But does Plato stop thinking of the Forms as a source of truth and ultimate reality? — Tom Storm

I don't know if he ever thought of them as a source of truth. Although Parmenides is generally considered a late dialogue, it is contextually an early dialogue based on the chronology of the dramatic settings of the dialogues. Socrates is a young man. What is the significance of this? Placing the dialogue at an early stage of Socrates journey suggests that he was from early on aware of the problems raised in the dialogues regarding Forms.

In Plato's Second Letter he says that his is a Socrates made young and beautiful.

In the Seventh Letter he says:

There is no treatise (suggramma) by me on these subjects, nor will there ever be. (341c)

In the Apology Socrates denies is having knowledge of anything "πολλὰ καὶ καλὰ", very much or great and good or beautiful. (21d)

In the Phaedo Socrates calls his hypothesis of the Forms "safe and ignorant". In addition to the Forms, he later recognizes the necessity of admitting physical causes such as fire and fever (105c)

In the Republic Socrates calls the Forms "stepping-stones and springboards" (511b). They are intended to free us from what has been hypothesized. But when asked he is circumspect but clear in stating that he does not actually have knowledge of the Forms:

"You will no longer be able to follow, my dear Glaucon," I said, "although there wouldn't be any lack of eagerness on my part. But you would no longer be seeing an image of what we are saying, but rather the truth itself, at least as it looks to me. Whether it is really so or not can no longer be properly insisted on. But that there is some such thing to see must be insisted on. Isn't it so?" (533a)

The truth as it looks to him may not be the truth, and he is not insisting that it is. But he insists that there is “some such thing to see”. What he shows us is a likeness of what the beings must be, that is, an image. The Forms are, ironically, images.

All of this is consistent with the many "likely stories (ton eikota mython)" in Timaeus. We are human beings, capable of telling likely stories, but incapable of discerning the truth of such things. Timaeus proposes it is best to accept likely stories and not search for what is beyond the limits of our understanding.

Socrates approves and urges him to perform the song (nomos). Nomos means not only song but law and custom or convention. In the absence of truth there is nomos. But not just any song, it is one that is regarded as best to accept because it is told with an eye to what is best. One that harmonizes being and becoming.

A digression via some questions. Plato seems to regard nous as the highest form of understanding - the ability to contemplate the ultimate nature of reality via the Forms. — Tom Storm

There is no better source of why this is not true than the works of Plato. Several of the dialogues can be cited, but Timaeus, in which Socrates remains mostly silent, presents a clear picture of the inadequacy of the Forms. In this dialogue, much or which is a monologue, Socrates expresses the desire to see the city he creates in the Republic at war. He wants to see the city in action. The story of the city in the Republic is incomplete. It is a city created by intellect (nous) without necessity (ananke), that is, a city without chance and contingency. A city that could never be.

For a more detailed discussion: Shaken to the Chora

What are you saying this tells us about language? — Tom Storm

The Greek term logos gives us a better sense of the problem then 'language'. What is at issue is the logic of saying, a logos of logos. The ability to give a comprehensive account. It is addressed in Plato's Sophist:

Theaetetus:
We really do seem to have a vague vision of being as some third thing, when we say that motion and rest are.
Stranger:
Then being is not motion and rest in combination, but something else, different from them.
Theaetetus:
Apparently.
Stranger:
According to its own nature, then, being is neither at rest nor in motion.
Theaetetus:
You are about right.
Stranger:
What is there left, then, to which a man can still turn his mind who wishes to establish within himself any clear conception of being?
Theaetetus:
What indeed?
Stranger:
There is nothing left, I think, to which he can turn easily. (Sophist 250)

To count rest, change, and being as three would be mistaken. Being is a higher order than rest and change. It is not a third thing to be counted alongside them.

The Stranger identifies five Kinds. In addition to change, rest, and being, there is sameness and difference (Sophist 254c)

Sameness and difference is the most comprehensive indeterminate dyad.

Contrary to Parmenides, the Stranger says that it is not possible to give an account of being without introducing non-being. Non-being is understood as otherness or difference.

There can be no comprehensive account of being without a comprehensive account of non-being. But what is other is without limit and cannot be comprehended. On the one hand this means that there can never be a comprehensive account of the whole, but on the other, it encourages an openness to what might be; beyond our limits of comprehension.

On the other hand, love and hate give an example of what I've tentatively termed "an unnecessary dyad": — javra

Empedocles claimed that Love and Strife are active principles of the universe. In the Metaphysics Aristotle says:

... everything is reducible to Being and Not being, and Unity and Plurality; e.g. Rest falls under Unity and Motion under Plurality. And nearly everyone agrees that substance and existing things are composed of contraries; at any rate all speak of the first principles as contraries—some as Odd and Even, some as Hot and Cold, some as Limit and Unlimited, some as Love and Strife. And it is apparent that all other things also are reducible to Unity and Plurality (we may assume this reduction) .. (1004b)

In the same section of the Metaphysics Aristotle says:

Being qua Being has certain peculiar modifications, and it is about these that it is the philosopher's function to discover the truth.

