The Evolution of Knowledge, RETHINKING SCIENCE FOR THE ANTHROPOCENE, by Jürgen Renn

t seems to me that this is a critical omission. It is not enough to simply rely on the Scholastic notion of of contingent beings. If we are to accept that at each moment the existence of anything and everything is threatened by extinction, there must be some external cause that threatens their existence. — Fooloso4

Thanks for the excellent overview of the inconsistencies and I agree that something is missing. For myself, the peculiar idea is not so much a threat of extinction by external causes as what the equivalence between creation and persistence means as:

For it is obvious to one who pays close attention to the nature of time that plainly the same force and action are needed to preserve anything at each individual moment that it lasts as would be required to create that same thing anew — ibid. page 33

If the equivalence is to be possible, it will have to replace the way potential and capacity are ascribed as belonging to a being rather than existing by themselves:

It is evident that even of the things that seem to be substances, most are capacities, whether the parts of animals (for none of them exists when it has been separated, and whenever they are separated they all exist only as matter) or earth, fire, and air (for none of them is one, but instead they are like a heap, until they are concocted and some one thing comes to be from them). — Aristotle. Metaphysics, 1040b5, translated by CDC Reeve

This touches on your comments regarding human nature. It seems to me that when you say:

Descartes' life can be divided but his mind cannot. It would seem that the mind is not dependent on God from moment to moment for the mind is not divided into parts. — Fooloso4

that you think Descartes is assuming the 'mind' is a capacity of a being in the Aristotelian sense, where creatures bring with themselves some measure of the causes of their existence. While the Sixth Meditation has Descartes returning to the world of the senses with some measure of trust he withheld during the Third, what is meant by the indivisibility of 'mind' is still completely contingent on observing:

For when I consider the mind or consider myself insofar as I am merely a thinking thing, I can’t detect any parts within myself.

(emphasis mine}

It looks like the connection between 'life' and 'existence' is going to require a lot more work when the guy says:

I rightly conclude that my essence consists entirely in my being a thinking thing. And although perhaps (or rather, as I shall soon say, assuredly) I have a body that is very closely joined to me, nevertheless, because on the one hand I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, insofar as I am merely a thinking thing and not an extended thing, and because on the other hand I have a distinct idea of a body, insofar as it is merely an extended thing and not a thinking thing, it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and can exist without it. — ibid. Sixth Meditation, page 51

I have only watched snippets of Dune movies because i think there is something deliberately anti-cinematic about it. The Star Wars stories are historical analogues of Beowulf repeated ad infinitum with Jane Austin thrown in for romantic interest.
Dune presents a universe of inexorable consequences where the good guys may not win, if you can say who they are.

I was hoping to say there is a startling difference between Descartes and Aristotle. I will think about how to present the idea more clearly than the gestures presented so far. I have a large measure of uncertainty in these matters.

Which statement from Aristotle are you thinking of in this regard?

I think we would translate "God" in this case as inertia. — frank

I see how the ideas of causes of motion can serve as a metaphor. Descartes is addressing why things appear to continue to exist from one moment to the next

For because the entire span of one’s life can be divided into countless parts, each one wholly independent of the rest, it does not follow from the fact that I existed a short time ago that I must exist now, unless some cause, as it were, creates me all over again at this moment, that is to say, which preserves me. For it is obvious to one who pays close attention to the nature of time that plainly the same force and action are needed to preserve anything at each individual moment that it lasts as would be required to create that same thing anew, were it not yet in existence. Thus conservation differs from creation solely by virtue of a distinction of reason; this too is one of those things that are manifest by the light of nature. — ibid. page 33

This equation between creation and persistence is what I am trying to wrap my head around. Is this to say that, unlike Aristotle's understanding of properties that can be predicated to a specific subject (which persists for some finite period), substance is a set of conditions which a 'distinction of reason' can view in a different light?

It depends on your god. — Ludwig V

That would make sense. But the cycle of humiliation and violence wears many different masks. Like the weird theological party within Billiards at Half Past Nine. You are what you eat.

