Just subbed, looking forward to seeing your future presentations of Thomist natural philosophy. As it's said, "We'll watch your career with great interest!"
I invented a new word for this: "pre-futed." It's what happens when Catholic thinkers anticipate later ideas of modernity, while the modern thinkers think they're coming up with an original idea.
Not to be biased but the same thing occurs in Orthodoxy prior to the advent of Catholicism. Not trying to be rude, just thought I would point that out.
Not to be biased but we are the same church and you split from catholicism. The nicene creed predates your departure from proper hierarchy. @IndiaNumberOneCoubtry
In debate with those corrupted by both Descartes and all the pseudo philosophies germinated by Cartesianism, I've always been able to successfully discredit René by using the "Agere Sequitur Esse" principle. Thanks to this video I have yet another arrow for my quiver: The "denying Reason by employing Reason to support my claim" sophism. Thank-you and God bless you for this and all your videos! + Pax +
If it helps anymore: there is of course no way to satisfy absolute scepticism of our bodies and the external world. However, I don't think it matters. If we are brains in vats we'll never know. We should live as if we are not brains in vats. We have to trust the existence of things in order to go about our day. The same can be said for Russell's Last Thursdayism. Neither of them are refuted, but I ignore both with the concept of a Properly Basic Fact. These are a set of facts which are needed in order to live life. Two of them are that we are a) not brains in vats and b) the universe didn't start Last Thursday, including our memories of the past.
Daniel Dennet of all people has a very good critique of this argument. I think it's called "Where am I?" and it basically argues against the possibility of such a thing using neuroscience. Of course, the point of the argument is to get you to question the reliability of your senses, but it's an interesting read and it's short so I thought I'd recommend it. I don't like his other work, but this was something I actually enjoyed.
I think you are misunderstanding Descartes, which may be an argument for anti Rationalism? Descartes applies doubt systematically throughout the Meditations until, having doubted his senses, external reality, etc, he makes two realizations that cannot be doubted and upon which all external reality rest: 1) God has to be all good (etc.) and is incapable of deceit (the Evil Genius argument) and 2) no deceit or deceiver can make him believe that he does not exist as a thinking being. From these twin foundations, one then can reconstruct all of external reality, coherently. PS: This all can be summarized in the simple philosophical axiom: Never put Deshorse before Descartes.
Descartes did not doubt his own logical capacity for reason, rather he doubted his senses and experiences as a way to know truth. He postulated it was possible that a demon was creating a faulty reality to deceive him. But one needs to have the capacity of reason to be deceived.
Your mental capacity and rationality is dictated by your environment and thus how you percieve it (senses). When we were children we were barely conscious, it is only through interacting with the world do we build consciousness gradually.
@@GranMaese His main break away with scholastic philosophy is that philosophers used to question their own reasoning and trust their senses are source of contact with reality, and find out how to better deal with the environment and each situation by fixing their reasoning. While Descartes doesn't doubt his reasoning... for him, if something is wrong, it's obviously not his reasoning, so it must be the environment and/or his senses. "Only my mind can be trusted to judge and decide what's real and what's not": this is the type of thinking a lot of people have inherited from him and others like him.
@@lynb.3040 Yes, which is a fallacious thinking. The whole point. His mind comes from (or is formed by) his senses, if he says he can't trust his senses, then by default he can't trust his mind.
The reason I cling on to Cartesian metaphysics so desperately is that Aristotle defines the soul as an actualization of the body and thus to be one with god in spirit is impossible. With Cartesian metaphysics, there is mind body duality and thus immortality, and in turn, ascending to God, is possible. If I were to design a way to upload consciousness into a computer, it would require mind body duality. Descartes believed in Transubstantiation, he just believed that "the soul of Jesus Christ imprints upon the bread and wine" which while it raises difficult questions, but at least it lets us move forward.
I recommend Aquinas' comments on the soul. It's indebted to Aristotle of course but it's interesting. Keep in mind though that the resurrection is physical. When we die our souls are not with our bodies but rest in the bosom of Abraham. At the resurrection they are united again in perfect bodies and we go to Hell or the New Earth. Union with God and the resurrection are physical events, not ghostly.
Even though the soul is the principle of act in a body, the soul can continue to exist without it although it would more so properly exist in a body composite, so we can have union with God
Great mathematician and achieved a formulation of the metaphysical ontological argument of all, Yes Leibniz, but Descartes was a great mathematician too.
True, ones that come from reason alone,but to takes this even further,there is somethings we know how to do without experience, primordialy eating and opening your eyes, so there are even more"mudane" examples that disprove empiricism
Generally, when attacking Descartes, it is attacked that what he tried to do, to doubt everything and only affirm pure reason, is impossible; in his own method, he does no such thing. The simplest examples of this are the language he uses, which is not purely rational, nor the idea of the method which is based on his life experiences, both of which were learned sensitively, that is, empirically. And he never questions them. Descartes even puts reason itself in doubt, he even doubts mathematics and other rationalizations in the meditations, as well as the senses. The problem is that the notion of doubting everything is already rational. He can only doubt if he is rational, the very methodical precept of doubting being a rationalization. In this way, he would be using the authority of rationalization to deny that his own rationalization has any authority, hence the contradiction. The phrase, or methodical principle: “doubt everything in order to arrive at an indubitable truth” is a rationalization, and so, it can't deny rationality without denying itself. Even the point of the deceitful devil, for example, is a rational exercise, calling into question the very attempt to doubt reason, which the entire thing depends. There is no method without rationalization, so to deny the authority of the method is to deny the authority of rationalization. But the first stage of the method is to doubt rationalization and then affirm it as the only possible method. The contradiction is twofold: the first is that the method denies the very thing on which it is based, and the second is that the method wants to give authority to that which gives authority to its very existence. It's similar to a child giving the authority of his own existence to its father. It's still possible to defend Descartes by proclaiming that doubt is a practicality, not a real doubt, but a useful doubt for the method; that he doesn't really believe in such doubt, but sees it only as a scientific apparatus for formulating the method. Which I find strange, since in the book he really does seem to believe in the doubt, he even uses his own life as a pretext, and has an existential catharsis when he finds existence in the act of thinking about the doubt.