The dyads are not simply concepts about the world, they are regarded as principles of the world.

p.s., yes, deep down, I'm sincerely philosophically minded about this issue of opposites. Though I'm not sure that if fits in with the thread's theme. — javra

With regard to 'necessity', Plato's Timaeus identifies two kinds of cause, intelligence and necessity, nous and ananke (ἀνάγκης). Necessity covers such things as physical processes, contingency, chance, motion, power, and the chora. What is by necessity is without nous or intellect. It is called the “wandering cause” (48a). It can act contrary to nous.

Aristotle says:

But chance and spontaneity are also reckoned among causes: many things are said both to be and to come to be as a result of chance and spontaneity. (Physics, 195b)

Spontaneity and chance are causes of effects which, though they might result from intelligence or nature, have in fact been caused by something accidentally. (198a)

With regard to the theme of the thread, the sensible world, the world of becoming, is neither regulated by intellect nor fully intelligible. Thus there can be no map of the world.

In the Philebus Plato addresses the question of the relation between language and world.
It raises the problem of what Aristotle called the “indeterminate dyad” .

The dyads include:

Limited and Unlimited

Same and Other

One and Many

Rest and Change

Eternity and Time

Good and Bad

Thinking and Being

Being and Non-being

Each side stands both together with and apart from the other. There is not one without the other.

Ultimately, there is neither ‘this or that’ but ‘this and that’. The Whole is not reducible to One. The whole is indeterminate.

And yet we do separate this from that. Thinking and saying are dependent on making just such distinctions.

Trump might be seen by N as an uberman, so much a master that he was able to live by a master morality despite specific democratic structures that were designed to make sure he was not treated as above the common man. — Hanover

I think Trump would be seen by Nietzsche as an exemplar of the last man. The uberman is first and foremost not a matter of dominance over others but of self-dominance, self-mastery, self-overcoming. The uberman is a higher man, a superior man, a man of a higher order. The creator of new higher values not someone who disregards values.

There is a more ancient understanding of truth as actuality or "alethia". — Janus

There is also the sense of true as straight. Carpentry uses the term in this way. Related to this is 'orthodoxy' - straight opinion, and 'orthodontry' - straight teeth. There is also the distinction in the Hebrew Bible between those whose ways and words are straight or crooked. The root of the word 'crook'.

When I hear the word ‘same’ I read it as ‘similar’. — Joshs

So, when you read the word 'same' you hear it as 'different'? Is that possible without some notion of 'same' that maintains the distinction between 'same' and 'similar'?

I'm sure that whatever way we try and conceive of as 'an immaterial entity or process' will miss the mark. It requires, as one of the earlier contributors to this thread was wont to say, 'a paradigm shift'. — Wayfarer

The reason why we miss the mark is simple. We have no knowledge or experience of any immaterial entity of process. Absent evidence, reasoned argument that such may or must exist is idle speculation and leads nowhere. We start with material or physical entities and make the misguided move of imagining the entity or process minus what is essential to it as if nonessential.

But if you want to believe a political rally is "incitement to insurrection", — NOS4A2

The problem is, not all "political rallies" are created equally. It is not as if the rally was held without the seeds of a deep state conspiracy having first been planted and cultivated. A conspiracy that feeds on resentment and a sense that "true patriots" are victims who must rally and fight to right wrongs and restore the nation to an imaginary time when America was great (for them).

But none of this starts with Donald. Back when America was great he was learning by example from his father Fred:

One such lesson came when Donald was seven years old, and his father was brought before a U.S. Senate committee investigating abuses in a housing program for war veterans and middle class families. President Eisenhower had been outraged to learn of the bribes that developers paid to bureaucrats and of the alleged profiteering practiced by Trump and others. Ike called them “sons of bitches.”

As federal investigators had discovered, the elder Trump had collected an extra $1.7 million in rent—equivalent to $15 million today—before beginning to pay back his low-cost government loan. He was able to do this because a bureaucrat named Clyde Powell approved the paperwork. Powell, who had never been paid more than a modest government salary, had mysteriously amassed a small fortune. (While it was clear Powell accepted bribes, the sources were never officially identified.) In addition to collecting the extra rent, Trump paid himself a substantial architect’s fee. And he charged inflated rents based on an estimate of construction costs that was far greater than what he actually spent. All of this was legal, even if it did victimize taxpayers, veterans, and other renters.

More here

In the eyes of Fred and Don they are the victims when the government interferes and does not allow them to run their business as they want. The law, when not used by them as a weapon, is an impediment to be worked around or removed. All in the name of freedom.

The irony here is that Trump, other business moguls, and political swamp creatures turned the tables. Railing against the "elite" they managed to obscure the fact that they are themselves an influential elite.