European antisemitism at the time of the Nazis had become scientific in character (it was pseudo-scientific, of course). It took up the older religious tradition of antisemitism and ran with it in a racialist direction, so it was motivated and justified differently than it had been in previous centuries. — Jamal

The Jews were blamed for creating a world order that produced the Communists as well as those Capitalists who crafted the Versailles treaty. They were so effective wielding this invisible power that the only way to defeat it was to wipe out every last one of them. Does that logic work as a 'theism'?

I take the 'insensibly' to mean that the principles will be accepted as self-evident and natural before they are recognized as a refutation of Aristotle. So, not subconsciously but more like 'unassociated' until fully appreciated.

Very interesting. I need to ponder before attempting a reply.

What do you make of the emphasis on the 'first person' point of view that started this discussion?

Are you cancelling that as not germane to the methods available to us or saying that is a category mistake?

Here the commonly accepted bit of dogma is literalism of scripture -- interpreting scripture with respect to factual truth. I don't know if this is a principle as much... but there is a tendency among atheists to interpret scripture with an eye towards factual knowledge. Maybe not quite a principle? But close enough to count as dogma, for my purposes at least, which is to avoid becoming dogmatic. — Moliere

I think that emphasis upon factual knowledge comes in some portion from the emphasis upon the confession of belief that is expressed through creeds. Contrast the significance of repeating the Nicene creed with providing an offering to Athena at her temple. Athena is not testing if you have a correct set of beliefs. She might help you if you honor her properly.

I think it is pertinent to the idea of resistance to present evils. So, Merton was a quietest when measured against 'Liberation Theology' and Bonhoffer resisted the Nazis when others did not.

The altar of sacrifice turns out to be a moving target and timing is key.

Alain Badiou wrote an interesting study of St. Paul, presenting him as a contemporary in terms of the dynamic where values are lost or established. Badiou does not view this as connected to the religious content itself but how it breaks with both Greek and Jewish traditions. From the introduction:

For our own part, what we shall focus on in Paul's work is a singular connection, which it is formally possible to disjoin from the fable and of which Paul is, strictly speaking, the inventor: the connection that establishes a passage between a proposition concerning the subject and an interrogation concerning the law. Let us say that, for Paul, it is a matter of investigating which law is capable of structuring a subject devoid of all identity and suspended to an event whose only “proof” lies precisely in its having been declared by a subject.

What is essential for us is that this paradoxical connection between a subject without identity and a law without support provides the foundation for the possibility of a universal teaching within history itself. Paul's unprecedented gesture consists in subtracting truth from the communitarian grasp, be it that of a people, a city, an empire, a territory, or a social class. What is true (or just; they are the same in this case) cannot be reduced to any objective aggregate, either by its cause or by its destination. — Alain Badiou, SAINT PAUL, The Foundation of Universalism

The tension between a self that decides what is true and institutions that constrain it is never completely released and becomes a catalyst for change at different moments. In the Reformation, for example, the primacy of divine judgement in each personal soul freaked out Luther when his followers saw that as a green light to topple their rulers. For the Americans who appealed to the equality of all men as creatures made by God, a universal principle could restrain the necessity for Hobbe's Monarch.

From Badiou's perspective, 'scientific truths' are a restraint upon valuation recognized as personally meaningful but that this process takes place in the larger context of the struggle for this ground supporting the universal and forces that would dismantle it. Badiou points to right-wing identitarians who want to depose the equality for all with the privilege of being a certain people.

In the matter of White Christian Evangelists, the abandonment of judging for oneself is the bridesmaid of the primacy of previous levels of social rank.

Please cite the text to support this statement.

You were using the idea to make a distinction between what might be a problem of experience between beings who care about it with an object you are confident does not share the problem.

There is an irony involved in your citing the arbitrary quality of 'being like a football' since it relies upon the commonly received notion that footballs do not experience their being. To that extent, you are using the concept you wish to excise.

