his understanding of the world, he went the opposite direction, and used his beliefs/delusions, as determinants of reality. *He dun goofed his one existence into wishful thinking, but at least he got some spotlight, albeit, at the ultimate cost of a deluded existence, and that too, by his own self. Phehehephephe, the dogs he dissected, were less deluded about reality than he was, pitiful.*
I'm calling BS. But on the other hand, the church would have hung him if he said there was no god. I have a good test of his theory. Stop teaching children about god and see if god appears in their heads.
This is funny because I have actually had someone spout of this argument of "where else do we get our idea of infinity!? Has anyone ever observed infinity? No! It comes from God!" as a way of trying to convince me that god exists.
How do we get semantics in our minds to begin with (read the Chinese Room thought experiment). And how do we get the idea of perfection and infinity from an imperfect and finite world?
I think we don't actually think about perfection and infinite things. Think about problems of memory, It is said by Psychologists that most people tend to not be able to remember more than 7 things is asked to recall something, unless they have special training/methods. Actual infinity cannot be thought of, but only the title of it, basically. Say you want to push this very far and think of an invisible, magical, universe-wide fantasy creature made up of a substance that we are not aware of. All of these things are things that never existed in reality, as far as we know, yet we have no problem getting the picture in our head. The problem is that people make up problems that don't exist, such as that we can't think of things that don't exist, which isn't true.
Why can't an finite substance cause and infinite substance?? Where is this explained in the mediations if explained at all? Also why does Descartes say he knows he exists while not knowing ANYTHING but the says he cannot know anything if he does not know God??
Didn't you only deal with one of his two logical proofs here? The second one is the inherent properties argument. Eg. he cannot conceive of a mountain without a valley. Therefore he cannot conceive of an infinite being without it being infinite. Its been a while since I've read Descartes and maybe I'm not doing it full justice, but I'd be interested to see your thoughts and/or refutation of that argument.
I am interested by the idea of different levels of reality. I would argue that finite and infinite substances are equally existent, but properties are interesting. They can't exist without a substance, but are they less real? They might be a construct of our minds, but you can apply a property to any substance. I suppose not quite every substance, a thought can't be brown, but for the most part properties can be on anything. Does this mean they are just as existent as substances, just in a different way? Heck if I know. The practical side of me doesn't even care. DAMMIT PRACTICALITY, IF YOU WOULD JUST HELP ME THINK WE COULD ALL FIGURE THIS OUT TOGETHER!!
With regards to the Causal adequacy principle, specifically the notion that the cause of something must have the same properties of the thing it is causing. Im not sure that this is exactly what Descartes is saying because such a notion is quite circular as God evidently does not have the same properties as me, because God does not have imperfection, or "finiteness". I took Descartes argument to mean that the cause of something must be more real, or bigger than the thing it is causing. (The absurdity of this lies with Hobbes' criticism). If you could tell me where I might be mistaken, that would be great :)
Heh just picked up myth of sysiphus. Haven't started it yet, but for ethics goes, I've been pondering the question of our rapidly growing mortality rate, how far it could extend in the future, and if there would be a justifiable age in to which the choice of suicide would not only be acceptable but expected.
Thanks for the video. I'm a new viewer. It was interesting. Could you please provide a specific reference as to where you found the two principles (the levels of reality principle and the causal adequacy principle) identified in your analysis and used in your critique? Did you identify these principles yourself? As an amateur reader in philosophy it would be helpful to know where to get critical responses to the arguments raised by the many philosophers. By the way, does your critique address Descartes' concept of clear and distinct ideas? This concept doesn't seem to fall into either of the two principles that you identified as being the two key arguments Descartes' God argument used or rested on. Your thoughts would be appreciated.
Philosophy Tube I realize that I am taking up the losing side of this argument, but I think that there may be some merit to Descartes trademark argument. For the record I have not gone back to re-read Descartes writings - which I should probably do but I have read some secondary sources on Descartes argument. The one book I read does not identify the two principles that you have identified perhaps because this book was published in 2000. This book only identified a principle the author called the Principle of Adequate Reality. This author suggested that Descartes derived this principle from the Principle of Sufficient Reason and then goes on to show how Descrates used this principle to establish that there were different levels of reality. The author didn't seem too convinced by Descartes arguments and seemed, in my opinion, unsure about what exactly Descartes' argument was about. To me, it seems obvious that we regularly talk about levels of reality and we all understand what we mean when we discuss them. For example, we understand and agree with Descartes that colours are properties of finite substances and that colours don't exist apart in some Platonic or Scholastic form. We also recognize that we are not infinite beings etc so like Descartes we need to explain how we obtained the idea of the infinite and God. Of the two options that explain how we get this idea of the infinite: 1) through abstraction (negation), or 2) a trademark from God himself - Descartes argument and reasoning seems to me to make more sense because if our idea of the infinite is only arrived at through abstraction we are left with explaining why the external world is not merely an illusion and why the external reality conforms to the ideas and theories we have of it. In short, we would be left in Descartes' prison. Another way we routinely discuss "levels of reality" is by making the distinction that Descartes himself made between formal and representational reality. If this distinction is not acknowledged by modern philosophers then many epistemological questions simply disappear. For the record, the book on Descartes that I am reading is part of the Wadsworth Philosophers Series called On Descartes by Garrett Thomson. Please excuse any errors in the above - I am really bad at not re-reading what I write. So my question to you and anybody who does not find Descartes' argument successful is how do you get out of his prison of doubt and/or whether you feel still trapped? :)
Helium has different properties from the hydrogen it is made of yes, but ultimately they are made of the same properties, protons, neutrons electrons, quakrs etc. all thats different is the number? I don't understand am I missing something here? how could a professor miss that
+Jack Gilfoyle Yes they are made of the same stuff, but the point still stands that helium has quite different properties from the hydrogen that's fused to make it.