The proximate reason for the "rally" was not to hold a peaceful and ineffectual protest but to prevent Biden from becoming president. To this end, among other things, lies were propagated that the election was stolen. If the system is as corrupt as Trumps supporters believe it to be, then the system is part of the problem and cannot be part of the solution. The only solution, as they have been led to believe, is insurrection.

Surely this does at least suggest 'a transcendent realm accessible to the wise'? — Wayfarer

In the first paragraph, what " is thought to rule and lead us by nature" does not suggest a transcendent realm. Nor does "what is noble and divine". Contemplation is called divine but it is not and does not lead to transcendence. It is, according to Aristotle, the highest human activity. It is part of the fulfillment or realization or actualization of our nature, not a transcendence of it.

As to the use of the term 'divine': In the Phaedo Socrates calls Homer divine. In the Iliad Homer call salt divine (9.214).

A wise person must have a true conception of unproven first principles

...

Contemplation is that activity in which one's νοῦς intuits and delights in first principles."

Only a person who is wise can have a true conception of unproven first principles, but only a person who is wise can know whether a conception of unproven first principles is true. If we are not wise then at best we can have an opinion about first principles we assume is true, but cannot prove.

Theoria (contemplation) is related to our term 'theater', to view or see. Plato's cave is a theater. A place in which the distinction between seeing and acting is most pronounced. The prisoners are shackled to the wall and can observe but not act. What they behold is taken to be true and nothing they are able to know contradicts that belief.

The image of the cave is an image of religious practices that seek to experience the sacred and divine. The problem is there is nothing they see that shows them that what they see is not true. Contemplative activity does not provide a reality check. Rather than transcendence it is far more likely to entrap us in a cave with its hope and expectation of transcendence.

Gerson is the go to guy on this subject as I understand it. — Tom Storm

He may be the go to guy for Platonism, but for that reason not the go to guy for Plato or Aristotle. Of course he and other Platonists would not agree.

Aristotle, in De Anima, argued that thinking in general (which includes knowledge as one kind of thinking) cannot be a property of a body; it cannot, as he put it, 'be blended with a body'. — Lloyd Gerson

This is misleading. Thinking is a property of intelligent beings. The distinction between form and body is an abstraction.

Human beings are an embodied beings. For Plato, as Aristotle well knows, forms are hypothetical. See Phaedo on Socrates' Second Sailing where he explicitly calls the forms hypothesis and acknowledges their inadequacy, calling them "safe and ignorant"(105b). See also Plato's Timaeus where the static and ineffectual nature of Forms is criticized.
,
Gerson says:

….the fact that in thinking, your mind is identical with the form that it thinks, means (for Aristotle and for all Platonists) that since the form 'thought' is detached from matter, 'mind' is immaterial too. — Lloyd Gerson

The "form 'thought'" is a product of philosophical poiesis. I don't think it is a term that either Plato or Aristotle ever used.

The limits of reason drawn by both Plato and Aristotle allows for both greater play and greater work of imagination, that is, of poiesis, of making. Reason often imagines that it is the whole of the story.

It might be objected that Aristotle argues for the existence of Intellect or Mind Itself, a disembodied thinking.But he does not present an unambiguous argument. Some scholars argue that this is intentional and marks the limit of what we know. A theological account intended to stand against the theologians, giving the appearance of an answer while pointing to the aporia of theological claims.

Near the beginning of Metaphysics Aristotle says:

... it is through experience that men acquire science and art ... (981a)

For more

Wisdom for Aristotle is, as it is for Plato and Socrates, knowledge of ignorance. The Platonist belief in an immaterial realm of intelligible Forms accessible to thought is a creation of the human mind, philosophical poiesis. Contrary to this, both Plato and Aristotle are rooted in physis, nature.

Physis or nature is not an explanation for why things are as they are. It is as things emerge and come to be as they are, how they grow and develop according to the kind of being each is. Each kind of being has its own nature. It develops accordingly.

Aristotle regards living beings as self-sustaining functioning wholes. The four causes are inherent in a being being the kind of being it is, not something imposed on or interfering with it from the outside. Human beings are by their nature thinking beings. This is not an explanation, but a given. It has nothing to do with Gerson's "form 'thought'". Nothing to do with a transcendent realm accessible to the wise.

Rather than an argument from reason, @Wayfarer, Plato and Aristotle use reason to demonstrate the limits of reason.

If it is belonging to the Abrahamic tradition ... — Manuel

I think he is addressing a predominantly Christian audience, starting with the dedication. Some scholars have made a connection between Descartes and Plotinus, but I have not looked into this.

To continue in the Cartesian tradition in a contemporary setting, we'd have to turn "God" into nature — Manuel

If I understand him correctly, this is the move Spinoza makes. But I think Descartes makes a distinction between God and His work.

I think you know much more about Renaissance humanism than I. What influences from Renaissance humanism do you see?

Not one part but piecing together several things.

