History of Science 2: Descartes & Knowledge
Induction, Deduction, Schmucktion – what’s wrong with using intuition?
Why do we need science? We have brains for a reason don’t we? Why can’t we just use them to arrive at knowledge? Our intuitions will lead us to truth!
Sense Deception
Illusion in Philosophy Book under Descartes
Arrows same length
Fake hand and hammer experiment
Pareidolia
Hot hand, cold hand, room temp hand
Page 100 of thinking fast and slow
That gorilla basketball video https://youtu.be/dQ47ocCsUPs
Perceptual Deception
Is the earth flat?
Do we observe the sun move or the earth?
How fast are you moving? (107,000 km/h)
Have you ever touched anything?
Is air open space?
Are solid things, solid?
Do heavier things fall faster?
What color is white light?
Are my hands clean?
Refraction of light
Your body is what percent human?
How do you protect someone against diseases? Keep them away from the disease or give them the disease?
Did Tyrannosaurus Rex exsist closer to the time of stegosaurus or us today?
Cognitive Deception
What’s heaver a ton of rocks or a ton of feathers?
A bat and a ball cost $110 together. The bat costs $100 more than the ball. How much is the bat?
Page 65 of thinking fast and slow
Mandela effect
Are there more odd numbers of more numbers ending with 9?
A cowboy rides into town on Friday. He stays three days and then leaves on Friday. How is this possible?
When I was six, my sister was half my age. Now I’m 40, how old is my sister?
If you’re running a race and you pass the person in 2nd, what position are you in?
You’re going to work for me for 30 days. I’m making you an offer. You can either get 1 million dollars at the end of the month or 1 cent your first day and I’ll double your pay every day until the end of the month.
Why does this happen?
It’s human nature to make quick judgements and conclusions. Making quick decisions was often what kept our ancestors alive on the African savannah. It’s a survival trait if we can make quick judgements. Imagine you’re a hunter gathered, your naked with no weapon. You hear a rustle in the bushes, what do you do? Do we know it’s a lion? How do we know it’s not a friend with a basket of fruit? Isn’t it better to run away and be safe rather than dinner? “better safe than dinner”. This is how humans think. The world is dangerous, decisions come with consequences and we want to survive. So we make snap judgments about the world.
Watch the Matrix
https://youtu.be/xOULKUK07kU
The Renaissance
Europe in the late middle ages had been met with much social and political turmoil. Martin Luther had separated huge amounts of Christians away from the authority of the Catholic Church, the printing press had allowed huge amounts of ideas to travel far and wide like never before, Galileo was contradicting long held beliefs about the Universe, Revolutions had thrown up questions of the divine rights of Kings and how governments should be run. Europe was trying to figure itself out again.
Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
Rene Descartes knew that humans were flawed at reasoning. Descartes is most famous for trying to make as few assumptions as possible. He asked how he could trust his eyes, his senses, sensations and mind. If senses can be deceived and our minds can be deceived, He asked himself, “How can we know, what we know?” If an evil demon controlled all his thoughts and feelings, in a scenario like The Matrix, how would he know? Morpheus says to Neo, “Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real?”
Why trust reason? Because it’s reasonable? That’s circular. Why is reasoning good? You can’t use reason to defend it.
He finally reduced his skepticism to “I think, therefore, I am”. Descartes decided that if he can think, then he exists. He would need to exist in order to think. This he called, “The First Principle of Knowledge.” He could ground his knowledge on this and build up from there.
He saw all existing knowledge as an apple. Some were bad apples, and those bad apples tainted other apples. If he really wanted to save some apples, he’d have to dump them all out and examine each one before adding them back in. Descartes said, “It is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.” He saw this as a way of keeping ourselves in check and ensure we believe the most true things as possible.
Descartes knew it wasn’t possible to actually live like this and therefore complete doubt was never his aim. P95 of The Great Guide.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLKrmw906TM&t=4s
So Science, observation and experimentation, have been used to clear through our own self-deception and biases to discover truths around us with the most accuracy possible.
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