Excerpts from the Principles of Philosophy

The following is an outline of a philosophical text which is provided with no claim with regard to it's accuracy or neutrality. Use freely, but at your own risk.

Overview

The Principles was meant to be Descartes’ magnum opus. It covers all the ground previously traced by his metaphysical and physical works in summary. Apparently, it was intended to replace Aristotle’s philosophy and traditional Scholastic Philosophy then used in Universities.

It is divided into four parts: The Principles of Human Knowledge, The Principles of Material Things, The Visible Universe, and The Earth. Herein we have omitted significant amounts of the physics, as - to be perfectly frank - they failed to interest us.

Outline

  1. Doubt [Part 1: The Principles of Human Knowledge (1-13)]
    1. That the enquirer after truth should, once in their life, doubt everything as much as they can.
    2. That we should even regard beliefs which can be doubted as false.
    3. That, however, this process of doubt should not be extended to the conduct of life.
    4. We can have doubts about sensible things because (a) we notice that sometimes our senses decieve us, and (b) it’s hard to distinguish the content of dreams (on a sensory level) from that of waking.
    5. We can even doubt mathetmatical proofs because (a) people make mistakes, and (b) as far as we know, God could have designed us such that our feeling of certainty doesn’t have any real correspondence to truth.
    6. “…whatever the ultimate source of our being…we experience within ourselves a certain freedom, which enables us always to abstain from believing anything which is not obviously certain and established. Consequently we can avoid ever making any mistakes.”
    7. That we cannot doubt that we exist while we are doubting; and this is the first thing we know when philosophising in the right order.
    8. That (1.g) enables us to recognise the distinction between soul and body, or between thinking thing and corporeal thing.
    9. Thought is “everything which happens in us while we are conscious, in so far as there is consciousness of it in us.”
    10. That absolutely simple and self-evident things are made more obscure by logical definitions, and that they are not the sort of thing that can become known by academic study.
      1. Saying “I think therefore I am” does require concepts of thought, existence, certainty. These things are treated by Descartes as “simple” (common-sensical?) and thus are assumed at the beginning of philosophy.
    11. The mind is better known/knowable than the body.
      1. “…it is obvious that we know more things in our own minds than in anything else, because nothing gives us knowledge of anything outside the mind, without its leading us to a far more certain knowledge of our own minds. For example, if I judge that the earth exists from the fact that I can touch or see it, I ought to judge from the same fact, but with even more certainty, that my mind exists.”
    12. Not making a sharp enough mind-body distinction is the reason why philosophers have heretofore not developed the correct initial point from whence to proceed.
    13. Knowledge of everything else depends on knowledge of God.
      1. Ideas (mental pictures) are not in themselves deceptive before we suggest that they imply some kind of positive claim about real stuff in the world.
      2. That said, if we want to know about anything - mathematical proofs, toasters, other people, animals, sedimentary rocks - we need to be sure that something vouchsafes some kind of veracity in the mind-world relationship.
      3. A benevolent author would provide this guarantee.
  2. God [Part 1: The Principles of Human Knowledge (14-23)]
    1. That the existence of God follows from the fact that necessary existence is contained in our concept of God. The argument here is sloppy, but, beefing it up:
      1. We can conceive of a perfect being which entails properties such as omniscience, omnipresence, etc.
      2. These properties are not inherent in us, so we could not conceive them unless they are somehow given to us from outside.
      3. This entails that a perfect being exists.
      4. It is further required that this be a single being, as unity is a perfection, and it is impossible to conceive a perfect being lacking in some particular perfection.
      5. For the same reason, it is impossible that God would not exist, as the concept of his perfection would not admit for a lack of existence.
    2. That necessary existence is not included in the concepts of other things in this way, but only contingent existence.
    3. People fail to recognize the necessity of God’s existence because they are predisposed to distinguish between essence and existence.
    4. That the greater the objective perfection of any of our ideas, the greater must be its cause.
      1. “Objective perfection” is best understood as the truth of a representational content.
      2. The more perfect a thing is as a representation as such, the more perfect the object of the representation must be. Formal perfection “trickles down” to objective perfection.
    5. (2.d) provides a second proof that God exists.
      1. Again, this content either needs to come from oneself, or from something outside of you, and, given the e.g. finitude of man, a clear idea of infinitude (which Descartes believes he has) is simply not capable of emerging from the former.
      2. Hence, God exists.
    6. That even though we cannot comprehend the nature of God, we know his perfections more clearly than anything else. [This seems to be a particularly tough premise for Cartesians. Personally, I think I understand my coffee mug a lot more clearly than infinity.]
    7. Because we have these God-attribute ideas in us, it follows that we were created by God.
      1. We could not have been self-created, because if we were, we certainly would have given ourselves all the perfections of God.
    8. That the continuation of our existence is sufficient to prove the existence of God.
      1. Time is such that its parts do not depend on each other, and never co-exist.
      2. From the fact that we exist now, it does not follow that we will still exist at the immediately succeeding instant, unless some cause continuously re-creates us, as it were, or conserves us.
      3. As we cannot create ourselves (2.g.i), nor can we conserve ourselves. Hence, we need someone else to do it.
      4. And whoever can do it, must be capable of authoring our being. And does, moment to moment. By way of (2.a.iv), this is God.
    9. If our innate idea of God then is sufficient proof of his existence, and hence his properties, it follows that we know what of him we can know, and that this is that God is infinite perfection(s).
    10. That God is not corporeal; nor does he have sense perceptions like ours; nor does he will the wickedness of sin.
      1. Bodies are not perfect, by dint of their divisibility. God is perfect. Hence, God is not corporeal.
      2. Sense perception implies passivity which implies dependence. Dependence is an imperfection. Hence, God does not sense in the way we understand it.
      3. God’s action does all things (objects) at once and consistently. He does not will the wickedness of sin, since sin is not a thing. And apparently (this is new here), God wills free-willing machines, and is as such not responsible for their actions.
