“...I learned not to believe too firmly anything of which I had been persuaded only by example and custom. Thus I gradually freed myself from many errors which may obscure our natural light and make us less capable of heeding reason.”
D returns to ‘custom’, but winds up—fortunately for his narrative of redemption—doubting what custom teaches him. (Whew, that was close.)
And now the crisis of doubt and error can be gradually resolved, but in order to do that, D introduces a new figure in the scene: that of the ‘natural light’ of reason. This is a hugely important notion for him, and I’m not sure how it fits in to the theory of mind he wants to endorse. It sounds kind of detached from the individual mind, as if it were a meta-resource (maybe God is guided by it too?), but again this baffling notion of nature. Surely the creator (if you believe in God) of nature isn’t guided by the creation; surely the controller (if you are merely a humanist) of nature isn’t guided by it. It seems to have things backwards.
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Timothy Chow on the NF consistency proof and Lean
20 hours ago
3 comments:
It would seem that God would not be subject to this natural light of reason in the sense that a servant is to a master, but would rather be this light, or at least the source of it. Descartes many times throughout the discourse and the meditations states that God is the source of his idea of perfection, and that God is also the object of this idea. In the second to last paragraph of meditation 3 Descartes says the following:
"it is no surprise that God, in creating me, should have placed this idea in me to be, as it were, the mark of the craftsman upon his work. . .But the mere fact that God created me is a very strong basis for believing that I am somehow made in his image and likeness, and that I perceive that likeness, which includes the idea of God, by the same faculty which enables me to perceive myself. . .I recognize that it is impossible for me to exist with the nature I have-that is, having within me the idea of God- were it not the case that God really existed."
The stamp which Descartes speaks of is both the idea of God which he says he finds inside of him innately and the faculty which allows him to understand this idea- the idea of perfection. Man, who finds in himself the imperfections of doubt and weakness, must subject himself to reason as a child is subjected to authority in order to progress in knowledge and goodness. In a sense God could also be said to be subject to the natural light of reason, and in that he would only be subject to himself, so this is really another way of saying that God's perfection is consistent with his perfection.
I do agree that "our natural light" seems im some way detached from the individual mind, as Professor Thompson has said. "Our natural light" is almost referred to as something that is built inside us, that begins its work from day 1; building up and constructing thought and reason. It is beyond our control just something that comes along with being a human. Almost seeming artificial to me, maybe in a machine-like manor, it has a guided-light that kind of escorts us in the right direction or processing thought and reason. What is the "right" direction? And in which path are we taken? Does this natural light guide us all to be on the same page, or to be unique and of variety in our thoughts? He describes this natural light of ours as a gift almost, and when he has freed himself of the shadow that has been casted over it, new things come to him: he can listen to reason, and perhaps better learn from this revitalizing of this natural light.
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