One is pragmatism, in which the location of your sock draw can never be known — Banno

I would think that the pragmatist, or some subset of pragmatists, would say that opening the drawer and finding your socks where you claim they there is sufficient for knowing where they are.

It is an article about "elements that are considered important in a discussion and distinguish a good discussion from a poor one". — Alkis Piskas

According to the article:

A goal of a discussion if to have everyone involved and participating in the discussion.

This is a common but questionable assumption in the philosophy of education, a vestige of a factory model. A way of measuring productivity.

How well does this translate to a philosophy forum? For one, there is no requirement for someone to pretend to be interested in a thread or to say something in order to count as participating. In addition, there is no expectation that members know enough about a topic to have something to say.

these are not guidelines or rules of conduct that one must abide to. — Alkis Piskas

They are presented as a measure of a good discussion:

... there are several elements in the process of discussion which serve to distinguish a good discussion from a poor one

For both classroom and forum discussion I don't agree.

Sure, there may be. But you can;t do anything about it, can you? — Alkis Piskas

You can. You can change your assumptions and attitude, which might change what you say and how you say it.

The question is how applicable/workable and effective these rules or elements are in practice. — Alkis Piskas

Hence my questions.

Self-consciousnsss is not preserved. — Gregory

If you mean individual self-consciousness, it is aufheben. A moment in the self-movement of the whole. In this way self-consciousness is preserved.

activity depends on the number of replies — javi2541997

Right, but what is the connection between activity and importance? It is easy to post something that will generate a lot of response, but this can be a poor measure of the significance of the thread.

it can end up in absolute forgetfulness, passing one page and another, and then disappearing in the endless information stock of this forum. — javi2541997

Perhaps, but it is possible, and I would like to believe common for some posts to reemerge at some later date when someone researches a philosopher or idea or question or problem. At least this is what I tell myself.

I bet that if one of the famous and common "philosophers" of this site ... — javi2541997

I was not aware that there are any. But famous or not, I agree that some members grab attention and others go unnoticed or are deliberately ignored. Those who are ignored certainly play some role in this. In some cases, especially with members who have been here for a long time, it is not worth the time and energy to rehash the some things once again. In addition, some members do not handle disagreement well. Speaking personally, when this becomes evident I tend not to respond to them.

Added: I am speaking in general terms, not about the author of this thread, with whom I have had some interesting discussions.







.

Two philosophers who influenced Hadot are Thoreau and Wittgenstein.

He wrote a paper on Thoreau: "There are nowadays Professors of Philosophy, but not Philosophers". The title is taken from a quote by Thoreau on philosophy as a way of life.

Hadot is credited with introducing Wittgenstein to France. The affinity can be seen in passages such as the following from Philosophical Investigations:

There is not a single philosophical method, though there are indeed methods, different therapies, as it were. (PI 133d)

First, it should be noted that the guidelines were written for teachers leading classroom discussion. I think the following claim is questionable for both classroom discussion and forum discussion:

It is desirable that the discussion has as many participants as possible. — Alkis Piskas

Why is this desirable? There are several questionable assumptions underlying this, including:

1) Everyone has something of value to contribute.

2) Those who say nothing are not participating.

3) What is important is the process not the substantive content.

4) A discussion needs to stay on track rather than go wandering off.


The first is based on a pervasive egalitarian prejudice that underlies popular educational philosophy. One problem with this becomes apparent when we consider the third assumption. In my opinion it is better to have enough self-knowledge to know when to stop talking and listen.

I am reminded of the following advice:

When you’re teaching always assume there is a silent student in the class who knows more than you do.

To remain silent may be an important form of participation. One in which one thinks about what has been said rather than thinking about what to say.

With regard to 4), when it comes to philosophical discussion the first rule to follow is this:

...wherever the argument,like a wind, tends, thither must we go. (Republic 394d)

This does not mean endless discussion of claims that go nowhere, but it is not always clear ahead of time where it will go. This is not to say that going off topic is never a problem, but that preemptive attempts to prevent that from happening may result in bigger problems. It may be that a tangent is self-limiting, not pursued beyond a few posts, but in other cases it can circle back or expand the initial inquiry in a useful way. One thing leading to another, something new may arise that would not have otherwise. In my opinion, it is best to allow a bit of messiness. If we knew ahead of time where an inquiry will lead the inquiry itself would not be necessary, and strict control of where it goes will surely prevent it from going to places that may be fruitful and interesting.