Even if the reasoning were more sound, wouldn't that just prove the physicality of the concept of infinity? I notice a lot of philosophers trying to prove god and thinking they've done so when they (in theory) prove something like an infinite regress.
How can "I think stealing is morally wrong" be true or false? It's true that I think stealing is morally wrong whether or not stealing is morally wrong. Enlighten me.
Mike F I agree. Stealing is morally wrong. What I think does matter, though. For if you can say that about me I can say that about those who think stealing is morally wrong. I am not a relativist.
DesCartes ideas of "more real" and "less real" revolve around not the state of a things reality, but the certainty we can believe that thing to be reality (as you explained at the beginning of the video) I'm sure philosophy has a better answer to DesCartes than dismissing his argument off of a misunderstanding of what he's saying... But I find the idea "the being resembles that which made it" to be solid and one of the best philosophical arguments for God(s)
Good Day. My question is what the source of the idea of God? Man can preceive traits and characteristics of man and amplify them to god like proportions in order to rationalize the concept of God but that does not exactly equate to what God actually is. Since God is something we are not which is infinite substance is it even possible to comprehend God?
***** I think it was Abu Bakr, the 1st Muslim caliph, who said "Our incomprehension of God is our comprehension of Him". Timothy winter (abdul hakim murad) said that "We can know nothing other than the Unknowable" ... If you think about it that is true - everything around us is God's Actions, every instant of creation is actually God's actions. Nothing exists except that He created it, so it's coming from Him, is from His plan, His Designing, His Will, and points to Him, but our limited knowledge cannot contain knowledge of His Unlimited Essence, but also our knowledge cannot escape Him either, as we cannot think of anything other than what He created for us to contemplate.
This is really well timed. I was just recently talking with several of my friends about the term qualia. Several recent videos I watched used the term and only slightly more recently did I get find a useful definition for it. For the quick and dirty definition see: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia Anyway we got onto the topic of questioning the existence of qualia. Like with the color brown they seem only to be able to exist as a property of something else, so it would seem to make sense to label them as existing "less" since they require something else in order to exist. I would think this more of a trinary definition of existence than a spectral one, but none the less I am not sold on the idea that existence must be binary. If existence only applies to physical things are we saying thoughts don't exist? If we say thoughts exist are we equating thoughts with physical properties? Is there a difference between what exists and what is real?
I don't think those are good rebuttals honestly. The PSR is something Descartes takes to be true a priori. I don't know what he's referencing when talking about Hellium and Hydrogen having different properties, but I'd find it to be very strange if their properties weren't (theoretically) grounded on what they atomically consist in and what their structure is. And I can see one denying the "threefold" division of reality, but I also fail to see how the argument fails. Even if one were to say that all there are are substances, how can you explain the fact of an idea of an infinite/perfect being other than that such a being exists?
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools... (Romans 1:21-22 NIV)
What gets me about all this philosophizing is that it happens within such a contrived vacuum. What about Evolution? I mean aren't we biological being. For a biological perspective on human consciousness listen to Mark Solms and Antonio Damasio talks. On the philosophical level, The missing key is appreciating the Mindscape ~ Physical Reality divide.
I have three days to do a philosophy paper and am using it as an excuse to binge Abby's oldest videos
I procrastinated and am starting mine 7 days before the turn in date 😬
Literally me right now
meeeeee
lmaoo me too
Yeah I have an exam on Meditations next week and it’s the penultimate course I have before graduating. I listened to the audiobook and when I got to the third meditation I literally went “Well this is bollocks”
I've been reading Descartes for nearly 5 years now and have taken courses about him at university, and no one has been able to explain his theory as simply as you. Congrats, dude! You helped me understand this better than a university professor has.
After this argument his point is basically:
1. Triangles exist
2. Therefore God
I love this 😂😂 but for real in meditations 2 he says he can't be certain that 2+3 is 5 and in 5 he suddenly says "ah yeah i can imagine a triangle as a shape itself". And the best part is he says he can imagine lots of shapes that he has never seen to proof that some ideas are not from outside. However he does not give one example of a shape he can imagine that doesn't yet exist in our world.
I was so excited reading the first 2 meditations, because he argued very carefully and step by step. Then in 3 and 5 he just jumps from one principle that he does not care to explain further (he just says this makes a lot of sense so it is true) to the other.
@@couch_philosoph3325 Isn't that because triangles having three sides is something true by definition?
If you recall Kant's point about math being synthetic I think it starts to make more sense as to how he can in any way doubt arithmetic while not doubting the essences of things like triangles or God.
you know what, that's actually it
@@2tehnik This makes sense from a Kantian (or broadly German Idealist) perspective, but Descartes is not claiming that the existence of God is something outside our phenomenal reality. He says that all thought must originate from within, and that if we have the idea of God in our head then that must be based on some properties which we are thinking of (namely the properties of God) and since one of God's properties is to exist, he must exist.
@@georgepantzikis7988 > but Descartes is not claiming that the existence of God is something outside our phenomenal reality
wdym?
That aside, I'm not sure I see how your reply relates to my comment. Mind clarifying?
I think, therefore I subscribed to this channel.
+Soane DeWinter Welcome!
Same
I clicked subscribe as well. But I dream vividly so I'm going to play it safe and say that I'm not absolutely certain that I subscribed.
Well said
"I'm pink therefore I'm spam" was always a fave as a kid... And still now, come to think of it!
Oh, and suicide prevention, please... ;)
Ethics of Suicide: A subject we just Kant touch.