I'd say the existence of psychosomatic symptoms of depression, or any number of correlatory effects from mental illness disproves a true separation of the body and the mind.
0:30 why is empiricism philosophical error? 2:24 i know very little on descartes so i apologise for any errors i make. what is meant by reason here? from my perspective, the cogito is not a logical deduction (which is what i believe is mean by 'reason') but instead an intuition, immediately apprehended as true. i think his cogito ergo sum is found not in meditations but in discourse on method, which comes before meditations so maybe he stopped using the phrase as this made it sound more like a deduction. 2:25 does he put his own rational faculties into doubt? i think he stills believes in deduction as this can be arrived at from intuition, i.e., the law of non-contradiction can be intuited from which he may derive basic laws of logic like deductions. 4:18 i think this is less of a presupposition but more of an extended intuition. he may have seen it as intuitively true that thinking requires a thinker, or intuitively that the nature of thinking is that they are had by thinkers (minds), rather than this being just a presupposition. if we were to put this intuition in a rational form, maybe it would be something like this: spatial objects cannot exist without a space to exist within, similarly thoughts cannot exist without a thinker to exist within. you can always doubt the rational form, but the intuition itself (for descartes) would not be doubted. 6:48 could he not aprehend being through introspection and intuition? (what do you mean by aprehend being?). or could he not have understanding of being through his intuition of god or the knowledge of god he would say that he has innately? 7:03 why should this principle be accepted? 7:14 doesn't 'intellectual cognition' presuppose an intellect? 7:16 doesn't 'we have sensory experience' presuppose a 'we'? 7:53 why should this form of psr be accepted as a strict truth? how do we know there is consciousness? how do we know they are caused by substances? how do we know they're distinct from our minds? why can the reason be no other? why should we produce them necessarily or freely? why would god giving us sensory information be deception?
Honestly the whole video is sadly just Christian copium which you can see in the comments of other viewers. Saying that Kant is wrong because some of his ideas are based in Descartes is like calling a typing machine a computer because they both can type. So I highly doubt you will get some "rational" answers to your questions and I don't think the author of the video really has tried to even understand modern philosophy outside of his Christian dogma and zeal or if he has tried well he has failed. Like if you look at the bigger picture here the whole statement is MY FELLOW CHRISTIANS WE GOT HIM and since Descartes laid the way for most of modern philosophy... well you know we got em too! AMEN! (christian emoji)
@@frostwori’m just wondering what the authors’ reasoning is; i feel like some points of views that are against him are simply dismissed in the video, but that’s only what i see
@@EitherSpark They are and what is even more funny is that Thomas Aquinas, especially in his theory of knowledge acts as an empiricists as he believed knowledge begins with the senses, the only difference is that he contributes intellect to the divine, because trust me. All of Aquinas arguments are just posteriori, to give an example he is sitting at a restaurant smelling orange marmalade hence orange marmalade exists, when in reality it could just be a perfume.
@@EitherSpark Well it's an oversimplification of Thomas Aquinas' argument about motion, known as the "First Way" in his Five Ways to prove the existence of God. It states that everything in motion must have been set in motion by something else, leading to a chain of movers. However, this chain cannot go back infinitely, so there must be a "First Mover" that is not moved by anything else, which he identifies as God So he is observing (smelling) motion (orange marmalade) :D and making an abduction of the argument that there must be somebody cooking oranges in the kitchen. Which is a reasonable suggestion but there are also hundreds of other explanations to why it smells like oranges or if the streets are wet, yes it could have rained but it could have been a flood or a cleaning vehicle.
I love St. Thomas but I think you are mistaken. Descartes establishes the certainty of his "I think therefore I am" on the claim that God is not an evil deceiver. I think he sufficiently proves this through his tying of clear and distinct ideas with the facts of reality. For instance, we know we are not dreaming because we have clear and distinct ideas about our past life and actions and we can connect them in one timeline whereas we would not be able to in a dream. In response to Hobbes who said we might just be dreaming that we have remember past events in our life, Descartes says that this is only dreaming, and whereas we are deceived in dreams, we easily recognize deception once we are awake. So I don't think that Descartes is doubting the rational faculty, he is saying that the rational faculty cannot be trusted unless it is supported by our knowledge of God not being a deceiver.
Your analysis is correct. One key note is that Descartes scholars tend to view the Evil Demon doubt as being meta-cognitive, that is, the doubt may imply that all of our cognitive processes may be flawed as a result of our imperfect nature. As such, the rational faculty is undermined. It is only through the notion of clear and distinct ideas that we cannot help but assent to that Descartes is able to justify the existence of God, and from this it follows (clearly and distinctly) that he cannot be a deceiver and that meta-cogntive doubt is not rationally held.
@@nicholasrandazzo3510 that's interesting because I am reading the Principles of Descartes by Spinoza and he says that we don't have the freedom to reject clear and distinct ideas. And he repeats Descartes in saying that if the mind could determine its own nature, it would give itself perfections.
@@coffeewleibniz Yes. The “pull” of clear and distinct perceptions like the cogito is that we have no way (when directly understanding it) to deny its truth. The Stoic conception of kataleptic impressions is a similar claim.