  3. Knowledge and Error [Part 1: The Principles of Human Knowledge (24-30)]
    1. God is infinite, and we are finite.
    2. Whatever has been revealed by God must be believed, even if it transcends our understanding. (Given [3.a], it shouldn’t surprise us when it does.)
    3. Since we are finite, it is absurd for us to attempt to determine anything about infinity, and so to try and set limits to it, as it were, and comprehend it.
      1. Rather, in every case where we can find no limit to some aspect of a thing, we shall not assert that it is infinite, but we shall regard it as indefinite.
    4. The difference between the indefinite and the infinite: Whereas with God (infinity), we have a positive understanding of limitlessness, with things indefinite (the number of stars, etc.) it is merely negative.
    5. Look at the efficient, not final causes, of natural things: When we are investigating things in the natural world, we should never draw our explanations from the purposes which God or nature had in creating them.
    6. God is not the cause of errors.
    7. It follows from this that everything which we conceive clearly is true, and that our earlier doubts are resolved.
      1. Our God-given faculty of knowing now, properly used, cannot deceive us. (cf. Meditations)
  4. Will and Error [Part 1: The Principles of Human Knowledge (31-42)]
    1. Our errors are negations if attributed to God, and defects if attributed to us. (Again, with appeal to God’s actions doing /things/ [cf. 2.j.iii])
      1. In the Latin, the distinction is between negatio and privatio, and the point is this: We can make true negative statements about God (e.g. that he is not a physical object). But this doesn’t mean that he lacks anything, since he is on a higher plane of existence than a mere physical object.
    2. All of our modes of thinking are reducible to intellectual perception (sensing, imagining, pure understanding) and willing (wanting, disliking, affirming, denying, and doubting).
      1. It is important that Descartes makes such a sharp distinction between contemplating what is present to the mind (perception), and affirming (whether to oneself or to another) that it is true. The latter is a separate mental act; and since it is an act, it is performed by the will. It is in principle under our control whether we doubt, believe, or disbelieve the contents of our mind; and this is why it is a defect of our will if we believe things we should not believe, or fail to believe things we should believe.
    3. Error is only possible when we make a judgment about something which we have not perceived adequately.
    4. Judgment requires the will as well as the intellect.
    5. The will has a wider scope than the intellect, and that this is the source of our errors.
      1. Our will is in some since infinite, insofar as it is impossible to conceive of a will more limitless than our own.
    6. On the other hand, our intellect is clearly limited in its grasp.
    7. Errors occur when we extend our will beyond our ability to perceive/understand.
    8. It is impossible to attribute our errors to God: A created understanding is by its very nature finite; and a finite understanding by its very nature does not extend to everything.
    9. The greatest human perfection is the freedom of the will, and that this makes humans worthy of praise or blame.
      1. Because of the infinitude of our freedom of will, we can be held responsible for our actions.
    10. Error is a defect in our behaviour, not in our nature; and that although superiors can often be blamed for the faults of their subordinates, God can never be blamed for our errors.
      1. The former is true because our nature is the same when we make incorrect judgments as when we make correct ones.
    11. The latter requires three steps, but the gist of it is that it’s not our place (as finitude:infinitude) to presume to understand why God does things.
      1. The authority which we humans have over one another was given to us so that we could use it for saving others from evil.
      2. The authority which God has over us all is completely absolute and free.
      3. Consequently, we owe him our utmost gratitude for the good things he has bestowed on us; but we can have no right to complain about his not having bestowed on us everything we know he could have bestowed on us.
    12. Freedom of the will is self-evident: Even when we imagined that some very powerful author of our being was trying to deceive us in every way, we were still aware that we had this freedom to withhold our belief.
    13. It is also certain that everything has been predetermined by God: Perfect knowledge is a critical perfection, and to deny it of God would be blasphemous
    14. Again, God is infinite, and our finite minds cannot comphrend how these two apparently contradictory facts can simultaneously be. Nonetheless they are.
      1. Note that Descartes is actually incompatibilist here: Freedom and preordination cannot be reconciled, at least not by our understanding, and that we should not even attempt to reconcile them. He is telling us how to cope with their irreconcilability. This is therapeutic.
    15. Our errors are due to our will, even though we do not wish to err: “wishing to be wrong is utterly different from being willing to assent to things in which there happens to be an error.”
  5. Clear and Distinct Perception [Part 1: The Principles of Human Knowledge (43-50)]
    1. We never err as long as we assent only to what is clearly and distinctly perceived.
    2. We always misjudge when we assent to things which we have not perceived clearly, even if we chance on the truth.
    3. Clear and distinct perceptions, as distinct.
      1. A clear perception “is present and fully revealed to the mind attending to it.”
      2. A distinct perception “is so separated and demarcated from all other ideas, that it contains in itself absolutely nothing which is not clear.”
    4. A perception can be clear without being distinct, but not distinct without being clear.
      1. The example is pain: One can have a very clear perception of pain without having a concept of the sensation as distinct from, say, the location of the pain.
    5. In order to correct our false preconceptions, we must consider the simple notions, and what is clear in each. These will be detailed below (5.f).
    6. Everything we perceive is considered either as things or their affections, or as eternal truths. Herein are the former.
      1. The most general things are substance, duration, order, number, and any others of the same sort which apply to all genera of things.
      2. The first genus is thought things, or things pertaining to the mind, res cogitans (perception, volition, all the modes of perceiving and willing).
      3. The second genus is material things, or things pertaining to extended substance, or body (size or extension itself in length, breadth, and depth, shape, motion, position, the divisibility of its parts).
      4. We also experience certain other things that arise from the close and intimate union of our mind with the body (hunger, thirst, anger, happiness, sadness, love, pain, pleasure, light and colour, sounds, smells, tastes, heat, hardness, and other tactile qualities).
