[quote=“harvey”]
[i]His philosophical construction rests on his renowned “I think, therefore I amâ€. This assertion is not false in itself as it is obvious that each of us can deduce our own existence by establishing that we think. What is however horrifying is to set ideas as anterior to sensations. Descartes in this way is the one who laid the first rock of almost all contemporary ideologies, because, as one does not necessarily know, Marx, Freud, and many others were greatly influenced by this radical inversion in our way of knowing. In fact, if our thought takes precedence over our way of knowing, what will we know? It’s simple, we will know ourselves!
So Descartes denies or rejects the proper sensibles, and recognizes the common sensibles as the only objective ones.[/i]
In fact, in the 17th century, when Descartes presented his argument (not his assertion, the word “therefore” indicates an argument) the French verb “penser” had a much wider sense than it does in modern times when it means “think”. In the 17th century, “penser” had the wider sense of “consciousness”, so that it was no only intellectual cogitation that was called “penser” but also, emotions and attitudes, like anger, or like envy that were “modes of thought or consciousness”. In addition, perceptions or “sensibles” such as having the perception of red or purple, were also modes of thought or consciousness “penser”. It was only much latter that “penser” took on the meaning of intellectual consciousness.
Let me recall what the proper sensibles and the common sensibles are: the proper sensibles are the realities perceived by one of the five senses (taste, smell, sight, touch and hearing), and the common sensibles are those accessible through various senses (size, shape, number, motion, rest). [/i]One must realize the crucial role that imagination and affect play in the perception of the common sensibles. If the common sensibles take precedence, as Descartes professes, the proper sensibles go to the wayside, and reality becomes secondary… and when Descartes declares that the common sensibles are the only objective ones, he sinks humanity into subjectivity, later coined as “transcendental subjectivityâ€.
I am unable to see where Descates “rejects” what you call the “proper sensibles” in favor or what you call the "common sensibles’ nor why the first would be subjective, and the second, objective. Descartes was a physical realist, in that he believed that the way in which we immediately perceive the external world is not how the external world actually is. He believed (as, in fact, most modern day physicists and philosophers believe) that the physical world, independently of our perception of it, is a very different sort of affair than the way it appears to us. And, indeed, it is only by taking that world into account, that we can achieve a coherent explanation of the world of, we might call it, “commonsense”.
/quote]
The French are cool merely because of their accent. All French philosophers get props on that note, regardless of what they said.
Hi Harvey
I am also skeptical of “I think therefore I am”. I prefer instead:
I am implies the being of “I” (unity) and its extension into existence as diversity (am)
I agree. As I understand it the human organism interacts with the external world through thought, feeling, and sensation. Yet they have become connected through imagination so the common sensibles are incapable of reflecting accurately the proper sensibles.
I believe that the Buddhist position of man as a plurality is quite accurate. If this is true, man is actually composed of many i’s as opposed to one central I. Which I is saying I think therefore I am? It is taking itself as the entirety of the human being further confusing things.
A person can say I can in reference to a skill and the dominion of one of our many i’s. In this limited sense I can as a reflection of I am is accurate. But it is also within mans’ potential for inner unity and from this perspective, I can therefore I am takes on a far deeper significance combining thought feeling and sensation free of imagination.
Simply assuming that “I think therefore I am” is very misleading while inviting ones egotism to become accepted as “I” or an inner unity representative of the wholeness of man. Simone Weil is much more realistic IMO.
Correctomundo.
argument
n 1: a fact or assertion offered as evidence that something is
true; “it was a strong argument that his hypothesis was
true” [syn: statement]
reject = doesn’t give them due credit
To recap, in short, Descartes’ errors:
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First, the error consisting in giving precedence to thought over the sensible and immediate experience of proper sensibles which he declares to be subjective, and to do it at the start of all his philosophy.
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Then the other error consisting in holding the common sensibles to be objectively experimented under the pretext that these can be the object of a measure, notwithstanding a measure is a figment of our intelligence, because yards/meters or gallons/liters don’t grow on trees.
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Further the error consisting in confining intelligence to logic, which is only one of the tools of intelligence amongst others.
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last (but not least) the error consisting in assimilating what is true to reality
Those are four very infantile errors for a realist philosopher, four beginners’ errors…I take that back, a beginner with a normal constitution wouldn’t make those errors. Yet not only does Descartes make them but he proudly displays them as his claim to fame.
Once again, “I think, therefore I am” is obviously not wrong but what is highly toxic is to prop an entire philosophy against that principle.
