Episode 76, René Descartes (Part III - Meditations on First Philosophy, 3-4)

The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast

Jack Symes | Andrew Horton, Oliver Marley, and Rose de Castellane

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4.8 • 604 Ratings

🗓️ 22 March 2020

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

All my life, I have been fed apples from that tree. I was told it was the only tree worth eating from. Every day, whether it was in school or in the church, someone would arrive with a basket, and I would take what they offered. Today a similar basket lays in front of me, full of apples I've been saving so to take a closer inspection.

Check those apples for me would you? Why so worried? Surely if they are good, there is nothing to worry about. You've heard of the Italian who was punished for checking, you say? I understand. I will do it myself.

There are too many in there to check one by one. I shall take them all out and only place back in the basket the ones that are certifiably good! I think the Italian might have been onto something, they all look rotten! I must check closer. I refuse to accept that they are all bad!

Ah, there is one. That will do. Perhaps the seeds can be used to grow more good apples...

Contents

Part I. The Life of René Descartes.

Part II. Meditations on First Philosophy, 1-2.

Part III. Meditations on First Philosophy, 3-4.

Part IV. Meditations on First Philosophy, 5-6.

Part V. Further Analysis and Discussion.

Links

René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy: in which are demonstrated the existence of God and the distinction between the human soul and body (Early Modern Texts).

Transcript

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0:00.0	Pan, pan, pan, pan, pan, pan, pan, pan, pan, pan, pan, pan, pan, pan, pan, pan, pan, pan,
0:07.1	scicast.
0:07.9	Part three, the meditations. Meditations three, the meditations.
0:23.7	Meditations three and four.
0:26.7	So last instalment, we looked at Meditations 1 and 2.
0:30.2	We doubted everything that we could possibly doubt.
0:33.0	We threw all the apples out of the basket.
0:34.9	Sometimes my senses deceive me.
0:37.1	I might be in a dream. The demon
0:39.4	might be deceiving me of every thought that I can have. That was meditation one. And the second
0:43.0	meditation we got the famous Coyito, I think I am. We established that one, I exist and two,
0:50.5	I'm a thinking thing. Then we spoke about some wax for a little while longer. Again, I'm not quite sure why. But then we move into the third meditation today when we're looking at, quote, third meditation, the existence of God. We'll jump right into it. In the opening, he does kind of what he's done in the past. He talks about what he's doubted in the previous meditations,
1:12.0	what he's established, have just said, he's a thinking thing, and that he exists. And then we're
1:16.3	going to think about what it is to be a thinking thing, what kind of things I can think and what kind
1:21.1	of modes of thinking there are. Now, it's interesting to get to the main core of this chapter, which is going to be named the trademark argument for God's existence.
1:31.8	Descartes needs to do a little bit of groundwork again to build up to that.
1:35.6	And just to reiterate, at this point, we have no knowledge other than I'm a thinking thing and therefore I have thoughts.
1:46.5	That's it. I can't say anything about the outside world. I can't say anything of really at all, even if it seems so evident that I have a
1:52.7	body. I still have to doubt that. So he needs to pick out a couple of key things. And so he starts off
1:59.5	by describing what thoughts are,
2:01.6	because I think seeing as he all he knows is he's a thinking thing, he might have to describe
2:06.8	what that thinking thing actually consists of. So he gives a couple of modes of thinking. And
	...

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