Because you do know stuff ... It takes training in philosophy to deny this. — Banno

This is similar to the affliction many suffer when the first read psychology and convince themselves that they have various dire psychological disorders.

Socratic skepticism became a victim of its own success. On the one hand, contrary to what Plato's Socrates says, some come to believe that we know nothing, but others come to believe there is a realm of transcendent knowledge, and still others that the problem is methodological, that with the right method all will be revealed.

The whole.

From the preface to the Phenomenology:

... the whole which has returned into itself from out of its succession and extension and has come to be the simple concept of itself. (#12)

And:

In my view … everything hangs on grasping and expressing the true not just as substance but just as much as subject. (#17)

He continues:

At the same time, it is to be noted that substantiality comprises within itself the universal, or, it comprises not only the immediacy of knowing but also the immediacy of being, or, immediacy for knowing.

The universal is unity of the immediacy, direct and unmediated, of knowing and being, of knowing and for knowing.

With regard to Spinoza he says:

However much taking God to be the one substance shocked the age in which this was expressed, still that was in part because of an instinctive awareness that in such a view self-consciousness only perishes and is not preserved.

Hegel thinks Spinoza shocked the age not because, as is commonly assumed, it threatened the status of God as distinct and separate, but because it threatens the status of man as distinct in his self-consciousness.

It’s Biden’s DOJ. — NOS4A2

Those who favor autocratic rule would have us believe that the DOJ does not and should not act independently.

Trump is quite transparent in his intention to put the unitary executive theory into practice. Agencies like the DOJ would not longer be able to act independently. All would be under his control, demonstrate their loyalty to him, and have as their purpose to do his bidding.

Trumpsters would have us believe that there is nothing radical or dangerous about this. That it is established practice. Hence, "Biden's DOJ". They are playing both sides, claiming special treatment for Hunter Biden while supporting Trump's attempt to establish a unitary executive.

Of course if Trump loses to a Democrat then there would be a 180 degree turn around and Trumpsters would accuse Democratic leaders of wrong doing by doing the very thing that Trump has set out to do.

Those 'dwelling in the cave' only know the appearances — Wayfarer

Those dwelling in the cave are just like us:

... you should compare our nature, in respect of education and lack of education, to a condition such as the following.

When Glaucon says how strange this image is Socrates replies:
They are just like us ...[/quote]

and the 'education in the truth' is described in the following — Wayfarer

This does not describe our education, the education of the dwellers:

“Now,” I said, “consider what liberation from their bonds, and cure of their ignorance, would be like for them, if it happened naturally in the following way. Suppose one of them were released, and suddenly compelled to stand up, crane his neck, walk, and look up towards the light.

How can the bonds that keep the prisoners from turning around release "naturally"?

A bit further on:

“And,” I said, “if someone were to drag him forcibly from there ...

If this someone forces a prisoner out of the prison then it does not occur naturally.

There is no suggestion that this is something he himself hasn't seen. — Wayfarer

In that case he would not say:

God knows whether it happens to be true, but in any case this is how it all seems to me.

It would not be how it seems to him, he would know that it is true. He would have divine knowledge rather than the human knowledge he professes. He would have the cure for his ignorance.

For the plutocrats America was great before Roosevelt and the New Deal.

Your interpretation is at odds with the text, though, and every interpretation of the meaning of the Allegory of the Cave that I've read. — Wayfarer

My interpretation is in line with both the text and well known and well regarded interpretations of it.

So the education in question, is the education necessary to overcome their attachment to the illusory domain and to perceive the real (i.e. be closer to 'what is'): — Wayfarer

Quoting from the text:

... an image of our nature in its education and want of education ... (Republic 514a)

The nature of the education of the cave dwellers, that is, our education, is that:

... such men would hold that the truth is nothing other than the shadows of artificial things. (515c)

What is wanting is an education in the truth.

