René Descartes - Meditation #4 - The Problem of Error

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This is a lecture video about the fourth Meditation on First Philosophy by the French, 17th century, philosopher Rene Descartes. This meditation focuses on the problem of error, which is analogous to the better-known problem of evil. The problem is that in meditation #3 Descartes takes himself to have proven that God exists. But if God is all-good, then it seems impossible that God would have created Descartes in such a way that allow Descartes to come to false beliefs. Descartes claims to solve this problem by distinguishing between the faculty of knowledge or understanding or intellect, on the one hand, and the faculty of choice or freedom of the will, on the other.
Here are the videos about the previous meditations.
Med #1: • René Descartes - Medit...
Med #2: • René Descartes - Medit...
Med #3: • René Descartes - Medit...

[@lanierwexford2582]

My top three reasons for enjoying your lectures, that nobody asked for: 1. They are a good general intro to the topic as discribed in the title. 2. You note along the way how certain words have bigger meaning, but that it is beyond the scope of this intro. 3. You don't pretend to be all knowing and own were you are pulling info out your ass for the sake of making a point. Stay AWESOME.

[@kensey007]

Descartes: I can't be certain I have hands. Also Descartes: I am certain that God is perfectly good.

[@Chryso3077]

It's unfortunate that Decartes assumes his conclusion from the start. His introduction explains that the purpose of his meditations is to prove God to the atheists & nonbelievers. He says in the preface to the reader that most objections from them wouldn't even be worth responding to also. So instead of starting from a place of not understanding, he assumes an all powerful evil & then mentally gymnastics his way into a perfect being because God's too big to think up by himself. I was really looking forward to deep diving into his reasoning but he comes off as a dishonest interlocutor that wants to concert others instead of going through a genuine reconstruction of foundational beliefs.

[@MugenTJ]

@@Chryso3077yep. None of my professors pointed out how insincere Descartes seemed to be. Unfortunately many teachers of philosophy are equally biased.

[@brokenrecord3523]

@@MugenTJ It is your professor's job to teach you Descartes, not tell you how you should feel about it. All those great philosophical conversations are practices in thinking. Maybe you should point out to your professors how insincere Descartes seems to be (and why).

[@MugenTJ]

@@brokenrecord3523 the issue I present is that they don’t want to point out fallacies committed by those line of reasoning . Thereby don’t earn my respect. I maintain that biases and personal opinion effected those philosophers, so it’s worth pointing out. Nothing wrong about that .

[@steffenjensen422]

Well part of the meditations is really good and then there's the religious stuff, but apparently we all were able to understand the fallacy on that front by ourselves, so Mission accomplished for any educators

[@guiony7329]

Better than my college professor

[@SuperMexicanlover13]

seriously love the explanation. I have been struggling in my Philosophy class and your videos/style is finally driving the info home for me

[@Daniel-ty1tf]

Professor Kaplan is so adorable! His analogies about IPODS and the way he grins while teaching puts a smile on my face 😊. Thanks for making philosophy so accesible , Jeffery !

[@alexavaneysan2935]

Thx from Russia, you're an awesome teacher

[@sergiuanfield9918]

this man is entertaining to watch. glad i stumbled on his work. thank you !

[@anag4863]

I have philosophy in french, but I still understand you so well, thank you so much!

[@kalimon6868]

You are amazing thanks for subtitles

[@tejaswaalia6548]

Thank you so much!!! This helped a lot.

[@battlefieldcustoms873]

I am going to go though all these again once I listen to your Objective morality videos again. I need to really deep dive to fully grasp this

[@6ixthhydro652]

nicely done putting it in terms anyone can understand.

[@abeerasajid7690]

That’s really good explanation, thank you!! 🔥🔥

[@Aknorian]

This is outstanding content, congatulations! I'd love to have a course series on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.

[@mrgwary2754]

Thank you so much,🙏 very Helpful vedio ❤️

[@rahulk934]

Love from Sambalpur Bargarh Jai MAA SAMLEI KOSHAL West odisha KOSHAL India... great lecture

[@margo6133]

Great analysis 🌟

[@DandGBears]

Dang I could not write backwards on a board for the camera like this guy. Great job and lecture

[@snehwaynesinha8337]

I understood all the meditations, except this one.

