Skepticism (B)

(Originally written September 3, 2006 in Book 6)

I can't do anymore. My mind is heavy and I have a sensory perception of pain. Do I know why my head hurts? I don't care if I know, it feels as much and that is good enough for me tonight.

Continuing on Descartes' Third Meditation

Ideas - thoughts which are images of things

Other thoughts are particulars that also have some form of thought process in them. These are volitions or emotions or judgments.

Judgments are in danger of being false, whereas ideas, emotions or wills are not.

The biggest danger of a false judgment is believing that internal idea resembles something outside of my self.

There are innate and adventitious and self-invented ideas.

Understanding what a thing is, what truth is, and what thought is are innate ideas.

Sense perceptions are adventitious.

Imagination ideas (unicorns) are self-invented ideas.

But, it could be that all ideas are of one category.

What reasons do I have for believing that things outside of me that cause sense perceptions resemble one another?
-Nature taught me to think this.

Since all knowledge I have comes from within me, something greater than I must have put these ideas in me, this is God's role in creation.

Since I am less perfect than God, that is I have less reality in me than God, I could not get the idea of him from within myself.

It must be concluded that the mere fact that I exist and have within me an idea of a most perfect being, that is, God, provides a very clear proof that God indeed exists.

The idea of God is innate.

"And indeed it is no surprise that God, in creating me, should have placed this idea in me to be, as it were, the mark of the craftsman stamped on his work - not that the mark need be anything distinct from the work itself. But the mere fact that God created me is a very strong basis for believing that I am somehow made in his image and likeness, and that I perceive that likeness, which includes the idea of God, by the same faculty which enables me to perceive myself. That is, when I turn my mind's eye upon myself, I understand that I am a thing which is incomplete and dependent on another and which aspires without limit to ever greater and better things; but I also understand at the same time that he on whom I depend has within him all those greater things, not just indefinitely and potentially but actually and infinitely, and hence that he is God" (Polman, 34-35). This is very good.

Fourth Meditation
"Truth and falsity"

What we know about corporeal things is not through perception.

Knowledge of God is the most distinct and clear knowledge man has.

God provides me with all the knowledge and capability for knowledge to make judgments. If I use the judgment correctly, I can't err.

I make mistakes because I exist somewhere between God and nothingness. God is the ultimate reality and nothingness is no reality. Since I tend to make judgments towards the scale of no reality, I am prone to err.

Error is a privation of some knowledge which ought to be in me.

The will is the ability to do or not to do something.

To behave correctly I must withheld my judgment on what I do not have indubitable knowledge of.

I cannot complain that God has not provided me with more knowledge or a greater capacity for knowledge because I am a finite being.

Every perception comes from God and to avoid error I simply have to withhold judgment on that which I do not have indubitable knowledge of.

Skepticism regarding the senses
David Hume

-Scottish Empiricist
-1711 - 1776
-Accepts there are truths of reason, mathematical truths and logical truths
-He doubts empirical and metaphysical knowledge
-Learning is based on sensory impressions
-Ideas are representations of sensory impressions
-Complex ideas are mere composites of ideas and we have no way of knowing if complex ideas accurately represent reality/