Descartes III - Radical Doubt and Faith

Descartes (1596-1650) invented and used a method called 'Radical Doubt' with the goal of finding 'true ideas', or clear truths. The rules of this method are:
1. Never immediately accept anything as true. Question all ideas.
2. Break ideas down into smaller pieces.
3. Do all reasoning in order, from simplest to most complex.
4. Omit no ideas. Take everything into consideration and enumerate everything.

Lately I've been talking to one of the librarians at the public library, and she is Jewish. I've also been communicating to a fellow blogger who is Jewish. They both say that the central core premise of their beliefs is to not accept anything anyone tells you until you have questioned it, analyzed it, thought about it, and were sure it made sense.

Sound similar, don't they? And it sounds like a great way of going about things and shifting out the truth from all the lies we get shoved in our face every day. But, if reason is all there is to finding the truth, why does the Catholic Church put so much emphasis on faith? If we can use our reasons well, what need have we of faith? God gave us brains, didn't He? Are we supposed to just let ourselves be spoon fed what a bunch of priests and bishops and the Pope say? And then believe it just because they said it?

This is my answer to those questions:
If I try to reach the truth, and I decide to take this premise of always questioning everything before accepting anything as true and of using only my reason, I am putting faith in my reason. I am putting immense trust in one, limited faculty of my mind that is just as fallen as my every other faculty because I am human. And on what grounds? What reason have I to put faith in my reason? My reason can even tell me that since it is limited it cannot take me unguided and alone to the truth which we all seek.

Consider what would happen if everyone used only their own reasoning to find the truth: no one would agree or come to any conclusions. Everyone would have pieces of the truth, arguments would constantly break out, and everything- morals, principles, etc.- would become relative. (sounds sort of like today, doesn't it?) Truth, however, by its very nature, is universal and eternal.

Furthermore, I can use my reason to find that God is so beyond my comprehension that I cannot reach Him through human reason alone. Then, I can use my reason to find that since He is all-loving, He would not have abandoned His creatures on earth with nothing but their reasons to guide them to Him. God would reveal truths about Himself, truths which help us reach Him by believing in them, though such truths surpass our reason's ability to comprehend.

The more our reason is lit by the light of faith, the more we may understand what we believe in, and the more we understand, the more deeply we believe and love what we know by faith. And what we know by reason and believe in by faith become tightly and wondrously bound.

Finally, belief is not based on how much sense the believed-in thing makes. Rather, we believe in truths beyond our comprehension beyond God told us. We believe for the authority of the person (or Divine Person) who told us.

Once again I refer to my favorite source:

156 What moves us to believe is not the fact that revealed truths appear as true and intelligible in the light of our natural reason: we believe "because of the authority of God himself who reveals them, who can neither deceive nor be deceived".28 So "that the submission of our faith might nevertheless be in accordance with reason, God willed that external proofs of his Revelation should be joined to the internal helps of the Holy Spirit."²⁹ Thus the miracles of Christ and the saints, prophecies, the Church's growth and holiness, and her fruitfulness and stability "are the most certain signs of divine Revelation, adapted to the intelligence of all"; they are "motives of credibility" (motiva credibilitatis), which show that the assent of faith is "by no means a blind impulse of the mind".³⁰

157 Faith is certain. It is more certain than all human knowledge because it is founded on the very word of God who cannot lie. To be sure, revealed truths can seem obscure to human reason and experience, but "the certainty that the divine light gives is greater than that which the light of natural reason gives."³¹ "Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt."³²

158 "Faith seeks understanding":³³ it is intrinsic to faith that a believer desires to know better the One in whom he has put his faith, and to understand better what He has revealed; a more penetrating knowledge will in turn call forth a greater faith, increasingly set afire by love. The grace of faith opens "the eyes of your hearts"³⁴ to a lively understanding of the contents of Revelation: that is, of the totality of God's plan and the mysteries of faith, of their connection with each other and with Christ, the center of the revealed mystery. "The same Holy Spirit constantly perfects faith by his gifts, so that Revelation may be more and more profoundly understood."³⁵ In the words of St. Augustine, "I believe, in order to understand; and I understand, the better to believe."³⁶