There is an ancient expression, still common today, that all that happens is God 's will. If one is sick that is God's will. If one gets well it is God 's will.

In the Sixth Meditation:

A sick man is one of God’s creatures just as a healthy one is

Given Descartes equating creation and preservation, the sick man is not simply God's creature in the sense of a creature who happens to be sick, but a creature who is preserved in sickness by God.

In the Fourth Meditation he says:

In estimating whether God’s works are perfect, we should look at the universe as a whole, not at created things one by one. Something that might seem very imperfect if it existed on its own has a function in relation to the rest of the universe, and may be perfect when seen in that light.

He rejects the argument that sickness is contrary to God's will because sickness is an imperfection and God makes nothing that is not perfect.

His interest in medicine is well documented. His approach was integrated with the rest of his philosophy.

René Descartes repeatedly wrote that a better medical practice was a major aim of his philosophical enterprise. — Steven Shapin, Descartes the Doctor:Rationalism and its Therapies

In his provisional code of morals (Discourse on Method, part lll) he says:

... making, so to speak, a virtue of necessity, we shall no more desire health in disease, or freedom in imprisonment, than we now do bodies incorruptible as diamonds, or the wings of birds to fly with.

He rejected the will or desire for health in disease because such a thing was not possible. But with the advances in medicine at that time the need to deny the desire for health looked like it would become increasingly unnecessary. The world as given to us by God would no longer be a prison.

I'd define will as the ability to do or not to do something, this can range from trivial things like lifting a finger, to participating in protests and everything in between. — Manuel

As I pointed out:

Descartes describes the will in two ways - a) freedom of choice, b) the ability to do or not do something. The shift from the former to the latter is significant. — Fooloso4

It is in the first sense, of what I choose or want or desire or pursue, that the will is unlimited. The second sense, as you say, is more problematic. It is here that the will and intellect must work together. But look at those things he lists as something one is able to do:

The will is simply one’s ability to do or not do something – to accept or reject a proposition, to pursue a goal or avoid something.

It should also be noted that he does not say the will's ability but "one's ability". Although in the fourth meditation he considers the will and the intellect separately, they are:

... co-operating causes ...

Although the philosophers have emphasized God's intellect there is an older tradition that makes God's will central.

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Contrary to this Descartes asserts: my will be done on earth. If nature is the work of God then the conquest of nature seems to be contrary to God's will. If sickness is the will of God then medicine, which Descartes took a keen interest in, is against the will of God. This is still an issue today, as can be seen in protests against technological advancements for "playing God".

we cannot will to change the world — Manuel

But that is what we do! It is not the will alone but the will combined with the intellect and body, that is, human beings who do this.

That modern, technologically and scientifically advancing man has changed the world and continues to do so it obvious. He calls his morality provisional because he is on the forefront of these advances in the power of what we are able to do. The will plays a central role because human beings are driven by the will for improvement in our conditions. If man can improve the conditions of his life he no longer has to accept the idea that he is powerless to do so. As @Paine has pointed out, and as Descartes recognized in a way the Stoics did not, knowledge is power.

As for the will, if the goal is right or correct moral judgments, that limits of focuses the intellect on morality. But there is a lot more to consider than morality, in mental life in general. — Manuel

It is not clear to me what you are saying.

I believe he says God is more certain than math. — Manuel

In the fifth meditation he reverses the order he had claimed for grounding certainty:

"I remember, too, that even back in the times when the objects of the senses held my attention, I regarded the clearly apprehended propositions of pure mathematics – including arithmetic and geometry – as the most certain of all.
...
I understand from this idea that it belongs to God’s nature that he always exists. This understanding is just as clear and distinct as what is involved in mathematical proofs of the properties of shapes and numbers." — Fooloso4

I remain unconvinced though. — Manuel

I agree that the will is problematic in ways that Descartes does not acknowledge.

In the end, it seems to me that knowledge provides better information on which to make a better informed decision. — Manuel

This is why he argues for willfully setting limits to the will. What he identifies as the problem:

When I look more closely into these errors of mine, I discover that they have two co-operating causes – my faculty of knowledge and my faculty of choice or freedom of the will. My errors, that is, depend on both (a) my intellect and (b) my will.

(Fourth Meditation)

contains the solution to the problem. The faculty of knowledge and faculty of choice must co-operate in the right way. The will must be restrained when it wills things it does not properly understand.

There is, however, another side to this. We get some sense of this when we look again at his provisional morality:

In the Discourse on Method Descartes presents his "provisional morality".

"My third maxim was to try always to master myself rather than fortune, and to change my desires rather than the order of the world."

It is provisional because his method will allow man to master fortune. Man will no longer have to accept things the way they are. Descartes method of reason is, as he says in the Meditations, the Archimedean point from which he can move the world. — Fooloso4

The desire to master fortune comes from the will, but to accomplish it requires the intellect. It is by the use of reason that he can move the world, but it is by the will that he seeks to do so. The will is without limits in that there is nothing but the will itself that limits what we want. It is provisionally necessary to change our desires because we cannot accomplish all that we desire.

