Descartes 2 - A Priori Knowledge and Mind/Body Begin this lecture by talking about the very famous argument presented

by Descartes called The Wax Argument. - Consider a piece of ax! it has certain physical properties. eg it has a taste! a smell! makes a sound and it has a certain shape and has hardness. But if you take this ax and hold it next to a fire! all those physical properties change. "t no longer has the same shape! smell! si#e! taste! feel etc. But although all its properties have changed! e kno that it is the same ax throughout this process. But there is nothing e can point to that is the same! every one of its perceptible properties has no changed. $o do e kno that it is the same ax before and after melting% Descartes says e cant kno it by sensing it! because everything e sense is no different. &o e must kno the ax not via the senses by via rational intuition. By thinking! by using reason. &o hat e have is some appearances. The ax looks a certain ay. 'n the basis of these appearances e make a (udgement that there is a physical ob(ect out there and e kno that the essential attribute of this physical ob(ect is that it is extended in space and can take different shapes. But strictly speaking e don)t have any contact ith the ob(ect! hat e see are its appearances. We perceive the real nature of the ax solely ith our mind. Descartes Philosophy of Mind &o e can sum all this up. The first thing is that Descartes is a dualist so he thinks there are t o fundamentally distinct elements to reality. The first element of reality is the mind. The mind is a distinct! non-physical entity hose essential characteristic is thinking. The other end of this dualism is the physical nature of the orld outside the mind. *hysical ob(ects never think. Their essential characteristic is )extension) +taking up space, and are purely mechanical. &o hat -'. are! really! is an immaterial mind. What you interact ith are ideas! +your experiences, hich are mental +i.e. non-physical,. &o hile you think you are encountering physical ob(ects! that is not the case! you are encountering representations of those physical ob(ects. The procession of these ideas makes up your mental life! hich you have immediate and unfailing access to. "t)s impossible for us to be rong about our o n experience. The /uestion then is! does my experience accurately represent reality% "n the common sense vie the outside orld has certain properties and e come in contact ith them. But in Descartes) vie those properties are in our mind or our experience of them. &o a tree is not green! the green exists in my mind. &o you! are a non-physical thing and are not in the physical orld. As a rough analogy! and its not a very good analogy and probably Descartes ouldn)t be happy ith it! but e can

modify it. Take the analogy of the mars rover. The rover is on mars and sending back images to the 0asa scientists. The scientists are not on mars! or interacting ith mars in any real direct sense! they are in a room in 1ort 2auderdale. .sing those images they are able to navigate a mechanical ob(ect around the surface of mars and the mechanical ob(ect really is on the surface of mars. This is something like the picture Descartes has ith respect to the mind and the body. Another analogy - "magine that you have been raised in a room here you are never allo ed to leave. "n this room you have a television monitor that sho s you scenes of the outside orld. Based on these images you conclude that there are people out there things. But ho do you kno the camera is really out in the outside orld% "t could be the case that someone ants you to think there are people out there doing various things but in reality it is all (ust a $olly ood set or computer simulation designed to fool us. &o you are trapped in the room! you cant get out! all you have as evidence is the images on the screen. We cannot leave the room and go outside and check! so ho do e kno % Descartes argues that if 3od exists and ouldn)t deceive us! e can trust the ay things appear. Because 3od is supremely good and ouldn)t deceive us. &o if e could prove that 3od exists! e can trust that the ay our senses depict the orld is the ay things really are because 3od is not a deceiver. The Source of our Ideas &o ho can e tell the difference bet een these t o competing hypotheses about the origins of our experiences. 'n the one hand e have a hypothesis that there is some trickster out there ho is feeding us this stuff and so our experience is radically rong. 'n the other hand e have the hypothesis that there is a benevolent being out there ho guarantees that the picture is set up right. Descartes proposes that there are three possible sources for the ideas e have. - 'ur ideas may be caused by physical ob(ects. - 'ur ideas may be caused by ourselves +like his idea of a purple vampiric unicorn., - 'r they may be innate +in the mind already, At this stage in the method e cannot rely on physical ob(ects because that is hat e are trying to prove. &o that leaves only t o options. 'ur ideas are generated from us or they are innate. An innate idea is an idea that is )inborn). Descartes then argues that all clear and distinct ideas are innate. Why does he make this claim% $e argues that most of my ideas " could have made up myself. eg people! dragons! angels! fire etc etc. But one special concept is 3od or the idea of a perfect being. Could " have been the source of that idea% The concept of a perfect being is a concept of an infinite being. +infinite po er! love! kno ledge, There are no limits to 3od. Descartes argues that e could not be the source of our idea of 3od. $e says the cause of an idea must be as real as the effect! other ise you get something from nothing. &o hatever is produced ithin the effect! must have been contained in some ay ithin the cause. &o Descartes is employing a notion that is similar to Aristotle)s!