THANK YOU FOR THIS VIDEO! I'M STUDYING THIS AGAINST MY WILL AND YOU ARE SO HELPFUL!! X
I often wonder if Descartes realised his philosophical insight and teaching of methodical doubt was so powerful that it could be used to disprove the existence of God and then thought sh..t I had better use it to prove the existence of God otherwise I am in big trouble with the Inquisitors.
im afraid descartes' methodical doubt gets nowhere near to disproving God's existence - all it does is give you a possibilty that nothing is real - and that there may be no way of proving harmony between the self and the world around it.
I'm currently writing a rebuttal of the Trademark argument for my Metaphysics and Epistemology class, so thank you for the help :)
+TheGreatYukon My pleasure!
I wish he talked about Meditation 5, where Descartes tried to prove the existence of God again.
That one was just a version of the ontological argument, which was older than Descartes.. goes back to Anselm. I think Descartes was just throwing it in there to be thorough. Kant later destroyed it.
Nah, he just plagiarized Anselm haha
I love your channel, dude! Can't stop watching it! Excellent work. How you only have 28k subscribers, I don't know. Keep it up.
Mark Lapeña Thanks!
+Philosophy Tube
Hi
Thank you for your channel and for the light-hearted way you present these subjects - I find it energizing!
Descartes' argument may be helped and become more logically valid, if we took levels of reality to mean:
levels of power to cause, which also means levels of permanence or stability.
A normal 3 year old and a normal 30 year old both seemingly live in the same reality - yet they do not: the abilities, understandings and emotional world of the 30 year old stretch far beyond those of the 3 year old.
A 3 year old would be utterly at a loss at the 30 year old's office - while the 30 year old would know how to use it to produce value for others and income - the latter enabling the 3 year old to be fed. Also, the 30 year old's ability to differentiate the fleeting things (less substantial, of less reality-value) and the more permanent things (and therefore the more relevant).
So practically the child and adult do live on different levels of power to cause, which Descartes calls levels of reality (since the power to cause means power to influence reality).
This also applies to different adults with different talents and outlooks.
In this sense, perceptions are caused by objects, which are caused by principles sustaining those objects, and so on. And so, the higher something is in the hierarchy of being a permanent cause - the more real that thing is.
Also the finite does depend on the infinite, since all definable forms (both tangible and abstract) are defined by the formless around and within them. A triangle is defined by the angles - the spaces between its sides.
Existence and movement are enabled by space - and enabling is an act, and that which acts - is, so space is an actual entity, albeit a formless one.
The possible counter-argument that without objects there is no space - would fail - because there are no objects without space, while there is a lot of space without objects. So objects and movement require space, but space does not require them. Therefore the formless preceded all form, all matter, all energy.
The formlessness actually contains all forms, is the source of all forms, and transcends all forms.
Mind and will are also forms, contained within the formless.
The formless is one and simple, so abilities such as awareness would be omnipresent to it.
From here it's easy to prove God.
Peace
@@PhilosophyTube humble beginnings
The main thing about Descartes' attempt to prove God that stuck out to me since I first heard it was the 'I couldn't have thought of God unless he was real' part, I mean all you have to do is point to the concept of fiction, Tolkien thought of Middle Earth that isn't proof for Middle Earth existing.
That's not how the argument works, though. Middle Earth isn't a valid example.
why did i find this channel 45 minutes before my final exam?
where do you study
Please do the ethics of suicide! I wrote a paper on euthanasia , stating the reasons why I am for it, and I would like to hear of any philosophers who may have given thought to the subject.
Did you note in said paper how keeping euthanasia illegal is likely to decrease, over the next 50 or so years, the number of people wanting to commit suicide, nevermind euthanasia itself via improved palliative care? That's the best argument against euthanasia.
Where's the proof that keeping euthanasia illegal will help decrease the number of people who want to commit suicide?
What about those people with terminal illnesses, who are told that the last moments of their lives will be excruciatingly painful? What if they don't want to live through that? I think it would be entirely unethical to keep them alive if they don't wish to, especially if doing so will only increase their suffering.
I think that is the best argument FOR euthanasia.
Chris Solomon There is no empirical proof as we're talking about the future so obviously we can't prove it. Let me show you the argument:
P1 - Good Palliative care reduces the desire of someone to want to die.
P2 - Palliative care advances and progresses through funding gained from primarily governments but also some private firms, especially in other countries than England.
P3 - If euthanasia is illegal then fewer people with terminal, painful illnesses will die.
C1 - Therefore if euthanasia is illegal the demand for palliative care will increase relative to how much the demand for palliative care would change if euthanasia was made legal because more people with terminal painful illnesses would die.
P4 - If the demand for palliative care is higher this means that the provision of palliative care is more profitable for private firms and more of a pertinent issue for governments.
P5 - If provision of palliative care is more profitable then more money will be invested into research for it.
P6 - More money invested in research will lead to better palliative care.
C2 - therefore from P6 and by P1 in such a society where euthanasia was kept illegal we will end up having far better palliative care far sooner. This will result in a scenario in which we have people voluntarily living and contributing to society for far longer than before as opposed to the alternate society in which euthanasia was made legal and once someone hits 85 they have a very high chance of committing suicide via euthanasia.
P7 - The second society is morally inferior to the first.
C3 - We should not legalise euthanasia.
Hmm okay. I don't really have a rebuttal because I haven't considered the effects of improved palliative care.
Chris Solomon If you're interested Mary Warnock, a peer in the house of lords, introduced me to this argument in her book "Dishonest to God" which elaborates on how clearly our legislative system is wholly dependent on morality to make sense and how because of that religion (specifically Christianity) manages to keep popping up and influencing our legislative system because, as we all know, the religious like to claim that only they are moral and they themselves have a special understanding of morality that the irreligious do not.
