Philosophy 303 - Principles of Inquiry: Ways of Knowing

 

Assignment #1

 

  1. Get access to a copy of the film The Matrix -- from Netflix, or Amazon video on demand ($2.99), or your local video store (if it hasn't closed yet).  Watch about the first half of it (at least), through the part where Morpheus explains and demonstrates the how the Matrix works.  Think about what it would take to convince you that you were living in the Matrix or some such virtual reality device.  Think about how you know (or whether you do really know) that you are not living in a virtual reality fed to you by someone else.  If you have already seen the film, you might want to read Descartes first, and then watch the film looking for references to his ideas.  There are quite a few of them!

  2. Read the first two of Rene Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy.  These are available online in several versions.  My favorite version for beginning students is one prepared by Jonathan Bennett.  Professor Bennett has modernized Descartes’ language, simplified the sentence structure, and inserted a number of helpful comments. Link here.(PDF)     If you prefer a straight translation try: http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/descartes/meditations/meditations.html. 

  3. A very helpful guide to the Meditations, written by Rae Langton of the University of Edinburgh, is here:

    Part 1

    Part 2

    Part 3

    I’d strongly recommend reading at least the first part of this for background on Descartes and his social context.   (Only Part 1and the first half of Part 2 are relevant to this assignment.)

  4. Below you will find study questions for Descartes’ first two meditations.

  5. Write out answers to study questions #1, 3, 5, 7, 10, 13, 16, and 17.

  6. Read also: Martin Gardner’s forward to How to Think About Weird Things (pp.vii-viii) and the Introduction and Chapter 1 of Science, Truth, and Democracy (through page 9).  As you read these two selections, think about your own attitudes towards and beliefs about science.  Do you think that the natural sciences produce universally valid and objective knowledge?  Do you think that they constitute the best or the only way of knowing what the world is really like?  Do you think  that there are alternative forms of knowing? (If so, what are they?)  Do you agree with those Kitcher calls the "debunkers' that science is just as prejudiced and value-laden as any other human point of view?  Might it be a tool of oppression or an expression of a culturally limited point of view?  Sometimes people who are attracted by these 'debunking' ideas are also attracted to the doctrine known as 'relativism'.  Relativism says that the truth of a belief is relative to the person or the community or the culture or the world-view (or some such thing) of the person who believes it.  That implies that what is true for you (or people who share your culture or world-view) may not be true for me.  In my experience teaching college, it is very common for students to express relativistic ideas.  “It all depends on your point of view.” Or “Everybody’s entitled to their own opinion.” Or the recurring question, “Who’s to say?”  Sometimes I get the feeling that people are actually offended by the idea that some opinions might be just wrong and other opinions simply correct.  What do you think?
  7. Write a bit (perhaps ½ to 2 pages) about your own beliefs about science, relativism and the possibility of objective knowledge and your reactions to what Gardiner and Fay say about these things.
  8. Submit what you’ve written (#5 and #7 above) to the dropbox for assignment 1.  What works best is to save your work as a Word document and submit it to the dropbox.  Then I can insert comments using Word’s change-tracking function.

 

 

 

Study Questions for Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy

The numbers in parentheses refer to the paragraphs of the Bennett version of the Meditations (available here in a version with paragraph numbers). There are 11 paragraphs in his version of the first meditation and 16 in the second meditation.

 

Meditation One

1.      What task does Descartes set for himself at the beginning of this meditation?

2.      How does he propose to accomplish his task? (Paragraph 2)

3.      What is the first reason he finds to doubt the evidence of his senses? (P. 3)

4.      Why does he think that this reason is not enough to undermine all his sense-based beliefs? (beginning of P. 4 – the dialogue between Doubtful and Hopeful )

5.      What further reason does he then propose for doubting his opinions? (end of P. 4) 

6.      What sorts of beliefs survive even this reason for doubting them? (P.5-7)

7.      What hypothesis then leads him to doubt even these remaining beliefs? (P. 8)

8.      What other hypothesis does he then consider, which leads him to the same conclusion (i.e., the conclusion that “doubts can properly be raised about any of my former beliefs ... on the basis of powerful and well thought-out reasons.”)? (P. 9)

9.      For what purpose does Descartes suppose “an evil genius, supremely powerful and clever, who has directed his entire effort at deceiving me”? (P. 11)

 

Meditation Two

 

10.  Note how Descartes works his way towards his first indubitable conclusion: “I am, I exist.” (P. 3, another dialogue between Hopeful and Doubtful)  How do you think he would respond if someone said: “How do you know you really exist?  You might just be dreaming that you exist!”?

11.  Why can’t he imagine he doesn’t exist? (That doesn’t seem so hard to imagine!)  How do you think Descartes would answer this question if it came up at this point in his meditations?

12.  What did Descartes used to think he was before he set out on these meditations? (P. 5)

13.  What do his current meditations lead him to conclude about himself?  (P. 6-8)

14.  The passage about the wax is difficult.  Descartes is using this example to arrive at a very general and (to his mind) very important conclusion about how we can acquire true knowledge.  Why does Descartes think he cannot know the wax through perception? (P. 11)

15.  Why can he not know it through his imagination? (P. 12)

16.  With what faculty (or power) of his mind does he know it?  (P. 12-13, reiterated in P. 16)

17.  Descartes has now established (to his satisfaction, at least) that he does know something for sure: he knows that he exists.  Do you agree with him that he does know this for sure (and that you, therefore, know for sure that you exist)?  Do you agree with him when he says that he has “powerful and well thought-out reasons” to conclude that he doesn’t know anything else for sure (and, therefore, that you don’t know anything else for sure either)?  Why or why not?  Does the possibility that you might be living in the Matrix (or some such virtual reality device) give you a good reason to doubt all your beliefs?