Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Ways of Worldmaking', 'On Metaphysics (frags)' and 'Meditations'

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6 ideas

16. Persons / A. Concept of a Person / 1. Existence of Persons
1400 Some cause must unite the separate temporal sections of a person [Descartes]
     Full Idea: Because the entire span of one's life can be divided into countless parts, each one wholly independent of the rest, it does not follow from the fact that I existed a short time ago that I exist now, unless some cause creates and preserves me each moment.
     From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §3.49)
     A reaction: How could I 'prove' that this computer is the same computer as it was five minutes ago, even after I have accepted the straightforward existence of the computer? This is the Enlightenment Project, the mad desire to prove absolutely everything.
16. Persons / D. Continuity of the Self / 7. Self and Thinking
1401 Since I only observe myself to be thinking, I conclude that that is my essence [Descartes]
     Full Idea: Since I do not observe that any other thing belongs necessarily to my nature or essence except that I am a thinking thing, I rightly conclude that my essence consists in this alone, that I am a thinking thing, or substance whose essence is thinking.
     From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §6.78)
     A reaction: This actually appears to be my favourite confusion - of episemology with ontology. Compare 'whenever I see him he is smiling, so he must be happy'. Personally I am happy to say that my essence is thinking, as long as it needn't be conscious.
2299 I can exist without imagination and sensing, but they can't exist without me [Descartes]
     Full Idea: I can understand myself without the faculties of imagining and sensing, but not vice versa; I cannot understand them without me - a substance endowed with understanding.
     From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §6.78)
     A reaction: I think this is a fundamental and important error on Descartes' part. The idea that understanding is possible without imagination (and even sensation) is wrong, and it leads to the misleading concept of 'pure' reason.
6907 For Descartes a person's essence is the mind because objects are perceived by mind, not senses [Descartes, by Feuerbach]
     Full Idea: For Descartes the essence of corporeal things is not an object of the senses, but only of the mind; and hence it is not the senses but the mind that is the essence of the perceiving subject, that is, of man.
     From: report of René Descartes (Meditations [1641], 2) by Ludwig Feuerbach - Principles of Philosophy of the Future §17
     A reaction: This, of course, is why Descartes' approach can lead to idealism and solipsism, whereas the other approach leads to empiricism and animalism (Idea 6669).
16. Persons / F. Free Will / 1. Nature of Free Will
2283 Our 'will' just consists of the feeling that when we are motivated to do something, there are no external pressures [Descartes]
     Full Idea: The will consists solely in the fact that when something is proposed to us by our intellect either to affirm or deny, we are moved in such a way that we sense we are determined to it by no external force.
     From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §4.57)
16. Persons / F. Free Will / 4. For Free Will
2282 My capacity to make choices with my free will extends as far as any faculty ever could [Descartes]
     Full Idea: I experience that the will or free choice I have received from God is limited by no boundaries whatever, …indeed it is so great in me that I cannot grasp the idea of any greater faculty.
     From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §4.56)