Oh man, you explained down the earth, thanks. Keep the philosophy alive.
This is an interesting discussion of Descartes' arguments. The previous videos helped. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for this video!! We're reading all of Descartes' meditations and I have not been able to understand how he proved God's existence (plus my professor isn't really able to convey his knowledge properly) You've saved my grade!!
My pleasure! I can't believe people still watch these old videos haha
Well, I'm watching this "Old videos" from IRAQ! :D Surprise! But no seriously, thanks for putting up these videos! You made my essay sound much better! :D Greetings from AUI-S!
This was old seven years ago??@@PhilosophyTube
5:20 the more real argument, while it amuses me as much as you, is a call back to scholasticism's hierarchy of being and perhaps even Plato according to whom non-visible intelligible things (ideas) were definitely more real than the material world which was seen as merely a reflection of those ideas.
Do the suicide one. It's a much more taboo subject and therefore (at least in my opinion) a much more interesting one. I think it could generate a really fascinating discussion.
I've an important exam tomorrow on this and I haven't read the discourse yet, kudos on the vid, really helped a lot!
I like this format of presenting and analyzing a philosophical argument.
p. Finite substance: Area between 0 and 1 on the number line.
q. Infinite substance: Real numbers between 0 and 1
pq
I could weep with joy - this channel is the only thing that can potentially save my A-level.
4:45 This discussion is in parallel with the arguments between Indian philosophers, very specifically between that of the samkhya and advaita tradition who believes in the law of pre-existing cause or sat karya vad, and the materialist school of the carvaka and the logicians(nyayikars) who believed that effect arising as an epiphenomenal quality(asat karya vad or aarambha vad).
This was always my least favorite argument to the point of irrational(?) rage. Thank you for this breakdown! Even though I am seeing it 7 years or so later….
Doesn't the IDEA of God have less formal reality than Descartes and therefore, isn't it consistent that, with his understanding of Formal and Objective Reality, he could be the cause of the IDEA of God since he has more Formal Reality than the IDEA of God?
I understand that God has infinite formal reality and the IDEA of god has infinite objective reality however it seems that Descartes's mind only contains the IDEA of god and not god itself.
The funny thing is, even if you follow along his principles it still doesn't hold up, because there's some sort of fallacy of composition going on here : what Descartes is thinking about may be infinite, but that doesn't mean that the thought itself is, otherwise he'd have to conclude that the thought of a rock is solid, the thought of a brown table is brown, etc. So according to his own principles, the finite thought of infinite subtance can be caused by something as finite as the thought itself is.
So... yeah, this argument fails on pretty much all levels.
He didn't cause that thought ...you thinking about the sun doesn't mean you caused the sun .
@@abdouliverpool247 same logic applies with time
visavis the 'properties' aspect...
Sun=energy
Animals=energy
:. life (animals) can be produced by sun bc/ of the common property 'energy'
Likewise Helium/Hydrogen may not act in similar properties
However the proton/neutron/electron 'properties' are in common
:. enabling the combination
?
man this channel is friggin awesome
How would Dascarte's respond to mythological or pagan "god" concepts?
Would his "proof" be just as apical to those gods as his own god?
What of a foreign god idea to his own god idea?
Indeed, it would just lead to a deistic god not a personal one, as most of the valid arguments for the existence of god tend to.
His argument would vindicated that God is all good (As that's a crucial step in the argument), but I suppose you could perhaps believe that and be a Deist?
Thanks for you video! It really helped me understand the argument of Descartes if god really does exist or not! I have to write a paper on it and you really made it make more sense, and you cleared up some principles i was confused on! thanks!
Shaylee Richards My pleasure!
the little ringing sound at 3:15 made my day
I liked the pace of this video it was easier to follow. Also can i say I'm watching this on my day off of my philosophy class (*cough* nerd). As to Descartes I was impressed with meditations 1 and 2 but the entire notion of God threw it for me. I mean he knew 'I' existed but took the idea of God from others to build his argument. You did introduce Descartes' belief that only a strong thing can make a strong thing, etc. Even so human beings are finite. There's a slippery slope fallacy. But even so an infinite God would have to make a finite substance to make a finite person. Even to suppose the values of a good God and a bad deceiver I found to be weak. Although Kant built onto Descartes philosophy. So I can appreciate Descartes a little more from a Kantian standpoint.
yay, been folowing for three years, and now this is finaly relevent to my studdies!
Thanks for this video! It was incredibly helpful as I am currently taking a philosophy class on all the great classics of philosophy.
Awesome video! It helped me with my homework :D
Ivy May Yay! Hope you get a good mark!
I've been reading Med III and it's been driving me crazy because nothing of what he was saying made any god damn sense, and I felt like I was constantly missing something. Feels amazing to know for sure that it was him, not me.
Bro that book is not a good book at all. When I read it, I said to myself you got it wrong not him, but we are the ones that lives in 21st century not him. He got it all fucked up If u ask my opinion !! We all know that chance of god's existence can not be proven by philosophers, It can only be done by physicist.
+BigBalls ReligionFucker lol yeah, Des was full of crap :p
Couldn't it be a little presumptive to state without apology from our perspective that things exist or don't? I'm no expert in quantum physics, but as I understand it, gravitons have been proposed to do just that: partially exist in this reality.
+Philosophy Tube if something doesn't need to have the same properties as the thing it causes to exist then why doesn't your friend's objection to theistic evolution fail in the same way Descartes' trademark argument for God does? If the causal adequacy principle is "bullocks" then saying that God is efficient therefore we should expect the evolutionary process to be efficient should be an incorrect assumption, since that would be assuming that God and the evolutionary mechanisms he might create have to have the same property, namely efficiency. What are your thoughts?
