Entropic_Gnosis

I find myself in a bit of a quandry, In the Meditations Descartes insists that there is a division between the mind and body (alright, i can accept that) but he further goes on to claim that the mind is the sole repository of the self. On the surface this makes sense but when i looked at his other assertions i found that all he attributed to the Mind was knowledge of itself, of the existance of God, and the knowledge of the physical world. All very well and good (granted the Cartisian Circle might rule this out but let us humor the old man for a bit eh ) but it the mind knows only a set of universal truths then what is there to differentiate it from any other mind? Experiance and memory seem to fit the bill but that requires sense experiance and so the self is not the Mind alone but the interplay of Mind and Body. Am i nuts here, did i read something wrong? I just want to throw this out and see if it holds water.

jpbrooks

I generally agree, and would add that if Descartes, Berkeley, and others who find enough information in sense experience to infer the existence of God, already implicitly assume that sense experience can be trusted enough to provide reliable information.

Entropic_Gnosis

granted about the sense experiance, but Descartes didnt use sense experiance in the way it is usually termed to "prove" that god exists. His ontological argument relies upon the definition of god alone. A perfect being has perfect aspects and as one of these aspects is existance, it therefore follows that god exists.

I always thought that a strange way of proving god

Neilium

Strange indeed. The existence of the remotest possibility that God exists automatically means God exists. Kind of an odd runaround.

-Neil

JP2

But I think that there is a difference between accepting that experience can shape our mind-set (which explains the difference in our individual mind-sets) and accepting that these experiences can be demonstrated, absolutely, to correspond with the "external" world.

Remember, Descartes' main aim was merely to find a concrete foundation upon which all other truths may be based and it was from this desire for the "absolute" that he, quite rightly, declared the senses fallible. I don't think any of the Continental Rationalists ruled out the importance of experience, or the legitimacy of the "awareness" of experiences in themselves, rather they merely questioned the extent to which these experiences can be said to correspond with the absolute "what-is" of the "external" world.

jpbrooks

But his "proof" of the existence of God was no less question-begging than any other Ontological "proof" of God's existence.
Descartes' methodology was one of "doubt". He wanted to find the "foundation" of certainty in our knowledge on which we can build our entire "structure" of knowledge about reality. Logic was one of the "tools" that he used in his methodology. If his aim were to start with literally nothing (including no knowledge of Logic at all) to attempt to build his philosophical system, he failed to be as thorough in his methodology as he could have been.

I have to run.

Entropic_Gnosis

Thats one of the many things that bother me about the man, a lot of his "proofs" are just rehashes of more ancient proofs. More what i am interted in is the mind/body problem. There is an ambiguity there he uses the mind and self interchagably but with his foundationalism that seems to limit the things the mind alone can comprehend without the interfearence of the outside world.