63 thoughts on “Descartes. 3rd Meditation”

    1. Please restate your question. I do not understand what you are asking about and how the problem of doubt that you mention in your questions relates to the 3rd Meditation.

  1. “Only judgment can be false or true in judging about the correspondence of an idea with its source” – Would unfair/false judgement would have a negative effect on the source? If so, why? What leads to unfair judgement?

    1. From what I understanding of Descartes model of what it means to have a good or bad judgement, a negative effect on the source would not be necessarily an important part of that judgment. Being to make a judgment means, to align the idea that I have with the corresponding reality.

      If in front of me there are two apples and two pears, I say that I have a total of four fruits, which matches the basic concept 2 + 2 = 4 then I know for sure it’s a correct judgement. However if I said I had five, then it would be an incorrect judgment.

      Not sure how Descartes would define an unfair judgment. I don’t think of him as addressing ethics in what he presents thus far, I would be curious to know too.

      1. Hector, you are basically right. Judgment cannot affect sources. Judgment is a mental operation. Ideas on the basis of which I judge and the ideas of the things that I judge are all in my head. I can judge only ideas. I cannot judge things. Nobody can judge things. We only judge ideas of things that we have in our heads. However, I do not see why you single out a moral judgment. I make a false/wrong judgment when an idea of good deed that I have in my head does not corresponds to the idea of deed that I judge. E.g.: ‘imprisonment of illegal immigrants is good’. If the moral idea in mind is ‘all people are born equal’, the judgment ‘imprisonment of illegal immigrants is moral’ is wrong/false.

  2. Do we really have an idea of God? We don’t have specific images of God. Only what artists draw.

    1. In these readings, yes there are two ideas of God that are presented, which are quite distinct from the other.

      There is the form of God as an idea of religion, which would be the one that is attributed the many different concepts of religion and who the God head is – could be as clear as Zeus for some greeks, or Jesus Christ for Christians. Or it could be incredibly conceptual as the Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews and Allah the God of Muslims. ETC.

      There is the form of God as that ultimate concept that exists as the proof that there is an outside in Descartes thinking. In the video the professor calls it the God of the Machine, a perfect being. Descarte writes “‘God’ I understand a substance that is infinite, eternal, unchangeable, independent, supremely intelligent, supremely powerful, which created myself and anything else that may exist.”

      1. Thank you Hector. I only would like to add that for Descartes the first understanding of God is a vulgar or wrong understanding. We only can speak about God as an idea of infinity, which cannot be imagined.

  3. When Descartes writes “By ‘God’ I mean the very being the idea of whom is within me – the one that has no defects and has all those perfections that I can’t grasp but can somehow touch with my thought.” What does he mean by ‘whom is within me’? In this phrase does Descartes refer to the capacity of doubting and thinking, which then creates for the capacity to conceptualizing an idea even if it is not graspable?

    1. Yes, you are right. I begin to doubt out of realization of my imperfection. But to realize that I am not perfect, I have to have the idea of perfection, which cannot be produced by my thinking, which begins in doubt, because doubting already presupposes the idea of perfection. Otherwise, I would not start to think if the idea of perfection would not be implanted in me.

    1. Ideas pop up in my head. They are there. If I have an idea on chimera right now in my head, it is in my head. It cannot be false. Judgment is a process of corresponding of different ideas, a process of matching of different ideas. When I examining an idea of an elephant in my head and make a judgment, “Elephants are small insects,’ I make a false judgment. It is false because the idea of an elephant and an idea of a small insects do not correspond, do not match.

    1. Given that the human or embodied mind has the faculty or capacity to have sensory ideas of pains, colors, sounds, and so on, where these are occasioned on the occurrence or presence of certain motions in the brain, and nothing of the motions in the brain is transferred to the mind, and nothing resembling the pains, colors, and sounds is present in bodies including the brain, then the ideas of pains, colors, and sounds the ideas of those qualities must be all the more innate.