Aw, so cute. Baby, pimple faced, male presenting Abigail.
Luke Skywalker and the force must exist or else George Lucas would have never had thought of them
Couldnt one argue in favor of the causal adequacy principle, using the very examples used to refute it? For instance, the example of the cake is saying that the ingredients used to create the cake, do not share the same properties as the end: the said cake. However, thats not true at all. Although, on the surface it may seem that the cake is a new substance all together, it still doesnt change the fact that its components are still acting as they did before being combined. Its like saying that red and blue no longer act like themselves when combined because they've created a new color purple.... the fact is that purple is just an expression of both blue and red acting on the same space, and purple's "new properties" are just a composite property just as its components are composited.
So to take it back to the cake example, the ingredients, when put together to make the cake, are not exibiting new properties,. just expressing their same properties in the same space. Thus creating a new "composite" property which is technically not a property at all, just our minds attempt at rationalizing the mixture.
Just a theory... i would like to hear some feedback from anyone who has a perspective.
+Aqute Nolej Would you call that also the canvas/painter theory of existentialism?
Francois Druro I like to call it the "crouching pastry, hidden painter" theory lol
+Aqute Nolej Descartes can be somewhat excused not because he flunked highschool Chemistry class but because Chemistry hadn't been invented yet. Let's take a colorful, poison gas (chlorine) combine it with an unbelievably reactive metal that you can cut with a knife, burns spontaneously in air and explodes violently in water (sodium) and what do you get?? Exploding colorful poison? No, you get table salt. This is just one example, there are literally a thousand within your view right now.
Elements do NOT retain their observable properties in compounds. Most solid things and many gases are compounds.
What about the concept of Chaos itself? Even in seemingly certain situations, it always exists(omnipotence & everlasting) and it's a fundamental property of the universe that we (as humans at least) couldn't rationalise out of nowhere in our structured day to day lives and desire for meaningfulness. Everything is also unreliable, as all sorts of systems and structures, man-made or no are influenced(trademarked) by chaos in their lack of complete dependency.
Maybe not levels of reality, but level of contingent existence. Brown can only existence as a property of something else. Just like a object sustains its properties what sustains the existence of objects.
Perhaps seperately unsure, I am a imperfect being I can make mistakes and I can die. But I have knowledge that perfect being could exist though nothing in the universe is perfect. So were is my referent? imagination is powerful but it seems to me that only rearranges pre-existing ideas in seemingly new ways.
Is reality binary? Why couldn't we look at reality as an inductive argument? The more you perceive as real the stronger reality is. If someone is slowly going crazy they would slowly drift into a new reality. The things that used to be real become less real with the more evidence they get that their new reality is more real. I am not very eloquent with my typing but I hope this makes sense.
But reality exists independent of a person's perception thereof. For instance, new planets are discovered every day, but it would be factually incorrect to say that they did not exist before the moment of their discovery. In order for reality to be dependent on perception, perception must have a sort of innate quality of creation, or else the creation of reality is what causes it to be perceived, which is far more ridiculous. Therefore, no matter how distorted the perception of something may be, it still exists in the same state for the same reasons. Perception is the variable, not reality.
In Descartes’ Third Meditation, after observing the wax in different physical states, he establishes that reality is based upon perception. This is because perception was found to be through the mind (the only thing he had undoubtedly proven the existence of), so Descartes and the original commenter are simply staying in line with his thinking.
Another point is that if God does not exist, the myth of God might be more of a property we tend to give the universe- the universe is the finite substance, and the story of creation is a property of it, in these same way a person is a substance and a relationship to that person or a shared past might be a property of that person (to you).
A further obvious point is that properties are very clearly subjective- strong by whose measure? Delicious by whose tastebuds? So if properties are subjective, they are not created by the finite substance they occupy, but by the finite substance observing the other finite substance.
In that case, if God exists, then the infinite substance could be given finite substance by its observer. In which case, I am God.
But I thought, unlike the cake example, that Descartes was talking ONLY about infinite things. In other words, Perfection cannot have anything added to it to make it exist. Perfection is just infinite. It just DOES exist. Therefore, everything else (that is not an absolute infinite property) CAN be subject to change. In other words, cake CAN therefore be made by things that don't have its exact property. Does that make sense?
Excellent analysis. Excellent explanation. Excellent video. I just subscribed, and I cannot wait to start binge watching! Lol
Similar ideas of "more real" and "less real" are common in Eastern philosophy - and usually embraced with deeper understanding than in the West.
Usually, an infinite substance is considered more real, because it is eternally unchanging.
Then again, the finite substance - which is what the Western sciences mostly study and is equipped to study - is in a constant state of flux, therefore thought of as less real. Because they change all the time, they are more like illusion i.e. not what they are thought to be, less real.
This channel has saved my ass so many times, extremely grateful
Hi, do you think the concept of God was created or discovered? And can you do a video about recommending philosophy books that you find interesting (not the classical works). Thanks
So long as we're doing mostly modern philosophy, could we look at the modern state of Aristotelian ethics?
one concern I have with Descartes' argument that I'm not sure is valid, is that it assumes that a "most" real thing exists. This need not follow from the existence of a hierarchy of reality if we're willing to accept an infinite chain of increasingly real objects. Each of these is more real than the things before it and less than the ones coming after it cannot meaningfully be called God (although one might be able to argue that they could be gods). It could just be turtles all the way down
I was wondering why I hadn't heard his argument for god before, it is pretty bad. But at the same time, it seem presupposotional apologetics is strongly influenced by this argument. It's interesting to watch the evolution of these arguments over time. Looking forward to the next video.
