Descartes Reading Group
This is a free version of the Meditations on First Philosophy by Descartes. I don't actually know how it rates as a translation, but it's easy to read on a phone, so I'm using it. Plus it's by marxists.org, so what could go wrong? :cool:
So let's consider what can be called into doubt!
So let's consider what can be called into doubt!
Comments (251)
FIRST MEDITATION: On what can be called into doubt
"Some years ago I was struck by how many false things I had believed, and by how doubtful was the structure of beliefs that I had based on them. I realized that if I wanted to establish anything in the sciences that was stable and likely to last, I needed just once in my life to demolish everything completely and start again from the foundations. It looked like an enormous task, and I decided to wait until I was old enough to be sure that there was nothing to be gained from putting it off any longer. I have now delayed it for so long that I have no excuse for going on planning to do it rather than getting to work. So today I have set all my worries aside and arranged for myself a clear stretch of free time. I am here quite alone, and at last I will devote myself, sincerely and without holding back, to demolishing my opinions."
"I am here quite alone, and at last I will devote myself, sincerely and without holding back, to demolishing my opinions."
This piece is one of the first important works of philosophy not written in Latin. It was written in French. Bibles were starting to be written in vulgar languages so the common people could read it. In keeping with this, Descartes wanted everyone to be able to read his work.
"Descartes said that he wrote in French so that all who had good sense, including women, could read his work and learn to think for themselves.". -- britannica.com.
Writing in the shadow of what happened to Galileo at the hand of the Church, Descartes dedication to the faculty of theology is both revealing and concealing. He tells them that once they understand the principle behind his undertaking they will protect it. This raises the question of what that principle is. Telling them that they will protect it is perhaps misdirection, but determining whether this is the case requires understanding what that principle is.
The second paragraph begins by declaring the superiority of philosophical demonstration and natural reason over that of theological argument. He goes on to defend belief in a way that defies natural reason and runs counter to the principle behind his undertaking:
Of course, as he has just noted, the unbeliever is not persuaded of the truth based on a doctrine of Holy Scripture or faith and grace. Indeed, as he immediately goes on to say:
The argument in the dedication contains its own circularity.
On the one hand he argues that philosophy like geometry relies on conclusive demonstration, but on the other, since unlike geometry in philosophy everything can be argued either way, it is not demonstration but being persuaded on the authority of the Church that such demonstrations exist that one accepts them as true.
To pursue the truth itself requires something else:
Preconceived opinions, including the opinions of the Church stand in the way of the few who are to achieve an adequate perception. Descartes makes a distinction between an exoteric teaching for the many and an esoteric method of inquiry suitable only for the few.
He cites two passages, the first from the Book of Wisdom, Chapter 13 and the second from Romans, Chapter 1, in support of the claim that God may be more easily and more certainly known than the things of this world. He will do this by doubting everything the senses tell us, but both passages do just the opposite, they move from the things of this world to God their creator. Both are rendered unreliable, however, if, as he proposes in the first meditation:
I quite like the statement also. It's quite something to declare that one is going to abolish all that they know and start from scratch.
There is irony here however, in that his demolishing of personal opinion leads to development of a communicable statement (personal opinion) to replace it.
Anything one expresses is a voice of opinion pertaining to value - something worth expressing to others.
So in even the act of writing his thoughts, Descartes was asserting the usefulness of his insights to others. And thus assuming such. A lack of doubt. As doubt prevents one from communicating if they have intense doubt as to what they are imparting, as likely doubt would lead instead to further personal isolated consideration/contemplation rather than determination - voicing ones ideas as determined and ready to be shared (opinion)
Absolutely. Descartes wasn't a solipsist. Notice his reasons for starting this project:
Quoting Descartes
He's saying he feels he's been bamboozled and wants to start fresh, not just for himself, but for science
He lived at a time when the Catholic Church made decisions about which math problems were proper to examine and which shouldn't be. When he says "the foundation" it appears he's talking about something anyone could discover, not just clergymen. Do you agree with that?
It seems then Descartes was appeasing both the church and his freedom to think.
The irony then being that the churches views are set, and anything that is set does not pertain to freedom (the unset).
Yes indeed. I certainly agree. This was his attempt at opening the book on pure reason and logic, all assumption set aside. This is remarkable for the time he lived in.
However, I cannot help feeling he had a certain enduring angst about the church and it's power. And might have cautiously framed his views in a fashion pertinent to church agreeability, at compromise with absolute unadulterated free thought.
We can acknowledge the church was certainly a domineering authority at the time. And to go against such an authority was dangerous indeed. So I wonder, if he has been influenced by such acknowledgements in his endeavors.
He took his motto from Ovid:
There is freedom of thought within the privacy of mind. But freedom of speech is much reduced. As it leads to reactive interpretation by others and thus action, which may be against you.
To say what one truly thinks could result in them being persecuted, based on the degree of morality or quality of what they think, as the deceitful/ dishonest cannot stand/abide any fundamental expression of truth and will thus attack it to preserve their own ideas and beliefs.
So long as there is a psychopath in power, lacking empathy, totally selfish and desiring domineering control of the narrative, anything that sways the general moral directive in a positive sense (privelaging equality, responsability and empathy) is a direct threat to their selfish ways and must be destroyed.
In that sense I'm inclined to say "who lived semi-well" hid himself well. He who lived well, did not hide himself, and put a target on his back/sacrificed his safety purely for the benefit/teaching/education of others. As martyrs did.
He seemed to be optimistic that he could win them over and bring reforms to the Church.
I was never too interested in his proof of God until I read that B. Russell said his proof works.
Thanks for coming aboard to read it!
There are different ways in which one might hide. An important and influential contemporary work on this is Leo Strauss' "Persecution and the Art of Writing". The complement of the art of writing is the art of reading. It is through the art of reading that we find what Descartes hides in his art of writing.
Quoting Benj96
One problem with writing, as Socrates notes in Plato's Phaedrus, is that what is said cannot be tailored to suit the reader. What may be of benefit to one person may be detrimental to another. Descartes gives us an example in the Dedication:
For the benefit of others Descartes argues along traditional lines for the existence of God and the immortality of the soul; but he does not claim, as Proverbs does, that fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. In addition he equates soul and thinking, and is silent about an afterlife. The significance of this will become clearer when he replaces sin with erring, and connects the avoidance of error with perfectibility. The latter is accomplished not by obedience but by will and knowledge.
In other words, there is a potentially harmful esoteric teaching hiding in the salutary exoteric teaching.
"My reason tells me that as well as withholding assent from propositions that are obviously false, I should also withhold it from ones that are not completely certain and indubitable. So all I need, for the purpose of rejecting all my opinions, is to find in each of them at least some reason for doubt. I can do this without going through them one by one, which would take forever: once the foundations of a building have been undermined, the rest collapses of its own accord; so I will go straight for the basic principles on which all my former beliefs rested."
The glaring principle here is foundationalism:
"Foundationalism is the view that if there is any knowledge or justified belief then that knowledge or justified belief rests on a foundation of knowledge and justified belief that does not depend on inference from anything else known or justifiably believed.". here.
Foundationalism isn't problematic to me. If it's challenged, then I'd ask, on what grounds is foundationalism in error or false? No matter what their reasoning is against foundationalism, it is bound to be grounded on something else. Then they're left holding the bag.
Which is why I usually say I hold that human thought is paradoxical and that much of what we call reality is human projection based on our limited perspective. From this 'dimly lit' vantage point I generally hold that I (or any of us) don't have enough information or wisdom to make reliable judgements about the nature of reality.
Yes.
Quoting Tom Storm
This would be a fair response against foundationalism -- but it also means that it hasn't undermined foundationalism.
If you mean if foundationalism as a theory is on the same level of argument as presuppositions (statements expressing premises), no.
Oh, I responded incorrectly, Tom. I meant to say, that foundationalism is itself a theory, a school of thought, if you will, which has a logical system of statements pointing towards their view. But to answer your question, yes, the postmodern tried to do away with the foundationalist notion of grounds. I actually disagree with them since they, too, were trying to ground their assumptions on some structure of society/government.
I would have to dig for their writings if you want to discuss this further.
It might help to examine the assumptions and conclusions he makes as he goes along.
I should also withhold it from ones that are not completely certain and indubitable.
His criteria to assent to a truth is certainty and absence of doubt. Of course his ideal is a mathematical certainty. Wittgenstein later will show that this requirement is why philosophy overlooks our ordinary criteria for every different thing we do.
the visions that come in sleep are like paintings: they must have been made as copies of real things; so at least these general kinds of things eyes, head, hands and the body as a whole must be real and not imaginary.
He begins to account for our doubt by taking our most direct, best-case scenario, sensations, and concluding that we must make copies, which can then be mistaken, without undermining the possibility of something certain, which he creates and abstracts as what is real (as Plato did with the Forms). Which leads to a picture such as:
Quoting Tom Storm
yet clearly I sometimes am deceived.
So in contrast, everything else is subject to doubt, or, to put it another way, possible failure, mistakes, error, thoughtlessness, hurt, tragedy, etc. As well, it is framed in a way that someone is deceiving him; in a sense, either God or himself. As if it werent a regular occurrence, but malicious, intentional, out of the ordinary.
On their view [that God does not exist], then, I am a product of fate or chance or a long chain of causes and effects.
He tries to give up on the idea of an all-powerful God, but, rather than accept uncertainty in the world, he assumes there are other forces of which I am the perfect product.
I dont reach this conclusion [that doubt can be raised about anything] in a flippant or casual manner, but on the basis of powerful and well thought-out reasons.
I think most interesting is there is a sort of admission that this desire for certainty is driving the form of his answers; that it is powerful, like a basic human need, but he takes it as a validation or badge of honor rather than as a unexamined forced criteria.
But if I go on viewing them in that light I shall never get out of the habit of confidently assenting to [the law of custom and habitual opinions].
Again, almost as a throwaway sentence, he reveals something more interesting. It is the habitual assent that he is actually trying to throw off, and he makes the assumption that these are errors and uncertainties, to which the contrast is perfection, truth, and certainty, rather than conscious assent, or its opposite, what Emerson calls aversion, or Thoreau would call dissent. He warns against laziness and to be on guard against the pull of conformity. That we will need courage to shake ourselves awake (say in the metaphorical sense of: unconscious assent to the social contract) and that there is some violence and struggle that we must throw ourselves into. Hegel will refer to this darkness as the dark path in the Phenomenology of Spirit, when we begin to take apart our dichotomies.
However, perhaps because he views dissent as crossing the rule of the church, he needs to be absolutely certain (to counter-balance the weight of old opinion) before defying the authority of the status quo (why he is in a sense hiding, as @Fooloso4 points out, his defiance). So maybe this is not just an epistemological treatise, but, hidden within, a political one.
However far I go in my distrustful attitude, no actual harm will come of it, because my project wont affect how I act, but only how I go about acquiring knowledge.
I just want to point to Socrates discussion in the Meno of knowledge and action (virtue) as well as Wittgensteins uncovering that the desire for knowledge creates the excuse for our responsibility to act, or react to the others claim upon us. That, no, there may be harm in Descartes attitude.
So let's look at the opening lines one more time.
Quoting frank
Anthony, what would you conclude the object of his project is? Is it to withhold assigning truth to anything that isn't certain in the way the conclusion of a mathematical proof is? Or is he putting aside his certainty for the sake of reexamining foundations? What do you think?
Without jumping too far ahead, a bit of explanation regarding this structure is needed. His use of the term 'objective' differs from ours. Objective reality refers to the ideas represented in the mind and differs from formal or actual reality. (Meditation 3)
For now I will only note that unlike the God of Genesis, Descartes' God does not rest on the seventh day (Meditation 3 on preservation and creation).
Of course were just getting started, so conclusions are premature.
Quoting frank
I will say that I think he started wanting to investigate what is normally unexamined; the hidden judgments and assumptions of our society (as he says, the law of custom and habitual opinions), as most of philosophy attempts to reflect onourselves embedded in our culture. But he floats away from an actual inquiry of instances of practices in the situations in which they happen, into an abstracted world encompassing every claim in every context. He jumps straight for the basic principles on which all my former beliefs rested. Plato makes the same mistake early on in the Theatetus when he skips over examples of knowing things to look for what knowledge is itself and then moves to theories of knowledge in the abstract, universally, like math.
Descartes skipping over our ordinary examples of knowledge to try to be certain about something more foundational is not because going through them one by one would take forever. He is worried about being deceived about our major concerns of custom and opinion, the many false things [he] had believed, like morality, politicsthe things we are more uncertain about. It is fear that makes him want to start with something he seemingly cant not know, his senses and his awareness of himself.
I'm glad you're coming to it with an open mind.
Continuing the first meditation:
"Whatever I have accepted until now as most true has come to me through my senses. But occasionally I have found that they have deceived me, and it is unwise to trust completely those who have deceived us even once.
"Yet although the senses sometimes deceive us about objects that are very small or distant, that doesnt apply to my belief that I am here, sitting by the fire, wearing a winter dressing-gown, holding this piece of paper in my hands, and so on. It seems to be quite impossible to doubt beliefs like these, which come from the senses.
"Another example: how can I doubt that these hands or this whole body are mine? To doubt such things I would have to liken myself to brain-damaged madmen who are convinced they are kings when really they are paupers, or say they are dressed in purple when they are naked, or that they are pumpkins, or made of glass. Such people are insane, and I would be thought equally mad if I modelled myself on them."
So he's saying that he realizes that the senses can deceive us, but there are some propositions which seem impossible to doubt without claiming insanity. How can I doubt that these are my hands?
Absolutely. He goes a step at a time.
He starts with this:
The things I believe to be true were learned through the senses.
But there have been times when the senses deceived me.
Therefore, it is wise not to completely trust any of the things I believe.
In a Christian framework, one is expected to offer complete trust to the sayings of the Church. Descartes says that since we learned these sayings through our senses, and our senses can deceive us, it isn't wise to offer complete trust.
I figured assigning deception to the senses was just a turn of phrase. You're saying there's more to it?
The reference to personal betrayal is interesting here. A loss of trust questioning the good faith of the interlocutor. The relationship is in peril before the trial has begun. The setting reminds me of Dante who discovers he is lost "midway through life's journey." The failure to find one's way threatens madness.
Phenomenologically, it seems like the self and the world are two poles of sensation. if you look out the window, notice how you frame the experience as a connection between sensor and sensed. The two imply one another and they're inextricable. Descartes is asking if we can break this structure. Can we do it by flat out denying one pole, that is the sensed?
Quoting Paine
:up:
We can suppress them (the senses) to an extent. But it's the intellect which calls the shot when it comes to making truth claims, on this latter part, Descartes is quite right.
But when we ask the world questions, like: is that a star I sense? Or an airplane? We want the world to speak, not our own intellects. All the human truth teller is doing is repeating what the world has said. The intellect is just supposed to aid us in hearing the world correctly, right?
Descartes' science of optics stands as a counterweight to the doubts raised in the Meditations. He begins the discourse on optics:
The science of optics is a study and theory of the nature of light. Its explanations are in terms of a physics of motion and physiology. Further, what is at issue is not the fact that the senses can deceive us but that they can be augmented and improved upon. Descartes overarching concern is not to bifurcate but to unify.
In his synopsis of the Meditations he says:
In other words, his metaphysics is grounded in physics. And yet he says in the First Meditation:
The problem is obvious. If his account of the immortality of the soul depends on an account of physics but it is reasonable to conclude that physics is doubtful then it is reasonable to conclude that the immortality of the soul is doubtful.
If only he had an Archimedean Point.
But you don't recognize a star by sense, you recognize by the intellect. You see with your eye, but judge with your intellect.
The world doesn't speak, we reach conclusions based on what we are able to discern. Here Descartes would likely introduce his famous "common notions", but I'm yet to read the Meditations a second time, more carefully.
I do remember him making quite astute observations about what we literally see and how we interpret what we see. I think his example was seeing a hat, and inferring a person, something like that.
