I imagine God not existing all the time...

So in considering the ontological argument I find the weakest point to be the fact that Descartes states that "I am not free to think of God without existence (that is, a surpremely perfect being without a supreme perfection)" (7:67). There are a few problems I find here. First off, unlike Descartes finds, I am pretty sure I can think of God as not existing. I do it all the time. I realize here that he draws on the fact that the idea of God is that of a surpremely perfect being. Furthermore, that his perfection entails existence as part of its essence, for to not exist would be to lack a perfection. However, why does perfection necessarily have to include existence. Descartes seems to just throw it out there that existing is a perfection, but does not really give any reason for it. However, even if we grant that existence is a perfection and thus to think of a surpremely perfect being, God, would be to think of him existing, what is to say that we actually do have the thought of this surpremely perfect being. I do not find it strange to argue that the perfection most attribute to God is actually beyond our grasp. To think about God being everywhere at all times, existing for eternity, omnipotent, omniscient, surpremely good, and other such ideas people label God with, seems like a pretty impossible task. We cannot begin to comprehend what eternity even means. We can state that to be perfect means to have these attributes, but at the same time we most likely do not even know some of the properties that a perfect being would have, and we could equally be mistaken about others because our intellect is not advanced enough to comprehend perfection. For us, surpreme perfection is just a term. Thus, even if we cannot think of a surpreme being without thinking it must exist, why can't we be mistaken about this? Who says we can even think of God, a supreme being? If we cannot even think of God the argument clearly fails. Thus I find Descartes' weakest point in his ontological argument to be the necessity of existence in perfection without a good argument behind it, and the assumption that we can even think of a perfect being and be correct about it.

Come on baby light my fire...

In the fifth meditation the meditator comes to the conclusion that certain properties of extension are "true and immutable natures" whether they exist outside of her or not. Furthermore, these properties are not an invention of her own intellect. Her reason for concluding this can be found in the consideration of a triangle. A triangle may or may not exist outside of the intellect; however, when considered one notices certain properties of the triangle such as its three angles equaling two right angles. These properties are clearly recognized even if one never thought about them before when imagining a triangle. These properties are what Hatfield calls discoveries as opposed to inventions. That is, these properties are found in a triangle whether one wants to see them or not and whether or not the triangle actually exists.

The discovered properties of a triangle can be compared to the warmth of a fire. The properties come to the meditator whether she wants them to or not in the same way a fire gives her warmth without her choice. The meditator may choose to not think of a triangle at all by thinking on other things; however, when the triangle is in her imagination the properties come to her. The connections found in the triangle reveal themselves to the meditator clearly and distinctly.

The meditator, we can agree, may think of a triangle whether it exists outside of her or not, in the same way she can think of a chimera, which clearly does not exist outside of her. The point to be proven is that the properties of the triangle are not inventions. The idea presented above is that since the meditator has no choice but to see these properties they could not have been invented in her intellect, rather the properties were discovered and furthermore must have preceeded her thinking of the triangle. Not only does this show that uninvented properties may be found whether or not the object of the idea exists outside the intellect, but also it gives a more concrete idea of what it is to have a clear and distinct idea.

I don't know if there is a fire in the room or not, but that definitely makes me feel warm inside...

It appears to me that freedom is first mentioned in the Fourth Meditation when the meditator first states that her errors depend on knowledge and "the faculty of choice or freedom of the will". Here is seems the most simple definition of freedom is choice. In fact later, after she discusses the faculty of knowledge she switches the terms in saying "the will, or freedom of choice". Thus, I think it is safe to say that freedom in this case is interchangeably freedom of choice or freedom of the will.

The tricky part is decifering what this means. This freedom of choice in the will turns out to be the greatest faculty the meditator can conceive of and thus because of the will that she considers herself to bear some likeness to God. Although God's will is greater due to knowledge power and object of the will, the meditator sees the will as simply the "ability to do or not do something (that is, to affirm or deny, to pursue or avoid)". Take an apple: one may affirm its juiciness or deny it, one may eat it or not eat it, one may pursue it by going towards it to partake of it or avoid it because maybe one's seen too many still lifes and it creeps him or her out. From here it seems that freedom is found in the will and the will is the ability to do or not do something, so given an object or a situation or an idea or whatever, freedom is the ability to do whatever with it.