So I did something similar to Descartes with finding absolute certainty, and my professor pointed me out to him. I agree with you on it sounding very presuppositional. On top of that, it would seem we wouldn't have free will in this case either. If this god were real and making us think things that we have no control over otherwise.
Dude you saved my butt! I wanted to cry, it's part of my finals :0 thanks so much!!!! Now I know how it works!
omg thanks olly. Longtime watcher, decided to study philosophy, had to google something, cause I´m to lazy to read and you came up hahahahah
Everybody gangsta til Descartes starts dissecting living dogs
Good video, really got me thinking. Inspires me to look into it more, which definitely means you are doing your job well :)
As for the next video, I vote for both of them lol. They both seem very interesting.
im on youtube, procrastinating writing my descartes essay by watching this video.
"You're not just going to get browness the property floating around..."
aww shit.
This is Platonic Ideology (overall, it seems so).
The premise behind reality is similar to the Theory of Forms. Besides being more real or less real, formal reality and representational reality are really the problems with Universals. Substances of a finite or infinite nature are in a ontological sense, a "Particular" set (hence the principle). It is an opposition of compositions (and similarities are included) based on what I've learned.
Mathematics (most particularly in sets or pairs of numbers) plays at this a lot.
This is so useful, thank you!
Philosophy Tube 0:10 "Cogito" is not "Ko-gee-toh", but "Ko-jii-toe". Yeah, i took classical Latin at Catholic School.
Nope, you're wrong. All 'g's are hard in Classical Latin, without exception. You might be thinking of Ecclesiastical Latin, which has different (and wonky, imo) pronunciations.
Sorry, that's what I meant. No idea why I wrote Classical instead of Ecclesiastical.
Matt Hoffman
You're still wrong, though.
maggit Maggit and Purple Zart are correct. 'G's and 'C's are hard according to classical pronunciation. "Cicero" is pronounced Kick-uh-roh. "Caesar" is Kai-ser.
(Cracks the Classical Latin Major knuckles) The history of pronunciation and linguistics is important for a fuller understanding of the words we work with and the affect of their communication. In that, one could argue that the classical Latin pronunciation is relevant because of the culture which actually spoke the language as its main form of communication. Yet: given we are speaking of Descartes in this case, and at that time Latin was used as a good way to communicate between languages (that is to say it was no one's first language), and that this form of Latin was indeed Ecclesiastical Latin, then we have a valid argument to that pronunciation.
However! Ladies and Gentlesirs, despite whatever language is your personal native language we are currently communicating in English. Specifically, given our kind host is PhilosophyTube, British English which means two things: One, the correct pronunciation could be that Latin, Ecclsiastical Latin, *or* British English. And two, by that argument all my American spellings are technically wrong.
This made it so much easier to understand, thank you!!
In the classical model essence precedes existence. Every prior philosopher had already thought that there was meaning to being human prior to the first human "painting." But that required God to have existed. Jean Paul Sarte believes God to not exist. So any theory that implies that essence precedes existence, since it depends upon God must not be true which means then existence must precede essence. Which means that I have to first exist and only then do human beings start to define what it means to be human, but there is no set in stone definition of what a human is or what a good human is. There aren't any a priori values only man made values. With this profound responsibility comes three accompanying emotions that we are accountable for. Once we become aware of the necessity to construct values, since we can't find any values in the world, we must build them. We feel anguish, abandonment, and despair. Now that existence precedes essence, since God does not exist, each person is responsible for the construction of good and evil or values and they insert those values for other people to see. Mankind's responsibility to fashion meaning stems from the fact that there is no objective meaning, no objective meaning to human existence because there was no God to conceive of.
what kind of a society would result from this standard of thinking in your opinion?
From the video or from what I said?
from what u said
shaun Brown Well I think that we currently live in the type of society that I just mentioned. We have the responsibility to create our own or follow someone else's "painting" of what the good life is because as I said there is no set in stone definition of what it means to be a good/moral human.
It seems that if you take causal adequacy to mean that whatever is in the effect must be in the total cause, it remains perfectly defensible. After all, the power to make cake must SOMEHOW exist within the causes leading up to it, or else they wouldn't have caused a cake at all. Surely Descartes saw baked goods being made, and could see the "cakeness" existing eminently or virtually within the ingredients, the heat of the oven, etc.
Avoid background music
... doesnt matter what every living entity choose to do... at the end of a given material time, each entity inquire about the cycle of birth and death...
Awww, so cute. Spotty, and all!!!
The only thing that I could not logically defend was that God existed, because he "trademarked" himself on us. To his defense, where did we even get the idea of God? It has to be from him himself
I think the topic of nuclear weapons in the context you would discuss it has less coverage in RUclips than the ethics of suicide prevention.
About living versus not living.The idea that animals and plants aren't living is not that wrong.Though it's usually presented the other way around.Because yes, if we look deep enough, all we find is patterns, laws, reactions. And we can see that in everything. Dogs, grass, water, planets, and even the Universe as a whole (though infinite, which could open up to ways to disprove many things discussed here, be it by including God in some finite way, or simply piling up infinity as a statistical way of saying "nobody can prove or disprove anything, ever, nothing is constant when part of an infinite world").
Everything, at small and large scales, is exclusively made out of the same material and laws. Humans are nothing more than a bubble full of rythmic reactions that keep on repeating for years and years and then shape other similar beings and keep on doing it for practically ever. Masses in space, bumping into each other, splitting in smaller stuff, then rearranging into bigger stuff, to again smash and divide. There is no difference. Life is composed of very simple laws/mechanics, and everything is alive, or the concept of life is flawed and then nothing is alive because it's pointless to compare stuff when we look at the infinitly small.