But this latter part moves us quite ahead in the Meditations.
So don't really have to be a madman to doubt that your hand is really yours. You could be asleep right now. There doesn't appear to be any criteria for determining if what's happening to you now is a dream or reality. But then, dreams imply a world that's been copied by the mind:
So our doubts continue to develop. Now what seems indubitable is that two plus three makes five. How could that be wrong?
He does not doubt that there are:
At this point the ontological status of these things has not been determined. Only that they are:
but perhaps nothing more.
Quoting frank
He says that such obvious truths cannot be false, but the problem remains as to what they are truths of, that is:
The full significance of this is revealed in what follows immediately:
This too must be doubted. Both that there is an all-powerful God and what sort of creature he, Descartes, is.
He has claimed that:
but in what follows:
I don't have to tell this to you, I'm kind of "typing out loud" here but, he really doesn't deserve the amount of crap that is often levied his way, in particular for his dualism.
Nevertheless, the basic orientation of arguing that complex thoughts are created by the combination of quite simple "things" (whatever they are ontologically) is remarkably modern and very fruitful.
Quoting frank
This is the bottom of a very long fall, so it seems absurd; and people take philosophy as esoteric, unpractical, and academic because they associate it with taking this worry seriously. But, as I said, it starts with the fear that we could be deceived in our cultural assumptions and societal norms. Another way to see this is that we might not know how to go on together at some point, that we might be judged wrong despite following orders, that the words we say might betray us. We are scared and anxious of, as it were, the future: uncertain, unpredictable outcomes.
Socrates will say that contradictory ideas clash with each other in our soul and Theatetus says that he wonders immensely what these things are, and really sometimes I feel dizzy when I look at them. Socrates says this wonder is the origin of philosophy. Descartes will also feel dizzy at the realization that there is no foundation whatsoever, not even as to whether I am awake. But the concern is for certainty in our opinions and customs, which are what he really wants to get straight about. We want knowledge to be as certain as the hands in front of our face; we dont doubt our hands, we doubt that knowledge will save us at all.
Next in the first Meditation, he presents this argument for why I might be wrong about "2+5=7"
In modern language, he's just saying that it's metaphysically possible that he could be in circumstances where he's wrong about arithmetic. A divinity could create those conditions.
He answers an objection to this, that the divinity he's describing can't exist because God is loving. God wouldn't do that to His creations. Descartes answers that if that were true, he should never find himself deceived.
Another objection is to the framework of metaphysical possibility: one could just deny that there is any divinity at all, so remove the primary power of that kind of possibility. Descartes answers that this doesn't bring us back to certainty, though. Without a divinity, Descartes says he would be left at the extremity of imperfection (divinity basically is existence and perfection), and so it's more likely that he would be deceived all of the time.
So up to this point, we've lost confidence in the certainty of
1. that this is my hand
2. that 2+3=5
3. that there is any earth, sky, space, shape, size, place, etc.
The crux of what I see is that Descartes is demonizing the inherent fallibility of our human condition.
Even in the best case scenario, even when required to be perfect, knowledgepredetermined, non-contextual, hoping to predict the right thing to do (ought)is flawed in Descartes assessment.
But we regularly fail, make mistakes, dont assess the situation (act thoughtlessly) or do so not taking into account the other, etc. None of this is reason for panic or a vortex of irrationality. The possibility of error in our actions does not lead to the conclusion that all our efforts are hopeless. And not just wrong but seemingly for no reason, randomly, as if it could happen at any time without our being able to see it coming (thus, maliciously). This is the motivation of the desire to have the predictability and stability of science or math or our direct sensations, so that we can just follow the moral rules and never be wrong or judged.
Well, he does posit a demon but I do not think he is demonizing our fallibility.
Quoting Antony Nickles
We do, but he does not argue that this is reason for panic or a vortex of irrationality. Quite the opposite, it is reason to find something indubitable and build on that foundation.
Quoting Antony Nickles
In the Discourse on Method Descartes presents his "provisional morality".
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.
It's a part of it, I think, though he does have a very strong optimistic streak so far as the extent of human reason can go in attaining knowledge.
He wanted to get rid of most of the influence of scholastics, which he thought were generally quite mistaken in terms of arguments and conclusions and reasoning in general.
But he did think that if one follow him in his specific method, no question we set ourselves to answer, will be beyond our reach. He's somewhat inconsistent, at least in his Rules for the Direction of Mind, where he sometimes seems to acknowledge that we do have certain limits.
It was a good corrective and obviously he set forth a immeasurable change in philosophy away from metaphysics and into epistemology, and he got an awful lot correct. But he was too optimistic about what we can know, even though he does point out, as you do, that many ways we are led to error.
But he's mostly remembered in popular cultures by being that guy who postulated two substances, as if there somehow idiotic, given the state of knowledge during his life...
This seems to be splitting hairs. I think we can agree hes not actually claiming theres a demon. I welcome your reading, but I am claiming he is externalizing that he is demonized (afraid), that his ability to have a clear path through our culture and customs is fraught. He is afraid that we are unable to tell right from wrong; that the human condition is unfounded.
Quoting Fooloso4
He is anxious that he might turn out to be wrong (I was struck by how many false things I had believed) or that he is not aware of, explicitly, the opinions he confidently assents to, that keep coming back as though they had a right to a place in my belief-systemour ordinary beliefs. The reason to find a foundation is the fear, the lack of confidence, the unease of possibly being wrong.
Quoting Manuel
The thing about Descartes, even Socrates, is that they do put the cart before the horse in wanting a specific type of knowledge (to solve our doubts) even before they get started, but in searching they do find a method that advances our ability to dig into a subject, even if they dont get things right, or are barking up the wrong tree (such as imagining if we get clear about our sensations we will solve our moral dilemmas).
Sure - this was a phenomenon common the classical tradition of the rationalists and the empiricists, they believed that the contents of our mind were transparent and, could be treated as such. They did provide a useful framework on how to proceed, but, as you mention, it was not quite right, but surely understandable and not worthy of reproach (not that you are reproaching them), given the time they (and in particular Descartes) lived in.
In any case, the shift to epistemology is definitive with Descartes, and that is still fully with us to this day and doesn't look like it will go away for the foreseeable future.
In regard to the question whether the senses play a part; how do we later find out it was a plane?
The Second Meditation:
I feel like someone who is suddenly dropped into a deep whirlpool that tumbles him around so that he can neither stand on the bottom nor swim to the top.
Emerson starts his essay Experience lost [ i ] n a series of which we do not know the extremes, and believe that it has none. They are in surroundings with no form and no way to orient. The analogy is apt because Descartes has no specific subject, and so no context from where to start. The abstraction leads to a general response without the criteria of an ordinary circumstance, and so grasps for the criteria of perfection.
I will suppose, then, that everything I see is fictitious. I will believe that my memory tells me nothing but lies. I have no senses. Body, shape, extension, movement and place are illusions.
He goes on to create the picture that our human faculties are the problem: that our sight creates fiction, our memory lies, and our sensations are illusions. Framing it on ordinary terms like dream, illusion, fiction, and lies gives us understandable ways of making it right: to awaken (pay attention), find what is not fake, sort out the facts, and authenticate. Unfortunately, Descartes, and everyone thereafter, takes the judgment of what the solution needs to be away from these ordinary contexts, and so postulates consciousness, reality, factual basis, and truth vs falsity (rather than mistake).
Somebody tells tomorrow that new military technology which looks bright at night, it could be confused for a star. Or we see the "star" moving very, very slowly, but we are uncertain because we are sleepy, tomorrow we ask was a star moving last night, and someone tells us that there's an airport nearby, and people confuse stars with planes because of that. Any reason, really.
I think you have mistaken a rhetorical device for something existential.
From the First Meditation:
It is a meditation, not a crisis of doubt. He has waited to do this meditation until he was able to set aside the time to withdraw from the practical concerns of daily life. It is in that sense a practice of abstraction.
Quoting Antony Nickles
In my opinion, knowledge of our ignorance is the proper philosophical starting point. Descartes was more cautious than Socrates. But he was also more cautious than Galileo, who did know something of which the Church was ignorant.
How could Descartes claim that there are things the Church is ignorant of, thing the Church claimed that are doubtful and wrong? By doubting everything.
@Manuel Notice how he's foreshadowing Hume's answer to the problem of induction? We seem to be bound by habits of belief, so that even if you decided to doubt everything you know, you'd find yourself "pulled back into the old ways."
So now he goes into the "imprisoning darkness" of the problems he has raised.
That's right they reach very similar conclusions so far as the usefulness and dependability of "folk psychology" (I dislike the term "folk", but, it's what we have...), the interesting thing to me is they kind of reach opposite conclusions.
Descartes tries to develop a method in which the reasons he puts forth for believing in something necessarily follow. Hume's big revelation was that we actually never observe such necessity, but merely postulate them.
Now, this brings forth an important conundrum, do we follow the principle of sufficient reason or do we go with Hume and say that this principle cannot be experienced in the world.
But that is an entirely different thread.
Still, very astute observation Frank. :up:
True. :cool:
Ill let you move the discussion forward at your leisure Frank, as it is your thread. It does appear we
may have not worked out all the issues brought up in the first part.
Quoting Fooloso4
If we take philosophy literally and at face value, we are not putting it in contrast to the rest of the tradition, nor questioning why he has chosen this method, why he needs certainty.
The fact that Descartes withdraws from the practical concerns of daily life is not only the cause of the abstraction, it is motivated by the desire for abstraction, to be apart from our human life, its uncertainty. However, in doing so, we no longer have our ordinary concerns, so we can impose the criteria for whatever concerns us most, which is to be certain.
Quoting frank
Descartes tendency is to slide back into my old opinions just as Humes doubt would recede when he went to the bar, because we do have a memory (as Socrates would say) of our shard lives and judgments. I would argue that without those there is no action, no meaning, no concerns, no way to have a self, at all.
Quoting Fooloso4
What we are told is not the only important part of philosophy. Philosophy is not about undeveloped summaries or condensed conclusions. We, like Descartes, must ask more of the text. So I do not take anything as rhetorical but take it seriously enough to attribute reasons for everything, implications, assumptions, motivations, blind spots, frameworks, analogies, etc. But these are not my guesses or just reading more (putting more) into a text; I supply evidence for these lines of implication. I offer you to see for yourself, or offer other answers to these open questions, other reasons for why he said this or that, said it this way or that.
Good question. From the first meditation:
You seem to be arguing that we should not take what he says literally, but you go on to object to the idea that there is a rhetorical aspect. From the beginning I have set his work both within and against the tradition. I have also said why he chose this method. Why does he need certainty? Because, as I also said, he is looking to established a foundation. If, as he said, he is to:
Now there are problems with the idea of foundationalism, but if we are to understand him, we should not begin by rejecting what he sets out to do.
Quoting Antony Nickles
It is the deliberate act of abstraction. These meditations could not take place while dealing with the demands of life outside his closed room.
Quoting Antony Nickles
It is not in order to be apart from uncertainty. It is just the opposite. It is done in order to give free rein to it.
Quoting Antony Nickles
These are not mutually exclusive alternatives. As Aristotle said, rhetoric is as counterpart to dialectic. They are closely related. It is rhetoric that takes into consideration assumptions, motivations, blind spots, frameworks, etc.
Descartes says that there yes, but I'm skeptical if he believes that as quoted, given other textual evidence.
The senses are the spark. But it's a bit obscure to me to argue that senses think, they (seem to me) to just act in accordance to relevant stimuli.
What I'm not clear on, nor do I see it with the rationalists (nor the empiricists frankly) is if one can make a case that a person "thinks" with the senses in any way.
Again, it's a particular difficulty I've been thinking about for a bit. I'm inclined to say "no", but am not fully convinced yet, it could be a wrong view.
I don't think this captures the significance of Descartes using the motif of an evil demon during his experiment upon himself. In a time when people were executed for witchcraft, demanding that a 'good' god would not deliberately deceive us separates the realm of the created from the problem of sin.
On one hand, Descartes is couching his argument in a way to avoid the fate of Galileo. On the other hand, he is challenging the Christian appropriation of the cosmos as performed by Augustine, Aquinas, and the like.
That part is more like Kant arguing against superstition than Hume musing about causes between billiard games.
Quoting Manuel
I tend to think with Kant that the senses without concepts would be "blind", but I don't think that entails that without language there are no concepts. After all 'higher' animals seem to navigate the world very effectively without language, a fact which convinces me that they see things as things (although perhaps not self-reflectively if that entails language), just as we do.
So, I think that the simplest organisms (and machines) operate with just stimulus and response, then the next step up is perception (which entails conception) and then on top of that there is self-reflection.
Quoting Paine
:up:
I agree, but then we enter into difficult terrain, I think it wouldn't be too crazy to speculate (based on the evidence we have, in part) that they have intellect. So, a mammal that gets shocked touching a ball, say, will avoid it after a few interactions.
But then they have some kind of (poor in relation to us) intellect.
The real muddle is when we consider a case in which we see an organism which we intuit has NO intellect, maybe a Starfish, or "below" that, a plant. They react to sensations as if they had intellect.
That is, we cannot tell the difference in behavior between and intellectual response to sensation, and a reflexive one...
Descartes assumed, more often than not (again, some inconsistency here) that animals were kind of like machines. But that claim would no longer be supported by most these days...
Literally was the wrong word. When I said we should not read him simply at face-value, I meant we should not just take him to be making explicit everything we can learn.
Quoting Fooloso4
He is looking for a foundation in order to have the certainty he needs to conquer doubt. Youre assuming hes a reliable narrator. What hes telling you hes doing is not the whole picture.
Quoting Fooloso4
But surely to understand a philosopher is not just to get to the point where we understand the words and the sentences and can follow along with what they say? I am not rejecting what he sets out to do; Im analyzing how he gets lost along the way because of what he wants from it.
Right, but does anyone?
Quoting Antony Nickles
I don't think so.
Quoting Antony Nickles
It is because he is not a reliable narrator that I don't think that conquering doubt is as much a problem as you make it out to be.
As I pointed out on page one:
Quoting Fooloso4
I also said:
Quoting Fooloso4
The whole force of my argument has been that there is more here than meets the eye.
Quoting Antony Nickles
That is right. Despite your claim, he has not said what the principle behind his undertaking is.
Quoting Antony Nickles
Descartes is a careful writer. He is a central figure in Western philosophy. He did not gain that reputation by getting lost. If someone is lost it is not him.
Descartes skips over all our practices to ask whether we can trust our senses not because they are the birth (spark @Manuel says) of everythingimagine apologizing, or justicebut because we imagine we cant be wrong about them. We think: If I am in pain, I must know it, and know it without a doubt. But we can repress it, and even to where it doesnt register (now imagine anger, remorse, prurient curiositywill we say we cant be unaware now?) But the point is not that we can doubt it, but that he is looking around for something to hold that place.
Well you seem to think you understand what Im trying to say and just flatly disagree. Id leave it at that, however,
Quoting Fooloso4
this is uncalled for in this kind of forum. If you want to believe Descartes or Plato or Kant never made a mistake, feel free, but there is no cause to mock me. I will accept an apology if you care to discuss any other subject.
That's fair. But I do think that if one takes into account his sometimes ridiculed account - which is severely underappreciated - of "common notions", I think such statements as his saying that all his (misleading or dubious) knowledge came from the senses, could be misleading as stated by him.
The issue I am highlighting is that it's not clear senses alone give us any knowledge, without an intellectual component.
Taking this into account, I think Descartes would surely agree that knowledge comes from the intellect, the problem is in the way we judge what the senses "say".
Put another way, it would be rather unreflective to consider the senses alone, they are way too poor to account for knowledge. And if this is the case, as I think Descartes would admit, then the senses provide "data", which is only such because of the intellect, otherwise, senses seem to lack mind.