    7. The latter (eternal truths) cannot be listed in the same way. They are axioms, of which he gives several examples:
      1. “Nothing comes from nothing.”
      2. “It is impossible for one and the same thing to be and not to be simultaneously.”
      3. “What has been done cannot have been not done.”
      4. “Someone who is thinking cannot fail to exist while thinking.”
    8. These (5.g) are rightly described as “common” notions because it is possible for anyone to perceive them clearly and distinctly.
      1. However, some of them are not actually perceived so clearly and distinctly by everyone, as some people have preconceived opinions which contradict those common notions, and hence make it difficult for these people to grasp them.
  6. Substance [Part 1: The Principles of Human Knowledge (51-57)]
    1. “Substance” is a thing which exists in such a way that it does not need anything else in order for it to exist.
      1. There is only one substance really exists independently of absolutely everything else, God.
      2. By contrast, all other substances exist only through the co-operation of God.
      3. Hence, it is impossible to have a distinct understanding of any sense of the term which is common both to God and to created beings.
    2. Both types of substance, however (cogitans, extensa) need nothing other than God in order to exist.
      1. We can recognize existent things by their attributes; absence of attributes (or properties or qualities) is equivalent to absence of being.
    3. Each substance has one distinctive attribute - that of mind is thought, and that of body is extension.
      1. Descartes’ metaphysical terminology is rather loose here. Strictly speaking, each substance has just one attribute, and everything else that can be said of it is a mode, or manner of being, of that attribute. This is contra the use of “attribute” as “property” in the last point. “Distinct” additionally implies that no other substance can have it.
    4. By carefully separating all the attributes of thought from the attributes of extension, we can have clear and distinct notions of created thinking substance, of bodily substance. In the same way, we can also have a clear and distinct idea of uncreated and independent thinking substance, namely of God.
      1. We must not suppose that the latter adequately reveals to us everything that there is in God.
      2. Nor should we pretend that it contains anything which we (a) are not aware of and (b) do not vividly perceive as belonging to the nature of a totally perfect being.
    5. Duration, order, and number are understood distinctly as long as we refrain from attaching the concept of substance to them: They are modes through which we consider (e.g. numbered, ordered) things.
    6. Modes, qualities, and attributes are all of class n.
      1. ns are “modes” when we consider a substance to be affected or variegated by n[x] (e.g., again, number, existence, duration)
      2. ns are “qualities” when this variegation is the basis for giving them a name (example?)
      3. ns are “attributes” when we view them more generally, and only in so far as they exist in the substance (what a body generally is, cf. 6.c.i: e.g. extension qua bodies)
    7. Some attributes are in the things themselves (attributes, modes) whereas others are only in our thought.
      1. The main message is that time is only in the mind, whereas duration is an attribute of things (and presumably of the mind as well).
      2. When we measure the duration of things in time, we add the concept of time to duration, by reference to the heavenly bodies.
      3. He does not make it clear whether he is saying that the quantity of motion of a thing is in the thing itself, or in the mind (or both).
  7. Universals and Kinds of Distinction [Part 1: The Principles of Human Knowledge (58-62)]
    1. “Number” and all other universals are only modes of thinking.
    2. How universals arise; and what the five standard ones are.
      1. Universals arise when we use one idea for thinking about all individuals which are similar to each other.
      2. The five standard universals are: genus, species, specific difference, property, and accident.
    3. On distinctions; real distinction.
      1. Universals (e.g. number), as applied to things, arise from their being distinguished from one another. There are three types of distinctions.
      2. Real distinction is only one between two or more substances. We perceive real distinction insofar as we can have a clear and distinct thought of one thing without the other.
    4. The two sorts of modal distinction
      1. One is the distinction between a mode and the substance of which it is a mode. This can be recognised from the fact that we can have a clear perception of the substance independently of the mode, but we cannot, conversely, understand the mode independently of the substance (e.g. body: shape, motion; mind: affirmation, memory).
      2. The other is the distinction between two modes of the same substance. This can be recognised from the fact that one mode can be known independently of the other, and vice versa; but neither can be known independently of the substance which they both exist in (e.g. a moving, square stone).
      3. However, when a mode of one substance differs from (a) another substance or (b) a mode of another substance, this is a real rather than modal distinction.
    5. The two sorts of distinction of reason
      1. A distinction of reason are between (a) a substance and one of its attributes or (b) two such attributes of one and the same substance.
      2. We can recognize (a) when we cannot form a clear and distinct idea of the substance if we exclude the attribute from it. (e.g. between a substance and its duration)
      3. We can recognize (b) when we cannot perceive clearly the idea of the one attribute if we separate it from the other.
  8. Thought and Extension [Part 1: The Principles of Human Knowledge (63-69)]
    1. The appropriate level of abstractness for conceiving substance
      1. Thought and extension can be considered as constituting the natures of intelligent and bodily substance respectively.
      2. Given this, they should not be conceived as anything other than thinking substance and extended substance themselves, that is, as mind and body. This the clearest and most distinct way of conceiving them.
      3. It is also easier to form a conception of extended substance or of thinking substance than of substance alone, and they differ from it only through a distinction of reason.
    2. Thought and extension are can also be taken as modes of substance, insofar as (a) one mind can have many different thoughts; and (b) one body can be extended in many different ways (stretching). In that case, they are modally different from substance.
    3. Thought and extension themselves have various modes in their turn. These are best perceived if we consider them as modes of the things they are in.
      1. E.g. (thought): understanding, imagination, memory, volition, etc.
      2. E.g. (extension): shapes, the position and motion of parts.
    4. Sensations, emotions, and appetites can also be perceived clearly, provided we scrupulously avoid making any judgments about them which go in any way beyond what is included in our perceptions, and what we are intimately conscious of.