Of course it is not that simple as the meditator lays out degrees of freedom (in the non-statistical sense). She goes on to explain the will further stating that "when the intellect puts somethin forward...our inclinations are such that we do not feel we are determined by any external force". Given that, the meditator continues stating that to be free does not mean we need to inclined both ways. In fact, and here's the tricky part, if we are inclined one way "the freer is my choice". Divine gracea and natural knowledge apparently only increase and strengthen freedom. Further, indifference in a choice is the lowest grade of freedom. If the meditator always saw what was true and good, she would be "wholly free" because she would never feel indifference.

So let's break that down. Indifference is the lowest grade of freedom. This makes sense to a degree to me because if we are indifferent about something than we won't utilize our freedom really, or if we do there's no passion or cause behind it. Some people may be indifferent towards say playing a sport. They don't really care either way, so they just play because whatever. Whereas, there may be people out there who want nothing more than to play a sport and they play because they are inclined to and they are really utilizing their freedom, it seems a higher form of freedom to me somehow. Most see the fact that higher freedom is when one is divinely inspired to be a form of determinism. Wholly free as always being told what is true and good seems to leave out the choice. However, I think it's really just a negation of relativism. If we are say divinely inspired or just always know what is true and good, well that may incline us one way, but for some it could still incline them the other way. We still have the choice to do or not do, we still have our will. We just happen to know what a true and good choice is. However, since we are finite and imperfect we are capable of deceit and wanting to do what isn't good and true. We've all done things we knew ahead of time weren't the best things. Just because we are given the knowledge does not mean we are forced to do anything. The fact that we have the knowledge makes us freer because when we utilize our will we know what we're getting ourselves into either way and we aren't just making a blind choice.

When I first thought about what it is for an idea to resemble a thing I thought it was pretty obvious. If one’s thinking in images then well the idea is a picture of the object, it resembles the appearance of the thing. If one’s thinking in language, well then the idea resembles the world in that the language refers to the object. However, we discussed in class how oftentimes our ideas are not in either of these forms. We do not usually think in pictures or in language necessarily. So if our ideas are not pictures or sentences how can they resemble the world?
I guess the first step to figuring this out is to figure out what an idea is. When Descartes discusses ideas he names only particulars. I feel that particulars would be easy enough to talk about. Our ideas of particulars resemble the world in the same way that Florka’s scribbles on the board resembled a cat. I feel that our ideas of particulars resemble the world in that for each individual person his or her idea refers to the given thing. My idea of a cat may be different from someone elses, but they both still resemble the world in that my idea of a cat leads me to be able to think about a cat, talk about a cat, picture a cat, and if I talk to you about a cat, you will know what I am referring to even if your idea of a cat is different. The idea does not resemble the world in the way a photograph does or the way a similar object does, but rather is resembles the world in that for each person the idea refers to the particular and allows one to be able to do different things with the idea.
I get a little iffy when it comes to considering ideas that are not particulars. However, maybe it is not as big if a problem as I may think. Take the generality of the idea of being a cat or the idea of justice. How much can those ideas even resemble the world? Is justice a thing that can be resembled? It can be exemplified, but I do not see how justice can be “resembled”. For something to be resembled is for a thing to be like or similar to it. Perhaps other generalities can resemble justice, like fairness, and maybe our ideas can resemble generalities in a sort of descriptive way. However, I do not see how our ideas can resemble generalities in the same way they resemble particulars.

Nature vs. Natural Light

The meditator finds herself classifying ideas in this section of the Third Meditation. Seeing that judgments are the only type of idea open to falsity, she considers the arguments behind her current "Resemblance Theory" which states that the judgments she makes are based on actual objects outside of herself. Her first reason behind holding to the resemblance theory is that nature taught her to thing this. This idea is explicitly defined as it is states "When I say 'Nature taught me to think this', all I mean is that a spontaneous impulse leads me to believe it, not that its truth has been revealed to me by some natural light." Taking nature first, what is meant is that as Hatfield states "we experience objects as having various properties". It is simply the idea that sensory perceptions present objects as they are outside of you. Nature teaching is to say that sensations are true representations of the world outside of the self. The meditator dismisses this as valid reasoning however as natural impulses have been wrong in the past and thus cannot be trustworthy at present.

When defining nature as teacher the meditator distinguishes it from the idea of natural light. She uses the cogito reasoning as an example of knowledge from natural light. She then goes on to explain that ideas from natural light cannot be doubted. Afterall, she maintains, "there cannot be another faculty both as trustworthy as the natural light and also capable of showing me that such things are not true." It seems, as Hatfield suggests, that the natural light may be another form of clear and distinct perception. However, it adds something to the equation in the idea as Hatfield notes that it is "all we have somehow makes it uninpeachable as a source of truth".

