Saint Anthony Mary Claret College

Philosophy 103: Modern Philosophy

Amisola, Michael Jhon L.

A Philosophical Reflection on Rene Descartes Mind and Body, Blaise Pascals probability
of faith and Baruch Spinoza Intuition as certainty of Knowledge.

Thesis Statement: The nature of God and the knowledge of truth is only certain in terms of
thinking, faith and intuition.

The act of doubting for Descartes is the only way to be certain of knowledge. For Pascal
the faith is the only way to acquire knowledge and for Spinoza, intuition is more immediate than
that the immediacy of our reason. These are three claims from the three different Modern
Philosophers which propose certain claims about the certainty of truth and knowledge. The
claims introduce such nature of God and Nature which differs in approach that also made it for
us humans to whether abide with their certainty without having a concise understanding.

According to Descartes it must start with the basic to start doubting everything then come
up at a certain point that the act of doubting is merely undoubtable that he was existing.
Cartesian dualism of Mind and Body has two motivations, the religious motivation that proves
that our soul is immortal and the scientific motivation insisting that it has its own mechanistic
dynamics. Thus the two motivations underline the distinction between the res extensa and res
cogitans. If the res extensa, the Body, the science has its own way of way of mechanism and res
cogitans has its way of certainty then how can truth of knowledge be certain as such? There must
a point of agreement that the two motivations meet. Descartes provide the answer by saying that
regressive analysis that expose the thinking thing to the Body. So does it mean to say that the
thinking thing is dependent on the mechanism of the Body as it was exposed? Or does it say that
the mind tames the body or the other way around, the body tames the mind. Reason is our direct
hinge and of our direct connection to God. Minds immortality rests on the immortal mind, then
what is the necessary connection of the mind to immortal mind? Do such human as among us
have an access to it? If it is true that the minds immortality rests upon the immortal mind, then it
can be possible that the Bodys immortality rests upon the mind. Thus the body causes the mind
and the mind comes to have certainty of God. But it can be also that since the mind that thinks
causes the body and God to exist in a thorough analysis.
 In our contemporary world today we ascribe faith as our medium and path of
communication to God. In my own way it is also parallel of the idea that Blaise Pascal had
introduced. Faith is what exposes us to the truth. Apart from faith which is directed to revealed
truths and supernatural worlds, Pascal identified experience and reason as the only ways of
acquiring knowledge of the natural world.1 Facts can be known with certainty of observation,
Pascal conceded that it would require the use of reason to understand or explain natural
phenomena, and that is the secrets of nature are hidden. It is somehow very Augustinian in
terms of concept that to believe first then which right after then you see. But some things come
to bother me to agree such certainty because if faith dominates such certainty of truth then it
would put on a claim that truth of the natural world are based upon just solely agreeing and
following certainty without having any absolute form of reason. In terms of experience and
reason as the only ways of acquiring knowledge it appeals that both two sources of knowledge
apply with certainty of truth from the point of view of experience alone particularly from the
senses and just the reason from that experience would affirm as true and that is already a
knowledge of the natural world. Matters of fact are proved by senses only. Pascal emphasize that
our eyes which are the appropriate judges of fact as reason is of natural and intelligible things. At
some point there is a tendency that both reason and experience does not coincide with some
truths. That senses or experience have also misconception and it will not be agreeable upon the
true reason. So it could be possible that experience exposes us to the reason to truth. The
misconception taken as wrong at first glance but moving towards the experience would also
qualify that misconceptions as a correction or exposure to the liable truth or knowledge apart
from the misconception. How can matters of fact be proved by senses, especially the eyes that
can only qualify what it sees but not the other side of the coin, hence it is deceiving. So the thing
here is that at what point or degree or extent that experience and reason agree to prove that it is
the only ways of acquiring knowledge. Because if the two does not agree with all the truths then
it is refutable to be certain that it is the only ways of acquiring knowledge. Then if we just let
lift of faith, the heart to mediate then everything just fall into mere probability, and how can it be

1
"Blaise Pascal," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, August 21, 2007, , accessed March 15, 2017,
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal/#TheKno.
certain if it is only probability? So the certain becomes uncertain if I would let my heart alone,
the lift of faith in virtue of probability is a weak proposition to say to be certain of something.