      1. However, in the grand Cartesian style, we must remember that this is particularly hard to do, insofar as from a very young age we are given to judge that all the things we sensed were things existing outside our minds, and that they exactly resembled our sensations, which we do not /know/ at the time.
    5. The same is true of everything else we sense, including pleasure and pain, despite the fact that we often wrongly think that pain is located in, e.g., the foot, it is much more certain that it is a mental disposition.
    6. We must take the greatest care to remember that pain, colour, etc. are perceived clearly and distinctly only when they are considered as sensations or thoughts.
      1. Through lack of attention, one might easily persuade onesself that one has considerable knowledge of - e.g. - color, by assuming that it is something similar to the sensation of colour which one experiences in oneself.
    7. Meanwhile, in the same visual objects/representational content, we have a much clearer picture of size, shape, number, motion, duration, etc. - not as part of the existential content of some thing, but as a “modal” mental content.
  9. Causes of Error [Part 1: The Principles of Human Knowledge (70-76)]
    1. That there are two ways of arriving at judgments about objects of sensation, one of which keeps us from error, and the other of which leads us into error.
      1. One is to judge that there is something in objects (that is, in the things, whatever they might be, which our sensation comes to us from), but that we do not know what. This is tantamount to saying that there is something in some object of sense that causes in me the sensation of color. This will not cause an error in judgement.
      2. The other, which will cause an error in judgement, is when we think (e.g.) we perceive colours in objects, even if we don’t know what it is we are giving the name of colour to, and cannot understand how there can be any similarity between the colour we suppose to be in objects, and the colour we experience in sensation.
    2. The main cause of errors is our preconceptions, established at infancy, is the conflation of one’s sensory experiences of things with actually-existing properties of the things themselves.
    3. Another cause of errors is how incredibly hard it is for us to forget our preconceptions.
    4. A third cause is that thinking wears us out, and we lapse into thinking about things (e.g. substance) as they are framed by our preconceptions as opposed to as they are occuring presently to our perceptive apparatus.
    5. A fourth cause is that we associate our concepts with words, and we are much more apt to do our thinking with these words than with their representational content, concepts. Basically, words are short-hand for concepts whose ease of use prevents us from being forced to think with the complex entities that concepts-as-things are
    6. A summary of what is to be observed in order to philosophise correctly.
      1. Lay aside all preconceptions
      2. Scrutinize (in the proper order) the notions we have within ourselves. Judge all those which we perceive clearly and distinctly to be true, and all others to be false.
      3. In so doing, we shall first observe that we exist insofar as it is our nature to think.
      4. Simultaneously, we shall observe that God exists, that we depend on him, and that we can discover the truth about the other things by considering his attributes, since he is their cause.
      5. Finally, we shall observe that apart from the notions of God and of our mind, there are also notions of eternally true propositions, a certain bodily nature (extension, divisible, capable of moving), and various sensations.
    7. That divine authority takes precedence over our perceptions; but othwerise it is inappropriate for a philosopher to accept anything which has not been perceived.
  10. Existence of Matter [Part 2: The Principles of Material Things (1-4)]
    1. On what grounds we know with certainty that material things exist.
      1. All our sensations come from a thing of some sort, which is distinct from our mind.
      2. This is because it is not in our power to bring it about that we have a sensation of one thing rather than of another.
      3. However, it can be asked whether this thing is God, or whether it is distinct from God.
      4. Under compulsion from our sensations, we clearly and distinctly perceive a certain matter, extended in length, breadth, and depth, etc.
      5. Let us now suppose that God revealed this idea of extended matter to our mind through his own immediate agency.
      6. If it is “absolutely inconsistent” with God’s nature to deceive us, then our clear and distinct perceptions of extended things must be true.
      7. And this extended thing is what we call body or matter.
    2. The same argument proves that one body is more closely united to our mind than other bodies are.
      1. The reason is because we observe that pains and other sensations come to us unexpectedly, and the mind is aware that they do not come from itself alone.
    3. Perceptions of the senses tell us not what is really in things, but what is good or bad for the human compound.
    4. The nature of body does not consist in weight, hardness, colour, etc. (as all these properties are based on some arbitrary effect they cause to the senses) but in extension alone.
  11. Nature takes on all possible forms [Part 3: The Visible Universe (47)]
    1. Previously in Part 3, Descartes has said enough to “provide the causes of all the effects which are observed in this world,” with maximum simplicity, intelligibility, and probability.
      1. Descartes once tried to explain how the present orderliness of things could be deduced by the laws of nature, from a primal chaos.
      2. However, a state of confusion seems less consistent with the supreme perfection of God than a proper arrangement.
      3. No ratio or order is simpler or more easily comprehensible than that which consists in everything being the same as everything else.
      4. Therefore I now suppose that, in the beginning, all particles of matter had the same size and motion.
      5. In general, it makes hardly any difference what is assumed as the initial state of the universe, since all subsequent changes must take place in accordance with the laws of nature.
      6. Thanks to these laws of nature, matter successively takes on all the forms of which it is capable.
      7. Consequently, if we consider these forms in proper order, we shall finally be able to arrive at the form of the world we currently live in.
  12. Sensation [Part 4: The Earth (188-195)]
    1. Why the machinic account of the Earth is not sufficient.
      1. So far I have described the Earth, and hence the whole visible world, as like a machine, taking account only of the shapes and motions in it.
      2. Yet our sensations reveal to us many other aspects of it, such as colours, smells, sounds, and the such like. If I were to say nothing at all about these, I would seem to have left out the main part of any account of natural things.
    2. The motions which the nerves set up in the brain affect the soul or mind which is intimately joined to the brain in different ways. These different affections of the mind (thoughts) are what we call sense-perceptions, or sensations.
    3. The distinction between sensations; on the internal sensations