But it is Descartes' ambition to master fortune. Knowledge and will work together not simply to understand the world as it is but to transform it into what it could be. Knowledge provides the ground and the will the ambition and determination to build.

This is a theme that educated men of that time would have been familiar with:

And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and fire them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. And the Lord said, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.”

(Genesis 11:3-7, emphasis added)

To state it plainly, Descartes, Bacon, and others set the will of man against the will of God. The will of man to once again do whatever it is they will to do.

I mean, it just seems obvious to me that intellect is far broader than will in scope. — Manuel

Descartes describes the will in two ways - a) freedom of choice, b) the ability to do or not do something. The shift from the former to the latter is significant.

The will is simply one’s ability to do or not do something – to accept or reject a proposition, to pursue a goal or avoid something.

While it is true that to accept or reject a proposition or to purse a goal is to do something, this is not the same as saying that the ability to choose is the ability to accomplish what one chooses to do. But it is just this that Descartes is hinting at. To make them one and the same.

When the will is considered not relationally, but strictly in itself, God’s will does not seem any greater than mine.

(Fourth Meditation)

By relationally he means:

... having to do with the amount of knowledge that accompanies and helps the will, or with the number of states of affairs to which it is applied – do not concern the will in itself, but rather its relations to other things.

(Fourth)

The ability of man to do whatever he wills to do is limited only by the limits of our knowledge. It is in this sense that the will is more extensive than the intellect. Descartes' will is for man to do whatever he wills to do, and this is accomplished by the increase his increase in knowledge.

In the third meditation he says:

My knowledge is gradually increasing, and I see no obstacle to its going on increasing to infinity. I might then be able to use this increased and eventually infinite knowledge to acquire all the other perfections of God. In that case, I already have the potentiality for these perfections ...

He immediately backtracks, seemingly to reject this, but what he rejects in the comparison with God is that what God is in actuality man is only potentially.

... even if my knowledge increases for ever, it will never actually be infinite, since it will never reach the point where it isn’t capable of a further increase ...

Put more positively, man is infinitely perfectible. Not simply as a matter of avoiding error but by the ability to do whatever he wills to do. That this is what Descartes has in mind is supported by the following from the fourth meditation:

It is only the will, or freedom of choice, which I experience as so great that I can’t make sense of the idea of its being even greater: indeed, my thought of myself as being somehow like God depends primarily upon my will.

I have been thinking a lot about the historical movement from his 'rationalist' perspective to the empirical methods based upon theory and experiment. — Paine

I think historians present the wrong picture when they set Descartes' rationalism against experimentation. Descartes was an experimental scientist working on optics, light, biology, botany, and other areas of the physical sciences.

As a matter of 'theology' this is to say God will not be filling in this part of the picture ... It turns out that accepting God is an innate idea is not a leg up on using the 'natural light' to explore the darkness. — Paine

In the fifth meditation he reverses the order he had claimed for grounding certainty:

I remember, too, that even back in the times when the objects of the senses held my attention, I regarded the clearly apprehended propositions of pure mathematics – including arithmetic and geometry – as the most certain of all.
...
I understand from this idea that it belongs to God’s nature that he always exists. This understanding is just as clear and distinct as what is involved in mathematical proofs of the properties of shapes and numbers.

It is not God but the light of reason that corrects the errors in judgment of sensible things. But this reversal is actually a return to the priority of the self as what is first in his "Meditations on First Philosophy". That Descartes puts the self and not God first is seen even in his claim of God as an innate idea.

A skeptic should be read skeptically. When Descartes claims that he is only a thinking thing we should be skeptical. What is he intentionally leaving out? In the dedication to the Meditations he says:

And since in this life the rewards offered to vice are often greater than the rewards of virtue, few people would prefer what is right to what is expedient if they did not fear God or have the expectation of an after-life.

Perhaps Descartes too prefers the expedient. What harm can come to a thinking thing from God or an after-life?

In the second meditation he says:

But what about the attributes I assigned to the soul? Nutrition or movement? Since now I do not have a body, these are mere fabrications. Sense-perception? This surely does not occur without a body, and besides, when asleep I have appeared to perceive through the senses many things which I afterwards realized I did not perceive through the senses at all. Thinking? At last I have discovered it - thought; this alone is inseparable from me. I am, I exist - that is certain. But for how long? For as long as I am thinking.

His denial of a nutritive soul and the soul as the cause of movement is a rejection of “the philosopher”, Aristotle. His denial of Church doctrine is not so overt. Without a body the physical tortures of Hell cannot occur. And although Descartes distinguishes between the mind and body, he never claims that a thinking thing continues to think after death.