The claim is that in order to “think” you must first “be” so “I think therefore I am” is better reconciled as “I think because I am” If you were not in a state of “being” you could not produce “thoughts” therefore the first principle should be one of being not of thinking. If you were “thinking without being” then you would be in the “evil genius brain jar” model discussed in the video or in some other similar context. Coincidentally, psychological research shows that people’s “thoughts” are largely a mental framework under which we try and justify their irrational emotions. Human are not inherently rational, we are just more rational than other animals, which is why we need to justify our emotions rationally in the first place. If it is true that our emotions precedes our logical reasoning then by what standard could one conclude that “thinking” is a “first principle”? Given the current research, even if you reject all my other arguments, then you would have to concede that the axiom should be “I feel therefore I am” This may seem irrelevant to some but I can assure you the downstream consequences of flawed philosophy is unintentional suffering.
@@robertd9965 eastern orthodox fathers especially it's full of metaphysical words that echo like the gnostic teaching and mysticism of Kabbalah and Sufi teachings
If your familiar with Penrose he is currently giving miss aligned perception management an olive branch in the same way that Descarte is working to re allocate affinities to ensure they can be lived out as a measure of faith and are not getting in the way to the point they are alienated and disregarded as obstacles
Doing philosophy with Decharte, I think one is doing a bad philosophy or rather no philosophy at all. How can a carpenter work without the carpenter's bench?
I agree with the circularity problem of Descartes, but the empyristic axiom (nihil est in intellectu quod prius non fuerit in sensu) is incoherent and false and will inevitably lead you to hume's radical empyricism. Leibniz and Berkeley also refuted the argument that God would deceive us if the external world doesn't exist independent of mind pointing out that by the same logic God would never permit us to make errors in judgement which we clearly do and yet we don't attribute them to God but to a mistaken use of our cognitive faculties. Also no theist really believe that the external world exists absolutely independent of mind (only of limited minds), since it can't exist without God creating and sustaining it in existence.
I don't think this is a charitable interpretation of Descartes' cogito and his first meditation. I don't believe he ever questioned being and hence the principle of non contradiction. The point of the cogito is that the perception of thinking demonstrates oneself as a being without reference to five senses.
I agree. In the same way, the law of non-contradiction presupposes being as well. To use it in that way to debunk anything doesn't serve any purpose but to deconstruct itself.
This seems to be a case where entire fields of thought are born of misinterpretation, like Nestorianism taking on things Nestorius never believed, or modern protestants denying Mary's perpetual virginity, or the beat movement going political against the will of Jack Kerouac... you know the deal.
@@MatthewMcRowan Pseudo-Dionysius has a massively understated influence on Christian theology from Rome to the East. His "Mystical Theology" is a must read.
Despite the mistakes that Descartes made in his method, starting from Pyrrhonian, global skepticism, this is only one minor mistake in Descartes' magnificent oeuvre. In suma teologica, exempli gratia in question 75. Aquinas offers a nebulous solution to the problem of mind and body. Therefore, if Aquinas is really ingenious as you say, then he himself must have seen the impossibility of any kind of realism, and if he wanted to maintain a realistic position, he would have to accept that God is the link between these two opposing spheres, thus accepting Descartes' position. Materialism and realism are wrong and unfounded, idealism is the correct answer.
Will you respond to Majesty of Reason's objections to the argument from motion? Seem like they are pretty solid arguments and not any mischaracterizations of the argument.
what's worse about Descartes (the biggest dead end of western philosophy in like, forever) is that he was bling to the fact that he reach a point of circular reasoning, rather than some deep insight. Quite an embarrassment, actually. The very grammar of "I think therefore I am" means nothing else but "I exist and my thinking exist, therefore I exist, as so does my thinking." That "ergo" is completely superfluous , it's a tautology. Of course he felt panic and began constructing superfluous entities: a Demiurge that does not deceive for some reason (and what if he did, what difference would it make)? If his brain wasn't so rigid, he might've recognized that reasoning must start somewhere, from what could be termed axioms. And sins one cannot get past the circular reasoning of existence and thinking, cogitation (and, most importantly, an AWARENESS of the same), these must serve as axioms and an entire edifice of philosophy might be erected on this foundation, saving us from all the garbage that followed.
It is far more doubtful that ALL that is in the intellect had to be in the senses FIRST. The idea of a perfect infinite being, for instance is not first in the senses in any meaningful way. Plus, there are many other aspects that cannot be traced back meaningfully to sensory stimuli. Now, Descartes does not affirm that he believes (even methodologically) that everything is false. Doubt does not imply falsehood. So Incan doubt that 2+2=4 without compromising that the negation is true. Both might be doubtful even if one of them HAS TO BE true (principle of non-contradiction would hold at the same time that does not help you getting one truth without foundation).
@@victormanuelperaltadelrieg6871 I think you’ve misunderstood the parapytetic axiom. We can abstract universal concepts from sense data, we aren’t just limited to particular sense experience like the empiricists are.
This is similar to the objection posed by the Jansenist theologian Antoine Arnauld to which Descartes replied that you are first aware that you think before you are aware that you exist. Descartes defines thoughts as whatever we are immediately aware of and ideas are the forms in which are thoughts exist. People made fun of Descartes by saying "I walk therefore I am" but Descartes replied that we can only say that we have the idea that we are walking. So our awareness of things comes first before we can assume that something exists outside of our awareness.
@@jamesdewanca Descartes believed that ideas have representative reality or represent something real to some degree. This was another one his arguments for God's existence since we have an innate idea of God.
Yeah, but you assume knowledge of the principle of being comes from the senses... but on what basis? If only I could remember what was in my mind before my senses developed! Descartes' argument would be true if pure intellection presented the idea of being to him. I get that the idea of being is part of the sensory experience, but the comprehension of this concept could be in pure intellection as far as I understand, or it could be innate, or like you said in senses
but our human nature and intellect is inherently flawed and perverse as a result of the fall? we prefer sin all the time and rationalise it to ourselves as well. peace be upon you nonetheless.