[@Zyphosify]

Really great lecture! Digestible and clear

[@profjeffreykaplan]

Thanks for the kind words!

[@kiboorg1236]

Ur a great teacher

[@brendanward2991]

Another great lecture. The more I learn about the philosophy of Descartes, the less I respect him as a thinker. He strikes me as a dishonest thinker who is only interested in demonstrating that all his beliefs were actually the right ones to begin with. He doubts everything, then magically recovers everything and concludes: "Hey, I was right all along."

[@abrahamkabon1459]

A biased comment of a "biased" man. Funny.

[@horoboro6537]

Yes, but why didn't God design for compatibility? Wasn't Descartes an engineer at some point in his life? This argument seems really bad faith.

[@speculawyer]

Eh...it was ages ago. He was a smart guy for the time.

[@eslaweedguygrey]

I guess he wasn't dedicated enough to his method of doubt. Like, he was more interested in demonstrating the methods by which he could prove his beliefs than he was interested in the actual doubting part. We can perhaps see this in the strained logic of Descartes' cosmological argument.

[@shannonluck5066]

I love your work Jeffrey! ❤ I'm new to philosophy, I just got a little from Western Civ... Your teaching is Great! Thank You... 🎉

[@asdfasdf-yv4vt]

Got a Bradley cooper vibe goin on. You should do your next course in a racoon costume. Great courses. Keep it up!

[@UPSCSimplifies.]

Hey, your explanation is really great and helpful. Can you more content on Spinoza and Leibniz and other western philosophers ? Please...

[@geradhoyt]

Descartes: I think therfore I beg the question

[@dijonstreak]

...simple...it's called FREE WILL. which is a GIFT FROM God. !!

[@adnanahmad1051]

I'm surprised to see how naive Descartes thinking was. He never thought about if bad doesn't exist, how would he understand good? If mistake is non-existent, how would we value correctness? Regardless of whether God exists or not, his reasoning was faulty.

[@juarezcastelo]

You are the bird that pre-digests Philosophy and feed it to our baby brains.

[@JohnM-og5rt]

love the content! hoping you work out some of the audio tho. keep it up

[@malthagal]

I thought it was just me haha, it's still very clear though.

[@brokenrecord3523]

As a scientist (which I am), my philosophy is based in the scientific method, which relies much more heavily on the knowledge side of this equation, as if with perfect knowledge (or enough) that judgement/choice/will is not really a factor any more, i.e., once you truly understand something, you will have no choice, but to believe it. --- --- The problem (with our brains?) is that we neither attain the requisite knowledge nor realize that we are making a choice (to believe what we don't understand) so much so that we have elevated it to a virtue (faith).

[@1k1ngst0n]

great lecture again. Meditation 3 lost me at the reality part

[@hawthorne1504]

Dr Kaplan, yes reading philosophy slowly and deliberately is the only way to proceed. So my question is… you really need to specialize in philosophy, and how do you determine where to focus. I’m all over the map so to speak. I majored in philosophy so I have a background but now I’m just in an ADD mode of jumping from one topic to another, one century to another, one philosopher to another.

[@tzakman8697]

please do one for spinoza.

[@Skol999]

Love it. Slightly terrified that he has to explain IPods, but hey, age is a thing...

[@aamirnagaria2189]

My question is; why do we always assume that God is benevolent, omnipotent, omnipresent, etc? How did we come to such a conclusion? Why do we assume that our creator (if he exists) MUST be a perfect being?

[@flaminghell9572]

Because the previous argument (attempted to) demonstrate that a maximally perfect being exists. Maximum perfection to Descartes likely implies omnipotence, omniscience and benevolence.

[@calorion]

The flat Earth video is not in the description.

[@bekalara3928]

The lecture on Med 4 starts around 2:00 . Before that was a review of the 3 previous meditations.

[@puzzardosalami3443]

"there were these things called headphones!", Sure teach, what wild times they must have been.. :P

[@notcirrious]

What about vinyl...