It is in this specific context that senses are "sparks", as we will see when we get to Descartes observation about what literally hits the eye, as opposed to what we immediately interpret.
Again, this is my doubt.
Ah, I see. Or, I am unfamiliar enough with all that to retract characterizing your use of the word, nor to offer much help on what happens between sensation and anything else (although Wittgenstein does say we go too far in trying to get between our sensations and our expression of them, PI #245). I can only say that Descartes at this point appears to believe they do not fulfill the requirement he has set: to preclude doubt. If I would predict his next step, it would be that the separation of sensation from that-which-could-be-deceived (intellect) would only be to maintain the integrity of our senses while controlling the framework by which we are deceived, to structure our failing.
In other words, in the Theatetus Socrates first postulated that our senses gave us the criteria (measure) for knowledge, but abandoned that picture simply because our senses can be wrong, or not generalizable from person to person. Of course it remains to be seen how and thus why we need to posit an intellect rather than training our expression of, say, being cold, to language.
? When you say:
Quoting Antony Nickles
I take it that is what you are saying.
Quoting Antony Nickles
First of all, he is a careful writer. Second, from that statement to claiming he never made a mistake is quite a leap. Third, if you think he made a mistake then either he did or you did.
I think it odd that you think that suggesting you rather than Descartes is lost is to mock you.
As I think you know, he will confirm this. This is, of course, a very old problem going back at least to Plato.
Quoting Manuel
His mechanistic view of optics allows that animals without mind can see, otherwise they would not be able to move around in the world.
Following his claim that:
he lists several things that come through the senses:
(First Meditation)
I was referring to human beings in that example.
Sure, animals in his view, on today's terms would be mere reactive organisms.
Quoting Fooloso4
Of course. No sane person could doubt this.
But "thinking with the senses" should be sharpened a little, to make it more coherent. Minor quibble though.
Quoting Antony Nickles
Ah, you come from a later Wittgenstein angle, gotcha.
Quoting Antony Nickles
Indeed, he does something like that. Aside from certain mathematical and logical formulations, the intellect too can deceive us, in ways that go beyond Descartes demon, because it applies to ordinary everyday life. Of course, we know much more about mental illness and self-bias and all that.
In general, however, I think Descartes is correct about highlighting the intellect, with small caveats.
The question was raised about the connection between the senses and the intellect. Since Descartes denies that animals have intellect we should consider what he allows the senses alone can accomplish. In the passages I cite these are beliefs that come from the senses. Are the senses alone sufficient? Given the connection between mind and body, which he will discuss, perhaps the problem arises only in abstraction, when mind and body are artificially separated and not treated as a union.
Quoting Manuel
As we see with Zeno and the denial of motion. Does this fall under logical formulations?
This sounds more plausible to me.
What do we do with edge cases, such as plants or oysters? Do we assume some minimal intellect here or is it all sense?
Quoting Fooloso4
If I had to guess, I think Zeno's case arises when we confuse two different intellectual exercises, namely conflate what it possible in mathematics with what is possible in ordinary life. What's true of one does not necessarily follow of the other.
But that could be wrong too.
Is having a sense of something and making sense of something two different senses of sense?
What is the minimum requirement for minimal intellect?
Is intellect a property limited to individual organisms?
There is some interesting work being done on trees and communication networks.
Wittgenstein points to "seeing as" and "seeing aspects".
I think so, making sense is something like "give it meaning", when I think of senses, I think about moving my quickly away from a hot object, or scratching my arm, or closing me eyes (if it's too bright).
Colors become an issue, I grant that.
I am slightly confused here, so I'm not trying to be too definitive about it (not that you are making any accusations). Just working it out a bit.
Wittgenstein, at least his latter work in relation to mind, can be quite misleading, imho.
Certainly Descartes would've disagreed with a good deal of that type of philosophy, with exceptions admitted about word-use (which he critiques the Scholastics for abusing, etc.).
Quoting Manuel
I think we can see that some animals have preferences, and so display intentional behavior. This might not be obvious in simple 'one-off' acts, but extended observation and testing I think would show the difference.
The idea that animals are machines and hence, for example, feel no pain seems absurd to me, and is abhorrent.
Quoting Antony Nickles
We cannot be wrong about consciously feeling pain. We cannot be wrong about how things seem: say, for example I look at the far hill and I see an animal moving across it that looks like a sheep: I cannot be wrong about seeing something moving that looks to me like a sheep, but of course it may not be a sheep.
And you say I must be right if I am conscious, which I take as not just conscious in the sense that I am awake, but conscious of, in that I am aware of the pain, which is a kind of knowing. But we can be suffering and not know it (be unaware), such as when we are in denial, but it is clear to our friends, or when I am cold but I focus on something else.
But it is exactly the feeling that we cannot be wronghere importantly in the sense that I must know, and know with certainty (the version of know as: correctly)that is why sensation was picked first by Descartes as foundational. And pain is the traditional example because of its stark, vibrant, seeming self-evidence; as: if I dont know my pain, what do I know?
People tie themselves in knots with theories about the science of sensation and the brain, but, here, for Descartes, the actual mechanics and logic of sensation do not matter because it does not meet his requirement for certainty. I can either be incorrect that I sense something (Youre not shot this time! Or Its just a mirage!) or mistaken in my judgment of what I sense (Youre not angry, youre jealous. or Whew, that felt like a spider!), but, ultimately, I can deceive myself, be mistaken, or uncertain, and that will not do for Descartes as a foundation for our opinions. And, regardless, the doubt of our connection to the outside world (in the example of dreaming) eclipses what we feel or dont or whether we are correct about it.
I agree and I do think animals (some of them at least) go beyond mere stimulus reaction, namely some presence of mind.
As to the animals being machines, surely disgusting and contemptible now. Much less so back then, which doesn't make it right, but should provide some context for judging people back then.
I take you as saying that Descartes is creating the role of the deceiver so that it wont be thought he is speaking ill of God (if God was claimed to be the deceiver). And so, perhaps, our sin (doubt, uncertainty) does not blemish the perfection of Gods creation. I would add that the original sin is not deception but knowledge, it being thought to make us aware of, and able to address, everything in the world. But I also see the political point you are making about skirting the line between analyzing the theological-philosophical history without being accused of heresy.
One twist in this narrative is how the good God has permitted demons to exist and some quantum of ecclesiastical authority comes from protecting the flock by kicking the bad sheep out. The correlation between what you believed and your personal outcome was closely linked. Overcoming trials of temptation by evil entities was interwoven into the fabric of every garment.
While this experience was built on Paul's view of a view of a world where the Kingdom of Heaven would replace the one expected to pass away, the early theologians drew from the Greek tradition to legitimize their view against a received understanding of nature and divinity. The breathless anticipation of Paul morphed into the two cities of Augustine. Aristotle eventually was integrated into an acceptable view of nature with the constant caveat that Revelation preceded anything it had to say.
But then you have Galileo being charged with being a heretic for challenging what was stolen from the candy store in the first place. The genius of Descartes is that he did not simply take away something of value but offered a replacement.
Well, Ill continue on (if there is nothing else @frank?) As discussed previously, in Para. 2 of the Second Meditations Descartes accepts that nothing is certain, not our sensations. nor being awake; that everything is fiction and illusion (rather than accept how we ordinarily judge the correctness of our senses, or the different criteria for the judgments involving our sensations). Though some will continue to try to find a way in which our sensations or bodies are certain (@Janus), that could not avail us anyway, as there is no connection between how our senses (or any of science) could be the basis for true or certain customs and opinions anyway, which is the point of the Meditations. Descartes pushes forward in search of something that cannot be doubted, that is perfectly certain.
Taking Descartes advice that it is a placeholderthat we should call [it] what [we] willIll skip over bringing up God and phrase what he says as a MacGuffin (as if it doesnt matter what it is): Isnt there [something that] gives me the thoughts I am now having? But why do I think this, since I might myself be the author of these thoughts? (@Paine might have an answer for this why.)
Setting aside for the moment his assumption (premise), taken generally, that there is a cause for my internal dialogue (outside or inside), he says But then doesnt it follow that I am, at least, something? (interestingly, on par with that somethingthe causeas it were: created in the image of God). When he says doesnt it follow it makes me think of the necessity of a logical argument; this follow is a must with the force of certainty he is looking for: there is a cause; it can be internal; the thing that I am is that cause.
There is not only that logical necessity, but he takes his ability to secure doubt about everything as something certain. So what remains true? Perhaps just the one fact that nothing is certain! And his skeptical conviction becomes another basis of the self. if I convinced myself of something then I certainly existed. And the conclusion is usually taken to be that I exist, but the point is clearly the certainty which I can have about this; put differently, he does not start to prove the existence of the self, but to prove anything, to be certain in any regard. He has merely retreated to here.
Thanks for moving ahead. I was working. :grin:
Quoting Antony Nickles
I agree. It's not an argument. He's not trying to persuade anyone. An argument would be out of place because we launch arguments for propositions that are in doubt. That's the whole point of an argument.
Descartes isn't offering any justification or foundation for "I exist." This is indubitable.
But then he goes on to refine the "I" that must exist.
Was reading over your conversation with Antony, and it is very interesting, and very much echoes Chomsky's interpretation of Descartes, which is that The Meditations were written, in a sense, so his physics would be taken seriously.
On your point of him contradicting himself (or at least appearing inconsistent) as to physics being liable to doubt, in which case the soul is not immortal, or the opposite, that's very hard. You know Descartes far beyond me, so I can only guess based on what I am reading.
Although it is true that he is trying to not get into trouble with the church, it seems to me that Descartes was quite confident that we are thinking things, so I do not think he would let go of the notion of the immortality of the soul.
In other words, the physics are more problematic than the thinking thing, even if he says he bases this project on physics. It sounds more consistent given many other things he says. Edited: That is, I'd wager that if he discovered his physics was not true, he would still not doubt that he is a thinking thing. But, yes, these are quite connected, as he mentions.
Given your experience with the texts and Descartes, if you had to guess or even form a hypothesis, what interpretation would you lean in on?
Cool. Looking forward to your comments.
If you were cold and focusing on something else to the point of being unaware at all of being cold, then it would not seem appropriate to say that you were suffering being cold, unless the cold was great enough to be physically detrimental. But even then, that would be a different notion of suffering than the kind of suffering that in order to be counted as suffering entails being consciously aware of it.
Quoting Antony Nickles
You can be incorrect that you sense something, but you cannot be incorrect that you seem to sense something; that was the only point I was making. This is really what Descartes means when he says that we can doubt, but that we cannot doubt that we are doubting (or think or feel, but not doubt that we are thinking or feeling). Pain and other sensations such as pleasure are unique in this context. If I feel pain or pleasure, it makes no sense to say that I doubt that I am feeling pain or pleasure; what could it even mean to say I doubt that I am feeling some sensation that I am feeling?
Quoting Antony Nickles
This is where you miss the point. I am not really saying that our sensations are certain; since they are not propositional, they are neither certain nor uncertain, they are merely sensations, although what we infer on the basis of them can be certain or uncertain. (That said, it would seem to be absurd to say that I doubt that I feel any sensations, so it seems that I can be certain that I feel sensations).
You might argue that it is not certain that we are embodied, but there can be no doubt that we seem to be embodied. Embodiment is not the same kind of case as feeling sensation; we certainly feel sensation, but it does not necessarily follow that we are embodied.
In the thread "Philosophy is for questioning religion" the topic of esoteric philosophical writing came up. I quoted something from Descartes. This one below is more relevant to his physics:
Quoted from here
Quoting Manuel
The title of the first edition was " Meditations on First Philosophy in Which the Existence of God and the Immortality of the Soul Are Demonstrated". But the second edition, (the text cited in this thread) is "Meditations on First Philosophy in which are demonstrated the existence of God and the distinction between the human soul and the body". There is no mention of an immortal soul.
In the third meditation he says:
In other words, the human soul is a created or contingent, or dependent substance. The continued existence of the soul depends on God.
Quoting Manuel
I am going to hold off on that until we have read more of the text.
The task of finding something that is certain is not simply a matter of Descartes finding something he can be certain of, that is, of alleviating his doubts. The one thing that is solid and certain will function as an Archimedean fulcrum with which he will reestablish the world on a new basis. The authority of the thinking I will displace that of Aristotle, "the Philosopher", and the Church.
Wow Fooloso4, that's some gold you've provided in that link, not limited to Descartes.
I was familiar with the letter, but had not seen it, I do have his Philosophical Writings collection, and volume III is a compendium of everything he wrote to everybody, but, there's no way to divide them up by topic, making finding that specific one, very hard.
Many thanks, I look very much forward to continuing this here, I will surely learn a lot.
I dont think Ive got to the part where he says that yet.
Quoting Janus
Touché; you have me there (I take this as similar to Wittgensteins remarks). But there is also not a context where it is meaningful to say that I am certain that I am in pain (unless someone else thought I was making more of something), and it is for this certainty that Descartes is searching (math-like knowledge, not just, resolved or really sure).
Quoting Janus
Well this distinction seems to matter. So we can be unaware of our sensations, but, if aware, not doubt them, yet be wrong about sensing something (or in denial), but not certain (other than that we do sense something), then it is our judgment which could be correct or certain. But I see or feel something but I dont know what it is; sometimes we call this being tricked by our senses, other times because of inexperience.
For Descartes, a certain truth is one that can't be doubted. It's as if there's a spectrum with absolute certainty on one side and pure doubt on the other. Per the SEP:
Quoting SEP on Descartes' Epistemology
Having put aside uncertain propositions, he focuses now on what he couldn't doubt: that he exists.
But what about the "I" is indubitable? He lists things that come to mind about what he is: he's a man with a body. But he finds that this falls to the evil demon.
So what's left? His conclusion is astonishing, in a way. He starts with pondering what wax really is:
He concludes that wax is none of the everchanging properties a piece of wax may have. The wax itself, is an idea. I realize that interpretation of what he's saying is up for debate. Debate!
The ego is an idea. Right?
That nicely cues the work of the Third Meditation, where ideas are defined in the context of the "thinker." Giorgo Agamben makes some interesting observations about the grammar of pronouns and their indeterminate nature that may throw light on how Descartes distinguishes the 'thinking subject' from the 'I' as an object:
I think that captures some of the 'living instance to instance' quality in the passage Fooloso4 quoted above:
Starting with the soul he says:
He goes on to say a few paragraphs later:
This can be read either as:
1) the soul is not as I imagined it to be
2) I only imagine I have a soul
He continues the sentence:
That he is not or does not have a body is something that he supposes for the sake of his meditation. Put differently, that he does not have a body is subject to doubt.
Compare the following statements:
He is a thing that imagines:
That he imagines cannot be doubted, but what he imagines can be. He says that imagination is related to the nature of body, but also that to imagine is to think.
The same holds for sensing:
On the positive side he is certain that he exists, certain that he thinks, and imagines, and senses. On the negative side, just as what he imagines and senses can be called into doubt, so too can what he thinks, for they are all part of his thinking. If what he thinks can be doubted, if even what he doubts can be doubted, is he then hopelessly lost is doubt? Will his certainty that he exists be sufficient to serve as his Archimedean point?
Yes. The copy of the Meditations you're reading is an utterance. An utterance is sounds or marks.
I agree. It's by the utterance of a sentence that a proposition is expressed.
I mean isn't the point that what he is thinking about may be false, or misleading or an error, but that he is thinking can't be coherently doubted... can it?
For an evil demon can cause me to think more than I do - become more active or perceptive in my thoughts. Alternatively, I can be put in a state of dreamless sleep, in which case, there is no thinking. But if I am awake, that there is thinking going on - a conscious buzzing if you like - can't be denied, at least so far as I experience things myself.
Others have access only to my behavior, they have to infer that I think.
As for existing - well, one could argue logically - that thinking need not be restricted to body, thinking could be a spatial phenomena. There is no evidence for it, but also no evidence against it. But even in this case thinking would exist.
