Plato and Descartes: Key Philosophical Concepts
What is Known as the Second Sailing in Platonic Philosophy?
Plato introduced a universal intelligence to explain things, undertaking what he calls navigation. In the first navigation, driven by natural philosophy, he tried to explain sensitive data through the senses, where all responses related to nature. The second navigation reveals Plato’s philosophy, leading to the discovery of the supersensible, seeking a release from the senses and a move towards the plane of the logos and what can be grasped with the intellect.
How Does Platonic Philosophy Explain Beauty?
To explain why something is beautiful, the natural philosopher would resort to physical elements such as color and shape. However, according to Plato, these are not true causes but means or contributing causes. Therefore, it is necessary to propose the existence of a higher cause, which is a real cause, something intelligible, not sensible. This is the idea or pure form of beauty itself, which makes empirical things beautiful, that is, through shape, color, and proportion that force is required to be beautiful.
What is the Sensible World According to Plato?
According to Plato, the sensible world is where we operate and perceive through the senses. Being composed of matter, we can differentiate individuals. These individuals are composed of parts that are changing because matter tends to disorder. The beings that constitute the sensible world receive their being and essence from the intelligible world.
What is the Intelligible World According to Plato?
According to Plato, the intelligible world is that of ideas, composed of immaterial, simple, universal, and eternal entities. They are universal because there are no physical elements in it, so they can only be differentiated from each other according to their response to an order or a different determination. They are eternal and do not change.
The Concept of Truth in the Presocratic World: Truth as Aletheia
Truth as Aletheia has been understood and interpreted as a voice derived from the verb Lanthana, whose meaning is what is not hidden or concealed and revealed, thus becoming patent. Therefore, Aletheia is patency or discovery.
The Concept of Truth Understood as Formal Validity
We consider the concept of formal validity or truth as the understanding that something is true when it follows from something given, regardless of whether or not it corresponds with experience. The fundamental criterion for considering a deduction correct is its consistency with the given.
This way of understanding truth is typical of formal sciences like mathematics, especially logic, so it is also called syntactic logical truth. Although it is also applicable to empirical sciences, philosophy, theology, and any knowledge claims of rationality, because consistency is the basic condition for rational discourse.
What is a Thought? What is the Difference Between a Thought and a Proposition?
We consider a thought as the immanent content of consciousness, which can be true or false and is expressible as propositional. To explain the difference between a thought and a proposition, we will use the definition of both. As we have said, thought is the immanent content of consciousness. However, a proposition is the verbal expression, oral or written, of thoughts. A proposition can be considered valid when it is consistent with others belonging to the same genus, that is, when that proposition is clear.
The Concept of Truth as a Property of Thought: Truth and Veritas
The term Veritas aims at the accuracy and clarity of the saying: verum is what is true, accurate, and complete, involving a direct reference to omissions. Veritas refers to saying, and rather than the limitation of saying, the narrative, which is the hue that has the word truth.
The Concept of Truth as an Exclusive Property of God: Truth and Emunah
We consider the Hebrew word Emunah as true in the sense of trust. The real God is, above all, one who delivers what he promises, as a true friend is someone you can count on. On the contrary, a false friend is not a friend but a failed friend, a person who cannot be trusted. The concept or word Emunah thus refers to compliance, which is expected and will be.
Descartes’ Vision in Ulm in November 1619
René Descartes, while in the German city of Ulm on the night of November 10, 1619, had what he regarded as the revelation of the foundations of a new and admirable science. This act was the revelation of a method that led to a different organization of knowledge into a single universal philosophy or science, called mathesis universalis, in which these ideas do not contradict each other.
The Four Rules of the Cartesian Method
First, the rule of evidence: never accept anything as true if it is not previously known to be evident. Therefore, carefully avoid precipitation and prevention, and do not include in my judgments anything beyond what is presented to my mind clearly and distinctly, ruling out any possibility of doubt. Evidence will be true in that thought or feeling that occurs to me with indubitability or completeness. Secondly, we have the rule of analysis: divide every problem to be studied into as many parts as possible and necessary to solve it better, that is, analyze each thought to search for evidence. On the other hand, we consider the rule of synthesis: drive my thoughts, starting with the simplest and easiest objects to learn, to gradually rise, as if by steps, to the knowledge of the most complex. God is the guarantee that my innate ideas, as well as adventitious ones, are true since, according to the ontological argument, God is good. So, if we use this argument, we recover the adventitious ideas, that is, the so-called synthesis. Finally, we find the rule of enumeration: carry out everywhere enumerations so complete and reviews so general as to be sure you have not missed anything.