[@Nick-Nasti]

The annoying thing for many people is that we rarely give so much thought to such a flawed proposition (Descartes). He makes such basic mistakes that any undergrad would be failed for.

[@georgezodo1770]

In the previous meditation, Descartes tried to prove the existence of God but he didn't intend to prove, at least from what you presented in your video, that God was good. In this meditation you started with the assumption that the existence of God means the existence of a good God, a non deceiver God. Accordingly, I believe there is a gap to be filled between the previous video (Meditation 3) and this video (Meditation 4).

[@profjeffreykaplan]

Excellent question. I suspect that Descartes would respond by saying that the argument from the previous meditation proves the existence of God defined specifically as *an all perfect being*. That is, God is defined as a being that has all of the perfections (all of the good characteristics) to their maximum possible degree. And benevolence or goodness, Descartes would say, is a perfection. So Descartes would definitely say that he has proven the existence of an all good being.

[@georgezodo1770]

@@profjeffreykaplan Thanks Dr Kaplan for your valuable answer. On the other hand, it is not "the existence of God defined specifically as an all perfect being" that was proved in the previous meditation. The logical structure used to prove the existence of God did not necessitate the existence of a good God but probably a being whose existence is necessary for the existence of the "I". A deceiver God can also play the same role. Kindly note that my argument is not based on what Descartes has or has not claimed in his book, but rather on your previous lecture regarding the subject matter.

[@pcatful]

OK, cool. But where do you get your jackets?

[@simononeill2633]

You're blowing my mind. First, you put pineapple on pizza and now you say the world is flat 🤯😅

[@mickymillersson4376]

I'm asking myself, constantly, just how many perfect gods did Descartes imagine existed. Seems his faculty of choice tends to overrule his faculty of intellect.

[@andiralosh2173]

Yes I was asking myself all along if you might substitute any other supernaturalist concepts for it. His argument relies on perfection and goodness, however, which is perhaps limiting, while at the same time bungling the problem of evil

[@MugenTJ]

He craftily conceal his faculty of faith. I doubt it was choice or intellect.

[@googleplushatesme2230]

If decartes only believes in stuff that he understands with clarity and distinctness. How could he believe in God? I may be getting ahead of myself. I have not finished the lectures.

[@tim40gabby25]

Why would God not give everyone the kind of mind to make mistakes when God is certainly capricious enough to allow baby deaths, for example.. more knowledge decreases mistaken choices, though an individual is unaware of the extent of their knowledge - unknown knowns, as Runsfelt didn't say . Just asking.

[@turtles38x19]

God can create decievers. What if our creators are deceiving us and god created that deceiver?

[@Nick-Nasti]

What if the deceivers wrote all of our holy books?

[@dhampirism]

jeffrey, we know what casettes are

[@andiralosh2173]

He walk man'd, so that I could pod

[@henryodera5726]

An easy solution to "the problem of evil" is just examining parenthood. All good parents want their children to be good. However, they also want those children to be free to make their own choices. Why? Because freedom or free will is good for their child, since the alternative to freedom is forced slavery. If we can agree that freedom or free will is good, then we can agree that an all good God would definitely desire free will, at least for His choice creations. Just as a good father wants his child to be free to choose, so also would an all good God want at least some of His creations to enjoy free will or freedom. However, here's the problem. In order for free will to be truly free will in a creature, then the creature must be made with at least some capacity to choose to do what its Creator does not want. And in order for free will to be meaningful, then the consequences of choices have to be allowed to some extent, otherwise no act would have meaning. Let me give an example. Say that you want a man to be able to choose not to murder. Well, then you also have to allow him to be able to choose to murder, otherwise his choice not to murder would be a compulsion, and not a choice. However, in order for this man to be able to choose to murder, his victims have to be able to die. For if a man knows that people can't die, he cannot choose to murder since it would be impossible. For example, no one can choose to teleport in a natural human body, because teleportation is impossible for a natural human body. And if a man cannot choose to murder, then he cannot also choose not to murder. If you cannot choose to teleport, then you can also not choose not to teleport. Let's look at this from another perspective. Suppose that you want a man to choose to save lives. What must first exist? Preventable death must first exist. For if preventable death does not exist, then you cannot save a life. And if you cannot save a life, then you cannot choose to save a life. All comic book heroes who are admired, for example, are only relevant because of the existence of preventable disasters and tragedies. So any decent comic book author makes sure that there are plenty of preventable disasters and tragedies in order for their protagonist's goodness to shine. But whereas comic book authors force these disasters and tragedies on their characters, God has allowed man to be able to choose whether or not to bring about these disasters himself. In fact, the biblical narrative tells us that it's the choice of one man that brought about death and a curse on the earth. All good deeds that a man can do, only exist because evil exists. For example, loving one's child as a human is only good because you could hate them instead. But in a world without hate, love wouldn't be good, it would be normal. It would be normal since there's no alternative. That's why we think it normal for animals to give birth to, and nurture their young. It's because they're doing it instinctively, and not by choice. Anyway, to summarize, in order to create a good man, it must first be possible for him to be evil. Otherwise he'd just be a robot, and robots cannot be good or evil. One last example is looking at AI in our technology e.g in smartphones. Nobody praises their smartphones for doing what they've been programmed to do. Why? Because smartphones don't usually choose to be cooperative. They have to do what they are programmed to do. It is literally impossible to create a good man without the capacity and ability to choose evil.