Can existence be a hallucination caused by a demon? Perhaps. But even in dreams, we exist in some manner...
Imagining that his internal dialogue is caused by something (certain), and being assured of the certainty of his self by his ability to convince himself that nothing is certain, he continues:
let [the Deceiver] deceive me all he can, he will never bring it about that I am nothing while I think I am something. So I conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, must be true whenever I assert it or think it.
I think it is important to ask what the role is of the deceiver. Such a specific choice of words; when I am deceived it is because I was going along thinking I was fine (right in my knowledge of the truth), sure and certain of myself, when the rug is pulled out from under me and it turns out I was mistaken, but more than that, that I was wrong all along, had been asleep, thus I am angry enough to point a finger outward, not that I had simply failed to examine what I assent to with sufficient deliberateness, but that I was told I was right, as if the wool was pulled over my eyes, trained into our culture and its common criteria and opinions. And I feel betrayed, that what I believed in was nothing, that I was gaslit and feel a little insane as if someone stole something important from me, because my opinions are my identity, so maybe I am nothing.
But Descartes claims I am something; he asserts his existence. Without any standard, or basis, or justification; in the face of the betrayal of society, in defiance to it. Later, alluding to this, Emerson in Self Reliance will say Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say 'I think,' 'I am' (After saying, Whence, then, this worship of the past? The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul.) He will call conformity what Descartes says is the habit of confidently assenting. Descartes continues My old familiar opinions keep coming back, and against my will they capture my belief. It is as though they had a right to a place in my belief-system as a result of long occupation and the law of custom. His assertion is not a statement that can be (true or) false; it is true whenever he asserts it (while I think I am). It is not true because it conforms to a state of affairs or is right; it is the act of the legitimate authority, the one with the right that was as though they had, but which is his. Thus the self is not a given continuous thing, but an act.
I think the 'imagination being related to the nature of the body' comes from Aristotle/Aquinas saying images come from senses interacting with material things and that thinking is analogous to that process because thinking requires images.
Descartes is opposing that analogy by saying our intellect is a process that we experience more intimately than its objects: After including all the various activities as kinds of thinking, he says:
Not being able to describe this 'real nature' must be one of the reasons why the mind is easily attracted by things that can be.
He immediately proceeds to say that using the imagination to try a grasp this topic, of what thing I am, is like trying to use dreaming as guide to seeing things more accurately.
Based on previous comments too, Descartes takes it that the imagination is misleading and leads to all kinds of mistakes.
He does conclude later on, in the same page (in my book) that it turns out the imagination is part of his thinking, but I ask, is it part of reason?
Could the I be something created by the imagination and not reason? Or maybe reason and imagination are combined in a such a manner that they cannot be separated.
It's not so clear to me that the imagination must by nature be misleading.
Contrary to Aristotle, Descartes claims that we do not see things is the world, but rather representations in the mind.
This leads to the problem of judgment, of whether the things we perceive accurately represent the things they are perceptions of.
It is not that it must be misleading by nature, but that like the senses it can be misleading. It is not, by itself, a reliable source of knowledge.
Which is fair enough. So, we rely on reason to gain knowledge, but then what is reason?
Aristotle had a version of that separation. Descartes kicked off the consequent discussion of what was "mind independent." Maybe the thinking here is not a determination as it is often portrayed to be.
I'm into the Third Meditation. I'm reading and rereading it to get the whole thing to hang together.
Should we go through it a step at a time? Or just present ideas about what the whole thing means? What do you think it means?
[ T ]hought! This is the one thing that cant be separated from me. I am, I exist that is certain. But for how long? For as long as I am thinking. But perhaps no longer than that; for it might be that if I stopped thinking I would stop existing; Still, I am a real, existing thing. What kind of a thing? I have answered that: a thinking thing.
It is noteworthy that one of his criteria is trying to separate things from himself, and so not just about doubt and certainty, but wanting a kind of inseparableness, as if it wouldnt be taken away, or lost. And so he has shunned the world (and his own body), as it were, first, before it fails him.
But he is afraid he will only exist for now, while he is thinking; as if he is not always thinking, that it is a particular act, separate from his internal dialogue or awareness. And, if he stops, he will slide back into the pull of habit and conformity and fail to exist apart from everyone else.
That continuity of thinking is clearly central to the meditation and a source of concern. I don't understand what you mean by saying it is "separate from his internal dialogue or awareness."
I think Descartes is linking those activities together.
Yes, that is the assumption of the bulk of the interpretation of the Meditations, but Descartes has not clearly parsed out exactly what he is referring to (lumping it all together in a sense). Also, in looking at it as categorically open, the characteristics he is attributing to it allow for what I am suggesting, and there is clearly evidence in the text. As well as what Ive mentioned so far, he is concerned that what he is calling thinking might stop and then he would cease to exist, not the other way around (that he would, what, die? (or whatever the opposite of metaphysically existing is) and thus stop talking to himself; not very profound of him).
I think I am attempting to claim that it is unnecessary to restrict Descartes to simply painting a metaphysical world of existence, mind, and thinking (despite his lack of care not to appear so). I believe he is more relevant than to be saddled with that legacy. We could take him to be describing the criteria for what we would judge as thinking as individuation from society or investigating rigorously or the like, as Wittgenstein or the later Heidegger will see it as (which may or may not interest @Banno). This possibility, of course, remains to be seen, but I have at least found it fruitful and justified so far.
So Descartes has identified himself as a thinking thing. But @Paines concern is legitimate; if I am to say thinking is not our inner dialogue nor awareness, then what is it? Descartes will ask the same thing:
A thing that thinks. What is that? A thing that
doubts almost everything,
understands some things,
affirms this one thing namely, that I exist and think,
denies everything else,
wants to know more,
refuses to be deceived,
imagines many things involuntarily, and
is aware of others that seem to come from the senses?
These activities are all aspects of my thinking, and are all inseparable from myself.
what is called sensing is strictly just this seeming, and when sensing is understood in this restricted sense of the word it too is simply thinking. 2nd Meditation (bold added)
I have broken the text to line up the activities to show the similarity to Wittgensteins Philosophical Investigations:
the speaking of language is part of an activity
Review the multiplicity in the following examples, and in others:
Giving orders, and obeying them
Describing the appearance of an object, or giving its measurements-
Constructing an object from a description (a drawing)
Reporting an event
Speculating about an event
Forming and testing a hypothesis
Presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams
Making up a story; and reading it
Play-acting
Singing catches
Guessing riddles
Making a joke; telling it
Solving a problem in practical arithmetic
Translating from one language into another
Asking, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying. Philosophical Investigations, #23 (bold added)
Wittgenstein will show that whether these activities are being done or not is not equated with an intention or other mental process but that we simply judge if the movement or action has met the criteria or standards for each thing and then we would say it is that activity.
So, for Descartes, thinking consists of the activities doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wants, refuses, and also imagines and senses. These are not metaphysical processes in our head that we picture like our inner dialogue or our attention to this or the other, or some brain function. Affirming or doubting are acts with very specific criteria done in particular situations, just like asking, or thanking.
For Descartes mathematics is the model of reason. Just as in mathematics, if one does not mistake a mistake then everyone, whatever their beliefs and opinions may be, will arrive at the same conclusion.
Can you explain what you mean?
I was agreeing with your stating that Descartes was a departure from Aristotle's model of perception and knowledge of the world but was thinking that Descartes was not sharply separating the domain of Reason as Kant did from the nature of things as they are in themselves. I take Descartes' enthusiasm as a scientist as evidence for this. There is also the search, as you have underscored, for the Archimedean point of leverage.
As you suggested, upthread, the Sixth Meditation has Descartes returning to the world able to trust in many of the elements he questioned previously.
Seeing the act of thinking as a list of activities does not reflect the problem of description that I commented upon upthread. By speaking of an 'indescribable part of myself which cannot be pictured by the imagination', it seems to me that Descartes is pointing at something that is always there but is not understood.
In the Third Meditation, Descartes says he needs the existence of God to find grounds for its relation to all of his activities. That seems the opposite approach of Wittgenstein, who describes our use of language to show what it is for us.
Good point. In the second meditation Descartes says:
The "clear and distinct" perception of the wax is the result of reason. What is perceived is the wax's nature, as it is, not simply as it appears to us.
Two issues that Descartes will return to are introduced here. The first is the faculty of judgment:
The second is the dependability of what is "clear and distinct".
For Descartes the faculty of judgment is concerned with the question of whether things are as they are perceived to be, or more radically, whether they are at all outside the mind. But since we cannot make this comparison the problem of modern skepticism arises. It is here that "clear and distinct" ideas play a central role. Kant accepts the existence of things outside the mind, but rejects the question of their nature, that is, what they are in themselves.
Here is John Cottingham's translation of this passage:
According to this translation it is not some mysterious part of himself, but the 'I' itself. Why does he say it can't be pictured in the imagination. I think it because the imagination will not give us a clear and distinct idea of the 'I'. But reason does.
Both translations are in agreement with regard to the formation of mental images of bodies.
Does reason give us a clear and distinct idea of the "I"? It seems to me that it does not, but that it yields various possible understandings of the "I"; none of which are clear and distinct.
I think the language is more forceful than that on this point. We are intimately familiar with the "I" but don't "know" it for some reason. The French version says it this way:
Quoting Descartes, Second Meditation,
The tight connection between 'not knowing' and being 'unimaginable' is sort of a concession to Aristotle saying, "thinking requires the use of images." Descartes certainly uses a lot of images in his writings. But I read him to say that the activity that convinces him that he exists is prior to what Aristotle describes.
So, maybe not a mystery as much as a gap that is easily overlooked.
Or we could take what he says on its face as stating a fact. Cottinghams translation is But I still cant help thinking that bodies of which I form mental images and which the senses investigate are much more clearly known to me than is this puzzling I that cant be pictured in the imagination. The self cannot be pictured because it is not a body. He is saying it is indescribable and puzzling not to spur us to try harder to, say, solve the puzzle of describing it, but to say categorically it is not a thing to be described because it is not a thing (that is always there). It is not conversely a thing that is not here, something incorporeal. We could say the self is mythical. We are a work in progress (or not), but not a given constant. We are an open question. It is puzzling because it is not how we would reflexively picture it (want to have it be in order for it to be known, and with certainty), that we are still on the way to a new way of thinking of ourselves.
I think Descartes is asking us to accept that the self is a thing despite not being imaginable or described the way other things are.
But I would not express that thought as equivalent to you adding: "The self cannot be pictured because it is not a body." What a soul is, in relation to bodies, has been discussed for centuries before this work.
Descartes is arguing that this focus has missed the mark. The "always there" I pointed to refers to the "thinking thing" being there when we pay attention to it.
He does say:
Are you saying he does not think it does or that you do not think it does? In the third meditation he says:
In what follows there are a few other things he mentions. His continued existence does not depend on himself, that he is finite, and that he has innate ideas.
He goes on to make a distinction between kinds of thoughts. Some are ideas - images or pictures of things, and others are such things as volitions, emotions, and judgments:
As quoted from the third meditation in my response to Janus, he distinguishes between thoughts that are images and others that are:
When, for example, I will or am afraid, this is not the likeness of willing or being afraid. It is not something I imagine. I can, of course, imagine what it is like to be afraid, but when I do so I rely on a memory or feeling of when I was afraid.
So he lays out the foundation he's discovered:
F: I exist and I am a thinking thing.
Next he says that F wouldn't be convincing if it wasn't necessary that what he perceives clearly and distinctly is true.
So now he establishes the rule that whatever he perceives clearly and distinctly is true.
I'm having trouble following that logic. Unless what he means by "perceives clearly and distinctly" is mental events of all kinds.
In other words, he means that if he doubts x, it is certain that he doubts x. If he tastes y, it's certain that he tastes y. That sort of thing?
Quoting Paine
What I should have said was that it is not an ordinary thing (given, constant, observable), and that the characteristics (criteria) of this thinking type of thing are not those of an object. It only exists while we are thinking, and is feared to go away if we stop. I existthat is certain. But for how long? For as long as I am thinking. For it could be that were I totally to cease from thinking, I should totally cease to exist.
Quoting Paine
I dont see evidence of that request and interpreting what I do see that way is jumping to a conclusion. Descartes wants to have a certain constant self, but is honest enough to stop short of assuming that.
How does 'stopping short of assuming' that constancy of the self pertain to Descartes being sure that he exists because he is thinking?
As you observed in a previous comment, there is a list of activities coming from the thinking. The Third Meditation begins with sorting out the different modes they appear within. I take your point that there is an uncertainty expressed about the continuance of his existence. But there does not seem to be any doubt expressed about whether the different modes all come from his 'thinking substance'. It is through this unity he is attempting to rearrange the First Principles he is meditating upon.
Edit to add: The last sentence refers to the full title of the work: The Meditations Concerning First Philosophy.
As practiced amongst the Scholastics, this 'being first' is related to Aristotle saying:
There is a shift in this paragraph from the certainty of being a thinking thing that perceives to the certainty of "whatever" it is that he perceives clearly and distinctly.
Sometimes we can't see things clearly, maybe there's dust or fog, sometimes we can see well but we can't judge the object well, because we are sleepy of confused.
Keeping this in mind, that he is thinking of his scientific works adds valuable context to what he's arguing for in the Meditations.
And as a side note, his comments in the Second and Third Meditations on out "common notions" in simply superb. He already made Sellar's "manifest image", "scientific image", 400 years prior to Sellars, really impressive reasoning.
I was saying the latter. I don't find his definitions convincing. Also, I don't think his conflation of affective states with thinking helps to clarify anything. I mean in a purely formal sense the self is understood to be the entity that feels, experiences, desires and thinks, and that is clear enough until you begin to ask the further questions as to just what this entity is, if it is claimed to be anything more than the whole organism.
Quoting Antony Nickles
So, the self is an "I-thought" or, since Descartes seems to include all kinds of feeling, sensation and voilition as thinking, what we might call a "sense of self"?
How specific?
Is there not more than one way of asking? Of thanking? Of affirming or doubting?
Are there not specific sorts of specificity?
How finely must we chop experience before the spectre of generality has been sufficiently warded off?
This should be looked at against the background of the tradition he is rejecting. Aristotle regarded such things as being related to the soul, but since Descartes regards the soul as a thinking thing these activities are classified as kinds of thinking.
Quoting Janus
Yes, I agree. He will have more to say about the whole organism. But I don't think a full description or complete knowledge of himself is his main concern. He says enough to serve his rhetorical purpose.
Interesting observation, but how well does it fit with his example of the wax? For example:
If generalizing haunts us, its in connection with removing anything specific to somethings ordinary context, such as experience. Used without there being anything extraordinary, it looses its ability to differentiate that is a hallmark of its being brought up. Your history may give you a different perspective, as might undergoing something distinctive (no one will ask about your experience of breakfast, unless you, say, went to a new Dim Sum restaurant), but general experience is categorically unremarkable, unless you have your head in a book.
And, as any lawyer knows, speaking generally may be more appropriate than detailing every instance, but just because I can plead, cajole, call in a favor, etc. and call them all asking doesnt make the conditions allowing for a request to be any less specific nor the criteria for judging the line where it becomes pressuring any less clear. And sure we can use language lazily if we like, but beating a nail in with a screwdriver doesnt make it a hammer.
Is that line particularly clear? Isn't this exactly the sort of thing people very often disagree about?
("Allowing"???)
Quoting Antony Nickles
But this is odd. It takes considerable effort for Descartes to achieve the degree of abstraction he does in his reasoning, to extract himself from everyday ways of thinking. Doesn't look like laziness.
Now, f I don't understand the difference between a hammer and a screwdriver, I might select one or the other indifferently, much like a lazy person who does understand the difference but doesn't care. But that doesn't make me lazy. For that I would have to have deliberately shunned opportunities to learn the difference, and so on.