@adamsheaffer In one of his letters after his trip to the Galapagos Islands, Darwin admitted that his primary reason for coming up with the notion of "evolution" was to destroy Christianity by undermining it. Having been gifted with a strong intellect, he knew full well the principle that the greater cannot come from the lesser, for that would violate the Principle of Entropy. So, fully aware of his culpability, he published his interpretations of his observata anyway. This betrays him as an evil man. A very evil man. So I would say, in this sense, that Darwin not only contradicted himself, but also contradicted principles of Reason. Is my judgmental erroneous? If so, please let me know in what manner am I wrong, for I'd rather be rightfully corrected than have a false perception of reality.
As far as I know, he didn't clarify that in his work, really. And even if he would, why deny that your senses exist? Why deny that what we see, hear and touch exists? And again, how does he define existence? He doesn't, because he'd depend on the external world to define it, and would have to explain where did his mind obtain that definition from, and how did he even learn to turn thoughts into words without the interference of the external world. By the way, he doesn't really go far with this exercise. He says he'll do it, but them skips to the assumption that everything exists. He couldn't even one day live supposing that nothing exists, aside from himself, and he doesn't even try. This is not true philosophy. True philosophy is to be lived and experienced accordingly by the philosopher. By in his attempted "philosophy" we see deception, and in his biography lack of virtue.
@@lynb.3040 It’s not that sense experience doesn’t exist, philosophers didn’t understand sensory data to be all that reliable. This is why Aristotle adopted a model of knowledge which made the undeceived intellect dependent on the confused senses, and why so many after him developed on the same idea. Creatures can only know through the senses, but sense requires interpretation, which is the task of intellect. This inherently involves the intelligibility of the universe and the distinction of truth and being. Descartes is wrong in the latter event.
@@j.johnson2190 I see. I ended up writing things that were inaccurate above, and thus unclear. But I agree with you. But the main point I was trying to make is that philosophers used to rely on the external world to obtain information they need to question their own reasoning and methods, by first coming up with something they wanted to investigate, and then attempt to get to the truth on that. And they would build on top of others, conversing with them. And what Descartes does is pretty much opposite to all of that. The decides to doubt everything at once, except his own method and his own reasoning. And doesn't dialogue with anyone, as far as I know. Because doing that would be relying on his senses and the external world.
The immanent faculties are perfect cognitive operations, the act of possessing is perfect regardless of the subject which possesses by the operation. Descartes never even engaged in rational operations, he was an animal who was able to possess but refused to believe it. I wonder who decided Descartes should be even known today, perhaps a scheme to confuse the modern world. Brother, love you efforts but you're not using Aristotle to the fullest. You're using very logical arguments that cannot be maintained in the realm of "the being", "actus essendi" is another, much deeper matter that Aquinas corrected in Aristotle.
I think you misundertand Descartes' actual contention here, the whole point of cogito ero sum is to agree that the possibility of reason and non-contradiction must be axioms. It's also just patently untrue that intellect can only come from information found through the senses because God is an intellect who existed before there was anything to sense
Thanks for the Collab!
I ❤️ you(no homo)
Just subbed, looking forward to seeing your future presentations of Thomist natural philosophy. As it's said, "We'll watch your career with great interest!"
Do you think you could do a robust and comprehensive course on Thomism?
plz make more videos on descartes as well as epistemology in general!
The Bible alone debunks DeScartes! Neither the scholastics nor the hesychasts are necessary!
I invented a new word for this: "pre-futed." It's what happens when Catholic thinkers anticipate later ideas of modernity, while the modern thinkers think they're coming up with an original idea.
Not to be biased but the same thing occurs in Orthodoxy prior to the advent of Catholicism. Not trying to be rude, just thought I would point that out.
Not to be biased but we are the same church and you split from catholicism. The nicene creed predates your departure from proper hierarchy. @IndiaNumberOneCoubtry
Not to be rude or anything, but Eastern "Orthodoxy" split from rome because the byzantines didn't want to submit to the rightfull Vicar of Christ.
There is nothing new under the sun.
There's already a word pre-refuted that means the exact same thing
I am a Ex Muslim, I recently converted to Christianity. Just realized that it was the greatest decision of my life ever. ❤
🎉
Amen. I hope you can become Catholic
Be Rational, I Recommend Thomism. Because God Is Considered Relatable To Events
Congratulations! God bless you
Welcome home, everyone is welcomed to stay, only a few will want it, but know that God loves you
I'm loving these collabs, keep it up with the amazing content
@@kimsimte4586 I’m glad, thank you!
Do you know the motto of the Insecure Cartesians?
It's:
"Cogito, ergo sum, cogito."
In debate with those corrupted by both Descartes and all the pseudo philosophies germinated by Cartesianism, I've always been able to successfully discredit René by using the "Agere Sequitur Esse" principle. Thanks to this video I have yet another arrow for my quiver:
The "denying Reason by employing Reason to support my claim" sophism.
Thank-you and God bless you for this and all your videos!
+ Pax +
Antonio Damasio, the neurologist who wrote 'Descartes's Error", seemingly reached the same conclusion, rather saying "I exist, therefore I think".
The brain in a vat argument had been giving me some depressions in the last few days. This video comes right on time. God bless!
If it helps anymore: there is of course no way to satisfy absolute scepticism of our bodies and the external world.
However, I don't think it matters. If we are brains in vats we'll never know. We should live as if we are not brains in vats. We have to trust the existence of things in order to go about our day. The same can be said for Russell's Last Thursdayism. Neither of them are refuted, but I ignore both with the concept of a Properly Basic Fact.
These are a set of facts which are needed in order to live life. Two of them are that we are a) not brains in vats and b) the universe didn't start Last Thursday, including our memories of the past.
Daniel Dennet of all people has a very good critique of this argument. I think it's called "Where am I?" and it basically argues against the possibility of such a thing using neuroscience. Of course, the point of the argument is to get you to question the reliability of your senses, but it's an interesting read and it's short so I thought I'd recommend it. I don't like his other work, but this was something I actually enjoyed.