He adopts the attitude and practice of the ancient skeptic. From the fourth meditation:

… suspending judgment when I am not intellectually in control, I let my will run loose, applying it to matters that I don’t understand. In such cases there is nothing to stop the will from veering this way or that, so it easily turns away from what is true and good. That is the source of my error and sin.

But in the synopsis he says:

But here it should be noted in passing that I do not deal at all with sin, i.e. the error which is committed in pursuing good and evil, but only with the error that occurs in distinguishing truth from falsehood ...

If when I don’t perceive the truth clearly and distinctly enough I simply suspend judgment ...

I can avoid it simply by remembering to withhold judgment on anything that isn’t clear to me.

There is an expediency to Descartes’ skepticism. To raise doubts is not the goal. In the synopsis he mentions freedom several times:

Although the usefulness of such extensive doubt is not apparent at first sight, its greatest benefit lies in freeing us from all our preconceived opinions …

I shall stubbornly and firmly persist in this meditation; and, even if it is not in my power to know any truth, I shall at least do what is in my power, that is, resolutely guard against assenting to any falsehoods, so that the deceiver, however powerful and cunning he may be, will be unable to impose on me in the slightest degree. But this is an arduous undertaking, and a kind of laziness brings me back to normal life. I am like a prisoner who is enjoying an imaginary freedom while asleep … (emphasis added)

In the Second Meditation, he says:

the mind uses its own freedom … (emphasis added)

Descartes is declaring and making use of man’s freedom from the pervasive and suppressive influence of Aristotle, the Church, and God. At the same time, he makes the connection with ancient skepticism. As mentioned earlier, in the Discourse on Method Descartes presents his "provisional morality".

My third maxim was to try always to master myself rather than fortune, and to change my desires rather than the order of the world.

It is provisional because his method will allow man to master fortune. Man will no longer have to accept things the way they are. He is declaring man’s freedom not only from the forces of man and God but of nature. The daring and startling immodesty of his claim in the second meditation can now be fully appreciated:

Archimedes used to demand just one firm and immovable point in order to shift the entire earth; so I too can hope for great things if I manage to find just one thing, however slight, that is certain and unshakeable.

You coulda fooled me. — Manuel

Although I had read Descartes before, I think it has more to do with developing interpretive skills. Reading between the lines of philosophers who want to be read that way, and so write accordingly.

You have such mastery of the text — Manuel

Nah. I make it up as I go along. Seriously. Of course it is based on what is found in the text, but the connections are things I am working out as I write.

you mention two uses of the word "nature" — Manuel

As I understand it there is distinction is between a particular nature of something and the nature of a kind of thing. In both cases the nature of something is what it is to be that thing, its essence (esse, to be). The nature that is particular to Descartes and the nature shared by human beings. There is the nature of this poorly made clock, which is by its nature unreliable, and the nature of clocks in general, which is to be a reliable time keeper.

Descartes also uses the term to refer what God has created, the natural world.

The example of the clock is illustrative, for he thinks that bodies, including human bodies, are similar to clocks ... On this he turned out to be quite wrong — Manuel

But not completely wrong. The details of his biomechanics might be wrong, but much has been gained by seeing the body as a mechanical system.

Natures:

In the sixth meditation Descartes touches on the concept of nature:

... I have been using ‘nature’ ... to speak of what can be found in the things themselves

and:

For the term ‘nature’, understood in the most general way, refers to God himself or to the ordered system of created things established by him. And my own nature is simply the totality of things bestowed on me by God.

So, what is his own nature? On the one hand:

I know that I exist and that nothing else belongs to my nature or essence except that I am a thinking thing

but on the other:

... the nature of man as a combination of mind and body ...

If nature is what is essential and in the things themselves, and among the things bestowed on him by God is his body, then it would seem that the nature of the self is to be both mind and body.

And yet he says:

I am really distinct from my body, and can exist without it. — ibid. Sixth Meditation, page 51

The nature of time:

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. — ibid. page 33

Given the importance of this claim about the nature of time, it is surprising that he does not say more. There is, however, a couple of brief comments about time keepers, that follows the same pattern of seemingly contradictory claims.

A badly made clock conforms to the laws of its nature in telling the wrong time.

but:

... a clock that works badly is ‘departing from its nature’

This is resolved by noting that in the first case he is talking about the nature of a particular clock, a badly made one, while in the second he means the nature of clocks, that is, what it is to be a clock.

Is time itself like a badly made clock? Even a good craftsman, let alone a perfect one, would not make something that required his continued support it at every moment in order to work. Either what God has made is badly made and its nature is to work badly, or the argument for the nature of time as discreet moments is badly made.

In that case there must be something wrong with the argument for discreet moments of time. Why would Descartes make it then? The argument was made in response to two possibilities:

If I had derived my existence from myself, I would not now doubt or want or lack anything at all; for I would have given myself all the perfections of which I have any idea. So I would be God.

and:

Perhaps I have always existed as I do now. In that case, wouldn’t it follow that there need be no cause for my existence?