Also, cake. Cake is not simply made out of egss and flour (let's keep it to two ingredients). It's made out of ingredients with specific properties that they do share with the cake. The cake is not just egg and flour. It's egg and flour, but baked. Heated. Which influences the ingredients. Cooked egg and cooked flour do share properties with the cake. And that's excluding how the ingredients interact with one another under those circumstances. And I am not a physicist or a quantum physisist, but I'm pretty sure the same reasoning can be applied to hydrogen and helium.
And also, we can keep on going smaller when we try to compare thing with what they are made off. And eventually we get to the point where every single thing is just a complex accumulation of the exact same matter and energy, following the same rules and sharing all properties, rendering useless seeing any difference between the cake and the eggs.
X's interaction with Y cause Z to occur in X! Y is not the cause! Y is an expression of a property! The effect of Z is the outcome of by X and Y! However: how X reacts is X's property!
I would be happy with either.
Do both!
Could not have thought of it... unless he was influenced from the outside, which he was, clearly. I'm missing something.
Descartes was a fool, suffering from cognitive dissonance, between what he saw, and what he wanted to believe about himself and his kind. So, instead of using reality as the source of forming his understanding of the world, he went the opposite direction, and used his beliefs/delusions, as determinants of reality. *He dun goofed his one existence into wishful thinking, but at least he got some spotlight, albeit, at the ultimate cost of a deluded existence, and that too, by his own self. Phehehephephe, the dogs he dissected, were less deluded about reality than he was, pitiful.*
There's a peculiar coincidence between the causal adequacy principle and the current conception we have of genetics
I'm calling BS. But on the other hand, the church would have hung him if he said there was no god. I have a good test of his theory. Stop teaching children about god and see if god appears in their heads.
This is funny because I have actually had someone spout of this argument of "where else do we get our idea of infinity!? Has anyone ever observed infinity? No! It comes from God!" as a way of trying to convince me that god exists.
How do we know there is no spectrum of existence?
You were a brilliant woman even back then.
How do we get semantics in our minds to begin with (read the Chinese Room thought experiment). And how do we get the idea of perfection and infinity from an imperfect and finite world?
I think we don't actually think about perfection and infinite things. Think about problems of memory, It is said by Psychologists that most people tend to not be able to remember more than 7 things is asked to recall something, unless they have special training/methods. Actual infinity cannot be thought of, but only the title of it, basically. Say you want to push this very far and think of an invisible, magical, universe-wide fantasy creature made up of a substance that we are not aware of. All of these things are things that never existed in reality, as far as we know, yet we have no problem getting the picture in our head. The problem is that people make up problems that don't exist, such as that we can't think of things that don't exist, which isn't true.
Why can't an finite substance cause and infinite substance?? Where is this explained in the mediations if explained at all? Also why does Descartes say he knows he exists while not knowing ANYTHING but the says he cannot know anything if he does not know God??
Why do you need the causal principle?
Didn't you only deal with one of his two logical proofs here? The second one is the inherent properties argument. Eg. he cannot conceive of a mountain without a valley. Therefore he cannot conceive of an infinite being without it being infinite. Its been a while since I've read Descartes and maybe I'm not doing it full justice, but I'd be interested to see your thoughts and/or refutation of that argument.
I am interested by the idea of different levels of reality. I would argue that finite and infinite substances are equally existent, but properties are interesting. They can't exist without a substance, but are they less real? They might be a construct of our minds, but you can apply a property to any substance. I suppose not quite every substance, a thought can't be brown, but for the most part properties can be on anything. Does this mean they are just as existent as substances, just in a different way? Heck if I know. The practical side of me doesn't even care. DAMMIT PRACTICALITY, IF YOU WOULD JUST HELP ME THINK WE COULD ALL FIGURE THIS OUT TOGETHER!!
With regards to the Causal adequacy principle, specifically the notion that the cause of something must have the same properties of the thing it is causing. Im not sure that this is exactly what Descartes is saying because such a notion is quite circular as God evidently does not have the same properties as me, because God does not have imperfection, or "finiteness". I took Descartes argument to mean that the cause of something must be more real, or bigger than the thing it is causing. (The absurdity of this lies with Hobbes' criticism).
If you could tell me where I might be mistaken, that would be great :)
Heh just picked up myth of sysiphus. Haven't started it yet, but for ethics goes, I've been pondering the question of our rapidly growing mortality rate, how far it could extend in the future, and if there would be a justifiable age in to which the choice of suicide would not only be acceptable but expected.
I actually did two videos on the Myth of Sisyphus a long time ago, they're the two about Welcome to Night Vale.
Philosophy Tube Thanks for that. Almost finished with MoS. Ill check out WtNV soon. Sounds interesting.
Thanks for the video. I'm a new viewer. It was interesting. Could you please provide a specific reference as to where you found the two principles (the levels of reality principle and the causal adequacy principle) identified in your analysis and used in your critique? Did you identify these principles yourself? As an amateur reader in philosophy it would be helpful to know where to get critical responses to the arguments raised by the many philosophers.
By the way, does your critique address Descartes' concept of clear and distinct ideas? This concept doesn't seem to fall into either of the two principles that you identified as being the two key arguments Descartes' God argument used or rested on. Your thoughts would be appreciated.
TylerJTube The principles themselves are in Descartes, and there are other recommended readings in the description :) Welcome to the channel!