@@Oatmeal_Mann Thanks for recommending! God bless!
It caused me panic months ago
I think you are misunderstanding Descartes, which may be an argument for anti Rationalism? Descartes applies doubt systematically throughout the Meditations until, having doubted his senses, external reality, etc, he makes two realizations that cannot be doubted and upon which all external reality rest: 1) God has to be all good (etc.) and is incapable of deceit (the Evil Genius argument) and 2) no deceit or deceiver can make him believe that he does not exist as a thinking being. From these twin foundations, one then can reconstruct all of external reality, coherently. PS: This all can be summarized in the simple philosophical axiom: Never put Deshorse before Descartes.
This is exactly that I was thinking.
Well said
Based material
Descartes did not doubt his own logical capacity for reason, rather he doubted his senses and experiences as a way to know truth. He postulated it was possible that a demon was creating a faulty reality to deceive him. But one needs to have the capacity of reason to be deceived.
Your mental capacity and rationality is dictated by your environment and thus how you percieve it (senses). When we were children we were barely conscious, it is only through interacting with the world do we build consciousness gradually.
@@trambly611 how can something material affect and determine the immaterial? Many of Descartes contemporaries acknowledged this problem.
Doubting his senses and experiences is ultimately doubting his own logical capacity to reason. Is a fallacious premise.
@@GranMaese His main break away with scholastic philosophy is that philosophers used to question their own reasoning and trust their senses are source of contact with reality, and find out how to better deal with the environment and each situation by fixing their reasoning. While Descartes doesn't doubt his reasoning... for him, if something is wrong, it's obviously not his reasoning, so it must be the environment and/or his senses. "Only my mind can be trusted to judge and decide what's real and what's not": this is the type of thinking a lot of people have inherited from him and others like him.
@@lynb.3040 Yes, which is a fallacious thinking. The whole point.
His mind comes from (or is formed by) his senses, if he says he can't trust his senses, then by default he can't trust his mind.
I knew this channel was gonna be good in the first video, one year ago!
Thank you for using Reverend Father Coppens. He is very underrated.
The reason I cling on to Cartesian metaphysics so desperately is that Aristotle defines the soul as an actualization of the body and thus to be one with god in spirit is impossible. With Cartesian metaphysics, there is mind body duality and thus immortality, and in turn, ascending to God, is possible. If I were to design a way to upload consciousness into a computer, it would require mind body duality. Descartes believed in Transubstantiation, he just believed that "the soul of Jesus Christ imprints upon the bread and wine" which while it raises difficult questions, but at least it lets us move forward.
I recommend Aquinas' comments on the soul. It's indebted to Aristotle of course but it's interesting.
Keep in mind though that the resurrection is physical. When we die our souls are not with our bodies but rest in the bosom of Abraham. At the resurrection they are united again in perfect bodies and we go to Hell or the New Earth. Union with God and the resurrection are physical events, not ghostly.
Even though the soul is the principle of act in a body, the soul can continue to exist without it although it would more so properly exist in a body composite, so we can have union with God
Aristotle and Aquinas’ biggest L was calling the soul the form while the body is the matter 🙂↔️
Excellent video, as always.
I appreciate that
Well done! Descartes was still one helluva mathematician though.
Not gonna deny that
Great mathematician and achieved a formulation of the metaphysical ontological argument of all, Yes Leibniz, but Descartes was a great mathematician too.
I was anticipating this video! having Joshy in it makes it even better!
Sanctus and joshy are such a W duo
@@Iminyourare12 Real
Absolutely stunning presentation. Lots of Thinking involved. Best information on my Faith continuously.
Rene Descartes still goes crazy in math
Descartes in Math 📈
Descartes in Ontology 📉
@@vincenzorutigliano5435
Leibniz in Math: 📈
Leibniz in Ontology: 📈
And no ,not all knowledge comes from experience,what about mathematical/abstract truths, that have to do nothing with our physical environment?
I believe Descartes believed that some ideas are innate. His trademark argument comes to mind.
True, ones that come from reason alone,but to takes this even further,there is somethings we know how to do without experience, primordialy eating and opening your eyes, so there are even more"mudane" examples that disprove empiricism
I seriously doubt that. There is nothing undoubtable but the Ultimate and Eternal Power of Christ the Lord Adonai.
❤️✝️✡️❤️
❤☪️❤️
Could you do one on Spinoza and/or Kant?
Does this mean that Thomas Aquinas did not agree with St. Augustine's "I doubt,therefore I exist"?
He was literally a platonist
Generally, when attacking Descartes, it is attacked that what he tried to do, to doubt everything and only affirm pure reason, is impossible; in his own method, he does no such thing. The simplest examples of this are the language he uses, which is not purely rational, nor the idea of the method which is based on his life experiences, both of which were learned sensitively, that is, empirically. And he never questions them.
Descartes even puts reason itself in doubt, he even doubts mathematics and other rationalizations in the meditations, as well as the senses. The problem is that the notion of doubting everything is already rational. He can only doubt if he is rational, the very methodical precept of doubting being a rationalization. In this way, he would be using the authority of rationalization to deny that his own rationalization has any authority, hence the contradiction. The phrase, or methodical principle: “doubt everything in order to arrive at an indubitable truth” is a rationalization, and so, it can't deny rationality without denying itself. Even the point of the deceitful devil, for example, is a rational exercise, calling into question the very attempt to doubt reason, which the entire thing depends.
There is no method without rationalization, so to deny the authority of the method is to deny the authority of rationalization. But the first stage of the method is to doubt rationalization and then affirm it as the only possible method. The contradiction is twofold: the first is that the method denies the very thing on which it is based, and the second is that the method wants to give authority to that which gives authority to its very existence. It's similar to a child giving the authority of his own existence to its father.