“. . . I noticed that while I was trying . . . to think everything false, it was necessary that I, who was thinking this, was something. And observing that this truth ‘I am thinking, therefore I exist’ was so firm and sure that all the most extravagant suppositions of the sceptics were incapable of shaking it, I decided that I could accept it without scruple as the first principle of the philosophy I was seeking. [Discourse IV, para. 1; CSM, I, p. 127.]”
one needs to remember rene’s circumstances…
remember what the church did to galileo? rene had written a lot of geometry and astronomy that showed the church was wrong about the heavens… of course, he did not run afoul of the church so he did what he could to save his neck…
the cogito was merely the first step in an excuse for god…
-Imp
It is hard to tell just what you are getting at. But I’ll make a try at it.
In his Meditations and Discourse Descartes begins by arguing that sense perception is inveterately unreliable, and as such, cannot afford us certain knowledge of anything beyond themselves. For instance, we can know that we have a red impression, but we cannot infer from that that we know that there is anything red that is causing that subjective red. impression. The general argument in the First Meditation is that if we accept sense impressions as our basis for knowledge, we can know nothing beyond them, and so, in general Empiricism implies Skepticism. (Descartes gives three different but connected arguments for that inference from Empiricism to Skepticism all based on “the method of doubt”: the argument from illusion; the argument from dreaming; and the argument from the Malign Genie). Consequently, for us to go beyond skepticism, the doctrine that nothing can be know beyond our immediate experiences, we need to discard empiricism, and seek cetain knowledge in what Kant would later on call “pure reason”. In the Second Meditiation, Descartes point to an example of certain knowledge that goes beyond immediate sensation which is achieved by pure reason alone. And that is, of course, “The Cogito”. He holds that he can show that he himself exists because his criterion for certainty, his method of doubt, demonstrates that that his own existence is itself, indubitable, inasmuch as doubt he exists is self-refuting. For he must exist in order to doubt. If we combine the arguments in the First and Second Meditiation, we derive the following argument.
- Empiricism (reliance of the senses to provide us with knowledge of the world around us) leads to (implies) Skepticism (that we cannot know for certain the existence of anything beyond our immediate sense-perception).
- But The Cogito is an example of knowledge that is certain, and which tells us with certainty that something does exist beyond our immediate sense perception, namely our selves.
Therefore, 3. Empiricism is false (from 1, and 2, by modus tollens)
Thus, in a few strokes, Descartes has:
- Rebutted the claim that our immediate sensations can afford us certain knowledge of a world beyond us.
- So has rebutted Empiricism as a theory of knowledge.
- Has given an important example of knowledge (the existence of one’s self) that does not reply on sense-impressions.
- Has prepared the ground by giving a foundation for certain knowledge which is independed of sense knowledge, so called, namely the Cogito, from which he hopes subsequently to erect knowledge independent of sense-perception.
His rejection of the proper sensibles (as you put it) in favor of thought, is not a mere whim on his part, but is supported by the three arguments in Meditation 1 which I have already mentioned, from which he concluded that empiricism was a dead end as a source for certain knowledge.
As long as she doesn’t prop her entire philosophy against that principle. 
It is quite a curious thing that many women hold Plato in high opinion, given that he considers them not to have the same soul as men. Simone Weil loves Plato and despises Aristotle (whom she did not understand). Yet Aristotle is the first to determine that men and women specifically have the same soul, enabling “friendship” between one another (what he calls “Philia”), in view of the same end.
Plato and the neo-platonicians, be they artists, philosophers or mystics, close themselves off definitively to reality. After abstacting they never come back to reality, turning their back to being qua being, and ultimately to the first being, for it is the idea they have of the first being which takes precedence over its reality. What interests me in an abstraction is to reinject it into what is concrete, in such person, or in such work, so as to better know them, to make them more intelligible. However brilliant it may be, an abstraction should help to know better and “love” better, else it is uselsess…
I don’t know all that much about Buddhism except that it seems to me to be very close to platonicism and an artistic point of view… I think they speak of “mental substance”.
Harvey
It is my impression that Descartes has long ago lost relevance except as a historical figure in philosophy. It seems to me that he endorsed the prevailing view of a mind/body duality. I suspect the influence of the Catholic Church was the reason Descartes ended taking the particular path that he did.
I wonder why you spend such an effort on a philosopher that you feel that reading him is a punishment. I recognize your dissatisfaction with Idealism and its associated mind/body split but why flog a dead horse. Religion rather than Descartes is the influence that maintains the idealistic philosophy, it seems to me.
I have been reading “Marx’s Theory of Ideology†in an effort to understand ideology, which I feel is a very important and neglected concept.
