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Week 7 - Descartes Med 3-4 and "The Electric Ant"

Page history last edited by KJA 10 years, 4 months ago

Presenters post your agenda here: 

 

 

Each group is tasked with dramatizing, in the form of a skit, the selected scenes from Philip K. Dick’s “The Electric Ant” in an effort tease out the issues, themes, and ideas and their relation to the first four Meditations of Descartes.  Feel free to present your skit in such a way that it emphasizes the ideas your group finds most relevant to the relationship between “The Electric Ant” and “Meditations.”  At the end of each presentation, your group will be asked to briefly identify and discuss how you see the ideas of Descartes at work in the scene.  Groups will receive twenty minutes to prepare their five minute presentation.  And because candy is much sought after, it will be awarded to the group with the best dramatic performance and the group with the most insightful presentation about their skit’s relationship to Descartes.  Each group should feel free to contract or expand their scene as they see fit as long as it is conducive to their presentation of the scene’s relationship to the Descartes text.

   The groups and scenes are as follows:

 

 

 Group 1:  (Sam, K, Karena, Mazzin)

 

 Your scene begins on page 228 of “The Electric Ant” with the paragraph near the middle of the page beginning “Programmed.  In me somewhere, he thought, there is a matrix…” and ends on page 230 with the line “And this sets me apart from every human…”

 

 Directions to consider taking this skit (feel free to deviate):

  Third Meditation: (p. 27 in the Oxford)

  “The most glaring and widespread error that can be found in them consists in my judging that the ideas that are in me are similar to or in accordance with some things existing outside me”

 

 

 Touch upon issues dealing the constraints and limitations of an internal self in contrast with perception of the outside world.  How is deception at work in Descartes and “The Electric Ant”? 

______________________________________________________________________________ 

 

 

 Group 2: (Stacy, Sara, Michael)

 

 Your scene begins near the end of page 235 with the paragraph beginning

“Poole said, ‘I’ve examined the circuit.  It doesn’t carry enough voltage…” and ending near the middle of page 237 with the paragraph beginning “I want to know you completely.”

 

 Directions to consider taking this skit (again, feel free to deviate):

 

 Fourth Meditation (p. 44 in the Oxford)

 

 “I cannot deny that in a way the universe as a whole is more perfect as a result of the fact that some of its parts are not immune from error, while others are, than it would have been if all its parts were entirely similar.  And I have no right to complain that the part God has given me to play in the world is not the most prominent and perfect of all.”

 

 Consider touching upon the limitations involved in one’s creation.  Poole’s desire to “control time” seems the exact opposite of Descartes recognition of the role god has given him.      

_____________________________________________________________________________

 

Group 3:  (Sergio, Jenneke, Jack)

 

 Your scene begins near the middle of page 238 with the line “He cut the tape” and ends with the story’s conclusion on 239.

 

 Directions to consider taking this skit (again, feel free to deviate):

 

 Second Meditation (p. 22 in the Oxford paragraph in the middle of the page)

 

 “Perhaps the truth of the matter was what I now think it is: namely that the wax itself was not in fact this sweetness of the honey […] but the body which not long appeared to me as perceptible in these modes, but no appears in others”

 

  Touch on the issue of perception and relate it especially to Poole’s experience of an alternative perception after having cut his tape.  It’s also possible to connect this with the eternal present we discussed with Boethius.  What does perception have to do with the discussion between Danceman and Sarah at the conclusion of the story?”

 

Apologies for the horrible spacing in this post.  It didn't want to transfer over from Word. 

 

Comments (3)

Michael Pruess said

at 11:21 am on Mar 1, 2010

Random comment unrelated to the above assignments, but related to the text and to Boethius.

In paragraph 2 of section 55 in the Fourth Meditation, Descartes writes:
"For since I know now that my nature is very weak and limited, whereas the nature of God is immense, incomprehensible, and infinite, this is sufficient for me also to know that he can make innumerable things whose causes escape me."

This seems very similar to the endnote of Boethius--I remarked in class that once you accept something just because God understands it and you can have some idea of it, you're the most gullible thing in the world, easily led to any conclusion. Lady Philosophy reconciled free will, necessity, and foreknowledge all by saying that the true eternity of God is something we mortals cannot comprehend. Similarly, in the quoted passage above, Descartes is forfeiting his reason in order to cede to the authority of a greater being who understands things we cannot. Hmm.

Michael Pruess said

at 1:40 pm on Mar 1, 2010

To expand on my question/comment toward the end of class today, I find that these modern philosophers have a tendency to assume things in the middle of their proofs/skepticisms that are hard to swallow. Descartes has his "deception is evil; God is good and wouldn't deceive" spiel which has no proof or explanation in the text, and seems to stem from an Augustinian view of lying. With Spinoza, existence is power and because God is supremely powerful he must exist—there is no explanation as to why the ability to end one's existence isn't considered power. The list goes on.

My main point I guess is that these great thinkers head us down an interesting path toward an exciting conclusion, but there seems always to be -some- portion of the argument that comes out of left field.

I was wondering if anyone had thoughts on the matter—do such unproved assumptions discredit the entire line of argument? Is it alright to just overlook them? &c.

The assumptions aren't even necessarily intuitive. For instance, it seems to me that an all-powerful being would have the power to destroy itself. Or, in the case of Descartes, an omniscient God could have all kinds of reasons for deceiving Descartes. Maybe Descartes is a bad guy a la Lady Macbeth, and God is tricking him to drive him mad?

Michael Pruess said

at 6:26 pm on Mar 2, 2010

Stacy, Sara--do we want to develop our skit any further before class tomorrow?

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