It's still possible to defend Descartes by proclaiming that doubt is a practicality, not a real doubt, but a useful doubt for the method; that he doesn't really believe in such doubt, but sees it only as a scientific apparatus for formulating the method. Which I find strange, since in the book he really does seem to believe in the doubt, he even uses his own life as a pretext, and has an existential catharsis when he finds existence in the act of thinking about the doubt.
Thanks much for this video.
I do agree with Cartesian dualism though, that the mind and body are directly dissociated.
I'd say the existence of psychosomatic symptoms of depression, or any number of correlatory effects from mental illness disproves a true separation of the body and the mind.
@@arethmaran1279and I guess the Bible agrees with that
Wow, that was Truly Amazing!
yayyyyy.. new descartes vids!!!!! plz make more videos on descartes as well as epistemology in general!!!!
Aquinas was very good for all Times.
Amazing argument, thanks for the video ✝️🇻🇦
✝️ 🚾
0:30 why is empiricism philosophical error?
2:24 i know very little on descartes so i apologise for any errors i make. what is meant by reason here? from my perspective, the cogito is not a logical deduction (which is what i believe is mean by 'reason') but instead an intuition, immediately apprehended as true. i think his cogito ergo sum is found not in meditations but in discourse on method, which comes before meditations so maybe he stopped using the phrase as this made it sound more like a deduction.
2:25 does he put his own rational faculties into doubt? i think he stills believes in deduction as this can be arrived at from intuition, i.e., the law of non-contradiction can be intuited from which he may derive basic laws of logic like deductions.
4:18 i think this is less of a presupposition but more of an extended intuition. he may have seen it as intuitively true that thinking requires a thinker, or intuitively that the nature of thinking is that they are had by thinkers (minds), rather than this being just a presupposition. if we were to put this intuition in a rational form, maybe it would be something like this: spatial objects cannot exist without a space to exist within, similarly thoughts cannot exist without a thinker to exist within. you can always doubt the rational form, but the intuition itself (for descartes) would not be doubted.
6:48 could he not aprehend being through introspection and intuition? (what do you mean by aprehend being?). or could he not have understanding of being through his intuition of god or the knowledge of god he would say that he has innately?
7:03 why should this principle be accepted?
7:14 doesn't 'intellectual cognition' presuppose an intellect?
7:16 doesn't 'we have sensory experience' presuppose a 'we'?
7:53 why should this form of psr be accepted as a strict truth? how do we know there is consciousness? how do we know they are caused by substances? how do we know they're distinct from our minds? why can the reason be no other? why should we produce them necessarily or freely? why would god giving us sensory information be deception?
Honestly the whole video is sadly just Christian copium which you can see in the comments of other viewers. Saying that Kant is wrong because some of his ideas are based in Descartes is like calling a typing machine a computer because they both can type. So I highly doubt you will get some "rational" answers to your questions and I don't think the author of the video really has tried to even understand modern philosophy outside of his Christian dogma and zeal or if he has tried well he has failed.
Like if you look at the bigger picture here the whole statement is MY FELLOW CHRISTIANS WE GOT HIM and since Descartes laid the way for most of modern philosophy... well you know we got em too! AMEN! (christian emoji)
@@frostwori’m just wondering what the authors’ reasoning is; i feel like some points of views that are against him are simply dismissed in the video, but that’s only what i see
@@EitherSpark They are and what is even more funny is that Thomas Aquinas, especially in his theory of knowledge acts as an empiricists as he believed knowledge begins with the senses, the only difference is that he contributes intellect to the divine, because trust me. All of Aquinas arguments are just posteriori, to give an example he is sitting at a restaurant smelling orange marmalade hence orange marmalade exists, when in reality it could just be a perfume.
@@frostwor i see your point, but im not sure about the orange marmalade example🤣
@@EitherSpark Well it's an oversimplification of Thomas Aquinas' argument about motion, known as the "First Way" in his Five Ways to prove the existence of God. It states that everything in motion must have been set in motion by something else, leading to a chain of movers. However, this chain cannot go back infinitely, so there must be a "First Mover" that is not moved by anything else, which he identifies as God
So he is observing (smelling) motion (orange marmalade) :D and making an abduction of the argument that there must be somebody cooking oranges in the kitchen. Which is a reasonable suggestion but there are also hundreds of other explanations to why it smells like oranges or if the streets are wet, yes it could have rained but it could have been a flood or a cleaning vehicle.
I love St. Thomas but I think you are mistaken. Descartes establishes the certainty of his "I think therefore I am" on the claim that God is not an evil deceiver. I think he sufficiently proves this through his tying of clear and distinct ideas with the facts of reality. For instance, we know we are not dreaming because we have clear and distinct ideas about our past life and actions and we can connect them in one timeline whereas we would not be able to in a dream. In response to Hobbes who said we might just be dreaming that we have remember past events in our life, Descartes says that this is only dreaming, and whereas we are deceived in dreams, we easily recognize deception once we are awake. So I don't think that Descartes is doubting the rational faculty, he is saying that the rational faculty cannot be trusted unless it is supported by our knowledge of God not being a deceiver.
Your analysis is correct. One key note is that Descartes scholars tend to view the Evil Demon doubt as being meta-cognitive, that is, the doubt may imply that all of our cognitive processes may be flawed as a result of our imperfect nature. As such, the rational faculty is undermined. It is only through the notion of clear and distinct ideas that we cannot help but assent to that Descartes is able to justify the existence of God, and from this it follows (clearly and distinctly) that he cannot be a deceiver and that meta-cogntive doubt is not rationally held.
@@nicholasrandazzo3510 that's interesting because I am reading the Principles of Descartes by Spinoza and he says that we don't have the freedom to reject clear and distinct ideas. And he repeats Descartes in saying that if the mind could determine its own nature, it would give itself perfections.