[@Nick-Nasti]

This does nothing to resolve the problem of evil/suffering. Children suffer and die of cancer. God could prevent it yet he does not. If you say he has reasons, but we don’t know them: than god allows us to suffer even more by not granting us knowledge of those reasons. The fear of not knowing can be greater than the actual pain. Perhaps we suffer because of The Fall? Punishment for the sins of others is universally perceived as unjust. You will have no acceptable answers to these because the best theological minds have failed.

[@fantazypointz1054]

I would argue against the idea that love can only be good because hate exists. If we put the abstract idea of love and hate in a vacuum then how could we determine which one was good or bad? If the only thing that makes love good is its opposition or distance away from hate then there's nothing stopping me from saying that hate is good because love exists and love is the opposite of it. We all know love is good, but saying that the goodness of love only depends on hate doesn't explain or give an account of what that good is. That idea presupposes that love is good in the first place and then says it's only good because the absence of it is possible. It seems like there's some other factor or descriptor that tells us love is good in itself For example, when we speak about love we say it's good because of how it feels, and the consequences it brings about. None of this is solely dependent on hate. Hate may make the qualities more pleasurable, but love would still be intrinsically good and have positive consequences and utility regardless.

[@henryodera5726]

@@fantazypointz1054 What exactly is love in the first place? Love can be defined in two ways. The pop definition of love is a feeling of affection, admiration and/or concern towards something. The Christian definition of love, is the actual expression of care, respect and affection through one's actions despite one's personal feelings, and usually at one's own personal cost. With regards to pop love, this one is too abstract to actually be considered good. It is truly no different than a high that one gets from being drunk or intoxicated, and can just as easily vanish. To say that this love is "good" is the same as saying that being high is good, which it actually isn't, because it promotes recklessness, selfishness and self-indulgence. Similarly, pop love is responsible for the high divorce rates in many countries. "You make me feel good, so I marry you. You no longer make me feel good, so I divorce you". Like I said, this love is pretty much a high caused by hormones and chemicals in one's brain, and I wouldn't necessarily call it good. However, the love that can actually be considered to be good, is the love that is consistently expressed, because it does not depend on emotions but on character and principles. And this love is determined to be good because it is possible for it not to exist in a person. This is the love that I shall discuss in my next comment.

[@henryodera5726]

@@fantazypointz1054 If a robot can be programmed to give compliments, encouragement, sympathize, empathize etc, is that love? Maybe, but not from the robot. For the robot cannot do anything apart from what it is programmed to do. So it could only be considered to be love from the one who programmed and gave away the robot, but only if it was done freely. Because if money is involved, then it's very good business and not love. Anyway, a robot that is programmed to consistently say, "How was your day?" when you come back home, is not a loving robot. It has no free will. It cannot do anything else but ask you how your day was. For example, are Siri or Alexa gentle or polite? No, they are not. Why not? Because they cannot be harsh or rude. But otherwise, they are programmed to mimic gentleness and politeness by a human being who actually knows what those things are, and is able to choose whether to express them or not, or express the exact opposite. But if Siri or Alexa had the real potential to choose between gentleness and harshness, or between politeness or rudeness, then they could truly be gentle and polite. But if Siri or Alexa appear gentle or polite to you, that is only because the one who made them designed them to be that way in the image of something else - a gentle, respectful, helpful and polite young lady.