“Then, dear Glaucon,” ...

Note that in the middle of this passage you quote Socrates says of the story:

A god doubtless knows if it happens to be true.

A god would know if it happens to be true, but Socrates does not. And we do not.

Once seen, it is reckoned to be the actual cause of all that is beautiful and right in everything ... — Wayfarer

But this is not something that Socrates has seen and not something that we have seen. For us it too is an image, a story about something we have no experience of.

Anyone who is to act intelligently, either in private or in public, must have had sight of this.

And so, based on our education and want of education we do not have the knowledge to act intelligently. Such knowledge cannot be given to us by this or any other story.

“I also hold the same views that you hold,” he said, “after my own fashion, anyway.”

Glaucon makes the same mistake that you do. He holds a view about something he has not seen. He takes an image to be the truth.

I think 'the realm known by reason' — Wayfarer

If we follow the divided line this in not the realm known by reason. The realm is not known by reason (dianoia) but by nous. It is the realm of what is seen by the mind, not something known by reason. Not something that can be taught. Not something we have seen and not something we know to be true.

Added: I don't know which translation you are citing but the Bloom translation does not say "the realm known by reason".

the parable of the cave — Wayfarer

The irony here is that although with the image of the cave Plato is warning against the persuasive power of images he does so using images. And this is often taken to be not an image but the truth itself.

The cave story is, as Socrates says when telling it:

... an image of our nature in its education and want of education ... (Republic 514a)

The escape from the cave is an escape from the bonds of our education, an escape from the images of the truth. Replacing an image with another image, one of a transcendent realm of Forms, is not to escape the cave, but to remain bound within it. The image makers, the educators, that is, the poets, are not replaced by all knowing truth telling philosophers, but by the image maker Socrates.

In the Apology Socrates denies having knowledge of "anything very much or great and good or beautiful" (21d). And yet in the Republic he tells this story of transcendent knowledge, a knowledge he does not possess. In the Phaedrus he says he has an 'erotic art' (257a). And in the Symposium he claims to know nothing except things about eros (177d). It is this knowledge of eros or desire that informs his story of transcendence. The philosopher desires, but does not possess, transcendent knowledge.

The education of the philosopher living in the city, which is to say, the cave, is an education is how to educate those he must educate if there is to be any possibility of justice for the philosopher. Socrates does so by imitating the theologians, those who claim to have knowledge of divine things. But in doing so he replaces the willful capriciousness of the gods with the Forms.

I very much appreciate this insight. — 180 Proof

And I very much appreciate your appreciation.

I just reread Phaedo last week so I will be curious to have a look at the thread. — Leontiskos

A couple of years ago I started a thread on Phaedo. When I completed it I compiled my separate posts so that they can be read through without having to read the whole thread. I would be interested in your comments.

1. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/10914/platos-phaedo/p1


2. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/534860


3. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/535343


4. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/535924


5. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/536573


6. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/537114


7. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/537698


8. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/538481


9. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/539501


10. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/540733

Fooloso4's reading of Plato generally deprecates the widespread view that the knowledge of the forms corresponds to insight into a higher realm of truth. — Wayfarer

Perhaps the warning not to kill the messenger is apt. How well the widespread view holds up in light of the passages I sighted is up to the reader to decide.

But to disagree would require re-visiting and re-reading many a dusty tome, so I think I'll regard his as one among other possible interpretations. — Wayfarer

I can understand this, I feel that way about some philosophers, but for me Plato is not dusty tomes.
In my opinion, one must learn how to read Plato. Given the topic of this thread I will only say that the dialogues to not present the argument from reason. Certainly they contain reasoned argument, but if they

arrive at a true understanding — Wayfarer

it is an understanding of ourselves and our limits. It is not an understanding of a disembodied rational being. The dialogues are imitations or images of actual human beings known to Plato's first readers. Particular human beings with their various and particular ambitions, desires, and limits. In short, the true turning of the dialogues is not to an imagined realm of unchanging truths, but to the development of self-knowledge.

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.