      1. There are seven species of sensations, two internal and five external
      2. The first species of internal sensation is natural appetite, which involves nerves going to the stomach, gullet, throat, etc.
      3. The second species of internal sensation is emotions or passions, which involve nerves going to the heart and chest.
      4. All of these are a different species from the types of clear and distinct thoughts we might have about what is to be desired, etc.
    4. On the external senses; on touch.
      1. There are five external senses.
      2. Touch is the sense which relies on the nerves which end in the skin of the whole body.
      3. When these nerves are stimulated more forcefully than usual this gives rise to an additional sensation of pleasure or pain, (pleasure: because the mind is naturally pleased to receive evidence of the strength of the body to which it is closely united).
      4. From this it is obvious why bodily pleasure and pain are so little different from each other in the object, even though they are opposite sensations.
    5. Taste relies on nerves dotted around the tongue and the areas next to it.
    6. Smell relies on two nerves set in motion by particles forceful enough to pass through the mucous membrane after being drawn into the nostrils.
    7. Hearing relies on two nerves hidden in the innermost cavities of the ears, which receive the quivering and vibrating motions of all the surrounding air.
    8. The eyes rely on the optic nerves, which form the membrane in the eyes called the retina, and which are not moved there by the air or by any macroscopic bodies, but only by globules of the second element.
  13. Soul and Body [Part 4: The Earth (196-197)]
    1. The soul senses what happens to individual parts of the body by means of the nerves only insofar as it is in the brain.
      1. This is proved by the fact that diseases which affect only the brain obliterate or distort all sensation.
      2. The second proof is that, even if the brain is undamaged, we lose the sensation of parts of the body external to it if there is merely an obstruction of the routes by which the nerves connect them to it.
      3. The third proof is that we sometimes feel pain as in a certain part of the body even though there is no cause of pain in that part itself, but only in other parts through which the nerves pass en route to the brain. (e.g. phantom limb syndrome)
    2. The soul or mind’s various sensations can be stimulated in it by bodily motion.
      1. The writing point: “…words (whether spoken or merely written) can arouse absolutely any kind of thought or emotion in our minds.” [Actually, there is quite a beautiful passage that follows this, but is not quoted here.]
      2. The pain point: “A sword strikes against our body, and cuts it…This clearly shows that the sensation of pain is aroused in us simply by virtue of the fact that certain parts of our body are set in motion by contact with some other body.”
  14. Knowledge of Nature [Part 4: The Earth (198-207)]
    1. Our sensations reveal nothing to us in external objects apart from their shapes, sizes, and motions.
      1. We have no basis for concluding that anything at all reaches the brain apart from the motion of the nerves themselves.
      2. There is no way we can understand how size, shape, and motion can bring about something of a completely different nature from themselves, for example, those ’substantial forms’ and ‘real qualities’ which many people suppose to exist in things.
      3. Nor can we understand how these qualities or forms could subsequently have the power to cause motions in other bodies.
      4. Add also the observational evidence that in fact these various sensations are stimulated in the mind without our being able to detect anything passing from the external sense organs to the brain.
      5. We can then draw the general conclusion that we also have no basis for asserting that the things in external objects which we superstitiously reify with the names of light, colour, smell, taste, sound, heat, cold, and other tactile qualities (or even substantial forms), are anything other than the various dispositions of these objects, which bring it about that our nerves can move in various ways.
    2. No phenomena of nature have been omitted in this treatise: Size, shape, and motion are what count as phenomena of nature, given (14.a).
      1. Hence, objects themselves are nothing other than (or at least cannot appear to us as anything other than) various dispositions consisting in size, shape, and motion.
    3. Finally, these Principles on the complete nature of material things were formulated without using any principle at all which was not accepted by Aristotle, and by all other philosophers of all historical periods.
    4. There are imperceptible particles which make up bodies. Evidence: growth, decay.
      1. The reason we cannot sense these particles is that our nerves are not themselves so very small.
    5. The atomic philosophy of Democritus is similar to Descartes’, but with key differences.
      1. First, Democritus supposed that atoms were indivisible.
      2. Second, Democritus invented a vacuum surrounding them, whereas Descartes proved that a vacuum is impossible.
      3. Third, he endowed them with weight, whereas Descartes believes that weight is not a characteristic of any body considered in itself.
      4. Fourth, he failed to show how individual things arose from collisions of atoms alone.
    6. Descartes can explain the shapes and motions of insensible particles by using the method and inferring their behaviors from their macro- counterparts.
    7. It is sufficient that Descartes explain what insensible things /might possibly/ be like, even if they are not actually like that.
      1. One clockmaker can make two visibly identical clocks which tell the time equally well, which internally consist of completely different sets of wheels. Likewise, God could have made material existence work in many ways.
      2. Descartes claims, “I think I shall have achieved enough if what I have written is at least perfectly consistent with all the phenomena of nature.”
    8. These explanations, though they may contain some mechanical uncertainty, are at least morally certain, “are as certain as is necessary for the conduct of life.”
      1. Descartes claims that his objectors “perhaps overlook the fact that it would hardly be possible for so many factors to be mutually consistent if they were false.”
    9. Indeed, they are more than morally certain. They are absolutely certain insofar as they are built on a metaphysical foundation that God is completely good and utterly undeceptive.
      1. Assuming this is the case, the faculty he gave us for distinguishing the true from the false cannot lead us into error as long as we use it correctly, and perceive something distinctly by its means, which Descartes has.
    10. Caveat lector: “Nevertheless, I am aware of my weakness, and I affirm nothing. I submit everything I have written, both to the authority of the Catholic Church, and to the judgment of people who are wiser than myself. Nor would I wish anyone to believe anything which they are not convinced of by obvious and irrefutable reasoning.”
Written by Paul Tulipana, and posted to Sorglose Nacht on December 6, 2008
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Discourse on the Method