This tendency to hypostatization has been strengthened by another circumstance. Much psychological interest has been in the description of one’s experiences when he is conscious, his feelings, perceptions, emotions, thoughts; and to arrest such experiences in mid-career, to hold them in static for detailed description, incurs the danger of misapprehending these cross-sectional snapshots as stable and enduring things.”

Dashiell's image of random snapshots does not reflect the way Chalmers frames what is to be explained:

The meta-problem of consciousness is (to a first approximation) the problem of explaining why we think that there is a problem of consciousness. Just as metacognition is cognition about cognition, and a meta-theory is a theory about theories, the meta-problem is a problem about a problem. The initial problem is the hard problem of consciousness: why and how do physical processes in the brain give rise to conscious experience? The meta-problem is the problem of explaining why we think consciousness poses a hard problem, or in other terms, the problem of explaining why we think consciousness is hard to explain.
The relevant sort of consciousness here is phenomenal consciousness, or subjective experience. A system is phenomenally conscious if there is something it is like to be that system, from the first-person point of view. — D Chalmers, The Meta-Problem of Consciousness,

From the quote, it is hard to know what Dashiell would say to "something it is like to be that system, from the first-person point of view". With the concern expressed by 'reification', I am guessing he would align with the 'illusionist' against the 'realist' in Chalmer's article on the meta-problem.

Or perhaps Dashiell is viewing the matter as a behaviorist where 'the first-person point of view' is an epiphenomenon within an epiphenomenon.

You applied the Hitchens' argument as a counter to what was presented when the thesis Hitchen's was opposing is not being argued for here.

That is putting words in other people's mouths.

Yes, the onus IS on you to explain further, or else any discussion regarding your irreligious but still theist status, terminates, and you neither gain nor lose so why be a member of a discussion website? — universeness

Christ on a hand truck, who made you the arbiter of what is gained or lost by others choosing not to discuss some things?

At this point, you are putting words in other people's mouths and then arguing with those words.

This was going down while I was in a small room first reading philosophy:


I wish i had gotten out more.

A good observation when considering that Kant wanted to secure the logic of causality in the face of the skepticism of Hume.

The Mitrokhin article is effective in drawing out the differences between the Putin agenda and the focus of right-wing parties elsewhere.
It puts the post-soviet states into a certain light in how they deal with integrating Russian speakers into their systems. The invasion of Ukraine has accelerated the process of change. This activity is different than ethno-centric parties in other places who see themselves pitted against 'liberal' erasure of their special identity.

That is a good SEP article, and it helps me sort out some of the confusion I have (and have mixed up previously in this thread) about how 'innate ideas' work in the various arguments. This part, in particular touches on how perceiving our condition might relate to a formal proof:

The important point is that both kinds of meditators ultimately attain knowledge of God’s existence by clearly and distinctly perceiving that necessary existence is contained in the idea of supremely perfect being. Once one has achieved this perception, God’s existence will be manifest or, as Descartes says elsewhere, “self-evident” (per se notam) (Second Replies, Fifth Postulate; AT 7: 164; CSM 2:115).

Descartes’ contemporaries would have been surprised by this last remark. While reviewing an earlier version of the ontological argument, Aquinas had rejected the claim that God’s existence is self-evident, at least with respect to us. He argued that what is self-evident cannot be denied without contradiction, but God’s existence can be denied. Indeed, the proverbial fool says in his heart “There is no God” (Psalm 53.1).

When confronted with this criticism by a contemporary objector, Descartes tries to find common ground: “St. Thomas asks whether existence is self-evident as far as we are concerned, that is, whether it is obvious to everyone; and he answers, correctly, that it is not” (First Replies, AT 7:115; CSM 2:82). Descartes interprets Aquinas to be claiming that God’s existence is not self-evident to everyone, which is something with which he can agree. Descartes does not hold that God’s existence is immediately self-evident, or self-evident to everyone, but that it can become self-evident to some careful and industrious meditators.