[@henryodera5726]

@@fantazypointz1054 In my last comment, did you note the word "image" in that last part? Well, Judeochristians believe that man was made in the image of God. But unlike Siri or Alexa, man was given something unique because of the uniqueness of God Himself. Man was given free will, something that even man has been trying to pass on to AI yet never succeeding, because man isn't the origin of free will. Because when man tries to create true AI with free will, he's basically trying to create something in the image of God. But God owns that patent. Amyway, God Himself isn't good because He was made or designed to be good. He's good because He consistently chooses to be good. He delights in good. Therefore, His image also had to be capable of choosing and delighting in good as well, otherwise it wouldn't truly be His image. However, of that image could only delight in good because that is how it was made, it wouldn't truly be His image. It would basically be a supernaturally made Siri or Alexa that could only speak and do things programmed in it without deviation. And so, evil had to exist. Not because God delighted in evil, but because He wanted a creature that could choose freely to delight in good and do good. Because what God was seeking, was a creature that would consistently choose good despite having a real choice to choose evil at every turn. Hence the garden of Eden, and God planting in it a tree that He did not want man to eat, and then putting the man there and commanding him not to eat of it. With that one act, God created free will in man, and therefore gave man the capacity and ability to actually do good. Because if there's no tree and no commandment, then man could never choose to do good. Think about in legal terms. If there is no law, then there can never be a law-abiding citizen or a criminal. So if you want someone to be a law-abiding citizen, you must give him a law which he actually has the capacity to break. But if you do that, then you also bring criminality into existence.

[@abdoshaibany]

Descartes says god will not make me make errors but gave me an iPod without the knowledge of how to use so it is my fault that i couldn't use it so god must be exist 😂

[@christophertaylor5003]

Still, what is that "Me" who fails to compose Faculty of Choice (FoC) with Faculty of Knowledge (FoK) correctly? If I am the strict sum of these two, then what in Me has the function to compose FoC with FoK? It has to be FoC, because it seems as if it is the only thing of these two that can produce some action, particularly, composing itself with FoK (which is as I understood a mere storage of ideas and information). But if my Faculty of Choice fails to compose itself with my Faculty of Knowledge, then God must have given me imperfect Faculty of Choice, EITHER if there was a correct way of composition and it for some reason didn't choose it OR if there weren't such correct way of composition in the first place. If God can do everything, he certainly could make perfect finite Faculty of Choice and perfect finite Faculty of Knowledge, for example, a creature that has some knowledge and some free will and it can produce some idea based on these two components, and to produce this idea would take finite amount of time, but there is infinite quantity of ideas in the world, so it would take infinite amount of time to produce them all, which is also fine (as I imagine this). Yet he made us, and we are a good example of imperfection in flesh. The main point is, with all that Rene Descartes did for mathematics (as a low sort of mathematician I appreciate this very much) and for philosophy, his way of thinking is very controversial and from formal point of view these proofs are not correct proofs. Thanks for your explanation! When I studied these meditations during the course of philosophy in my university, I both agreed and disagreed with it, method of the doubt seemed very enlightening to me.

[@potterna1101]

Ok. Descartes just blows off everything from meditation 1. Now he apparently knows-with full certainly- the nature of God. How God wouldn't deceive for ex. His reasoning seems weak

[@imagine3844]

Is Jeffery an atheists. From his words. God I hope so! Lol

[@mykrahmaan3408]

This explanation for existence of evil is totally irrelevant for predation. Clearly a cruel intention perfectly designed by The Creator Brute.

[@seraphinaa4868]

bro pleeeeeeeeeeeeease stop talking about IPODS it is 6 am i am high as shit i do not NEED that