@@coffeewleibniz Yes. The “pull” of clear and distinct perceptions like the cogito is that we have no way (when directly understanding it) to deny its truth. The Stoic conception of kataleptic impressions is a similar claim.
The claim is that in order to “think” you must first “be” so
“I think therefore I am” is better reconciled as “I think because I am”
If you were not in a state of “being” you could not produce “thoughts” therefore the first principle should be one of being not of thinking.
If you were “thinking without being” then you would be in the “evil genius brain jar” model discussed in the video or in some other similar context.
Coincidentally, psychological research shows that people’s “thoughts” are largely a mental framework under which we try and justify their irrational emotions.
Human are not inherently rational, we are just more rational than other animals, which is why we need to justify our emotions rationally in the first place.
If it is true that our emotions precedes our logical reasoning then by what standard could one conclude that “thinking” is a “first principle”? Given the current research, even if you reject all my other arguments, then you would have to concede that the axiom should be “I feel therefore I am”
This may seem irrelevant to some but I can assure you the downstream consequences of flawed philosophy is unintentional suffering.
A subtle teaching similar to gnostic teaching. The few selected people are imbued with secret knowledge of the mysteries of life.
Which teaching are you referring to?
And: can you elaborate what you mean?
@@robertd9965 eastern orthodox fathers especially it's full of metaphysical words that echo like the gnostic teaching and mysticism of Kabbalah and Sufi teachings
this is intreseting because I was just reading on descartes in "a Mans knowledge of reality"
@@KNXGHT.7 Good book by Wilhemsen
video is goated with the sauce, keep it coming
If your familiar with Penrose he is currently giving miss aligned perception management an olive branch in the same way that Descarte is working to re allocate affinities to ensure they can be lived out as a measure of faith and are not getting in the way to the point they are alienated and disregarded as obstacles
Doing philosophy with Decharte, I think one is doing a bad philosophy or rather no philosophy at all. How can a carpenter work without the carpenter's bench?
9:15 , wow! That really explained my questions about God.
I agree with the circularity problem of Descartes, but the empyristic axiom (nihil est in intellectu quod prius non fuerit in sensu) is incoherent and false and will inevitably lead you to hume's radical empyricism. Leibniz and Berkeley also refuted the argument that God would deceive us if the external world doesn't exist independent of mind pointing out that by the same logic God would never permit us to make errors in judgement which we clearly do and yet we don't attribute them to God but to a mistaken use of our cognitive faculties. Also no theist really believe that the external world exists absolutely independent of mind (only of limited minds), since it can't exist without God creating and sustaining it in existence.
I don't think this is a charitable interpretation of Descartes' cogito and his first meditation. I don't believe he ever questioned being and hence the principle of non contradiction. The point of the cogito is that the perception of thinking demonstrates oneself as a being without reference to five senses.
I agree. In the same way, the law of non-contradiction presupposes being as well. To use it in that way to debunk anything doesn't serve any purpose but to deconstruct itself.
This seems to be a case where entire fields of thought are born of misinterpretation, like Nestorianism taking on things Nestorius never believed, or modern protestants denying Mary's perpetual virginity, or the beat movement going political against the will of Jack Kerouac... you know the deal.
What do you think about likes of Meister Eckhart, St John of the Cross and Pseudo-Dionysius and apophatic theology?
St John of the Cross is a fantastic doctor of the Church.
@@MatthewMcRowan Pseudo-Dionysius has a massively understated influence on Christian theology from Rome to the East. His "Mystical Theology" is a must read.
@SanctusApologetics will you respond to the comments which object to this video in the comment section or in another video?
Descartes and Saint Aquinas mean the same thing.
Despite the mistakes that Descartes made in his method, starting from Pyrrhonian, global skepticism, this is only one minor mistake in Descartes' magnificent oeuvre. In suma teologica, exempli gratia in question 75. Aquinas offers a nebulous solution to the problem of mind and body. Therefore, if Aquinas is really ingenious as you say, then he himself must have seen the impossibility of any kind of realism, and if he wanted to maintain a realistic position, he would have to accept that God is the link between these two opposing spheres, thus accepting Descartes' position. Materialism and realism are wrong and unfounded, idealism is the correct answer.
i didn't understand. I'll watch again tommorow :P
Will you respond to Majesty of Reason's objections to the argument from motion? Seem like they are pretty solid arguments and not any mischaracterizations of the argument.
@@jakxes3758 Yes, that will be a future video not too far from now.
what's worse about Descartes (the biggest dead end of western philosophy in like, forever) is that he was bling to the fact that he reach a point of circular reasoning, rather than some deep insight. Quite an embarrassment, actually.
The very grammar of "I think therefore I am" means nothing else but "I exist and my thinking exist, therefore I exist, as so does my thinking." That "ergo" is completely superfluous , it's a tautology. Of course he felt panic and began constructing superfluous entities: a Demiurge that does not deceive for some reason (and what if he did, what difference would it make)?
If his brain wasn't so rigid, he might've recognized that reasoning must start somewhere, from what could be termed axioms. And sins one cannot get past the circular reasoning of existence and thinking, cogitation (and, most importantly, an AWARENESS of the same), these must serve as axioms and an entire edifice of philosophy might be erected on this foundation, saving us from all the garbage that followed.
It is far more doubtful that ALL that is in the intellect had to be in the senses FIRST.
The idea of a perfect infinite being, for instance is not first in the senses in any meaningful way. Plus, there are many other aspects that cannot be traced back meaningfully to sensory stimuli.
Now, Descartes does not affirm that he believes (even methodologically) that everything is false. Doubt does not imply falsehood. So Incan doubt that 2+2=4 without compromising that the negation is true. Both might be doubtful even if one of them HAS TO BE true (principle of non-contradiction would hold at the same time that does not help you getting one truth without foundation).