The following is an outline of a philosophical text which is provided with no claim with regard to it's accuracy or neutrality. Use freely, but at your own risk.

Overview

In the Discourse (on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences), Descartes explains, in an autobiographical way, both what the method is - how he came to it, what its principal rules are, and what moral guidelines he applied to himself while he engaged in using it (these were required by the deep skepticism inherent to the procedure) - and the results of the method - the existence of god and the soul, and from there a sort of survey of the great many things he has learned about the world. He closes with an apology for the publication, which entails explaining why he had forestalled publishing it thus far, why he was now publishing it, and finally that he was looking for someone to fund his continued research.

Three physical treatises were attached to the Discourse, presumably as bait to potential investors: the Optics, the Meteorology, and the Geometry. It is reasonable to assume that these were attached because they were safe - that is, non-heretical.

Outline

  1. Considerations on the Sciences
    1. Everyone thinks he has plenty of good sense; further, it is unlikely that they are all wrong, and much more likely that good sense and the power of reasonable judgement is in fact distributed with some equality among men.
      1. The challenge then, is not genetic (he lacks good sense), it’s pathological: We fail to apply the good sense with which we are endowed.
      2. Given this, Descartes, hapless though he is, has formed a method to ensure that he applies his finite sense, and hence has succeeded in accruing knowledge. He believes that this search for truth is perhaps the ultimate purpose of men.
      3. Also, because he doesn’t deign to prescribe the method, this discourse is merely a detailing of his attempts to rightly use his reason.
    2. The end and subsequent beginning Descartes’ education
      1. Descartes, maybe the smartest guy in the room at maybe the most prestigious school in Europe, realizes that for all his learning, he is still riddled with doubt and error.
      2. This is not to say that all this learning is worthless, but rather simply that it has limits.
      3. Among the disciplines of his study, he found the foundations of mathematics to be the most sturdy. And worse, even philosophy hadn’t reached any firm conclusions: everything seemed to be subject to doubt.
      4. Hence, Descartes resolved to travel the world and dedicate himself to the acquire only knowledge of himself and of practical matters. His travels made him skeptical of his beliefs, which were informed merely by custom and example, so when he settled down to look inward, he was ready.
  2. Principal Rules for the Method
    1. Descartes, trapped for the winter in an uninteresting German town, and remembering his belief in the superiority of a single auteur (e.g. in buildings, towns, civilizations, religions) over a consensus design realized that the way to fix his understanding was to sweep away its foundations, and start anew to develop a foundation wholly his own.
      1. Descartes admits that actually accomplishing this “clean sweep” is probably too difficult for most. In particular, he recommends it neither for people who are confident in their destination and the way there, nor for those who feel that they could simply be instructed by someone else.
      2. He himself would have been one of the latter, had it not occurred to him that his professors, all professional philosophers, and all the people of the world - despite their good use of reason - had failed to come to any agreed-upon certainties. This obviously disillusioned him rather badly.
    2. Acknowledging the danger of developing totally new foundations, Descartes wanted to be very careful - rather not get far, than get too far up the wrong track, he reasoned.
      1. Even in his beloved logic and mathematics did he see many false propositions entangled with the true ones; it was, certainly, going to be very hard to untangle these.
    3. With this established, he decided to attempt to set himself up with a framework from which to proceed. This framework would have to be carefully selected from the mess of precepts that constituted modern logic.
      1. First, never accept anything as true that he does not clearly know to be such.
      2. Second, divide any difficulties into the smallest possible units for resolution.
      3. Third, start with the things of which it is easiest to be certain.
      4. Fourth, enumerate completely and provide a synopsis so general as to be sure to omit nothing.
    4. These rules were abstracted to the most general form possible from the principles of what he saw as the only successful discipline in building truth-consensus: mathematics.
      1. They were also so incredibly powerful that within three months, he had not only answered many questions he thought would be exceedingly difficult, he had developed his general framework for determining the extent to which a solution was possible for /any/ problem.
      2. And despite his success, he would choose to waylay his investigation into the deeper problems of philosophy until he matured a bit (hence, the Meditations).
  3. Rules of Morals Deduced from the Method
    1. During the time that Descartes was tearing down and rebuilding his entire stock of knowledge, he provided himself with a temporary code of morals, knowing that while he had no knowledge to guide him he was liable to behave “infelicitously.”
    2. Descartes’ Provisional Moral Maxims
      1. Obey the laws and customs of his country (it was a matter of expediency that he chose his country’s mores, as opposed to Persian or Chinese ones, say).
        1. When there were many opinions held in equal repute, he chose the most moderate.
      2. Be as firm and resolute in his actions as he was able; once he’s adopted an opinion, he must adhere steadfastly to it.
        1. This principle was meant to rid him of any pangs of conscience he might feel in moments of uncertainty or weakness of resolve.
      3. Endeavor to conquer himself, not fortune; change his desires rather than trying to change the world, as - in general - his thoughts were the only thing under his power.
        1. Finally, having once again surveyed all professions, he knew that he should be most content in the culturing of his own reason, and in making progress toward knowledge.
    3. Now possessed of his ethical maxims, he boxes these up with his faith, and begins to roam during his journey inward, observing life, and trying to sift the doubtable from the doubtless.
      1. He roams for nine years, and, regardless of his growing reputation, will not set forth his findings…until now:
  4. The Existence of God and the Human Soul (The Metaphysics)
    1. Applying the method, Descartes intends to interrogate his (theological) belief; he is hoping he will find some “wholly indubitable” kernel in there. The structure of this chapter will anticipate many of the main arguments in the Meditations (although the treatment of dreams will be different).
    2. He begins by affirming his belief in himself, and by establishing what he believes himself to be.
      1. In doubting all of his beliefs, Descartes realizes that he - the one who doubts - must exist simply in order to doubt. Cogito ergo sum.
      2. Doubting everything else, Descartes can conclude that he is (something) and that he thinks. Therefore, he is the thinking thing (res cogitans).
      3. And since this thinking thing that he was seemed to have no particular need of the body that Descartes once thought was him, Descartes could be sure that the mind and the body were two distinct and separate entities.
    3. This established, he needed to inquire as to how to determine whether a proposition was true or false.
      1. Following the logical necessity of the cogito, Descartes concludes that true things are those which we conceive clearly and distinctly.
    4. In the next place, seeing that his being was not perfect (it lacked certain abilities of which he could conceive), he was led to inquire about why exactly he could conceive of a more perfect being.
      1. He could clearly recognize that this idea must have come from some nature that was perfect.
      2. As opposed to the objective (representational) content all of his other thoughts, which could have come from either nothing or from himself, a representational content which was in itself more perfect than he was seemed to entail some formal/in-itself reality out there which informed the content.
      3. Given this knowledge, Descartes could be sure that he was not the only being in existence, and further that he was necessarily at least in part dependent on some other being. If he was self-generated, he argues, why wouldn’t he have made himself perfect?
