Meditation Five 🤟🤘

I used to do a thing with my dead name. My initials combined the same with a historical figure I admired.

After I chose my name, I tried to find the same kind of “link.” I couldn’t really find one that had that same type of connection.

My momentary “uneasy,” was then replaced with the realization that it wasn’t actually “unease.”  What did Kierkegaard call it?   “Anxiety?” That existential dizziness of freedom. The feeling you get when you realize You can choose anything and therefore, you’re responsible for everything you become 🤷🏻‍♀️

For me, it was me “realizing” I didn’t “need” that “link” anymore. My initials mean Me.

I spent so many years of my life needing that “link,” in more than just my initials. Needing attachments like it to validate my life. To feel “connected” to me.

That was a symptom of my dysphoria. A lack of “attachment” to my body, in a sort of Rene Descartes “sort of way.”

Also, may be why I suck at accepting compliments. Before, they always rang sort of “hollow.” At least now, I feel the sincerity.

The only fun part about “Meditation Five” in Rene Descartes’ Meditations on the First Philosophy is I get to talk about Immanuel Kant ☺️

Recap: [I don’t have a skip button]

In Day Four, Rene fell on the metaphorical sword. Kind of for all of us, really. Where he left us:

The world was a lie. All of it. Even our bodies. Think mind in a vat, fed “sensations” kinda like The Matrix.

Rene pointed out the obvious. “Hey, to be fooled, something has to exist to fall for it.” Hence, “I think, therefore I am.”

Now that “I” am, he was stuck with what to do about it. Welp, he’s got to think his way out. So, Rene imagined “a perfect island,” and now we have “blackboard perfect God.” But, he’s real. Trust me, Bro.

He’s also really really cool. I mean, All Perfect.  Trust me, Bro.

Because of that, we know he’s cool. And around and round one goes. Regardless, he ends with “that means we can trust certain clear and distinct perceptions…,” or something.

At the start of today we have this: Truth is possible. Error is our fault (that way, God’s still perfect 🤷🏻‍♀️).

[End Skip ☺️]

How imperfect are we??

Rene splits the mind into two parts: “Intellect” (our understanding) and “Will”(choice/judgment).

Our “Intellect” is limited. It’s like a candle burning in the dark. It’s passive: it just “reveals.”

Our “Will,” however, is unlimited. We can, and often do affirm or deny anything and everything 🤷🏻‍♀️ Even things we don’t even “know.” So, it’s active: it “decides.”

Per Rene, our understanding is finite and our will is infinite, and sometimes our will will “outrun” our  intellect.  Psst. He’s saying we make a lot of “snap judgements.”

Let’s talk about Kant ☺️

He was my age when he published his Critique. He was a little “quirky” 😁

Kant was a homebody, of sorts. And, he never met a comma he didn’t like ☺️

The scene is Königsberg in 1781. It’s like Peoria, Illinois. By that I mean, it’s not London or Paris. It’s smaller. A lot smaller. But, still big for its time. A midsized “Village.” But it was well situated.

Königsberg sat on the Pregel River, flowing into the Baltic Sea. It was, according to Dr. Google, a “major trading hub in East Prussia.” Okay.

That means “Goods” moved through its port constantly and that it was connected to cities like Amsterdam, London and St. Petersburg. It was a “small town,” but the world came to it.

Kant taught at the University of Königsberg, which Dr. Google says was founded in the 1500s.  Let’s say it anchored the city intellectually. Its faculty and students were plugged into a lot of European intellectual networks with Ideas from Isaac Newton, John Locke and David Hume.

Especially Hume. He was big. High peaks, “there is no necessity in an “if / than” statement.” 😱🤯

[I will definitely be circling back 👆, eventually].

Meanwhile, Königsberg was also a religious berg. It was shaped by Lutheran Protestantism, an especially strict form of it called “Pietism.” Per Dr. Google, it emphasized discipline, morality, and inner faith.

Kant himself was raised in this environment. In fact, more than raised, he famously never left Königsberg. Like ever. Supposedly, he never went more than 60 kilometers from home.

Kant was also a “confirmed bachelor.” Though he did “try” to marry, twice. Sort of 🤷🏻‍♀️

Kant was reportedly a fantastic dinner party host. As was the custom of the time, he’d try and put together the best “combination of guests” and was rather good at it. So, he wasn’t a recluse or anything. He just liked things “his way.”

The myth is: Kant took a walk every freaking day at the exact same time. Every. freaking. day.

It was said that the citizens of Königsberg could set their clocks by him. That’s how dependable he was.