On the idea of Baruch Spinoza, Intuition is more immediate than the immediacy of our
reason. Intuition is defined in Collins dictionary as knowledge of belief obtain neither by reason
or perception. At the very first if it is obtained neither by reason of perception then what would it
be? what is or are the certain way of obtaining knowledge? God contains everything.2 Is it
necessarily or agreeable that God can be contain in everything. For me it is impossible, taken it
as not in a mere doing that act of containing but rather on accounting God in everything. Yes,
God or nature can be interchangeably the same, the natura naturata and natura naturans.
Everything, the word everything does it pertain to in all sensible matters that only human mind
can apprehend? Everything would also be upon ideas. So God or nature is also in ideas? Then
there, for me in my own opinion there is a problem to ascribe or qualify as such everything
because for me everything can act in accordance of its necessity, the modes of Gods attribute
but the thing is the word attribute itself is lowering God to sensible substance or to nature. It
would agree to Spinozas opinion that the I is affected by God. Spinoza made a link towards
both Gods attribute and to modes that in such a way proposes that human cognition could have
an immediate grasp of the Nature.

It is clearly elaborated in the definitions and axioms supported by propositions of

Spinoza. The definition that says, By that which it is self-caused I mean that those essence
involves existence; or that whose nature can be conceived only as existing. So does it mean that
existence precedes essence? But how could it be possible to self-caused like say for example
does it mean to say that that a self-caused existed prior to everything? Since axioms consist
nothing more than arbitrary definitions, then do they tell us about the reality? However, part of
human cognitive ability, it would remain clearly as a question because the mind tends to clarify
or having seeking for truth that would suffice, support and convince the qualification of
definition. Even such a way that causal relation will be applied then it would hang upon the idea

2
Samuel Enoch Stumf and James Fieser, Socrates and Beyond: A history of Philosophy, 7th ed. (New
York, USA: McGraw-Hill, 2003), pg.237.
of infinite regress. Attributes are ways of manifesting God but not pluralization of God. If God is
attributed to everything thus he is present or contained in everything then it would lead to
confusion. Spinozas God is not divisible but in this term he is pluralizing God in a sense that he
is in everything, but how can it be? I cannot allow my mind to accept such truth? I think there is
something beyond its very notion of existence. Spinoza proposes that there is three kind of
knowledge for him. The imagination, intellection, and the higher level of knowledge the
intuition. The first one; imagination for Spinoza it is only an imaginative way of knowing. The
first and the lowest is opinion (opinion). Consisting of random sensory experience (i.e.
experience not determined by the intellect) and eternal reports; this kind of knowledge is
imaginative and inadequate.3 How? In a way that how something appears to us, come and affect
to us. Ideally, if we say imagination it is just only having a picture of a thing or something in
mind and Spinoza is right in saying that. That is why for him we need to go deeper in order to
understand things. Thus, imagination is looking things at the shallowest capacity of mind and
the second kind of knowledge will prove that. The second king of knowledge is intellection. In
intellection there is the part of mind; the finite mind, common notion and reason. Since we are
looking thing at the level of imagination then the finite mind would criticize, our shallow
imagination and thus it appeals to the mind to go deeper. But the problem here is yes, Spinoza
said that our finite mind criticizes our shallow understanding and to go deeper is it also saying
the same way that to deepen the form of imagination. Because finite mind criticizes the shallow
part but in the act of surging and deepening is also just deepening the act of imagination. The
common notion from subjective arbitrary then our mind is able also for consensus that improving
notion from that of others. It must be common to all things and are equally part of the whole.
Then after the common notion there is the reason that would adhere to causation to what is
essential but still for Spinoza it is not enough.

The higher kind and level of knowledge is the intuition or the conceptual connection
which proceeds from an inadequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to the
adequate knowledge of the essence of things. This intuition explains that one, or the substance

3
Jonathan Dancy, Ernest Sosa, and Matthias Steup, eds., Blackwell Companions to Philosophy: A
Companion to Epistemology, 2nd ed. (West Sussex, United Kingdom: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), pg. 750.
contained its whole nature and entirety in the universal. It is the matter of expansion of substance
to see in wider or keener view that God is contained in there. But does it support the claim of
having the higher kind of knowledge. In the definition of intuition above it is a knowledge that
attained either reason or perception and how can it be possible be a knowledge at first if it not
exposes or known in the mind? Like the example that God is in the polo. Well, we agreed in
class that it is just only a shallow understanding thus looking at the polo, the entirety and the
whole of God or Nature is already there within the polo. It is just like simply saying that in the
polo the world can be there and the even the universe is already there. The thing here is that our
mind will fall into imagination again in order to qualify such claim. It is like going back to the
lower knowledge because in intuition for me it means to say that nothing can be said of and it
entails that it is already the superior and the best notion to explain the substance.

Spinoza claimed that we can have absolute knowledge. For me, we can have knowledge
but that the problem is our mind is not capable to know and comprehend the whole of reality of
substance because it has its own mechanism. Within its attribute, the substance has its self-
nature. I could say that only a part of the nature we know and is revealed to us but not the
absolute and the whole nature because I believe that there is something with the substance that it
possesses certain naturing only from its own. There is always a knowledge higher to human and
is always higher to human.