      4. Finally, given his own internal division (4.b.iii) and the necessary perfection of the other being (4.d.i-ii), he could be sure that the other being was bodiless, since division was the imperfection for which unity was the perfection. Hence, if anything existed corporeally, it was imperfect.
    5. However, Descartes was still doubtful of corporeal or material things in the world. Nothing thus far had given him any reason to believe in the “formal reality” (in-itself-ness) of anything but himself as the res cogitans and God.
      1. For example, the logical construct “triangle” did nothing to ensure Descartes that any embodied triangles existed.
      2. Alternately, the logical construct “God” entailed the property “existence” (as a being without the property of existence would be lacking something), so Descartes again proved the existence of God to himself.
    6. The Problem of Dreams: How do we know that the thoughts which occur in dreaming are false and the ones in waking are true when there’s often no sensory criterion for establishing their difference?
      1. Insofar as dreams are clearly and distinctly conceived, they come from the part of us that participates in the perfection of God; insofar as they are confused or obscure they emerge from the part of us that participates in pure negation. (Which might seem to imply Descartes’ belief in prophecying by dreams?)
        1. If, for example, a geometer solved a hard proof in a dream, that wouldn’t make it less solved.
        2. Further, insofar as our dreaming sensory content tends to deceive our senses, this doesn’t make them any different than our waking sensory content does: e.g.: square towers that appear round at a distance, perspective, temporary visual impairment by disease.
      2. But, at the end of the day, our reasonings are never so clear when we are asleep as when we are awake, “reason further dictates that, since all our thoughts cannot be true because of our partial imperfection, those possessing truth must infallibly be found in the experience of our waking moments rather than in that of our dreams.”
  5. The Physics
    1. Descartes’ method has led him to observe some natural laws.
    2. Rather than provide a compendious recollection of these laws, he will concentrate on light, and follow this with some observations about things in nature that “follow” from light (the sun, stars, comets, things on the earth).
      1. It is necessary, in any world that God would create, that matter would be arranged in such a way as to constitute the sky, starts, planets, earth, and comets.
      2. From there, he deduced things about the speed of light, and about the situation and motions of the stars, and found that there is nothing there that is not there necessarily.
      3. Then on to the earth, on which it is necessary that things have weight; and how the water and air are situated on it.
      4. This led to a serious look at fire, which was the only terrestrial source of light that he knew of, and its effects on the vision and on other materials.
    3. Looking at all this, Descartes determined that it was likely that God had set it all into place as a mechanism rather than just creating ex nihilo things as they are now; and that (anticipating an argument in the Meditations) it was the same kind of effort to create it as it was to preserve it moment to moment.
      1. However, he will not find this the case with man, finding it rather more likely that God had sculpted the body very much the same way we have it now at its introduction.
      2. In this pre-mental body’s heart, God lit a fire without light, “which I thought was not different from the heat in hay that has been heaped together before it is dry, or that which causes fermentation in new wines before they are run clear of the fruit.”
      3. God will then create the rational soul and locate it in the body, but to understand how, we need to look at the functions of the heart.
    4. Descartes takes some pains to describe the heart, under the guise of telling people what to look for when they take the trouble of getting some large animal dissected for their instruction.
      1. This culminates with a mechanical description of the heart pumping blood, of some recent findings in England about how perpetual circulation is possible, and of the motion of the blood in the body, the processes of nutrition.
      2. This really does go on for pages, culminating with a short discussion on “the generation of animal spirits” - which, continually ascending from the heart to the brain, penetrate the nerves which tell the muscles to move.
    5. Descartes marvels at God’s craftsmanship
      1. This fabric of nerves and animal spirits leads Descartes to ruminate about chickens with their heads cut off, and more importantly the brain in all its strange states: sleeping, waking, hunger, thirst, common sense, and the creation of ideas.
      2. If you’ve ever seen a mechanical automaton, he says, and seen how few parts it takes to make something move around, you can easily see how this dense network of organs, muscles, animal spirits, nerves, blood and bone can do this work much more impressively.
      3. Further, he imagines, should industry grow to the point where there were machines that resembled apes, it is conceivable that you wouldn’t know the difference between one and the other.
      4. On the other hand, should there be machines that resembled humans, you could still use two tests to determine whether you were dealing with a human or a machine:
        1. Humans are conversational, whereas machines could not be. (Funny: This is of course the Turing Test.)
        2. Machines would not act rationally, but “solely from the disposition of their organs.” (Organs: Like the gears of a clock.)
      5. The rationality distinction also applies between men and animals, for, Descartes notes “it is incredible that the most perfect ape or parrot of its species, should not in this be equal to the most stupid infant of its kind or at least to one that was crack-brained, unless the soul of brutes were of a nature wholly different from ours.”
    6. This all to five firm conclusions:
      1. The reasonable soul (a) does certainly exist in men, and (b) could not be a simple consequence of matter.
      2. (c) The soul of men is indeed different in nature than the souls of animals.
      3. Finally, in consequence of (5.f.i): (d) the nature of the soul is wholly independent from that of the body, and (e) is, as such and “because no other causes are capable of destroying it,” immortal.
  6. The Future Advancement of Science, using the Method (Descartes’ Pitch)
    1. Three years later: Finding just how useful the method was in learning things about the physical world provided Descartes with a sense of duty to publish it, in spite of his natural inclination not to (which stems from the Descartes-persona’s belief in “to each his own”).
    2. In his searches - starting with his certain knowledge of God - he has uncovered many things about the heavens and earth, and in fact “never observed any which I could not satisfactorily explain by the principles had discovered.” However, this does not entail that there are not other ways (outside of the method) of determining each of the things that Descartes has found.
      1. All the things he discovered (which were many and presumably include the Optics, the Meteorology, and The Geometry, all of which were published attached to the Discourse, and others, which he will not publish [out of a fear of being labeled a heretic]) are consequences of the first five or six principal difficulties he resolved (above).
      2. He now gives an incredibly long explanation of why it is more rewarding for other people to find out things for themselves, and why he is the best man to finish the work he started, as two pieces of evidence as to why he has not published his findings thus far.
    3. The reasons why he decided to publish some of these things were twofold:
      1. Despite some effort, he was getting a reputation, and thought it best to “save [himself] at least from being ill-spoken of.” Aka. To set the record straight.
      2. He - at this point - can’t continue to afford his obscurity - he needs funds to continue his experiments. Hence, he has chosen to publish several of his less racy findings, namely on Optics, Meterology, and Geometry, as proof that his method can attain results.
    4. He finally apologizes for writing in French rather than Latin, and closes with a disclaimer which states that he makes no assurances about the future advancement of science.
Written by Paul Tulipana, and posted to Sorglose Nacht on December 1, 2008
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Meditations on First Philosophy