    2. Descartes does not argue that it is an innate idea. He argues that the idea of color can be produced by my mind. He says more about color and our interpretation of color in the 5th Meditation. You may return to this question next week.

  4. How we can understand that the concept about the God it s innate idea ?

  5. We understand that we are finite beings. Our polar opposite is an infinite being. So we understand what an infinite being is. And the infinite being must have created this idea. Which makes it an innate idea.

  6. Descartes in the Third Meditation states: “By the word ‘God’ I understand a substance that is infinite, eternal, unchangeable, independent, supremely intelligent, supremely powerful, which created myself and anything else that may exist.” As far as I understand, Descartes does not talk about God in the sense that people usually perceive it, according to their religious beliefs. Descartes calls God some “infinite/perfect force or substance”. Why does Descartes call this force specifically “God” and why does he use the term? Why does not he use the word “Nature” or “supreme force” or something else?

    1. You are right Descartes’ god is not a religious god. But, still, conceptually, monotheistic idea of god presupposes the idea of infinity and perfection. Descartes, faithful to his method, clarifies the idea of God, by clearing it from everything that does not belong to the idea. Descartes may give it a different name, but why to bother?

  7. Descartes says that there are 3 possible sources for an idea. They can be innate, come from outside, or can be manufactured by my mind. My question is that can’t we technically say that the third source is also innate? Descartes puts these sources into 2 groups (internal and external). I feel like he could have skipped going over the 3 possible sources and have gone straight to the 2 groups since it’s basically the same thing. It seems to me that it is an extra step that isn’t necessary.

    1. You are right, one can combine innate and invented sources as inside sources, and Descartes does it. He contemplates this 3rd source to make certain that he does not miss anything.

  8. At the end of the third meditation, Descartes arrives at the conclusion that, out of all the ideas that one can possess, only that relating to the infinite, or the perfect i.e. god cannot have been produced from inside, thus it comes from outside. But Descartes finds a new problem, and that is, if god exists, and he is perfect, why do we constantly make mistakes (why do we see imperfections)? – In fact god created everything so it operates in perfect harmony, both within itself and in its relation to other creatures; therefore, to be perfect is to unite with god and to conform to his will. While Descartes’ definition of god takes on an extended meaning; in a strictly biblical sense this could be translated as saying your prayers and staying committed to your vows to god.

    Is it possible that, this obvious distinction between humans and the rest of nature, meaning the fact that humans are capable of reflecting on such complex matters (god, infinity), which is not true in the case of other animals, in a way makes us responsible for the conditions we create for ourselves as a herd. For instance, the crisis with COVID could be alternatively handled in ways that wouldn’t lead to extended closures and so many deaths.

    1. You are right. According to Descartes, I am responsible for the mistakes that I make.
      Descartes discusses this problem in the 4th Meditation. You may restate this question for the next week.

  9. If you doubt you doubts how do you know that’s it’s a doubt you’re doubting? Is it be cause your doubts aren’t mathematically proven?

  10. If God is perfect, do I being a human, with God in me, have the ability to be perfect?

  11. Descartes described existence and perception as essentially superficial things that are dependent on acceptance of common “rules”/foundation and the affirmation of others. My existence is unreal because i am only a thinking thing to those that have perceived me to be. Moreover, people that have no idea that I exist, on the other side of the world for example, think i am nothing; theoretically i exist based on the concept/perception/common sense that others exist outside of ourselves but to them I’m a metaphorical being– much like God.
    Life outside of our immediate perception is manufactured by the mind. We only know it to be real after having experienced it. We’ve not experienced God, yet it is perfect. And perfection often invites doubt: What makes this thing perfect? Is it flawed? My senses do not appeal to it yet it is.
    God is infinite and unchanging.

    Is the idea of this ‘perfection’ ‘infinity’ a necessary foundation for human existence? That is– even if it was possible for individuals to exist only in the capacity that they perceive themselves to, if there’s no universal foundation for understanding existence (concepts of something more powerful put in place to understand things that are in fact unable to be fully grasped) would coexistence/existence be plausible?

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