@@victormanuelperaltadelrieg6871 I think you’ve misunderstood the parapytetic axiom. We can abstract universal concepts from sense data, we aren’t just limited to particular sense experience like the empiricists are.
god bless bro nice video, i think i will start reading philosophy gain
Comment for traction
WHAT IS THE INTRO MUSIC?!!??!!!!??
Descartes has it backwards. I am, therefore I think.
This is similar to the objection posed by the Jansenist theologian Antoine Arnauld to which Descartes replied that you are first aware that you think before you are aware that you exist. Descartes defines thoughts as whatever we are immediately aware of and ideas are the forms in which are thoughts exist. People made fun of Descartes by saying "I walk therefore I am" but Descartes replied that we can only say that we have the idea that we are walking. So our awareness of things comes first before we can assume that something exists outside of our awareness.
thoughts are whatever we are immediately aware of are ideas which are the forms in which are htoughts exist.
Thoughts, however are not fecund
@@jamesdewanca Descartes believed that ideas have representative reality or represent something real to some degree. This was another one his arguments for God's existence since we have an innate idea of God.
Kierkegaard says the same.
'I am, what wonder then that I think' ?
The Bible alone debunks DeScartes! Neither the scholastics nor the hesychasts are necessary!
Thinking is not a rational activity. Thinking rationally is a rational activity, but this is not the proposition of Cartesian logic.
No, The Cogito makes the way into the Perfection of God and in that, even it is a Illusion, the Illusion exist.
What's wrong with absurdity 11:29
They mean absurdity in that the worldview has contradictions, not the absurd when it comes to the meaning of life as described by Camus.
Yeah, but you assume knowledge of the principle of being comes from the senses... but on what basis? If only I could remember what was in my mind before my senses developed!
Descartes' argument would be true if pure intellection presented the idea of being to him.
I get that the idea of being is part of the sensory experience, but the comprehension of this concept could be in pure intellection as far as I understand, or it could be innate, or like you said in senses
but our human nature and intellect is inherently flawed and perverse as a result of the fall? we prefer sin all the time and rationalise it to ourselves as well. peace be upon you nonetheless.
I see Aquinas i upvote.
Descartes did not contradict himself, just as Darwin was not contradicting himself.
@adamsheaffer
In one of his letters after his trip to the Galapagos Islands, Darwin admitted that his primary reason for coming up with the notion of "evolution" was to destroy Christianity by undermining it.
Having been gifted with a strong intellect, he knew full well the principle that the greater cannot come from the lesser, for that would violate the Principle of Entropy.
So, fully aware of his culpability, he published his interpretations of his observata anyway.
This betrays him as an evil man.
A very evil man.
So I would say, in this sense, that Darwin not only contradicted himself, but also contradicted principles of Reason.
Is my judgmental erroneous? If so, please let me know in what manner am I wrong, for I'd rather be rightfully corrected than have a false perception of reality.
I don't think Descartes ever doubted his/our rational faculties. Just our sense experience.
Everyone doubted sense experience. Reason supplies us with means of sifting sense experience for truth.
As far as I know, he didn't clarify that in his work, really. And even if he would, why deny that your senses exist? Why deny that what we see, hear and touch exists? And again, how does he define existence? He doesn't, because he'd depend on the external world to define it, and would have to explain where did his mind obtain that definition from, and how did he even learn to turn thoughts into words without the interference of the external world.
By the way, he doesn't really go far with this exercise. He says he'll do it, but them skips to the assumption that everything exists. He couldn't even one day live supposing that nothing exists, aside from himself, and he doesn't even try. This is not true philosophy. True philosophy is to be lived and experienced accordingly by the philosopher. By in his attempted "philosophy" we see deception, and in his biography lack of virtue.
@@lynb.3040 It’s not that sense experience doesn’t exist, philosophers didn’t understand sensory data to be all that reliable. This is why Aristotle adopted a model of knowledge which made the undeceived intellect dependent on the confused senses, and why so many after him developed on the same idea. Creatures can only know through the senses, but sense requires interpretation, which is the task of intellect. This inherently involves the intelligibility of the universe and the distinction of truth and being. Descartes is wrong in the latter event.
@@j.johnson2190 I see. I ended up writing things that were inaccurate above, and thus unclear. But I agree with you. But the main point I was trying to make is that philosophers used to rely on the external world to obtain information they need to question their own reasoning and methods, by first coming up with something they wanted to investigate, and then attempt to get to the truth on that. And they would build on top of others, conversing with them. And what Descartes does is pretty much opposite to all of that. The decides to doubt everything at once, except his own method and his own reasoning. And doesn't dialogue with anyone, as far as I know. Because doing that would be relying on his senses and the external world.
The irony is that almost all l1beral rhetoric is taken from voltaire copying St Thomas' Disputes but ign0ring his Answers to those Disputes.
Thomistic empricism is based.
A yo , I did not know you gotta be an empiricist to be a good catholic.
W vid
The immanent faculties are perfect cognitive operations, the act of possessing is perfect regardless of the subject which possesses by the operation. Descartes never even engaged in rational operations, he was an animal who was able to possess but refused to believe it. I wonder who decided Descartes should be even known today, perhaps a scheme to confuse the modern world. Brother, love you efforts but you're not using Aristotle to the fullest. You're using very logical arguments that cannot be maintained in the realm of "the being", "actus essendi" is another, much deeper matter that Aquinas corrected in Aristotle.
How you canr be so wrong about descartes?
I think you misundertand Descartes' actual contention here, the whole point of cogito ero sum is to agree that the possibility of reason and non-contradiction must be axioms. It's also just patently untrue that intellect can only come from information found through the senses because God is an intellect who existed before there was anything to sense
As a Cartesian Thomist, I’m offended by this video 😤
Ego igitur cogito
ekstablish...
Aquinas: "Checkmate".
Sophomorish take.
Aquinas is temporary gift but daycarts wisdom is eternals
laughing rn