Besides, maybe you pound with the screwdriver because there's no hammer to hand. Recognizing that the screwdriver will do is not laziness, here, but insight, achieved by abstracting, and by flouting the rules about how tools ought to be used.
We are, of course far afield here, but, that people can disagree about it, does not mean that they ordinarily (very often) do, nor that the conditions and criteria are not there to make explicit (the grounds for inteligibility, rationality) in relation to the context of this particular case we draw out as necessary to show the confusion or what makes this an exception.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Allowing is here in the sense of the opportunity for. To ask for something meaningfully, the situation has to be appropriate. The conditions would be like the Kantian categorical requirements (except for each activity).
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
My point was not to define the motivation, but to carry the point that generalizing can be useful, or thoughtless, etc. In Descartes case, as I have discussed, it is the result of his desire for certainty.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
The insight is not achieved by abstractingwhich is the removal from context and the associated ordinary criteria in place of a generalization, to which we then can impose our desire for certainty projecting an ought that we can achieve if we just follow predetermined rulesbut from the possibilities of tools, including their open-endedness to solve problems, which comes from familiarity, thus why carpentry is an apprenticeship and not mostly explicit knowledge.
To attempt to get back on track, my claim here is that Descartes focus on the possibilities of thinking as various activities tells us more, and creates a clearer framework, than the abstraction of thinking as a process of a metaphysical self (brain, mind), which he avoids inamong other evidence I have discussedacknowledging that he only exists as apart from the pull of society, while thinking. If that is unclear, I have walked through the text above in multiple posts.
But although my perception of [the ball of wax] seemed to be a case of vision and touch and imagination, it isnt so and it never was. Rather, it is purely a perception by the mind alone formerly an imperfect and confused one, but now clear and distinct because I am now concentrating carefully on what the wax consists in
Well, attempting a non-metaphysical reading here will require some imagination and leniency. Some might say I am inserting what I want into the text, or stretching what is obviously not the case. But if there is the possibility that Descartes terms need not necessarily be read as metaphysical, then isnt that the imposition of a framework (even by Descartes), and in the face of textual evidence of an alternative?
I take Descartes as recognizing that the history of identifying objects, finding characteristics, following the extension of possibilities, etc., in short, our whole lives of interwoven activities, are the conditions for perceiving this as a ball of wax; that the wax does not consist as a body (object) but in these non-sensory, non-physical criteria and conditions.
Yes, he calls it perception by the mind alone, however, we can still say in a sense we only realize and seeas an activity apart from the brains sensory visionthis as a ball of wax by the ordinary criteria we judge makes up or matter to us about a ball of wax, or a thing to throw at someone, or an adhesive for a poster to a wall, etc. and not perception as a mental process like vision or requiring mind to be an object, rather than our (and our shared) means of judgment and identification.
When the wax is in front of us, we say that we see it, not that we judge it to be there from its colour or shape; and this might make me think that knowledge of the wax comes from what the eye sees rather than from the perception of the mind alone. But this is clearly wrong, as the following example shows. If I look out of the window and see men crossing the square, as I have just done, I say that I see the men themselves, just as I say that I see the wax; yet do I see any more than hats and coats that could conceal robots? I judge that they are men. Emphasis added.
And here is the example that makes it clear that seeing and judging are activities and not sensations or another faculty wherein we recognize an object or an essence or thing-in-itself (the themselves). As in the Theatetus, having something be visible to us does not equate to our knowledge of it. Austin cleverly makes this point by showing the ordinary ways in which we could be mistaken in applying our criteria to judge a case from seeing hats and coats.
And the fear of not being certain crops up again in the precipice he imagines in not having any metaphysical themselves (itself) taking it as far as the fantasy that we judge that the other is not human, or, less cataclysmically, not to be considered, not worth empathy for their pain (rather than certain knowledge). But he is realizing that our ordinary criteria for judgment are enough without metaphysical abstraction, thus that we can conclude these are people from only hats and coats.
Thanks for posting the line about hats and coats which is a crucially important topic, which I am particularly interested in, because it is much understudied and I think it's exactly right.
As to how the actual Optics pertains to these - I can't comment much, I have to read them. If I had to guess, when we just look at something, what we literally see with our eyes are colours and shapes and distances, but we do not judge what we see with our eyes, but with our minds: this the shape I am currently looking at, which is grey, elongated and thin, is actually a flexible lamp.
Below it, what I see it an irregular sized object, with some orange, black and white. When I judge what it is, it's a book with deckle edge pages, which accounts for its irregular shape.
I could argue that my merely seeing with my eyes, is clear, as nothing is obstructing my vision, but it is not distinct until I judge what my eyes are seeing. I believe some account along these lines, is what Descartes might argue, in relation to Optics.
I'll get back to you on that if I learn anything new in the secondary literature.
Quoting Antony Nickles
You can attempt to do an epistemological take, without the metaphysics and argue, that in "vulgar" (or ordinary) life, many of these objects are confused and unclear, but when we go into a scientific/philosophical perspective, our ideas of these objects become clearer and more distinct.
Quoting Antony Nickles
This would be terminological and not too controversial, this can be called an "activity", without much trouble.
Yes, the mind being an object can be problematic, because despite Descartes heroic attempts to clarify what a mind is, we, to this day, aren't sure what it consists of. But I'd only point out that without a mind, perception alone amounts for very little.
So, there is a sense in which the mind/brain is the organ we use to judge and identify things, while adding the qualifier that it is people that judge and think, and not minds, which doesn't change the main point, but is worth mentioning.
Quoting Antony Nickles
The metaphysics can get into the way and distract the extremely valuable point he is making. Again, giving an epistemological reading of his account can be fruitful, and we can think about not two different aspects in the world, but different aspects within which we divide the world.
One aspect being the less reflective ordinary life, the other being the scientific/philosophical one, the latter being the domain in which we notice that what we are literally seeing are hats and coats and not people.
In the Synopsis he says, parenthetically:
The omission of sin from a discussion of what a human self is of utmost significance. Beliefs such as being born of sin, original sin, and redemption from sin are of central importance to the Christian teachings he claims to be supporting.
In the Second Meditation he says;
The cause of this fall is nothing more an improper understanding of what he is. In the story of "the Fall" in Genesis, gaining knowledge man becomes like the gods. (Genesis 3:22) But the serpent already knew this and part of his enticement of Eve to eat of the tree of knowledge for this reason (3:5) But in the Genesis story immortality is forbidden. Christianity grants the immortality of the soul. In the Synopsis Descartes says:
He cannot prove the immortality of the soul, but what separates man from the gods is immortality, and so, with immortality man is not just like the gods but is a god. Descartes is no less subtle than the serpent.
I thought of you when I quoted it. You had mentioned it before but couldn't remember where you read it
Quoting Manuel
What would someone who had never seen a lamp see? In the old Yankee Magazine they would post a picture in each issue of some old object someone found. The question was, "what is it?" Which meant, what was its purpose, what was it used for. Of course, someone who did not know the answer might use it for some other purpose. What they see, I would argue, is not something other than what they did with it.
Not being able to "precisely demonstrate" immortality does sound like a lawyer's dodge but the argument for God's existence is based upon the untenable quality of the isolation Descartes is experimenting with:
From that starting point of what will allow him to escape his isolation, the existence of God provides a possibility that 'objective reality' does not.
It is similar to the 'ontological proof of God' in Anselm but has an important difference. It is not only that "I did not give this idea of God to myself" but I need the idea of God to accept what is given in experience.
Yes and many thanks for that. It really is an important topic, that is sometimes made fun of or more precisely ignored, these are the very ideas that should be developed in modern times, they're extremely valuable, imo.
Quoting Fooloso4
Sure, the use of a thing very much plays a crucial role to our understanding of it. If the lamp is off, they could take to be a piece of art, perhaps, or a weapon or maybe even a paperweight. If the light is on, then I think the options narrow down a bit, but I can imagine they could think of it analogous to a big flashlight, or a fire stick, etc.
But in these examples, it is quite apparent how judgment plays a role, such that if we stayed with perception, we'd not be able to discern much, if anything.
Quoting Manuel
Im using ordinary in its sense of: not special, not as: unexamined; it is in contrast to creating clarity by abstraction from any context or regular criteria and requiring only the certainty of logic or science. But we are just as capable of precision and rigorous analysis of our ordinary criteria as a philosophical perspective. The wish for philosophy to have science-like conclusions is to cover for, or hide from, our messy, vulgar lives and so sets aside people and creates the metaphysical, whether its the mind or advanced brain processes. Descartes is actually saying that our first impression from our senses, say vision, is not as clear as when we uncover the criteria and conditions for, say, the activity of seeingthe inferences we make, the reasons that matter to us for doing it.
Quoting Manuel
I am claiming thatalthough it seems natural to assumeperceiving here is not a natural ability or brain function, but an activity like pointing, or negotiating (which is a critical differentiation, not terminological), and that perception is seeing what something consists of, its conditions and criteria, as Descartes did with the wax.
Quoting Manuel
The brain allows for vision, which gives us information; but we are trained (or pick up how) to identify objects ( say, apart from identifying colors)to use criteria to judge a goldfinch from a robin, a rock from a turtle. Think of making an error in identifying an object; now did you judge wrong, or did your brain make a mistake? And what really is it to identify things? We dont always identify things. We dont need to. So there are certain conditions, contexts, where we only can be identifying things. Looking for the right cereal box? Trying to determine the genus of a new species? Do I take an apple as an apple? Every time?
Quoting Manuel
Im not limiting my claims to epistemology; Descartes is discussing ontology (what is and is not, and how), existentialism (the creation of a self), ethics (creation of a better self). Im just reading him as not giving metaphysical answers.
So, the reality is he has this idea, that is, an image in his mind. As he says:
Objectively, that is, as objects of the mind, his having these ideas cannot be false. But:
There is no way to verify that the idea does resemble something that has a formal mode of being or reality. But, he claims:
This conclusion is questionable. From the Cottingham translation:
Is it true that what is more perfect cannot arise from what is less perfect? We are told that the triangle we draw is never a perfect triangle. A perfect triangle would be one that does not contain any of the defects of the one the drawing is supposed to be a representative of. It is from imperfection that we get the idea of perfection. In more general terms, it is from absence, lack or want, from the desire to have more or be more, that we get the idea of completion and satisfaction, of perfection.
That's correct, we can have precise and rigorous analysis of "ordinary" perception and we often judge people's sanity or sobriety on this basis. Nevertheless, I don't take it to be a case that cover for our "vulgar lives" we try to infuse our ordinary perceptions with science, rather, the scientific or philosophical perspective (there was no difference back then between these terms, which is worth keeping in mind) is more reflexive and considerate than ordinary perception, we are puzzled by why certain objects look as they do under certain conditions, or why apples fall instead of going to the moon, etc.
In ordinary life, we are usually not bothered or puzzled by these things much.
It's a bit nebulous to me if that is what Descartes is intending to say, but that can be put aside.
Quoting Antony Nickles
Sure, you can say perceiving is an activity, like pointing, I'd only add that we naturally take perception to be passive, no effort goes into in, unlike pointing, though we know that a tremendous amount of stuff is going on behind the most trivial acts of perception.
Quoting Antony Nickles
Ah well, here I believe it is a mistake to put it in terms of "training", unless you extend training to include a teenager being "trained" to go through puberty.
In ordinary conversation I'd say, "I made a mistake.", naturally the brain plays a crucial role here, but I wouldn't usually say "my brain made a mistake".
Sure, we frequently overlook, or generalize or we aren't even attentive. I don't think I've said that we are always judging objects, nor do I see Descartes arguing for this either, on the contrary...
A self-imposed isolation that only arose only because, as he said at the start of the first meditation:
In order to do this he says he will withhold consent from beliefs that are not completely certain and indubitable. So for the purpose of rejecting all his opinions, he must find in each of them at least some reason for doubt.
In the ordinary course of his daily life no such doubt arises. Put differently, the need for complete certainty and indubitability is an unnatural requirement. He creates a problem he may not be able to solve. Positing God as an innate idea, rather than being an escape from solipsism, further isolates him.
Toward the end of the third meditation he says:
But both that he is and what he is are conclusions he arrives at through reason.
Toward the beginning of the second meditation he asks:
Toward the end of the first meditation he says:
This malicious god (call him what you will) cannot be the cause of his idea of himself. Descartes is the author of this thought. Can he not also be the author of the opposite of this thought, of a god who does not deceive but is supremely good and the source of truth? If he supposes the one then why can he not suppose its opposite?
You say:
Quoting Paine
Does he? He makes two claims. First:
If he has no reason to suppose there is a god determined to deceive him, he has no reason to doubt that two plus three makes five. And no reason to rely on any god at all:
Second:
Truth determined by natural light is not truth revealed by God. But what does the natural light reveal about God. According to the natural light the total cause of something must contain at least as much reality as does the effect. Is this indubitable? Consider the tipping point. "Wetness" is not the cause of water being wet. A molecule of water is not wet. It is only where there is enough molecules of water that it becomes wet.
I am not making claims about what you are calling our ordinary perception, which I take as our habitual unexamined lives. I disagree that science or philosophy (as you see it) are more reflexive and considerate than the examination of our regular criteria for judgment about identity, completion, exemptions, etc. Drawing out the standards and conditions of what something consists in, as Descartes says, examines and describes what we do rather than creating explanations (and abilities or processes) that fit our desire for certainty (which I argue is the birth of the metaphysical).
When I claim that Descartes perceiving is not a natural ability or brain process but is more like an activity, I mean like an analysis, an effort that we are in the habit of doing but that we can, nevertheless, reflect upon, be puzzled by. When I say like pointing or negotiating, I mean in the sense of a learned behavior, like seeing (which is like recognizing, identifying) compared to the faculty of vision. The tremendous amount of stuff going on behind the most trivial acts is the history of human life and our growing up and being indoctrinated into these cultural activities. You learn (even if simply following others lead) how to point, how to see, how to perceive, as you learn how to apologize, thank, and promise, all together as the habits that Descartes is trying to pick apart, because we can reflect on our behavior and uncover the conditions and criteria that make up our practices.
We can put aside the "more reflexive" comments for some other time.
Quoting Antony Nickles
In part, sure, we can do this, but it's an open question as to how far we can get by doing this, it doesn't sound reasonable or realistic to expect that by analyzing and reflecting on our "practices", we can do so with all of them.
Descartes, while being quite lucid, intelligent and thoughtful, at the same time though that human reason reached (or could reach) much further than what we'd say today. In this sense, him and Leibniz, for instance, seemed to indicate that we could know almost everything if we just follow the right method and continue developing the (then new) sciences.
This is important for the context of his claims.
There is a lot here to consider. I will address the issue of isolation here and think more before addressing who (or what) is the author of our thoughts (as understood by Descartes).
It is true that Descartes's experiment is a 'self-imposed isolation'. Saying that the conditions discovered or reasoned there are only applicable in the context of the experiment cancels its utility. If the purpose of the attempt is to establish grounds for science that is an improvement upon those provided by his predecessors, how do the results of this doubting change what people are doing?
Being somewhere between God and the world is related in the text to causes. From that point of view, asking about 'archetypes' is different from wondering where an idea comes from. With that sense of judgment in mind, I question whether Descartes is trying to escape solipsism as you described:
Quoting Fooloso4
It is not that he is trying to escape solipsism but if all he knows is the content of his mind he has, so to speak, painted himself into a solipsistic corner.
@Paine @Janus @Srap Tasmaner @Manuel
I continue, into the 2nd meditation, to assert that perceiving and perception is not a natural brain process that needs to be explained, but the activity of coming to consciously understand the ordinary criteria and conditions that something consists of, thus, when Descartes says whatever I perceive very clearly and distinctly is true I take it that, when we are able to clearly and distinctly uncover the criteria and conditions of something, we understand how something is deemed to be true; what set of characteristics (criteria) it is logically necessary to conform or align with or be consistent or faithful to; what truth is (consists of) in this instance.