the idea that ithin a substance! there must be something that remains the same +i.e. the material cause,. &o Descartes goes on to argue! that in this case the effect is my idea of 3od and this is therefore infinite because its the idea of an infinite being. &o only an infinite being could cause that idea. 'nly something that is itself infinite could be the source of that idea. &o e can then infer that the only thing that could have created my idea of 3od is itself 3od! an infinite being. Therefore 3od must exist! other ise " ould have no explanation for ho " could even have the concept of 3od. &o Descartes has concluded that 3od exists! and $e is not a deceiver! so " can have kno ledge of the physical orld. But this kno ledge consists in the innate a priori clear and distinct truths +math! geometry! physics! logic! philosophy,. Descartes calls the information from our senses! )obscure and confused). The real kno ledge e have of the physical orld is this a priori kno ledge. &o he is saying e kno ho the physical orld behaves! but e kno ho it behaves on the basis of logic and mathematics and physics. That is hat tells us the ay the orld )really) is. &o no vie . e ill look at a couple of ell kno n problems for the Cartesian orld

Mental Causation The first problem is based on the causal interaction bet een the mind and the body. "t seems intuitively obvious that mental events cause physical events and vice versa. 1or example! - 4y belief that there is beer in the fridge combined ith my desire for beer cause me to go to the fridge to get a beer. +mental events beliefs and desires causes physical action, - The itch on my leg causes me to scratch it! kicking me in the shin causes me pain! hich in turn causes me to hop around holding my leg. +$ere a physical stimulation causes something mental hich causes something physical, - 4y ondering something may lead me to ask a /uestion hich ill lead to noises being made hich causes me to hear the ans er to the /uestion. &o mental causation is part of our folk psychology! folk psychology is the vie s about our psychology that normal people have. &o the /uestion is ho do the mind and the body interact% Descartes thought that the mind and the brain communicated via the pineal gland. 4ovement in the brain! caused in a mechanical ay by material bodies! resulted in an experience of pain! a belief! a desire etc. But if mind is non-physical ho can it be affected by anything that is physical% The ay that causation is understood at this period in time involves a physical connection bet een t o ob(ects. *hysical things cause by bumping into other physical things. $o can anything bump into a non-physical mind% $o can a non-physical mind

bump into anything physical% &o this as idely held to be a vexing problem about Descartes vie . 0o heres a more modern orry about Descartes vie .. Causal Closure Dualism seems positively at odds ith modern science. About 567 years after Descartes! they started discovering various conservation la s for physics. *hysicists posit conservation la s for mass and energy. Which makes the claim that mass is not created or destroyed. &o hen e burn a piece of ood the amount of ash left over plus the amount of energy released +heat, is exactly e/ual to the original mass of the ood. &o is this is the case ho could a non-physical thing causally interact ith a physical thing% "f it did there ould be some unaccounted for energy in the system hich e don)t find. This has led to materialism8 everything is completely made of the postulates of a completed physics. &o there is also the fact that no one else has access to your experience. This leads to a problem about /uality inversion. Descartes also says that colour is not out there! it is something produced in the mind. &o hen someone says that is red! another person may see it as green. &o the t o people can differ in their conscious experiences even though they both agree that the ob(ect is called )red). &o there is no ay you could tell that our experiences are different. This is a problem for Descartes. What is even orse is ho do " kno if you are having any feeling at all. 0ot only is it possible that your experiences are radically different to mine! but its possible that your experience may not even be there. There is no ay that " could tell if you ere simply a #ombie. &o the /uestion for Descartes is ho do you kno that isn)t going on right no % That everyone else is (ust a character in your dream% This is the problem of other minds. And the vie that you are the only one that exists and everything else is a figment! is the vie kno n as solipsism.