If his argument is bad then either one or both of these possibilities cannot be ruled out. It would follow that God is not in control from moment to moment. As I was reminded by Paine, the phrase 'knowledge is power', which is commonplace today, was new at that time. Man exerts his control over what God made through the conquest of nature.

Descartes has proposed that the nature of the self is both singular and composite. Just as the nature of man or clocks is not the same as the nature of a particular man or a clock, the nature of thinking is not the same as the nature of a particular thinking thing such as Descartes.

Although Descartes isolates himself in his room, as a thinking thing he is not isolated. As a thinking thing he is connected to thinking itself, that is to say, to what is thought not just by him but other thinking beings before and after him. The nature of thinking is something we do together, a joint project, something that occurs between human beings. The thinking self is not just the individual but thinking itself, which is by its nature public.

The nature of thinking is not limited by the span of a lifetime. For thinking itself time is not moment to moment. It is a collaborative effort across time periods. Descartes was not primarily concerned with the past, however, but rather the present and future. More specifically, with his project for the perfectibility of man, which takes place over lifetimes.

Thinking for Descartes is not fundamentally contemplative or meditative but constructive. Thus he sought foundations on which to build. Although a lot of attention is paid to his epistemology it was groundwork for a science that would change the course of nature.

This equation between creation and persistence is what I am trying to wrap my head around. — Paine

@frank

For Aristotle to be is to persist.

According to Joe Sachs' article "Aristotle: Metaphysics" in the IEP:

Aristotle formulates the latter, the kind of being that belongs to a thing not by happenstance but inevitably, as the “what it kept on being in the course of being at all” for a human being, or a duck, or a rosebush. The phrase to en einai is Aristotle’s answer to the Socratic question, ti esti? ... Stated generally, Aristotle’s claim is that a this, which is in the world on its own, self-sufficiently, has a what-it-always-was-to-be, and is just its what-it-always-was-to-be.

On the face of it, Descartes rejects this. A living being is a created and always dependent being. But in "Principia Philosophiae" he says:

It seems clear to me that the general cause is no other than God himself. In the beginning he created matter, along with its motion and rest; and now, merely by regularly letting things run their course, he preserves the same amount of motion and rest in the material universe as he put there in the beginning.

·(Part ll, Article 36)

Here he claims that God is the cause of things coming to be, but rather than saying that God is the cause of their persisting he says that God lets things run their own course. No claim is made about God keeping things in existence.

His first law of motion (or nature) follows:

The first of these laws is that each simple and undivided thing when left to itself always remains in the same state, never changing except from external causes.

(Article 37)

In order to avoid confusion, Aristotle and Descartes do not mean the same things when they use the term 'motion'. Aristotle means more broadly any kind of change. The underlying problem is, how can something change and remain the same thing?

Descartes means:

A piece of matter or body moves if it goes from being in immediate contact with some bodies that are regarded as being at rest to being in immediate contact with other bodies.

(Article 25)

As we see with the wax, while it undergoes change something remains the same. It remains the same wax, which is known by the mind. The wax persists. All of the changes it undergoes are the result of external causes.

Descartes claim here is the reverse of what he argues in the passage cited in the Meditations:

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. — ibid. page 33

According to the law of motion, things remain the same unless there is a external cause, but in the Meditations it is only the result of an external cause, namely, God, that things are preserved. In the case of the wax Descartes identifies the external cause of change, but he has not identified the external cause that would cause him and everything else to cease existing if not for God.

It 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.

With regard to the question of existence and dependence, in the third meditation Descartes says;

Perhaps I have always existed as I do now. In that case, wouldn’t it follow that there need be no cause for my existence? No, it does not follow. For a life-span can be divided into countless parts, each completely independent of the others, so that from my existing at one time it doesn’t follow that I exist at later times, unless some cause keeps me in existence – one might say that it creates me afresh at each moment.

This argument should be compared to one in the sixth meditation:

Whereas every body is by its nature divisible, the mind can’t be divided. 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 added)

A bit later he says:

... the nature of man as a combination of mind and body ...

We might conclude that by a thinking thing he does not mean that all he is is a thinking thing, but:

Furthermore, my mind is me, for the following reason·. I know that I exist and that nothing else belongs to my nature or essence except that I am a thinking thing.

Is he making a distinction between the nature of man and his own nature? Does his nature extend beyond his human nature?

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. Is Descartes declaring his independence from both the Church and from God? Or, perhaps, he is declaring the independence of thought itself.

Toward the beginning of the fourth meditation Descartes claims:

I infer that God exists and that every moment of my existence depends on him.

Why would Descartes claim that every moment of his existence depend on God? Is this just feigning piety? His sincerity is questionable at the end of the fifth meditation:

... until I became aware of [God] I couldn’t perfectly know anything.

But the first thing he claims to know, prior to his awareness of God, is that he exists.

I think there is more to this, but don't know yet what it is. It seems significant his claim is not simply that God sustains us but must do so from moment to moment.