Edit: my understanding of what a thing is, what truth is, and what thought is, derive purely from my own nature, which means that it is innate
To say that: how something will be deemed true, such as a royal succession or an apology; what makes up a thoughtthoughtful, thought out; or tells what is essential to us about a thingwhat kind of object anything is, Wittgenstein will say, PI #373, which is revealed by what he terms grammar: the terms of the possibilities of something, Id. #90. (As an aside, he just after characterizes this connection as Theology as Grammar, which I have never been able to figure out.)to say that these understandings are innate, arise from my own nature, is to point to something within us, that we are born with, or into, as are Platos forms. My answer to this are the activities, practices, judgments, etc. which are ingrained into us, unreflected uponwhat we would consider naturalas a member of a culture.
I think what he has in mind simply the notion that when we perceive something in a manner in which we cannot say we obstructed by anything, say, bad vision or a confused understanding, we should take the experienced thing as true. It's complicated a bit by the fact that he mentions that things like colors are "obscurely" understood, which I believe he states in the Third Meditation, but we can set this aside for now.
My own impression is that when we do see things clearly, say a chair or a tree, we simply see clearly and distinctly, but I'm not confident it makes sense to say that the experience is either true or false, I hesitate here between thinking such judgments are true, or that truth doesn't arise.
I agree with him on the innateness claim, as I just don't see an alternative, unless we attribute cognition to the world. As for practices, activities and so forth, fine, so long as it is recognized that whatever these things are, and however they may vary, they are still innate to us as human beings, in other words it's within the range of what human beings do, necessarily.
Descartes' example of the wax is instructive. His senses do not yield a clear and distinct perception of the wax.
In the second meditation he says:
Clear and distinct perception requires reasoned thought.
He goes on to ask:
It is, of course, the latter, but what is it that he come to know clearly and distinctly about the wax based on his inquiry? From the third meditation:
Based on this list the question arises as to how his clear and distinct perception of the wax differs from his perception of some other object. He is correct that to perceive nature of an object requires the intellect, but it seems problematic to exclude the senses from such inquiry.
That's the one issue which I have a problem with his account: colors and senses are called by him (and Leibniz too, I would add) "obscure", presumably because he can't find the whatever is composite of certain, or maybe all colors. Maybe Leibniz had light or paint in mind, but he was arguing that green was mixture of yellow and blue, something like that.
Irrespective of that, it seems to me the colors, specifically (though sound too) are amongst the clearest aspects of conscious experience I can think of.
So that part of his account is confusing because color experience is manifestly evident, so the account looks incomplete.
That would be the case if the thinking activity is an unbroken circle. But the experience of being imperfect does not permit that:
The substance he can imagine providing to a stone or a lump of wax is not the same as how he can conceive of God's 'objective' reality.
That the comparison between the 'finite' and the 'infinite' requires the means of a negation is where doubt comes from. The experiment of the Meditation may provide a way out of solipsism, but it does not overcome the condition of being a doubting substance. That is why we have to crab forward by means of clear and distinct ideas.
When one factors in this primary condition, your question:
Quoting Fooloso4
is what Descartes is addressing when he says:
Starting, as Descartes does, with doubt, what is first is that he exists.
The reason he doubts is because he desires to find something certain and indubitable. Recognizing that he has been deceived by his senses does not require the idea of a more perfect being, only the recognition that his senses have sometimes deceived him.
Toward the end of the third meditation he says:
And in the fourth meditation:
and:
So, it seems that the source of his idea of something perfect and without limits could be himself.
It is interesting that in arguing for an infinite idea he rejects the idea of an infinite regress of ideas.
I don't understand how reference to "the activities, practices, judgments, etc. which are ingrained into us, unreflected upon" relates to the use of the "I" in Descartes' speech.
I have the same doubts about how this relates to Wittgenstein in the comment that I raised before and encounter a new one when you mention 'Theology as Grammer", Consider the different way thinking is being observed by the two philosophers. At the very least, would you not acknowledge a difference between the "I" that observes the thinking activity as an immediate event by Descartes and something like this from Wittgenstein?:
From this perspective, Wittgenstein is bringing into doubt what Descartes does not question during his project.
The imperfection being experienced does not only come from the uncertainty of what is reported by the senses. The other modes of thinking have him wanting some events and wishing to avoid orhers where his lack of understanding and limited power to influence events gives him to see the 'thinking' substance as finite. The infinite can only be conceived by means of the negation.
If one wants to overcome this limitation in conceivability, by some sort of Anselmian trebuchet whereby that idea is also a derivative of the thinking substance, Descartes says that argument depends on being the source of one's existence:
That segues into the passage you quoted earlier about the pointillism of an existence that needs to be reconstituted every moment. This perspective makes this 'finite substance' a lot less grounded than the mortal soul pictured by Aristotle to be activated by a divine intellect. The 'natural light' is a flashlight compared to the cosmic lantern the old guys were using.
Quoting Fooloso4
I think that shows Descartes agreeing with the Scholastics that an infinite series of causes must go back to what is not caused in the same way as our logos would order it: The unmoved mover blocking any view of what "self-causing" might be:
.
Do you mean that the infinite is conceived by what is not infinite? If so, this is the opposite of what Descartes is claiming.
Is there some equivocation in the passage you cited:
between wholly perfect and more perfect? For example, from the fourth meditation:
What the craftsman makes might be more or less perfect but is never wholly perfect. And as quoted before:
The term 'more perfect' allows for improvement, for greater perfection. It seems to follow that something more perfect rather than something wholly perfect is sufficient for me to recognize my lack of perfection.
There is a shift from the source of my ideas to the source of my existence. He argues that the source cannot be something less perfect than himself. For this reason he rejects his parents as the source of his existence. But surely he knows enough biology and animal husbandry to know that a more perfect offspring can come from less perfect parents. The source need not be something wholly perfect or even more perfect.
At the end of the fourth meditation he says:
His ability to avoid error and thus become more perfect comes from himself. The more perfect from the less perfect.
Quoting Paine
Descartes does not agree against an infinite regress of causes but against an infinite regress of ideas (third meditation). He argues that the cause must have at least as much reality as the effect, but this does not mean that there cannot be a regress of causes. Perhaps the idea that there must be a limit only marks a limit to our understanding of what is without limit.
@Janus @Srap Tasmaner @Manuel @frank
Quoting Paine
Youd have to show me where in the Descartes. My quote you are commenting after is in response to Descartes paragraph starting Among my ideas, some seem to be innate, but I do not see him making the point about our self (I) as above.
Edit: I see now what you might be getting at. When I say society or cultural or conformity they are a catch-all which includes our lives over thousands of years which have attuned into what I am describing as the activities, practices, judgments, etc. which are ingrained into us, unreflected upon", which I am reading Descartes to echo. But I will leave my original response below.
If you are responding to my interpretation of his assertion of his self, I would not say it is connected to my interpretation of Descartes describing thought as a list of activities (in the 2nd Med.) other than I take thought, not as a given, continually-occurring brain activity (like talking to yourself, or, as you say something that is always there) which some take that he then notices and concludes that, because of our self-awareness, he must be something, but that, as he says, while he is asserting somethingwhich I take as a sense of what thinking is, as an activity, in this case, asserting (what I argue is in relation to our culture)then he is manifesting his self, thus: I think. I am., to be understood as [while] I think [i.e., assert myself], I am [me]. I realize now that asserting yourself is not just in aversion to society or culture but can also be to be with society, as an act of, say, accepting expectations as your own duty, to define ones self. Thank you for the opportunity to clarify.
Quoting Paine
I dont think it is appropriate here to get into a side argument about what Wittgenstein is doing, instead of just focusing on what I take Descartes to be doing in the spirit of a non-metaphysical inquiry as Wittgenstein did. That said, I take this reference to be to this comment:
Quoting Paine
It would be easier if you spelled a few things out for me. Im not sure where/if Descartes does make the claim about needing God; I do take Wittgenstein as going through examples to show something, but I take that as, partly, that there is different grammar for each example so not just one way the world (thus language) works, so I dont know what you mean that he is showing what it is for usis it language? Language is different for us than God?And then how is what you take as Descartes need for God related to what you are taking Wittgenstein to show us? That Descartes needs certainty (perfection) to communicate where for us, i.e., our use of language is different? And, as I dont understand Wittgensteins theology as grammar quote, I dont know what you are saying about that.
Quoting Paine
Again, it would be much easier if you told me what you take the difference to be, or at least what the something like this illustrates about the way Wittgenstein views thinking (though only to illuminate the Descartes). From what I think I understand, I take the thinking activity as an immediate event just to be self-awareness, and not thinking, and that Descartes description of thinking as an activity is more like Wittgensteins understanding of thinking (thus why animals can do it, PI #25, in the sense of, e.g., problem-solving; or that we can do it, in the sense of considering (getting a new pen), without talking to ourselves #327-332).
Yes, I fell into the gap of that equivocation. I stand corrected. That his doubt is the condition through which he recognizes the lack of perfection is a kind of 'means of negation'. Ignorance, confusion, and uncertainty exist as sources of distress even when we don't compare them to something better.
Quoting Fooloso4
I think this shift from the source of ideas to the source of existence suffers from some of the equivocation discussed above. The argument came from whether God made me, I made myself, or my parents did. The argument against me making myself is that I would have made a better me if I was that powerful and knew more. The parents did not create their nature any more than I did mine. Applying the argument that the 'perfect' only comes from the more 'perfect" does not help his case. The parents are not the reason he is a thinking substance. Nor do they continually constitute this substance through time.
Quoting Antony Nickles
What, then, do you make of the title: MEDITATION THREE: Concerning God, That He Exists?
If this work is an epistemology masquerading as a theology, then it seems incumbent upon those who hold to that view to explain the author's stated intent to establish one.
Ive only gotten to the 10th paragraph of the 3rd meditation. Ill keep going and see if I find it.
@frank @Paine @Janus @Srap Tasmaner
Nature has apparently taught me to think that [ I can imagine an object correctly ]... When I say Nature taught me to think this, all I mean is that I have a spontaneous impulse to believe it, not that I am shown its truth by some natural light. There is a great difference between those.
Quoting Manuel
Consider that our spontaneous impulse is to believe our judgments, which are based on the criteria and conditions that we are inculcated with, which are natural for us, as if part of our nature (they are how our world functions, its cognition), but we are not normally conscious of the workings of our judgments, not until we shine some light on them, say, by reflection.
Things that are revealed by the natural light for example, that if I am doubting then I exist are not open to any doubt, because no other faculty that might show them to be false could be as trustworthy as the natural light. My natural impulses, however, have no such privilege: I have often come to think that they had pushed me the wrong way on moral questions, and I dont see any reason to trust them in other things.
And here we are back at the beginning, where he felt betrayed that he was wrong about something (nowas in most cases with philosophywith a moral question) and feels he cannot rely on our natural impulses, our unexamined judgements, which is where philosophy starts, when we dont know our way about and turn to reflect. Except in Descartes abstraction, there is no particular situation, no point of disagreement or loss as to what to do about a particular case, in a context, at a time. So he just takes his disappointment with the moral realm (where we may or may not agree) and doubts everything. So far that has actually led to uncover by reflection the criteria and conditions which are trustworthy as the natural light, but there remains his anxiety that God may still be deceiving us. I can never be quite certain.
That is a good SEP article, and it helps me sort out some of the confusion I have (and have mixed up previously in this thread) about how 'innate ideas' work in the various arguments. This part, in particular touches on how perceiving our condition might relate to a formal proof:
In the 13th paragraph of the third meditation, Descartes now moves on to question the impulse that there are others and other things than himself, and stumbles first on being unsure whether the things he judges are correct. Instead of accepting the fact that sometimes we are wrong or are interested in different aspects of the world, his desire to maintain the possibility of certainty forces him to turn our human condition into a theoretical problem and metaphysically split the uncertainty of our idea from a perfect reality.
To maintain control, he inserts between them that the world is (more) perfect because it is the cause of our (limited) idea, and thus why our idea may or may not resemble or represent the perfect external world.
If I find that some idea of mine has so much representative reality that I am sure the same reality doesnt reside in me, either straightforwardly or in a higher form, and hence that I myself cant be the cause of the idea, then, because everything must have some cause, it will necessarily follow that I am not alone in the world: there exists some other thing that is the cause of that idea.
I take it he is arguing that there cannot be anything in the world unless he is certain he is not the cause because it is so much or of a higher form. This cause could just be the unexamined criteria and conditions of our culture for our ordinary practices, which are our interests in the world coalesced as the different aspects, versions, or senses (uses Wittgenstein will also say) of our practices (as in his example of the sun). And the necessity of Descartes cause (its must) could be that there is a certain must to meet these criteria for a practice to be judged to be what it is, but he is fixated again on certainty and so eventually one must come back to an idea whose cause isnt an idea, and this cause must be a kind of archetype containing intrinsically all the reality or perfection that the idea contains only representatively. He not only attributes this perfection outside his self but outside the world, to avoid accepting its failings, errors, mistakes, limitations, confusions, etc.
By the 28th paragraph of meditation 3, there only remains the possibility that the idea of the infinite, eternal, unchangeable, independent (etc.) is beyond his ability to doubt.
my perception of the infinite, i.e. God, is in some way prior to my perception of the finite, i.e. myself. Whenever I know that I doubt something or want something, I understand that I lack something and am therefore not wholly perfect. (Emphasis added)
I find the crux here in the throwaway feeling of lacking something, as he was shaken at the beginning to find himself capable of being wrong when he thought he was fine; misinformed, or betrayed by societys habitual opinions and practices. He takes this lack as a problem to be solved completely before proceeding, rather than part of our human condition to be addressed going forward in each case.
The some way in which the infinite (perfect) is prior to the perception of the finite (lets say, human fallibility) is our desire for certainty. We set it as a pre-requisite and impose that criteria over our ordinary standards and workings of our practices. We want perfection to bridge our finite, limited knowledge and condition (apart from others) rather than be personally responsible for responding to the other and trusting the shared history of our lives together into our unknown future.
The third meditation, beginning at paragraph 34, is not an argument for the existence of God; its trying to imagine how we could exist without God. if God didnt exist, from what would I derive my existence?
Having interpreted the text to provide that we enact ourselves (or can), I will have to account for our derivation despite our imperfection. Descartes does stand by the conclusion that we are not metaphysical, that we may not exist (or continue to), though if we do exist it is without direct, conscious control over our selves.
"I experience no such power [to continue myself into the future], and this shows me quite clearly that I depend for my continued existence on some being other than myself."
Emerson and Thoreau and Nietszche at least, not to mention Freud, picture the self as divided in two, a part of which we may only allow to guide us, passively; that our conscious self is not our cause, as Descartes frames it. Emerson will talk about the exemplar that brings us to our next self; Nietzsche refers to this as the humanity above us. I take Descartes to be describing the same in saying the cause of us is in a "higher form". Thoreau will say we are at times in ecstasy, beside ourselves; in other words, outside our (conscious) selves, where Descartes only allows perfection to remain.
Descartes' case that we cannot be our own cause is partly based on our lack of knowledge of perfection. But our further self is unable to be "grasped by the finite", as Descartes puts it, because we are not a matter of knowledge. As I described above, our self is brought about in action, choice, reaction, interaction, into the future, held to our past, etc. We perfect our selves in aspir[ing] without limit to ever greater and better things. The self is not known or consciously chosen, but we strive and reach for what we cant grasp but can somehow touch with thought. We are not God, but our further self is made in [Gods] image, gaz[ing] with wonder contemplating [its] majesty.
The question is not the existence of God, but of us. Once, on being asked when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed [known], nor will people say, Here it is, or There it is, because the kingdom of God is in your midst. Luke 17:21, New International Ver. (or within you in the King James Ver.)
There's a lot there and very careful notes taken, it is much appreciated, I am about to begin the 6th Meditation, but your posts deserve some comments.