I am not versed in Goodman but we share enough admiration for Nussbaum to see she works with Rorty's questions while challenging his premises in other discussions.

I would like to frame the discussion in terms of histories of philosophy and how much a point of view is dependent upon that framework but it is a tortured draft for the time being. One cannot say analytic philosophers attempted to avoid that ground completely while the other team did not.

For that reason, I object to the 'movement' criteria because it elides the difference between what the thinkers are saying.
.

That survey is an interesting demonstration of the limits of classification. All those "anti-realisms" have the barest of connections to each other.
But I like the way it splits the bias toward how it is presented as a "consensus' depending upon how the thesis is put forward.

I agree that exploring Wittgenstein's thinking requires a separate discussion. But the "use of language" criteria is clearly important to Wittgenstein and it was in that sense that I asked about how the "I" was used by the different authors. In the spirit of Wittgenstein, that invites us to look at them side by side and seeing the differences. i was not proposing a variety of possible selves but noting how different were the conditions of discourse understood to be at work for each of them. You brought this perspective up and I have been trying to understand it in the context of this text.

I’m not sure where/if Descartes does make the claim about needing God; — Antony Nickles

What, then, do you make of the title: MEDITATION THREE: Concerning God, That He Exists?

If this work is an epistemology masquerading as a theology, then it seems incumbent upon those who hold to that view to explain the author's stated intent to establish one.

Only being able to perceive the infinite through a negation of the finite says we experience the finite and our imperfections

The infinite can only be conceived by means of the negation.
— Paine

Do you mean that the infinite is conceived by what is not infinite? If so, this is the opposite of what Descartes is claiming.

Is there some equivocation in the passage you cited:

For how would I understand that I [46] doubt and that I desire, that is, that I lack something and that I am not wholly perfect, unless there were some idea in me of a more perfect being, by comparison with which I might recognize my defects?
— ibid. page 45 — Fooloso4

Yes, I fell into the gap of that equivocation. I stand corrected. That his doubt is the condition through which he recognizes the lack of perfection is a kind of 'means of negation'. Ignorance, confusion, and uncertainty exist as sources of distress even when we don't compare them to something better.

There is a shift from the source of my ideas to the source of my existence. He argues that the source cannot be something less perfect than himself. For this reason he rejects his parents as the source of his existence. But surely he knows enough biology and animal husbandry to know that a more perfect offspring can come from less perfect parents. The source need not be something wholly perfect or even more perfect. — Fooloso4

I think this shift from the source of ideas to the source of existence suffers from some of the equivocation discussed above. The argument came from whether God made me, I made myself, or my parents did. The argument against me making myself is that I would have made a better me if I was that powerful and knew more. The parents did not create their nature any more than I did mine. Applying the argument that the 'perfect' only comes from the more 'perfect" does not help his case. The parents are not the reason he is a thinking substance. Nor do they continually constitute this substance through time.

The reason he doubts is because he desires to find something certain and indubitable. Recognizing that he has been deceived by his senses does not require the idea of a more perfect being, only the recognition that his senses have sometimes deceived him. — Fooloso4

The imperfection being experienced does not only come from the uncertainty of what is reported by the senses. The other modes of thinking have him wanting some events and wishing to avoid orhers where his lack of understanding and limited power to influence events gives him to see the 'thinking' substance as finite. The infinite can only be conceived by means of the negation.