Oh, and he did not like the Meditations. He especially, and definitely, did not like Day Five 🤷🏻‍♀️

“Meditation Five: Of the Essence of Material Things, and Again of God, that He Exists.”

Or, “Trust me, Bro.”

Or, what is “stuff?”

Here, Rene needs to get us from “Do I exist?” to ”What else exists (and what are they)?”

He starts with Maths. Geometry. Like, he invented part of it, so…, trust the source 🤷🏻‍♀️

Rene goes all, “take the triangle…, [gestures to an imaginary triangle sort of floating in mid air] it has three sides…” [Should be read in the voice of that priest in The Princes Bride at the wedding when he goes, “Marriage…,”]

But, even if no triangles exist “in the world,” the idea of a triangle still has a fixed essence. A “meaning.”

Here, Rene notes that its essence includes necessary truths: it has three sides. Its angles add up to 180° (that’s Euclidean geometry not Rene’s. So, he didn’t quote himself at least 🤷🏻‍♀️)

He treats those “truths” as clear and distinct truths — you don’t invent them, you discover them.  Umm, k.

Now Rene argues that material things also have clear, knowable essences (just like triangles in like geometry). Trust me, Bro.

[Let’s go to the blackboard where we left Blackboard God].

On Day Three Rene argued that since he has an idea of a perfect being—

[Blackboard God = We imagine a perfect being. God is the end of that process—the point where no improvement is even imaginable. “Blackboard GOD”].

—but he’s imperfect, so where’d that idea come from, amirite. So, since an effect can’t have more reality than its cause than Something Perfect must have caused that idea!! And, umm actually, that “something” = God. Rene’s causal chain argument: idea → cause → existence of God. Tada!!

Here, he goes further. Remember Anselm and that Perfect Island??

Rene’s power move: Just like a triangle must have three sides, God (as a perfect being) must exist, because existence is part of perfection. Boom!!

But, wait…, [Shh 🤫]

What he’s done is drop the causal element so that God follows just from the idea itself.

Day Three, God, empirically-ish.

Day Five, God A priori.

“But, will it play in Peoria?”

Let’s set our clocks ☺️

Immanuel Kant’s “Umm, actually” was in Book II of his “Critique of Pure Reason” in a section called “The Ideal of Pure Reason,” in a subsection 🤷🏻‍♀️ called, “On the Impossibility of an Ontological Proof of the Existence of God.”

Kant’s claim: “Existence is not a predicate.”

Or, “A hundred real thalers (coins) contain no more than a hundred possible thalers.”

Kant’s Mic drop was saying “exists” doesn’t add anything to the concept. It just says: this concept is instantiated in reality.

Instantiate is like, “his imposing mansion is intended to instantiate for visitors his staggering success as an entrepreneur. Or, a little Red Sport’s Car, y’know.

Kant says you can’t define something into existence. “Existence” isn’t a real property like “three sides.” Kant basically shuts the door on: Rene’s Ontological argument. Anselm’s version too. People still sometimes make a clever new one, but, yeah, that’s done done.

Kant forced philosophy to ask a new question: How can we justify existence claims without defining things into being?

The Transcendental Dialectic = the study of unavoidable illusions produced by human reason.

Reason is powerful. But it can’t stay in its lane. It tries to finish the story, a total self, a total world, a total God. And, in doing that, it creates beautiful, and convincing… wrong conclusions. Moreover, it’s a feature, not a bug.

Definitions tell you what something would be like. They don’t tell you whether it’s actually real.

Imagine I define for you “The perfect podcast host!! Flawless voice, perfect insight, universally admired…, that’s a clear concept. But, does that mean she exists? Nope!! All I’ve done is just “described something.”

That’s Kant’s point. Rene wanted certainty from inside the mind, but Kant notes that won’t get you existence just “structure.”

So, “You” can define something perfectly. “You” can even prove what must be true if it exists. But, “You” can’t prove it exists just by definition.

At the close of Meditation, Rene believes he’s established more trust in his ability to trust his clear and distinct ideas. Oh, and a “new and improved” Blackboard God.

This sets up tomorrow and the final Meditation. Here, Rene will continue his rebuilding project with this notion: If clear and distinct ideas are reliable…then I can trust…the existence of material things??

The distinction between “mind and body.”

I’ll also get kinda “Kanty” with it 🫰🫰🫰

Thanks for reading ☺️

I’d like to apologize for being late. My “dog ate my reality.” I will do 6 on Saturday. With love 💕

Sam 💕

A cool triangle photo 🤷🏻‍♀️