After consideration it seems that ideas that come to us clearly and distinctly seem to come from natural light, whereas ideas that come to us from the sensations and appear to be outside of us are things which nature has taught us. Furthermore, the former cannot be brought into doubt, while the latter can easily be doubted.

math sucks

I read and reread paragraph 4 of the Third Meditation probably about 10 times and could not really get an opinion about whether one can doubt if 2 + 3 = 5. However, after reading Hatfield I landed where I thought I would on the issue.

Paragraph 4 begins by considering simple arithmetic and geometry and how the meditator seemed to see these things clearly enough to affirm their truth. She then recalls her only reasoning for doubt in such matters at 2+3=5 was the deceiving god hypothesis. It seems that when she considers the DGH she must admit how easy it would be for the deceiving god to convince her of these simple truths when they were in fact false. But then she goes into this line of reasoning that confuses the issue. She states that when she thinks about things that are so clear to her (such as her existence and 2+3=5) let whoever deceive her because he can never make it so these things are not true. Given this it seems that she does not think 2+3=5 can be doubted. However, even after this, she maintains that there is still a possibility for a small metaphysical doubt due to the deceiving god hypothesis that she still must investigate and dispell. Given this last point I feel that 2+3=5 is still slightly able to be doubted. The cogito reasoning as Hatfield points out, is able to blanket this DGH concern because of the fact that thinking about the DGH automatically proves ones existence. However, 2+3=5 is not saved in this same way. Therefore, even if it is only a slight reason for doubt, 2+3=5 can still be doubted at the end of paragraph 4. So long as the DGH survives (and it has thus far even though the meditator doubts it heavily), 2+3=5 is possible to be brought under doubt.

Wax on, wax off

Descartes poses the proposition that we know our mind better than we know the body. Initially it seems that we would know the body of something more clearly due to our sensational perception of bodily objects (pun intended). However, Descartes wishes to dispose of this notion and aims to do so by proposing first that perhaps we do know the nature of body better and using an example to eventually show that this is not the case.

Now for the wax. The meditator considers a piece of wax as an example of an bodily object in order that the investigation will be able to represent the nature of all bodies. In considering the wax, it is obvious to the meditator at first that it contains certain properties such as sound when tappen, scent, and color. However, she notices the fact that the wax's scent, shape, and sound when tapped are dispelled if the wax is melted. In addition, the newly melted wax maintains it's inherent "waxness" despite this fact. Thus, it must be something else that causes the wax to be wax. Eventually the meditator lands on only standing properties of the wax being something "extended, flexible, and changeable".

The meditator now must consider how these properties are known. The knowledge that the wax may take an infinite number of forms allows the meditator to eventually make certain conclusions as to how we know the mind more clearly. This is done as she notes that the knowledge of the wax's infinite possibilities could not be known from the imagination as one cannot imagine each and every different possibility. However, one does grasp that the wax is capable of infinite shape and it must be known by some other faculty, the mind. Hatfield lays this out in 5 steps.
1. I can grasp that this melted wax is flexiable and changeable so as to be capable of innumberable changes of shape.
2. Imagination could allow me to grasp this fact only by representing these changes by an image of each possible shape.
3. My imagination cannot represent the innummerable shapes required.
4. It is not the imagination that allows me to grasp this capability of the wax.
5. But I do grasp this capability, so it must be by a faculty other than (sense or) imagination: call it the mind itself.
Given that it is the mind itself grasping the capabilities of the wax, it is noted that whenever one learns about the nature of a body it is the mind that grasps it. Each time it is the mind grasping the concept the cogito reasoning can be taken into account and one discovers once again the existence of self as a thinking thing. Thus, in a sense, knowledge of the mind's existence is always a precursor to the knowledge of the nature of body, and the claim is made that one must know the nature of the mind better than the nature of body.
For those unconvinced of the mind discovering the nature of bodily objects, Descartes discusses the cloaked men in which we cannot see the man himself but we use our mind to infer that it is a man under the cloak. In the same way we use our mind to discover many things that our senses and imagination to not directly show us.
The conclusion drawn from the whole mess of wax is essentially that due to the nature of body being derived from the mind allows us precursory knowledge of the nature of the mind, which in essence is saying that we know the nature of the mind better. This reasoning seems to work out pretty well, however, I still am wrestling with a couple of the arguments Wilson brought up. The main argument that I could not see the answer to was that if our knowledge of the nature of the body was incorrect, why wouldn't the knowledge of the nature of our mind be even moreso incorrect? However, I suppose that argument fails when one considers that the nature of the body and mind cannot be analyzed in the same scientific fashion. Thus, Descartes' reasoning lives to see another day.