If one wants to overcome this limitation in conceivability, by some sort of Anselmian trebuchet whereby that idea is also a derivative of the thinking substance, Descartes says that argument depends on being the source of one's existence:

From what source, then, do I derive my existence? Why, from myself, or from my parents, or from whatever other things there are that are less perfect than God. For nothing more perfect than God, or even as perfect as God, can be thought or imagined. But if I got my being from myself, I would not doubt, nor would I desire, nor would I lack anything at all. For I would have given myself all the perfections of which I have some idea; in so doing, I myself would be God! I must not think that the things I lack could perhaps be more difficult to acquire than the ones I have now. On the contrary, it is obvious that it would have been much more difficult for me (that is, a thing or substance that thinks) to emerge out of nothing than it would be to acquire the knowledge of many things about which I am ignorant (these items of {33} knowledge being merely accidents of that substance). Certainly, if I got this greater thing from myself, I would not have denied myself at least those things that can be had more easily. Nor would I have denied myself any of those other things that I perceive to be contained in the idea of God, for surely none of them seem to me more difficult to bring about. But if any of them were more difficult to bring about, they would certainly also seem more difficult to me, even if the remaining ones that I possess I got from myself, since it would be on account of them that I would experience that my power is limited. — ibid. page 50

That segues into the passage you quoted earlier about the pointillism of an existence that needs to be reconstituted every moment. This perspective makes this 'finite substance' a lot less grounded than the mortal soul pictured by Aristotle to be activated by a divine intellect. The 'natural light' is a flashlight compared to the cosmic lantern the old guys were using.

It is interesting that in arguing for an infinite idea he rejects the idea of an infinite regress of ideas. — Fooloso4

I think that shows Descartes agreeing with the Scholastics that an infinite series of causes must go back to what is not caused in the same way as our logos would order it: The unmoved mover blocking any view of what "self-causing" might be:

And although one idea can perhaps issue from another, nevertheless no infinite regress is permitted here; eventually some first idea must be reached whose cause is a sort of archetype that contains formally all the reality that is in the idea merely objectively. — ibid. page 42

.

To say that: how something will be deemed true, such as a royal succession or an apology; what makes up a “thought”—thoughtful, thought out; or tells what is essential to us about a “thing”—what kind of object anything is, Wittgenstein will say, PI #373, which is revealed by what he terms “grammar”: the terms of the possibilities of something, Id. #90. (As an aside, he just after characterizes this connection as “Theology as Grammar”, which I have never been able to figure out.)—to say that these “understandings” are innate, arise from my own nature, is to point to something within us, that we are born with, or into, as are Plato’s forms. My answer to this are the activities, practices, judgments, etc. which are ingrained into us, unreflected upon—what we would consider “natural”—as a member of a culture. — Antony Nickles

I don't understand how reference to "the activities, practices, judgments, etc. which are ingrained into us, unreflected upon" relates to the use of the "I" in Descartes' speech.

I have the same doubts about how this relates to Wittgenstein in the comment that I raised before and encounter a new one when you mention 'Theology as Grammer", Consider the different way thinking is being observed by the two philosophers. At the very least, would you not acknowledge a difference between the "I" that observes the thinking activity as an immediate event by Descartes and something like this from Wittgenstein?:

378. "Before I judge that two images which I have are the same, I must recognize them as the same." And when that has happened, how am I to know that the word "same" describes what I recognize? Only if I can express my recognition in some other way, and if it is possible for someone else to teach me that "same" is the correct word here.

For if I need a justification for using a word, it must also be one for someone else. — Wittgenstein, PI 378

From this perspective, Wittgenstein is bringing into doubt what Descartes does not question during his project.

Positing God as an innate idea, rather than being an escape from solipsism, further isolates him. — Fooloso4

That would be the case if the thinking activity is an unbroken circle. But the experience of being imperfect does not permit that:

Nor should I think that I do not perceive the infinite by means of a true idea, but only through a negation of the finite, just as I perceive rest and darkness by means of a negation of motion and light. On the contrary, I clearly understand that there is more reality in an infinite substance than there is in a finite one. Thus the perception of the infinite is somehow prior in me to the perception of the finite, that is, my perception of God is prior to my perception of myself. For how would I understand that I [46] doubt and that I desire, that is, that I lack something and that I am not wholly perfect, unless there were some idea in me of a more perfect being, by comparison with which I might recognize my defects? — ibid. page 45

The substance he can imagine providing to a stone or a lump of wax is not the same as how he can conceive of God's 'objective' reality.