In your previous answer you talked about "particular things that are ascribed to materialism might not stick". But mental things are not just "particular" things. They consist a whole world, in contrast with the material one! — Alkis Piskas

Throughout the long history of the term there have been various things ascribed to "matter". By particular things I mean some of the things that are said about matter that I am not in agreement with.

Nothing wrong with asking someone where they stand on an issue. I usually address the question in terms of embodied minds. The term "matter" has become problematic. In my limited understanding matter is not inert stuff but actively forms self-organizing systems.

As I understand it, he is saying that he wants his readers to become accustomed to his way of thinking before they sense what the consequences are. That is,

before perceiving that they destroy those of Aristotle.

I see Paine beat me to it.

I guess you must believe that thoughts, ideas, memory, knowledge, emotions and all mental activities and contents of the mind in general are composed of matter — Alkis Piskas

No. See my previous answer to your question. Mental activities are not composed of matter, but organisms that think are.

I've never denied his talent for climbing the greasy pole of popular opinion. — apokrisis

Nice image!

Thank you for saying so!

Are you a materialist? — Alkis Piskas

Yes, although particular things that are ascribed to materialism might not stick.

The will argument is somewhat strange, especially when he says that the scope of the will is larger than the scope of the intellect. — Manuel

Good point. Limiting the will seems to be unnecessarily self-limiting. There is something else going on here.

I can't get to the bottom of reasons in a way that I feel no problems in "seeing" this is as simple and as foundational as any reason can get, there's just so much in every judgment and proposition that are assumed. — Manuel

Descartes has a universal method for solving problems, his "mathesis universalis". He describes the mathesis univeralis in Rules for the Direction of the Mind. The first rule is:

The aim of our studies must be the direction of our mind so that it may form solid and true judgments on whatever matters arise

(emphasis added)

With his method he will be able to solve for any unknown. With his method it becomes less and less necessary to limit the will, for the intellect will be continually expanding.

.

So, I would prefer to say that he strives for certainty, as far as human understanding goes, though some things we can't comprehend, we being finite creatures. — Manuel

At the end of the fourth meditation he says:

This is where man’s greatest and most important perfection is to be found ... If I restrain my will so that I form opinions only on what the intellect clearly and distinctly reveals, I cannot possibly go wrong.

He has within himself the ability to become more perfect by avoiding error. Note that he allows for degrees of perfection.

In the fourth meditation:

I know by experience that will is entirely without limits.

and:

My will is so perfect and so great that I can’t conceive of its becoming even greater and more perfect ...

His will is perfect and thus the proximate and more likely source of his idea of perfection. He goes further. It is not just the idea of perfection, but the reality of perfection, as he avoids error and becomes more perfect, that is within him

I only know that He exists and this guarantees that clear and distinct ideas gotten through this method, can't be wrong. — Manuel

According to the argument it is not simply knowledge that God exists, but the claim that God would not deceive us that guarantees that clear and distinct ideas can't be wrong. But if clear and distinct ideas can't be wrong, then:

a Cartesian project, without God — Manuel

At bottom is a reliance on reason. For even his claims about God depends on reason. Further, he has established that even if God is a deceiver, his Archimedean point, his knowledge that he exists, established by reason, is fixed.

I think we have gone about as far as we can with going over the same things again. I appreciate that despite our differences the discussion remained civil.

how would you even go about looking for such a mind (I hesitate to say 'phenomenon')? — Wayfarer

I don't know how to go about looking for something that probably does not exist. That is why I keep returning to living things as the place to look for minds.

I can get on board with the idea that our minds do not exist without bodies because our bodies are extrinsic representaEition of our minds. — Bob Ross

We will have to agree to disagree on this as well.

So of course we should expect to a dead body to still have an alive mind — Bob Ross

You might expect that. I don't expect that. The majority of the medical community does not expect that. The majority of those working in cognitive science do not expect that.

Firstly, “Either or” entails a dilemma — Bob Ross

Either it is raining or it is not. What is the dilemma? Either it is Tuesday or it is not. What is the dilemma? Either consciousness is ontologically fundamental or it is not. what is the dilemma?

the former simply posits that there are physical things within experience — Bob Ross

It does not say that there are physical things within experience. It says that there are physical things that we are aware of. It does not say that those things are in experience. That is your assumption. I am aware of the tree that is providing me with shade, but that experience does not mean the tree is within experience, only that my awareness of it is. My experience does not provide shade, the tree does.

As I already explained, there is a symmetry breaker. — Bob Ross

Once again I will take the option to agree to disagree.

I provided an argument and you didn’t really counter it. — Bob Ross

Round and round we go.

But that research isn’t going to afford us an explanation of what mind is — Bob Ross

I agree. We do not have an adequate explanation of mind.

If by “embodied” you just mean that your mind corresponds to a physical body — Bob Ross

Mind is a capacity of sufficiently developed living bodies.