HCJ SEMINAR PAPER ON DESCARTES, SPINOZA AND LEIBNIZ...
Descartes
Descartes
Rene Descartes (1596 - 1650) is considered to be the father of modern philosophy. His outlook was influenced by new physics and astronomy.
He published the book ‘Principia Philisophiae’ in 1644, this set out most of his scientific theories. He wrote others books including ‘Essais Philosophiques’ in which he wrote about optics and geometry.
He regarded the bodies of men and animals as machines; animals were ‘automata’ (or automated) and humans as soulful.
Mind and matter
He asked the question ‘If mind and matter can’t interact, why does the body behave as if the mind is controlling it? Geulincx (a follower of Descartes) came up with the theory of two clocks as the answer: Both clocks keep perfect time and when one points to the hour mark, the other will strike, so that if you saw one and heard the other, you would think that one caused the other to strike. Each clock is wound up by God (perfect timing) so that when you choose to, physical laws cause your arm to move even though your mind hasn’t really acted on your body.
There are of course problems with this theory, one being that the physical series is rigidly determined by natural laws and the mental series (which is parallel to it) must be equally deterministic. However the theory has certain merits; in a way it made the soul independent of the body because it was never acted upon by the body. The theory also allowed the principle ‘one substance can’t act on another’. There were two substances; mind and matter, interaction between the two seemed so inconceivable and Geulincx’s theory explained the appearance of interaction while denying its reality.
Doubt
Descartes most important books were ‘Discourses in Method’ (1637) and ‘Meditations’ (1642). In these he deals with ‘Cartesian Doubt’; this is where he tried to doubt everything he could possibly doubt, pushing away everything unknown to him and left the stuff he knew - the only thing he didn’t doubt was geometry because it is unchangeable. Descartes even doubted his own nationality/heritage. Whilst doing this, he regulated his conduct by following ‘common received rules’. He left his mind unhampered by the consequences of his doubt.
Descartes began with scepticism with regard to the senses. He says ‘Can I doubt it that I am sitting here?’ Yes, because sometimes I have dreamt it.
Beliefs can be doubted whenever there is sceptical alternative to suggest otherwise.
Your senses have deceived at least once in your life, so why not at any time? They have no more status than a dream or a hallucination.
A question raised from this is ‘What if it’s all a dream?’ this is where ‘The Matrix’ comes in. The film is based on Descartes’ main philosophical statement/idea ‘I think, therefore I am’ and the ability of think for yourself (intellectual autonomy). Descartes knew that his sensory experiences didn’t always match reality e.g. the opposite of lucid dreams?
In ‘The Matrix’ people live their lives in pods which feed them sensory information; this gives them the illusion of leading ordinary lives. Reality is a computer generated dreamworld called the Matrix.
Ideas (this includes sense perceptions).
According to Descartes, ideas seem to be of these sorts:
1: those that are innate
2: those that are foreign
3: those that are invented by me
The 2nd type of ideas are objects, we suppose this because nature teaches us think so and also because such ideas come independently of the mind e.g. sensation.
Spinoza
Spinoza (1632 - 1677) was “the most noblest and loveable of the great philosophers” according to Russell. He wasn’t as intellectual as a lot of the other great philosophers but he was ethically supreme.
Main works and ideas
His main work ‘Ethics’ was published after his death at the age of 43. The ‘Tractatus Theologico-Politicus’ and the ‘Tractatus Politicus’ were his other works. ‘Tractatus Theologico-Politicus’ was a combination of criticism of the Bible and political theory. ‘Tractatus Politicus’ was only about political theory.
In his criticism of the Bible, he deals with anticipating modern views, in particular, assigning later dates to many of the books of the Bible in the Old Testament, rather than relying on tradition.
His political theory derives from Hobbes. In the state of nature, there is no right or wrong because wrong involves breaking the law. According to Spinoza, the Sovereign can do no wrong and agrees with Hobbes in that the church should be secondary to the state. Spinoza opposes rebellion, even against a bad Government. However, he disagrees with Hobbes in that ‘democracy is the most natural form of government’. He says that freedom of opinion is important, however he says that religious questions should be decided by the state and not the church.