That the comparison between the 'finite' and the 'infinite' requires the means of a negation is where doubt comes from. The experiment of the Meditation may provide a way out of solipsism, but it does not overcome the condition of being a doubting substance. That is why we have to crab forward by means of clear and distinct ideas.

When one factors in this primary condition, your question:

Is it true that what is more perfect cannot arise from what is less perfect? We are told that the triangle we draw is never a perfect triangle. A perfect triangle would be one that does not contain any of the defects of the one the drawing is supposed to be a representative of. It is from imperfection that we get the idea of perfection. In more general terms, it is from absence, lack or want, from the desire to have more or be more, that we get the idea of completion and satisfaction, of perfection. — Fooloso4

is what Descartes is addressing when he says:

And although one idea can perhaps issue from another, nevertheless no infinite regress is permitted here; eventually some first idea must be reached whose cause is a sort of archetype that contains formally all the reality that is in the idea merely objectively. Thus it is clear, to me by the light of nature that the ideas that are in me are like images that can easily fail to match the perfection of the things from which they have been drawn, but which can contain nothing greater or more perfect. — Descartes, Third Meditation, translated by Donald A Cress, pg 28

the so-called hard problem specifically calls for a causal, IE physical, explanation. — Janus

Chalmer's language was more directed to reductive models. We don't know what is 'physical' but we can make models based upon what is observed. So, it is only a problem if it is interesting that consciousness has properties that other phenomena do not, as explored through scientific models.

There is a lot here to consider. I will address the issue of isolation here and think more before addressing who (or what) is the author of our thoughts (as understood by Descartes).

It is true that Descartes's experiment is a 'self-imposed isolation'. Saying that the conditions discovered or reasoned there are only applicable in the context of the experiment cancels its utility. If the purpose of the attempt is to establish grounds for science that is an improvement upon those provided by his predecessors, how do the results of this doubting change what people are doing?

Being somewhere between God and the world is related in the text to causes. From that point of view, asking about 'archetypes' is different from wondering where an idea comes from. With that sense of judgment in mind, I question whether Descartes is trying to escape solipsism as you described:

Positing God as an innate idea, rather than being an escape from solipsism, further isolates him. — Fooloso4

Not being able to "precisely demonstrate" immortality does sound like a lawyer's dodge but the argument for God's existence is based upon the untenable quality of the isolation Descartes is experimenting with:

Moreover, even though the reality that I am considering in my ideas is merely objective reality, I ought not on that account to suspect that there is no need for the same reality to be formally in the causes of these ideas, but that it suffices for it to be in them objectively. For just as the objective mode of being belongs to ideas by their very nature, so the formal mode of being belongs to the causes of ideas, at least to the first and preeminent ones, by their very nature. And although one idea can perhaps issue from another, nevertheless no infinite regress is permitted here; eventually some first idea must be reached whose cause is a sort of archetype that contains formally all the reality that is in the idea merely objectively. Thus it is clear, to me by the light of nature that the ideas that are in me are like images that can easily fail to match the perfection of the things from which they have been drawn, but which can contain nothing greater or more perfect. And the longer and more attentively I examine all these points, the more clearly and distinctly I know they are true. But what am I ultimately to conclude? If the objective reality of any of my ideas is found to be so great that I am certain that the same reality was not in me, either formally or eminently, and that therefore I myself cannot be the cause of the idea, then it necessarily follows that I am not alone in the world, but that something else, which is the cause of this idea, also exists. But if no such idea is found in me, I will have no argument whatsoever to make me certain of the existence of anything other than myself, for I have conscientiously reviewed all these arguments, and so far I have been unable to find any other. — Descartes, Third Meditation, translated by Donald A Cress, pg 28

From that starting point of what will allow him to escape his isolation, the existence of God provides a possibility that 'objective reality' does not.

It is similar to the 'ontological proof of God' in Anselm but has an important difference. It is not only that "I did not give this idea of God to myself" but I need the idea of God to accept what is given in experience.