Chuck
It seemed pretty clear to me 
OK. I don’t however intend to review Descartes philosophy at this point in time. When I did reread him, though, I do remember that almost each page had one or several mistakes (other than the main ones I put forth).
To get back to your interrogation on the objectivity and subjectivity of the sensibles, allow me to set forth the following considerations:
Each of our external senses are uniquely capable of apprehending some of the “proper sensibles†– whereas other sensibles are common to two or more senses. It is important to understand the originality of each of our senses and their privileged contact with the physical realities that surround us. Sight apprehends light and color, hearing apprehends sound, the touch apprehends heat and cold, dryness and humidity….By contrast, size, shape, number, motion can be apprehended both by vision and touch. These “common sensibles†are measurable, whereas the “proper sensibles†are undividable and, in as much as they are proper, cannot be measured. It is by apprehending the proper sensibles through our sensations that we discover in the first instance the qualities of the existing physical realities. We are in direct contact with these realities through our sensations. It is through this sensible qualitative contact that our intelligence can ascertain that such reality exists. Our “judgement of existence†is the fruit par excellence of ones’ intelligence using the touch, which enables us to assert: “this isâ€, “this (hot) reality existsâ€. If we put the proper sensibles in parenthesis, and we only accept the “common sensiblesâ€, claiming that those are not objective, like Descartes, our intelligence cannot have this immediate contact with what is. The common sensibles are the domain of the measurable, of quantity, of the dividable. They are not ultimate…what is in act in the existing physical reality. Our intelligence cannot assert any more: ‘this existsâ€; “this is an act of beingâ€.
Moreover, it is important to note that speculative knowledge consists in an alliance between intelligence and the senses in contact with the external realities, contrary to practical knowledge where the internal experience comes first. We discover in this way an objective knowledge because it imposes itself equally to me, to my neighbour and to everyone else. We are all more or less under the influence of ideologies (be they artistic, affective, political or scientific), much more than we can imagine, and this is why most of us are incapable of reaching an objective speculative knowledge. Yet in as much as we admit that our internal experience comes first in a practical philosophy, we note the important role played by our imagination and our affect.
You may be right. My understanding was that Descartes reacted vigorously to fideism. It is also that he confided in a letter to father Mersenne that his goal was to topple Aristotle and suggested to him not to mention this, for fear of retaliation. In fact, in this engraving one can see Descartes purposely treading Aristotles’ works! 
Chuck,
Au contraire, I believe it is important to go back to the “source” of modern day ideologies.
I wouldn’t agree, even though most of the Church (Christian) is neo-platonician. Fideism in fact laid the foundations of modern ideologies. In particular, Marx’s and Hegel’s dialects block off the road to any speculative philosophy.
OK. I’m sure its interesting. IMO, Marx never got over the Promethian myth.
Harvey
Are you sure it won’t be for lack of knowledge?
Because we can “know” something without thinking first?
Some of us have a job… As far as knowledge goes, if you still believe that because something doesn’t exist “in flesh and bones” it doesn’t exist, you may have some homework to do Ever heard of beings of reason?
Primo in intellectu cadit ens (the first thing that “falls” in intelligence is the being), before any type of logic comes into play. Either we accept to be dominated by the being, and we gradually discover that it is through it that our intelligence reaches its true nobility, or everything becomes “possible” (as in mathematics), including the total destruction of intelligence, for if intelligence is made for the being, to deny this is equivalent to a suicide of ones intelligence.
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I think that the number seven does not exist in flesh and bones, but exists, nevertheless. But what brought that up?
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No, I have never heard of “beings of reason”. Is that the name of a new flavor of Baskins-Robbins ice-cream? Does it have nuts in it? I love ice-cream with nuts. (You couldn’t possibly mean what Leibniz called, “truths of reason” could you? No, I guess not.)
Harvey
First, it wouldn’t be right to discuss the deeper conceptions of Simone Weil on this thread. However. concerning the above, I cannot see how you can associate her with turning her back on the experience of the nature of being. Her whole life was devoted to just this experience of life in the raw. Neither you nor I could be capable of her dedication to the experience of being free of imagination.
When people avoid this dedication I will agree that these abstractions are purely escapism. But when resulting from being ruthless with oneself for the sake of impartially and consciously experiencing life in the raw, the understanding that results is non-illusory and includes, not excludes, what you term as qua being.
For those wishing to understand these people, we must become open enough try to raise and our capacity for understanding rather then demand they sink to our level.
Our initial conversation about me or a unicorn not being able to exist in your head …But if you prefer to think of a number 7 that’s ok…
You guessed right!
Being of reason = universal
Example : “smiley” is a being of reason which we abstract from a number of particular smileys 
which are concrete beings, or are they? 