His work ‘Ethics’ deals with metaphysics, psychology of the ‘passions’ of the human mind and will; it sets out an ethics based on metaphysics and psychology.
Metaphysics and psychology are from Descartes and Hobbes respectively, but ethics is Spinoza’s own work and of most value in his book.
Spinoza says that everything is ruled by an absolute logical necessity. There is no free will in the mental sphere or the concept of chance in the physical world. Everything that happens manifests from God’s instructionable nature.
Spinoza and the emotions
Spinoza suggests the idea that ‘the mind has an adequate knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of God’.
The ‘passions’ of our minds distract us from our intellectual vision, he goes on to say that ‘everything endeavours to persevere in its own being’, therefore we get love and hate. According to Spinoza, self-preservation is the central motive of the ‘passions’.
The last two books of ‘Ethics’ were about human bondage (or ‘strength of emotions’) and the ‘power of understanding’ (or ‘human freedom’).
Leibniz
Leibniz (1646 - 1716) is one of the supreme intellects of all time.
There are two systems of philosophy that can be attributed to him; the first was optimistic and orthodox. The other was unearthed by more recent philosophers and is said to be ‘Spinoza-esque’, profound and coherent.
Substance(s)
His most popular philosophy can be found in ‘Monadology’ and ‘Principles of Nature and Grace’ - one of which he wrote for Prince Eugene of Savoy. His theoretical optimism is in the ‘Theodicee’ - written for Queen Charlotte of Prussia. Just like Descartes and Spinoza he based his philosophy on substance, but differed from Descartes and Spinoza in his theory of mind and matter and the number of substances. Descartes said there were 3: Mind, matter and God. Spinoza said there was 1 substance: God.
According to Descartes, extension is the centre of matter; Spinoza said that extension and thought are attributes of God, but Leibniz says that extension can’t be an attribute of a substance because extension involves plurality and can only be attributed to a number of substances and not just one, for this reason, each single substance must be unextended.
Monads (Very brief explanation)
Monads are an infinite number of substances; each monad is a soul, but only when viewed abstractly. No monad could be related to another.
Leibniz’s arguments for the existence of God
1: The Ontological argument: This deals with existence vs. essence. Any person or thing exists and also has certain qualities. The OA in 3 basic steps:
Definition: God is the greatest thing imaginable.
Premise: It is greater to (necessarily) exist than to not (necessarily) exist.
Conclusion: God (necessarily) exists.
Leibniz said that unless the coherence of a supremely perfect being could be demonstrated, the ontological argument fails.
2: The Cosmological Argument: This is a form of the ‘first cause’ argument. A basic version of the CA is this:
Every finite being has a cause or a meaning.
A causal loop can’t exist.
A causal chain can’t be an infinite length.
Therefore, a first cause (not an effect) must exist
Leibiniz said this: “There can be found no fact that is true or existent, or any true proposition, without there being a sufficient reason for its being so and not otherwise, although we cannot know these reasons in most cases”.
3: The argument from eternal truths: This is hard to define properly, but roughly this is it: A statement such as ‘it is raining’ is sometimes true but sometimes false. The statement ‘two and four’ is always true. Statements that are always true are called eternal truths. Also, the truths that are part of the content of an eternal mind.
4: The argument from pre-established harmony: Leibniz says that the argument is this; all clocks keep time with each other without any causal interaction, there must have been a single outside cause that relates to all of the clocks. This links to the monads theory, if all the monads never have interaction, then how do any of them know that the other ones exist? Apparently, this argument has no logical fault because it is based on empiricism.
Every substance only affects itself, but all the substances in the world yet seem to causally interact with each other because they have been programmed by God in advance to ‘harmonize’ with each other.
The end?
Sources used:
Sources used:
‘A History of Western Philosophy’ - B. Russell.
No comments:
Post a Comment