How does 'stopping short of assuming' that constancy of the self pertain to Descartes being sure that he exists because he is thinking?

As you observed in a previous comment, there is a list of activities coming from the thinking. The Third Meditation begins with sorting out the different modes they appear within. I take your point that there is an uncertainty expressed about the continuance of his existence. But there does not seem to be any doubt expressed about whether the different modes all come from his 'thinking substance'. It is through this unity he is attempting to rearrange the First Principles he is meditating upon.

Edit to add: The last sentence refers to the full title of the work: The Meditations Concerning First Philosophy.

As practiced amongst the Scholastics, this 'being first' is related to Aristotle saying:

But if there is some immovable substance, this [that is, theological philosophy] will be prior and will be primary philosophy, and it will be universal in this way, namely, because it is primary. And it will belong to it to get a theoretical grasp on being qua being, both what it is and the things that belong to it qua being. — Aristotle. Metaphysics, 1026a25, translated by CDC Reeve

I think Descartes is asking us to accept that the self is a thing despite not being imaginable or described the way other things are.

But I would not express that thought as equivalent to you adding: "The self cannot be pictured because it is not a body." What a soul is, in relation to bodies, has been discussed for centuries before this work.

Descartes is arguing that this focus has missed the mark. The "always there" I pointed to refers to the "thinking thing" being there when we pay attention to it.

I think the language is more forceful than that on this point. We are intimately familiar with the "I" but don't "know" it for some reason. The French version says it this way:

Mais néanmoins il me semble encore et je ne puis m’empêcher de croire que les choses
corporelles, dont les images se forment par la pensée, qui tombent sous les sens, et que les
sens mêmes examinent, ne soient beaucoup plus distinctement connues que cette je ne sais
quelle partie de moi-même qui ne tombe point sous l’imagination: quoi-qu’en effet cela
soit bien étrange de dire que je connoisse et comprenne plus distinctement des choses dont
l’existence me paroît douteuse, qui me sont inconnues et qui ne m’appartiennent point,
que celles de la vérité desquelles je suis persuadé, qui me sont connues, et qui
appartiennent à ma propre nature, en un mot que moi-même — Descartes, Second Meditation,

The tight connection between 'not knowing' and being 'unimaginable' is sort of a concession to Aristotle saying, "thinking requires the use of images." Descartes certainly uses a lot of images in his writings. But I read him to say that the activity that convinces him that he exists is prior to what Aristotle describes.

So, maybe not a mystery as much as a gap that is easily overlooked.

Seeing the act of thinking as a list of activities does not reflect the problem of description that I commented upon upthread. By speaking of an 'indescribable part of myself which cannot be pictured by the imagination', it seems to me that Descartes is pointing at something that is always there but is not understood.

In the Third Meditation, Descartes says he needs the existence of God to find grounds for its relation to all of his activities. That seems the opposite approach of Wittgenstein, who describes our use of language to show what it is for us.

I was agreeing with your stating that Descartes was a departure from Aristotle's model of perception and knowledge of the world but was thinking that Descartes was not sharply separating the domain of Reason as Kant did from the nature of things as they are in themselves. I take Descartes' enthusiasm as a scientist as evidence for this. There is also the search, as you have underscored, for the Archimedean point of leverage.

As you suggested, upthread, the Sixth Meditation has Descartes returning to the world able to trust in many of the elements he questioned previously.

But he is afraid he will only exist for now, while he is thinking; as if he is not always thinking, that it is a particular act, separate from his internal dialogue or awareness — Antony Nickles

That continuity of thinking is clearly central to the meditation and a source of concern. I don't understand what you mean by saying it is "separate from his internal dialogue or awareness."

I think Descartes is linking those activities together.

I did not mean to put words in your mouth. I hear what you are saying about the limits of definitive statements. I am wondering how that activity is specific to a problem we are having now seen side by side with people having the problem at other times.