159 Faith and science: "Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth."³⁷ "Consequently, methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are."³⁸

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28 Dei Filius 3:DS 3008.
29 Dei Filius 3:DS 3009.
30 Dei Filius 3:DS 3008-3010; Cf. Mk 16 20; Heb 2:4.
31 St. Thomas Aquinas, STh II-II,171,5,obj.3.
32 John Henry Cardinal Newman, Apologia pro vita sua (London: Longman, 1878) 239.
33 St. Anselm, Prosl. prooem.:PL 153,225A.
34 Eph 1:18.
35 DV 5.
36 St. Augustine, Sermo 43,7,9:PL 38,257-258.
37 Dei Filius 4:DS 3017.
38 GS 36 § 1.

Descartes II

Descartes has rather odd ideas concerning the senses and the mind. Basically, he says that in our search for absolute, unquestionable truth, we must realize that the senses deceive us. He uses this as one of many examples of the deception of the senses.

"[F]or example, I find in my mind two wholly diverse ideas
of the sun; the one, by which it appears to me extremely
small draws its origin from the senses[...]; the other,
by which it seems to be many times larger than the whole
earth, is taken up on astronomical grounds, that is,
elicited from certain notions born with me, or is framed
by myself in some other manner. These two ideas cannot 
certainly both resemble the same sun; and reason teaches
me that the one which seems to have immediately emanated
from it [the former]is the most unlike."

Therefore, he reasons, all that is left to rely on is the mind.
One of the problems with this idea is that the senses have no will of their own. They are faculties of the body which collect data about the world around us and about ourselves. They are not capable of deceiving. What deceives us is the part of our mind that deciphers the information collected from our senses.
Also, one must keep in mind that the senses aren't the only faculties we have for learning and figuring things out. They can only go so far, but reason can go farther. For example, the senses teach us tat the sun gives light and heat. Reason goes on to teach us that it is immobile, extremely large, etc.
The fact that what we learn from the senses is rarely the entire truth because the senses are limited and because we do not always understand the data they collect correctly is no reason for disregarding them.

(Thank you, Joe, for your input in this problem.)

Descartes (and a tangent on some definitions of 'person')

Descartes is a rather controversial philosopher, at least among conservative Catholic circles. Presently, I have read his Discourses, I-III and the first half of IV, and his Meditations, I, II, & III. I would like to explain his "I think, therefore I am".

"I Think, Therefore I Am"
That is THE statement of Descartes, and few know much more about him than that. At first this statement seems to say that thought is the source of existence. But let us examine the text, keeping always in mind that Descartes was rather obsessed with doubting everything until he had undeniable proof for it.

"[F]rom the very fact that I thought of doubting the truth of other things, it followed very evidently and very certainly that I existed[...][T]here is nothing at all in this 'I think therefore I am' that assures me that I am speaking the truth, except that I see very clearly that, in order to think, it is necessary to exist."

You see, he is so concerned about not calling true anything that has the slightest possibility of being false, that the only thing left for him to know for sure is that his mind, which he calls 'I', exists. His proof for the existence of his mind is that it is thinking. And so, his 'I think, therefore I am' is really just a poor way of saying 'Because I think, I know I (that is, my mind) exists.

This would all be well and good, except for what he says during the ellipsis in the above quote.
He states:

"had I simply stopped thinking [...] I would have no reason to believe that I had existed."

This statement gives two criteria for a thing, specifically a human, to be considered living:
1. The thing must be thinking
2.The thing must be conscious of its thinking.

True as it may be that one's thoughts are a proof to oneself of one's existence, they are not a criteria for being considered a living human.

Speaking of criteria to be considered a living human, these are the definitions of some other philosophers of the word 'Person'.

Soul trapped in a Body - Plato
Rational Animal - Aristotle
Embodied Spirit - St. Thomas Aquinas
Thinking Thing - Descartes

It seems that these Philosophers fall into 2 groups- Those that define a person by what it does (thinks), and those that define a person by what it is made of (a body and a soul).