I think most of your reading is on the right track, since I am no expert, but keep in mind that even after he has completed and developed this method, he says, roughly paraphrasing, that this method is as good as my reason can take me, because I cannot comprehend an infinite being, I only know that He exists and this guarantees that clear and distinct ideas gotten through this method, can't be wrong.
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.
In modern terms, I suppose we'd say that some would like to find a certain indubitable starting point from which we can see that the foundation of our thinking as being completely seen through, a bit like seeing that 2+2=4, so a Cartesian project, without God and formulated differently.
But by now we know this is not possible, it's asking for way too much.
"Self" talk is very hard, and we would have to examine if those options you listed make sense, say of halving two selves. I think there is a sense in which Descartes "choppy" argument is rather reasonable, in that for me it feels as if the self and my feelings of it, fluctuate in intensity and intelligibility.
Thank you for taking the time to read through those notes. Rather than having an alternative answer to Descartes metaphysics, Im finding it more meaningful in seeing that the structure of his argument mirrors that of others concerning the perfection of the self.
Quoting Manuel
Im finding that the striving is the important part. The goal of certainty I take as self-imposed, so I wouldnt say we dont have the ability to understand or that we should just settle for an approximation, but that knowledge (certainty or not) is not our entire relationship to the world, that we must complete ourselves and posture ourselves towards others beyond knowing for sure the outcome or correctness or right.
At the end of the fourth meditation he says:
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:
and:
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
Quoting 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:
Quoting 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.
The will argument is somewhat strange, especially when he says that the scope of the will is larger than the scope of the intellect. Since he allows for degrees of perfection, there are aspects in which we could be more perfect.
I had in mind the following quote, near the end of the Fourth Meditation:
"And I have no cause for complaint on the grounds that the power of understanding or the natural light which God gave me is no greater that it is; for it is in the nature of a finite intellect to lack understanding of many things, and it is the nature of a created intellect to be finite."
Continuing in this line, a bit further down, in which Descartes speaks of the will, as you have quoted, he also says:
"... but it is undoubtedly an imperfection in me to misuse my freedom and make judgements about matters which I do not fully understand. I can see, however, that God could have easily brought about it that without losing my freedom, and despite the limitations in my knowledge, I should nevertheless never make a mistake."
He proceeds to say that he could see how it might be more perfect that we live in this world than one in which we never make an error and then:
"And I have no right to complain that the role God wished me to undertake is not... the most perfect of all."
Quoting Fooloso4
Thanks for precision, that's correct, he does say that. But that specific part of the argument doesn't seem to me to have aged very well.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes, I agree. The thing is I don't see reason as being "transparent", that is, 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.
I am really appreciating your commentary.
Good point. Limiting the will seems to be unnecessarily self-limiting. There is something else going on here.
Quoting 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:
(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.
Thank you for saying so!
Can anyone shed light on how Descartes would have meant with what is translated as "insensibly"? Might we translate it "subconsciously" today?
I see a certain merit to Descartes strategy, but my view is based on my understanding the relationship between our minds' intuitive faculties and the behavior of neural nets. I find it rather remarkable that Descartes recognized the potential effectivess of the communication strategy he describes, despite not having access to modern neuropsych. (Though of course he put a lot of thought into the nature of thought.)
I take the 'insensibly' to mean that the principles will be accepted as self-evident and natural before they are recognized as a refutation of Aristotle. So, not subconsciously but more like 'unassociated' until fully appreciated.
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,
I see Paine beat me to it.
His biography says he was actively trying to get in touch with esotericists in Europe, along the lines of Freemasons. We know he actually was acquainted with a member of one of them, but that member never revealed the association.
I wonder if the Meditations are related to that, or maybe the experience he had before he invented algebraic geometry.
Thanks Paine and Fooloso4.
I don't see what you are suggesting as so different from what I was speculating. (Although I do tend to use my own rather idiosyncratic vocabulary in discussing such things.). I interpret "accepted as self-evident and natural" and "become accustomed to his way of thinking" as matters of more subconscious 'intuitive fit' (Or what Kahneman would call type 1 thinking) than of logical reasoning. Though I'm not suggesting it should be looked at in black or white terms of purely subconscious/intuitive vs conscious/logical.
Anyway, I was struck by the use of "insensibly" in light of Descartes seeming focus on developing a foundationalist perspective. It suggested to me an insightful recognition of the potential for having his ideas fly under the radar, to bypass cognitive dissonance in those steeped in Aristotelian thinking, and yet simultaneously uncharacteristic of what I interpret as Descartes' focus on having a logically reasoned view.
BTW, I haven't read any of The Meditations, but this thread has made me much more interested in doing so.
That adds an interesting additional factor.
He was a fascinating guy, cruising all over Europe doing whatever he felt like doing. Think of him when you use your GPS. He invented the math that engineers use to design them.
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:
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.
It's one of Aristotle's proofs of God that in order for a thing to move, it has to be propelled moment by moment by God. I think we would translate "God" in this case as inertia.
This argument should be compared to one in the sixth meditation:
(emphasis added)
A bit later he says:
We might conclude that by a thinking thing he does not mean that all he is is a thinking thing, but:
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.
I see how the ideas of causes of motion can serve as a metaphor. Descartes is addressing why things appear to continue to exist from one moment to the next
This equation between creation and persistence is what I am trying to wrap my head around. Is this to say that, unlike Aristotle's understanding of properties that can be predicated to a specific subject (which persists for some finite period), substance is a set of conditions which a 'distinction of reason' can view in a different light?
I'm just spit-balling, but that passage you quoted has the same reasoning as one of Aristotle's proofs of God, so I'm guessing that this kind of thinking was just part of his world. Maybe @Manuel could comment?
Speaking of that, a reading of Aristotle's proofs of God would be fun, wouldn't it?
I was hoping to say there is a startling difference between Descartes and Aristotle. I will think about how to present the idea more clearly than the gestures presented so far. I have a large measure of uncertainty in these matters.
Which statement from Aristotle are you thinking of in this regard?
I was going to try to answer you, but I fell down a rabbit hole of comparing Newton's ideas of motion to Descartes'. Apparently Newton didn't like the fact that Descartes put God outside of the world. This is reminding me of the way Aristotle's Prime Mover is outside the world.
The big shift from Descartes to Newton is inertia. Descartes still had the Aristotelian idea that a moving object has to be continuously propelled by a "mover." This meshes with the idea that creation and preservation are the same thing.
I'll have to come back to this. Too tired. :yawn:
Not particularly much to say. Desmond Clarke, who has written a very thoughtful interpretation of Descartes, says that:
"Descartes is, at best confused about what substances are. Secondly. he consistently argues that we have no independent knowledge of substances apart from knowing their properties."
@frank
For Aristotle to be is to persist.
According to Joe Sachs' article "Aristotle: Metaphysics" in the IEP:
On the face of it, Descartes rejects this. A living being is a created and always dependent being. But in "Principia Philosophiae" he says:
·(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:
(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:
(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:
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.
:up:
Thanks for the excellent overview of the inconsistencies and I agree that something is missing. For myself, the peculiar idea is not so much a threat of extinction by external causes as what the equivalence between creation and persistence means as:
If the equivalence is to be possible, it will have to replace the way potential and capacity are ascribed as belonging to a being rather than existing by themselves:
This touches on your comments regarding human nature. It seems to me that when you say:
Quoting Fooloso4
that you think Descartes is assuming the 'mind' is a capacity of a being in the Aristotelian sense, where creatures bring with themselves some measure of the causes of their existence. While the Sixth Meditation has Descartes returning to the world of the senses with some measure of trust he withheld during the Third, what is meant by the indivisibility of 'mind' is still completely contingent on observing:
(emphasis mine}
It looks like the connection between 'life' and 'existence' is going to require a lot more work when the guy says:
The picture of a metaphysical will (largely uncontested still) is that intention is a human process or ability to create meaning in language or take a certain action. That we internally choose what we mean and decide our actions.
Descartes, in paragraph 10 of the 4th Meditation, puts it as The will is simply ones ability to do or not do something. I read in this that we dont just do anything, but that, in a real situation, there is an expected act (acceptance or denial, or for pursuit or avoidance), and we can do the expected thing (the something), or not do it: excuse ourselves, beg off, take a stand. The options of what action to take are not inside us, only the decision of which of those available to us do we decide to do (or to do nothing). This why intention is not inside us as well.
So our free will is not: doing anything we intend. We are determined in the sense that anything is not (usually) open to us. What makes a movement an act is its place in a situation. You call a ball or a strike. Descartes calls this being present[ed] with a candidate. Our freedom is that, when we are presented with the possibilities in a context, we have no sense that we are pushed one way or the other by any external force. So our will may very well be impinged, and our freedom is not about unfettered internal agency; as Descartes puts it, I can be free without being inclined both ways. The will is not having every option open (being indifferent he says), but having a will, an inclination, passion, desire, wish; Descartes focuses on acting on principle or knowledge, but the picture is that we are partial (made whole in the act Emerson says), personal, not simply intellectual, rational.
In the sixth meditation Descartes touches on the concept of nature:
and:
So, what is his own nature? On the one hand:
but on the other:
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:
The nature of time:
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.
but:
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:
and:
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.
I mostly agree with this interpretation, though Descartes does mention that sometimes we are not compelled one way or another, he also mentions that (as per Chomsky's highlight of Descartes, which Descartes actually says) we are inclined to do or say such and such in a specific situation X, but we are not compelled to do so.
We could be talking to a friend about a basketball match (for example) and we would know what topics are relevant to the conversation. But if I want to, I could perfectly well begin to talk about the political situation in Argentina, which is not relevant to the conversation, nor are we usually inclined to do such things, but we can do them, if we so decide to do so.
You have such mastery of the text that one feels intimidated in saying much, if anything.
That passage about a particular nature was perplexing, for he discusses, as you mention two uses of the word "nature", one being broader than the other. The more narrow sense refers to (as I take it now) human nature, a combination of body and mind. The other use of "nature" refers to the whole world. It sounds like an artificial distinction, as if we are somehow removed from the world.
But even "soul" stuff would have to be part of the world in some way, otherwise these distinctions don't make sense.
What's interesting to note, is that despite his famous dualism, he does mention the relation of the brain with the soul. Of course, most of us have heard about the famous "pineal gland", but the general point is that Descartes account of the mind and the body was quite naturalistic, for his time.
The frequent mockery he gets from neuroscientists or just scientists in general is very unfair and ignorant.
The example of the clock is illustrative, for he thinks that bodies, including human bodies, are similar to clocks, just more complex. On this he turned out to be quite wrong, as history would show, but his intuitions were quite sensible.
I don't have a general comment on temporality here, just commending you for your impressive contributions.
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.
Quoting 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.
Quoting 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.
You coulda fooled me. In any case they have been fantastically helpful.
In effect, it seems merely a point of emphasis on something particular (this specific clock, this specific human being) or something broad (clocks and human beings). Something seems off, just a little, maybe it's our modern way of understanding, but in contemporary (scientific) understanding, you gain knowledge of general things (human beings) by studying - in principle - one person.
In practice we need much more.
Quoting Fooloso4
As an example of human anatomy, it can be a useful heuristic.
But in terms of physics, or the way the world works, it was way off the mark. I mean, it was very intuitive and coherent, and everyone believed in it until Newton demolished it, to his surprise and lament.
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.
Quoting Manuel
Yes, we of course can act however we likethe only thing compelling us would be our customary responses. We dont even decide to agree or act appropriately most of the time. An inappropriate action may not even register as a response (unless a form of rejection); it may not do anything in light of the situation (just an engine idling Wittgenstein will say PI#132); it may not even be considered an act. Something out of place does bring up the question, Did you intend to ? And here the workings of intention are now clear without being metaphysical. We have ordinary criteria to judge whether something is or is not a certain practice, we dont make it one with our will.
Thank you for your continued interest.
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:
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:
But in the synopsis he says:
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 mans 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".
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 mans 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:
The trust restored in the unity of mind and body during the Sixth Meditation establishes that we can trust our senses up to where they need work from the intellect to explore the nature of creation. To wit:
As a matter of 'theology' this is to say God will not be filling in this part of the picture. What made God necessary to accept that I was not merely living in a dream of my own making gives me a mind that has to start from scratch. It turns out that accepting God is an innate idea is not a leg up on using the 'natural light' to explore the darkness.
That makes me think that I had things backwards when puzzling over the 'equivalency' of continual recreation versus a world of 'preserved beings'. From the Cartesian Zero, there is no way to tell. The provisional trust in the senses lets us move forward despite creating unknowns. It is an X, if you will, ready to be acted like it is known.
From that point of view, the later 'empirical' methods owe their life to this very restricted unity of mind and body. With the various meanings of skepticism to consider, I like this question from John Dewey:
I think Descartes approves of that message if he has been lingering in a celestial bathtub long enough to translate it from Latin.
I was surprised, at the 11th paragraph of the Fourth Meditation, to find Descartes discussion of truth centered on ethics, and not epistemology or ontology. He, of course, has not let go of his desire for certainty. when I understand something I undoubtedly understand it correctly. But the takeaway here is that I do not usually understand things (reach that level of clarity and distinction), at least not immediately; to come to where we understand something takes time.
Well, then, where do my mistakes come from? Their source is the fact that my will has a wider scope than my intellect has, so that I am free to form beliefs on topics that I dont understand That is the source of my error and sin.
So Descartes will and judgment is falible, indirect. We must not assume we have immediate access to the truth by some internal calculation or connection to something outside us; it takes time to get clear about what makes this situation or practice distinct from others.
When he turns himself to the particular facts about the world, ordinary criteria are there that we all have access to in order to judge and act; as Plato would say, before our birth. They lie forgotten (implicit) embedded in our culture.
"The truths about all these matters are so open to me, and so much in harmony with my nature, that when I first discover any of them it feels less like learning something new than like remembering something I had known before, or noticing for the first time something that was already in my mind without my having turned my mental gaze onto it."
And our practices and their criteria fit his standard to a point. They are "not under [his] control" and when he thinks of them "[he is] constrained in how [he does] this". Unfortunately, for Descartes they must be "eternal, unchanging, and independent ."
So he retreats to mathematics as his example, and the properties it has are repeatable, predictable, thus proveable and so contain the certainty he needs to extrapolate that, if he understands something, its properties must be true as well, which is his justification that the property of existence must be true about God.
Oh sorry man, I briefly saw this and forgot to reply, just came to my mind all of a sudden.
Quoting Antony Nickles
Yes, he says this quite astonishing quote about the will being wider than the intellect, briefly mentioned when talking to @Fooloso4.
I tried to understand that, even attempting to look at that statement as if I lived back then, but I can't make sense of it. I mean, it just seems obvious to me that intellect is far broader than will in scope. Of course, we use the will all the time (arguably), but it's scope is somewhat reduced to do this or do that or don't do, more or less.
I believe you have said you tend to follow the late-Wittgenstein tradition, so maybe the impact will be different, but I really do find the whole "remembering" and "from within me" to be quite accurate in my experience and surprising. We need not follow its religious aspects, but it's a powerful thought.
Quoting Antony Nickles
Back in his time everything was still mixed, philosophy and science and math, not to the level of the Greeks, but, still, no huge distinctions arose. And thus he probably mistook one our capacities - the capacity to do math, with something almost entirely different, our capacity to recognize objects and things in the world.
And while I think there are strong reasons to take them to be innate, they are of a different nature. And certainty in one, is not translatable to certainty on another.
Quoting Manuel
His use of has a wider scope is not helping him here, but I take him to mean that we can act without thinking, that we can follow our will whether our knowledge is clear and distinct or not; for example, without being aware of the implications of an act. Part of what makes this interesting is that the force that math has to constrain us (because it is true, independent of who is doing it) is not the same as the shame, confusion, or unintelligibility that may persuade us to take a certain action, but does not have the same force upon us, on our will.