Descartes’ Concept of Evidence
Cartesian doubt is the starting point to criticize acquired beliefs, regarded as false in principle, all of which can be given the same chance of error. For Descartes, it is the medium in which we find universal truth.
Types of Ideas Distinguished by Descartes
For Descartes, there are three kinds of ideas (according to their origin):
- Adventitious ideas: those that appear to come from the outside world, our external experience.
- Factitious ideas: ideas developed by the faculties of imagination and will.
- Innate ideas: those that do not allow this demonstration. Understanding has these ideas in nature. All innate ideas are clear and distinct; the “Cogito ergo Sum” is an innate idea. The existence of innate ideas is the fundamental basis of rationalism.
Cartesian Doubt: Logical Description of the Phenomenon of Doubt
Descartes’ methodical doubt is proposed as the only way to the obvious. Descartes’ doubt is the only means to find absolute certainty or a foundation that is certainly the very content of consciousness, a consistent reduction in the process, put in brackets to find the indubitable truth. Doubt is also universal, then all knowledge includes and is not limited to a certain field.
The Motive Leading to Doubts About Sensitive Knowledge: Sensory Illusions
Sensitive forms, that is, accidents of material entities, are perceived by the senses. According to Descartes, it is easy to doubt them because many times we are wrong. There are a large number of alterations and illusions of perspective or seeing things from a distance or other circumstances. These facts are undeniable, but he doubted to what extent they are sufficient to completely dispose of sense perception as a source of knowledge or conclude from these experiences that the senses always deceive us.
The Motive Leading to Doubts About Sensitive Knowledge: The Hypothesis of the Dream
When we are asleep, we do not distinguish whether what we feel is real or just a dream. The philosopher Descartes also argues shrewdly that we perceive, while asleep, even with more intensity than in waking times, something that is definitely not real, something that happens outside of our consciousness. For this reason, Descartes concludes that it is perfectly possible to doubt the existence of all material things and therefore doubt our own body, the world around us.
The Reason Leading to Doubt About Mathematical Knowledge: The”Evil Geniu”
Mathematical and logical propositions, all knowledge a priori, that is, not dependent on perception, or analytic propositions. Both in reality and sleep, 2 + 2 = 4, so it seems that these are undeniable propositions. But while there is a possibility of a hypothesis that calls into question certainty, we cannot affirm beyond doubt. Descartes introduced the hypothesis of a universal evil genius who always deceives us, forging doubt where this genius calls into question everything except the existence of the cripple.
What is Skepticism? Why Does Descartes Fall into It?
Skepticism is an epistemological position that defends the impossibility of finding absolute truth, where anything is possible if it is thinkable. Descartes falls into it because he has challenged his knowledge, adventitious ideas, fictitious ideas, and innate ideas through the evil genius hypothesis.
The Discovery of the Obvious Truth:”I Think, Therefore I A”
The only obvious truth, formulated as “I think, therefore I am,” is expressed by Descartes, in which he finds a way to prove it. He also makes an argument: “If I doubt, I am,” and even more, “If I doubt that I doubt, I do not doubt that I doubt.” This sentence is the first certainty, showing that we actually have thoughts; then doubt is a certainty, there are thoughts. Hence his famous phrase, “I think, therefore I am,” which tries to make us understand that if we do not think, we would not realize our own existence.
Multiple Uses of Reason According to Kant
We consider the concept of reason as something wonderful that only the human species has acquired since the beginning of life, unlike other species, which are not capable of thinking. According to Kant, there are three applications of reason: theoretical use, poietic or productive use, and finally, the use of morality. In the first use, theoretical use, reason is inevitably an instrument for the pursuit of truth. In the productive use, reason is applied to transform reality into a product or something useful. Finally, in the use of morality, reason tends to be applied to find the reality of good and evil.