Philosophy Tube I realize that I am taking up the losing side of this argument, but I think that there may be some merit to Descartes trademark argument. For the record I have not gone back to re-read Descartes writings - which I should probably do but I have read some secondary sources on Descartes argument. The one book I read does not identify the two principles that you have identified perhaps because this book was published in 2000. This book only identified a principle the author called the Principle of Adequate Reality. This author suggested that Descartes derived this principle from the Principle of Sufficient Reason and then goes on to show how Descrates used this principle to establish that there were different levels of reality. The author didn't seem too convinced by Descartes arguments and seemed, in my opinion, unsure about what exactly Descartes' argument was about. To me, it seems obvious that we regularly talk about levels of reality and we all understand what we mean when we discuss them. For example, we understand and agree with Descartes that colours are properties of finite substances and that colours don't exist apart in some Platonic or Scholastic form. We also recognize that we are not infinite beings etc so like Descartes we need to explain how we obtained the idea of the infinite and God. Of the two options that explain how we get this idea of the infinite: 1) through abstraction (negation), or 2) a trademark from God himself - Descartes argument and reasoning seems to me to make more sense because if our idea of the infinite is only arrived at through abstraction we are left with explaining why the external world is not merely an illusion and why the external reality conforms to the ideas and theories we have of it. In short, we would be left in Descartes' prison. Another way we routinely discuss "levels of reality" is by making the distinction that Descartes himself made between formal and representational reality. If this distinction is not acknowledged by modern philosophers then many epistemological questions simply disappear. For the record, the book on Descartes that I am reading is part of the Wadsworth Philosophers Series called On Descartes by Garrett Thomson. Please excuse any errors in the above - I am really bad at not re-reading what I write. So my question to you and anybody who does not find Descartes' argument successful is how do you get out of his prison of doubt and/or whether you feel still trapped? :)
Helium has different properties from the hydrogen it is made of yes, but ultimately they are made of the same properties, protons, neutrons electrons, quakrs etc. all thats different is the number? I don't understand am I missing something here? how could a professor miss that
+Jack Gilfoyle Yes they are made of the same stuff, but the point still stands that helium has quite different properties from the hydrogen that's fused to make it.
+Philosophy Tube Of course, blonde moment. Your videos are helping me with my Philosophy course. Keep it up brother
+Jack Gilfoyle No worries :)
Nice. Small point: it's *John* Cottingham.
Even if the reasoning were more sound, wouldn't that just prove the physicality of the concept of infinity? I notice a lot of philosophers trying to prove god and thinking they've done so when they (in theory) prove something like an infinite regress.
How can "I think stealing is morally wrong" be true or false? It's true that I think stealing is morally wrong whether or not stealing is morally wrong. Enlighten me.
Ok, so lets say its true. And? What conclusion follows that premise? None (i.e. what you think doesn't matter).
Mike F Are you asking a question?
Seriously? What you think doesn't matter. Something is either wrong or it isn't.
Mike F I agree. Stealing is morally wrong. What I think does matter, though. For if you can say that about me I can say that about those who think stealing is morally wrong. I am not a relativist.
Please please do the ethics of suicide prevention!!!!! There are so many angles to look at it from.
DesCartes ideas of "more real" and "less real" revolve around not the state of a things reality, but the certainty we can believe that thing to be reality (as you explained at the beginning of the video)
I'm sure philosophy has a better answer to DesCartes than dismissing his argument off of a misunderstanding of what he's saying...
But I find the idea "the being resembles that which made it" to be solid and one of the best philosophical arguments for God(s)
Good Day.
My question is what the source of the idea of God? Man can preceive traits and characteristics of man and amplify them to god like proportions in order to rationalize the concept of God but that does not exactly equate to what God actually is. Since God is something we are not which is infinite substance is it even possible to comprehend God?
***** I think it was Abu Bakr, the 1st Muslim caliph, who said "Our incomprehension of God is our comprehension of Him". Timothy winter (abdul hakim murad) said that "We can know nothing other than the Unknowable" ...
If you think about it that is true - everything around us is God's Actions, every instant of creation is actually God's actions. Nothing exists except that He created it, so it's coming from Him, is from His plan, His Designing, His Will, and points to Him, but our limited knowledge cannot contain knowledge of His Unlimited Essence, but also our knowledge cannot escape Him either, as we cannot think of anything other than what He created for us to contemplate.
This is really well timed. I was just recently talking with several of my friends about the term qualia. Several recent videos I watched used the term and only slightly more recently did I get find a useful definition for it.
For the quick and dirty definition see: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia
Anyway we got onto the topic of questioning the existence of qualia. Like with the color brown they seem only to be able to exist as a property of something else, so it would seem to make sense to label them as existing "less" since they require something else in order to exist.
I would think this more of a trinary definition of existence than a spectral one, but none the less I am not sold on the idea that existence must be binary.
If existence only applies to physical things are we saying thoughts don't exist?
If we say thoughts exist are we equating thoughts with physical properties?
Is there a difference between what exists and what is real?
I don't think those are good rebuttals honestly.
The PSR is something Descartes takes to be true a priori. I don't know what he's referencing when talking about Hellium and Hydrogen having different properties, but I'd find it to be very strange if their properties weren't (theoretically) grounded on what they atomically consist in and what their structure is.
And I can see one denying the "threefold" division of reality, but I also fail to see how the argument fails. Even if one were to say that all there are are substances, how can you explain the fact of an idea of an infinite/perfect being other than that such a being exists?
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools... (Romans 1:21-22 NIV)
What gets me about all this philosophizing is that it happens within such a contrived vacuum. What about Evolution? I mean aren't we biological being. For a biological perspective on human consciousness listen to Mark Solms and Antonio Damasio talks.
On the philosophical level,
The missing key is appreciating the Mindscape ~ Physical Reality divide.