Quoting Manuel
I would call it imagery or a mythical description of the feeling you have when you consider and realize how, for example, doing something mistakenly is different than doing it accidentally. That actions you have been doing all along can suddenly have distinctions and rationale that you had not considered, but that, when you do, causes you to acknowledge the truth of it; part awe in its being there already, and part uncanny that it is not always apparent.
Quoting Manuel
I am just getting through the next section, but I believe he is trying to claim that math and God have the same kind of certainty. As I said above, the force of math to require acceptance, but also its independence from people, their limitations, but I am still working on that.
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.
Quoting Paine
In the fifth meditation he reverses the order he had claimed for grounding certainty:
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.
I don't think there's a conflict. Descartes was the quintessential rationalist. This doesn't mean he thought all knowledge is a priori. :up:
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.
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.
(Fourth Meditation)
By relationally he means:
(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:
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.
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:
Thanks for the extra context. I remain unconvinced though. I could imagine situation in which my capacity for willing could be greater, it could for instance, be transparent to me how it is that I choose to do something or not do something. Even something as simple as raising my arm, is shrouded in mystery to me, I have no clue how I actually do it, even though I can, I don't know how I can.
Alternatively, my will could have the power to move objects beyond my body - surely God has such powers. And so on.
Quoting Fooloso4
In the end, it seems to me that knowledge provides better information on which to make a better informed decision. A man could do whatever he wills, but If I compare that to an idea - say reading a novel or thinking about the weather, it seems to me to be far more intricate and complex than the will.
Unless, of course, I am misreading or misunderstanding some aspect of the will, as Descartes conceives it.
Sure, outside of his thought experiments, to deny basic mathematical outcomes is hard to imagine. Maybe a crazy person would say that 2+2=5, but to believe it, is hard to grasp, for me at least.
On the other hand, most of the time, mathematical results are of little to no significance.
Quoting Antony Nickles
That's a good description.
I believe he says God is more certain than math.
But, you tell me when you are done with the section.
Quoting Manuel
But it is the type of certainty that math has that matters: predictable, dependable, extendable to all applications, abstract from context, separate from human fallibility, rule-bound, complete, universalin a word, perfect. Math is significant because it can find a solution for a future occurrence; it is the power behind technology, and, to an extent, the method of science.
I agree that the will is problematic in ways that Descartes does not acknowledge.
Quoting Manuel
This is why he argues for willfully setting limits to the will. What he identifies as the problem:
(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:
Quoting 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:
(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.
Quoting Fooloso4
That's an interesting inversion. I once thought, though am not longer certain, that it was hard to justify math, that is, not so much the results of elementary problems, 2+2=4 and so on, but the very foundations, what enables me to justify the postulation of "1" or any number?
But it's given in our minds/brain somehow.
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.
It is not clear to me what you are saying.
Quoting Fooloso4
Apologies for my lack of clarity. These comments suggest to me that he seeking to master his fortune, that is, control his own desires - which is what he has control over after all, we cannot will to change the world, we can will to change ourselves, in order to try and have an effect on the world, however small this change may be.
These sound to me to be strongly inclined to moral considerations, I master my will in order to change my desires so as to make them adequate for the task at hand. This is what I ought to do.
This is all well and good and true. But it seems to me as if, even taking all of this into account, and granting the will the scope Descartes gives it, still falls short of his original statement, or at least, the statement under contention, that the will is wider than the intellect.
I just see much more aspects to the intellect than I do to the will, there are more elements to it that "merely" doing this or doing that, or not doing anything. I say no more than this, it's my only doubt, pardon the pun.
I don't think Descartes is saying the will can be mastered. The reason he cannot experience the difference between his will and that of God's is because he can only directly know his own freedom. That freedom does include selecting between options that range from the indifferent to the most important:
Quoting Manuel
The "increase in natural knowledge" increases our power and effect upon the world.
That's my issue with it, he says this is what the will consists of.
But why should this be the total extent of the will? We have this capacity in dramatically larger proportion than other animals, if it can be said they have will at all. Maybe they have minimal will. A dog can be "taught" not to eat a treat until the owner says so. Maybe this is minimal will, maybe not.
But it's not inconceivable to me that another even more intelligent species could have dramatically stronger capacity of will compared to us. What it would look like, I cannot exactly say, but, I don't think it can be ruled out.
Just because we can't conceive of a greater capacity for willing, does it mean that it cannot exist, at least in principle.
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.
Descartes is saying he is not in a position to compare "wills" of beings as a capacity in the way differences in knowledge and ability can be. As a freedom of choice, the experience between selecting to do or not do, to affirm or not affirm any option is one that does not feel forced upon him by an exterior cause. In the theological registers Descartes was working within, that freedom of choice was related to the sin of choosing to turn away from God. From Augustine to Anselm, the freedom is a critical moment where we can err. Descartes is making a striking move by combining the choosing between true and false ideas and good and bad actions as instances of one "will." While Anselm may not approve this expression as a matter of faith, I think he would not object to:
This approach does call for asking what freedom of choice is and what counts as an external cause. Spinoza's Ethics got to work with calling the first an illusion and the second a category mistake.
Interesting replies.
My concern and interest here specifically is in the claim that the will is broader than the intellect. I'm questioning if that follows. In as much as we can (which is not trivial) differentiate mental faculties "the will" from "the intellect", it either is the case that the will is broader, or it isn't.
Then again, it could be that the distinction made between the two today can't be made too explicit.
That there are enormous consequences from having freedom of the will, (unless you are a determinist), is clear, we just look at the development of history.
I could very well be hyper-focusing on a topic that deviates from the goal of the Meditations. But again, my issue here is narrow.
It's a different thing if some of you believe that what Descartes said is correct. If it is, then that's fine. I wouldn't want this to be an impediment to the larger discussion.
Quoting Paine
Missed this in my last reply. Sure, I don't debate or doubt that. My question is, do all aspects of natural knowledge play a role in the will?
Maybe it would help if you gave a definition of the will as expressed by a philosophy that rings true for you. The concept has been approached many different ways and those ways have prompted very different 'psychological' perspectives.
I am reading Descartes as saying will is freedom of choice rather than him speaking of " having freedom of the will. The latter suggests there could be an unfree will. In this context, I read that as a contradiction in terms.
Quoting Manuel
I think that D is saying it will always help in making better choices but the inclusion of 'divine grace' in the statement is important too. We did not give ourselves freedom of choice nor what is our Good. The freedom of choice is a condition discovered through the limits of our intellect:
I've been following the discussion (without rereading the text, else I'd contribute) and this is exactly what I've gotten from the quotes posted. Will is the capacity to choose.
And this very specifically says "I would not deliberate" rather than saying, "I would have no choice." There is a tradition of equating sin with error, simply mistaking the bad for the good. But Lucifer chose, knowing full well he was choosing the bad. Descartes sees here, correctly it would seem, a power greater than which none can be conceived, in its own sphere far greater than the intellect is in the field of knowledge. You do not get to choose which options are open to you; you do not get to choose that all your goals be perfectly realized; you do not get to choose even to stick by your decisions and carry them out; but the power of choice itself stands unopposed.
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.
Hmmm. For Descartes having will at all is freedom of choice, I don't have much of an issue with that definition, save minor caveats than needn't be raised.
I suppose I unconsciously had Schopenhauer in mind, as when he says "Man can do what he wills, but cannot will what he wills." But he was a determinist.
Quoting Paine
That's a very thorny issue. It enters into the whole "causa sui" debate, of whether it is possible for one to be the cause of one's action. If the will is free, as I think it is, then it's possible.
Now, if my definition is not too problematic, then we can do, or not do something. With the intellect we judge, discern, reason, suppose, contemplate, compare, distinguish, evaluate, consider, combine, etc., etc.
That seems to be quite larger in scope than doing or not doing something. Granted, the latter is very important, no doubt about that.
That either/or always happens in the context of intellect:
For Descartes, 'modes of thought' include all the processes we experience from sensation, to emotion, to conceptual reasoning, and so on. The either/or of choosing happens in the case of the least important matters up to the most important decisions. That is where the element of 'indifference' is seen in relation to orders of freedom:
All I'm saying is that I perceive that in a single mental act, or object of knowledge, there is more at play than the will.
I don't have anything against the will, nor is it trivial or unimportant or of little consequence.
If you want to add something, please do, you certainly know Descartes very well.
I'll read whatever you say, as there is plenty more here to consider.
I mean to say that Descartes would largely agree. The greater degrees of freedom come from knowing more and resisting acting stupidly as a consequence. I don't understand how you see the will as being over-determined in the Meditations.
Quoting Manuel
I don't know how Descartes would respond to that. He might agree to some extent. Spinoza denied free will but for different reasons than Schopenhauer did. Spinoza said it was cheeky to say our acts of deliberation were like what God did. We deliberate about what will best serve our ends. Spinoza accepted that it was natural that we pursued those ends. He objected to the idea that we were breaking a chain of causality by doing so. Having a God who would interrupt the program at any time was declared capricious and weird from the perspective of a natural world.
Schopenhauer introduced a more thorough going skepticism regarding the idea of an ordered universe which would have been nonsense from Spinoza's point of view. It seems determinism is as tricky as freedom.
Quoting Manuel
Well, I have had to accept that I had gotten it wrong several times during this OP. There are plenty of opportunities to fail again.
Would you point at one or more of the psychological perspectives that you see see as most worthy of consideration? I'd be interested in looking into some of them.
I have my own neuropsych perspective on the subject, and would be interested in what others who have thought seriously about the subject have to say.
As I pointed out:
Quoting 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:
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:
Although the philosophers have emphasized God's intellect there is an older tradition that makes God's will central.
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".
Which part of the Meditations inspires you to suggest this?
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:
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:
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.
In his provisional code of morals (Discourse on Method, part lll) he says:
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.
So maybe influenced by Renaissance humanism?
I think you know much more about Renaissance humanism than I. What influences from Renaissance humanism do you see?
Taking such a broad view that would encompass ancient, medieval, and modern points of view is a project beyond the scope of my tiny mind and would call for its own discussion if it was not. But I can offer an example of how different first principles give different 'psychologies' or 'soul accounts', to translate the word from the Greek.
John Duns Scotus regarded the will to be prior to the intellect. He would have objected to the way Descartes presents them side by side in the quote above. There is a tension between the natural world and the realm of divine grace which the scholastic philosophers dealt with by explaining that the intellect is an activity of creatures as described by Aristotle. The possibility of free choice is 'unnatural' against the background of necessary processes. So, Scotus develops an idea of contingency quite at variance from Aristotle's treatment:
It has been more than a decade since I last wrestled with the text. This discussion encourages me to give it another go. In the meantime, I will appeal to a secondary source who I think gets at the consequences of free choice being accepted as prior to intellect:
Quoting Thomas Williams, SEP article
Oh sure. And as suggested by you implicitly, much of this depends on what one takes "God" to imply or cover. If it is belonging to the Abrahamic tradition, then obviously giving medicine to a sick person would be contrary to God's plan.
Of course, if one takes God to be somewhat akin to what Plotinus did, then medicine is not a problem.
You and Paine made me have a mini panic (don't worry these are good) and I started reading (skimming to be honest) some of the classics on "free will", Locke and Hume, but I thought Locke's take on the will to be quite more intuitive (if not reasonable) than Descartes.
The difficulties which one can find in his philosophy, is decently covered in the SEP.
To continue in the Cartesian tradition in a contemporary setting, we'd have to turn "God" into nature, and proceed from that, it seems to me.
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.
Quoting 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 don't know a whole lot about it. I've just been struggling to place Descartes in a historical context since we started reading this. I don't think I understood his historical significance as well as I thought. For instance, I'm still trying to understand his relationship with Newton and Hobbes.
A broad, maybe faulty notion about the Renaissance is that it's when our present conception of individuality emerged. The idea is that during the feudal period there wasn't enough community to provide a backdrop for individuality. Later, during the city building era, the drive to create community beyond the manors resulted in super-identities that eclipsed individuality.
Around the Renaissance and Reformation, a more mature social setting appeared, allowing stable bases for individuality: you weren't just a serf, you weren't just a member of the baker's guild, you were a distinct individual in your own right, which would have been a position formerly only held by the monarch and maybe a few aristocrats.
The events leading up to the Renaissance created the conditions for intellectuals like Descartes, Newton and Hobbes, the point being that humanism wasn't invented by Descartes, but rather he was reinforcing a trend that was already in motion in the world around him.
Quoting Fooloso4
But then in later Meditations he does indeed, so then he gives arguments for the existence of the outside world (not of material things yet). One of the arguments is the origins of his ideas, which is also one of his arguments for God.
It is only then later that he tries to prove whether there are res extensae.
In the third meditation we see an argument that resembles what is said in the quoted paragraphy from the 1st Med., that if I don't see the objective reality of an idea anywhere (it is not me) in me, either formally (it exists as a thing, like thoughts) or eminently (it is less perfect than me, so it can extrapolated from), the outside world must exist so that there is something to cause that idea.
However, just one/two pages later, he throws that out:
And:
I personally don't fully agree with the argument above; not with the conclusion, but with the way it is presented. Res extensa and res cogitans have different attributes, and so have different modes. It is a possibility that a res cogitans is born ex nihilo with the idea of extension (and in which case that idea of extension would not represent anything real); but without being so, it could not develop it by itself, as it does not have extension in itself. For the ideas to be contained in me, they would have to be simply a fortuitous result of the operations of my mind as it was born, in which case they are contained formally, not eminently.
It is also through God that Descartes "proves" in the 6th Med. that there is an outside world. But it has several problems.
Quoting SEP's Descartes' Epistemology
So perhaps Descartes is never fully convinced that there is an outside world I have some more reading to do to see if he says otherwise somewhere else. But he is not a skeptic, he does not need to be, he only finds many strong arguments for why there is an outside world.
As a curiosity, the bit on wax on the 2nd Med. seems to be somewhat of a proof of the outside world:
A very muddy, but wonderful book.
We need to make a distinction between the argument from doubt and his work, specifically his work in medicine, optics, and physics. I don't think he needed to be convinced that there was an outside world because he never really doubted it.
In The World and The Man, evidently not, but if he did not doubt the world in metaphysics, he wouldn't feel the need to put arguments for it in the Meditations.
I think it is a rhetorical strategy. After all, if he doubted that there are men in the world why bother writing and publishing?
As I see it, he begins by calling everything into doubt in order to call the authority of the Church and "the philosopher", Aristotle, into doubt.
That is when we would hear the redundant neologism "performative contradiction". I think it is because "doubt" here has two meanings.
A: I doubt he actually said those things.
B: I doubt whether I chose the right team.
One is a denial, the other is insuficient grounds. That {I have insufficient grounds to claim there are men in the same fashion as I claim I can imagine balls of different colours} is different from committing to the denial of an idea (which by itself requires grounding), the denial through which we would adopt different attitudes than we would if we committed to the affirmative idea. When there are two possible courses of action that result each from committing to one idea (opposite to the other), the commitment must be made to one of them, regardless of whether I doubt both.
Thus, the admission of possibility of mistake (B) is different from the commitment to a denial (A). But when acting, one must commit. I remember some theory of belief where beliefs are defined in fact by our behaviour, in which case entertaining skepticism goes out of the window but I don't subscribe to that theory.
I think that this kind of skepticism gets things backwards. It is not a matter of grounding the claim that there are men, but of providing grounds for doubting that there are men. The ability to doubt is not a good reason to doubt. Claiming that there are men does not require grounds. Claiming that there are men on Mars does.
I have been called worse, but I want to avoid getting entangled in such distinctions. I think Wittgenstein's notion of a hinge is right.
There are a few threads on the forum that discuss hinges. As I understand them they are things that in the normal course of our lives are not called into question and around which other things turn. To whom would the proposition "men exist" be addressed? What information does it convey that we do not already know?
Well, not my reply of choice, but since I can't think of anything else: people who think sex is a spectrum.
I will also use this post to say that the Fifth Meditation is by far and large the very worst meditation.