The following is an outline of a philosophical text which is provided with no claim with regard to it's accuracy or neutrality. Use freely, but at your own risk.

Overview

Descartes takes on the most ambitious philosophical project since Genesis, here, through a series of careful meditations, and starting with a deep skepticism concerning the possibility of knowledge, Descartes (and the reader who shares his “I”) will establish the possibility of knowledge. Along the way, he will prove the existence of himself, God, and certain things in the world, in that order.

Note: I noticed that I sometimes slip into the Cartesian/Scholastic usage of “objective/formal reality”. Objective reality = representational content. Formal reality = intrinsic reality.

Outline

  1. Preface and Synopsis of the Six Meditations
    1. Preface: From Descartes’ request for objections to his discussion of God and mind in the Discourse came only two he found worth mentioning.
      1. Objection 1: If the mind does not comprehend itself as anything but a thinking thing, this does not actually entail that the mind is nothing but a thinking thing.
      2. Response 1: In the passage, he was concerned with mind as an object of his knowledge, not necessarily the mind as it was. In short, the only thing Descartes was aware of about himself essentially was that he was a thinking thing.
      3. Objection 2: Just because Descartes can think of something more perfect than himself, this (a) doesn’t entail that his idea is in fact more perfect than himself, (b) much less that the object of the idea exists.
      4. Response 2: Descartes wants to appeal to a concept of “idea” here that does not just mean an operation of the intellect, but some object represented by that operation. So much for (a). As to (b), if there is within Descartes an idea-object that is more perfect than himself, then the thing exists.
      5. The rest of Descartes’ interlocuters he considers “silly and weak.” Generally, he says, arguments that attack the existence of God rely either on anthropomorphizing God or on our ability to somehow limit what God can do.
      6. Here Descartes introduces the Meditations, and urges anyone unwilling to “meditate with [him]” to quit while they’re ahead. Onward, intrepid meditators!
      7. In outline, he will: (1) Set out the thoughts which have enabled him to arrive at his “certain and evident knowledge of the truth,” after which (2) he will reply to all worthy objections, which he solicited and received pre-press.
    2. Synopsis of the following six meditations
      1. In the first meditation, he will give reasonable grounds for doubting all things. This initial doubt will prevent us from later having to doubt our subsequent findings.
      2. In the second meditation, he will suppose the non-existence of all things about which the mind (note again that the “I” of the Meditations is always written as an indexical) can find any reason to doubt. This will be useful in distinguishing between those things which are properly of the mind and those properly of the body.
        1. He anticipates some concern about why he doesn’t prove herein the immortality of the soul. He then suggests that this will be impossible until the sixth meditation. Fair enough.
        2. Additionally he notes here that since we can easily conceive of half a body, but never of half a mind, these things are not only constitutionally different, but in fact opposed. That will be enough to prove that the decay of the body does not imply the destruction of the mind, which should give us hope for an afterlife, and, this established, the topic will not be further discussed herein.
        3. Preview of the rest of the immortality of the soul argument: Once we recognize that all substances are created by god and hence incorruptable, and we recognize that while the human body is composed of substances which are themselves incorruptable, it itself will decay, and that this is not the case with the mind, which is pure substance, the mind/soul will be immortal.
      3. In the third meditation, he will prove the existence of God. (Notice that he is proving this stuff on basically the same schedule that the Bible has God making the universe. Six days, and the one to rest.
        1. This will take place along the lines of Object/Response 2 (1.a.iii(b)-iv(b)) above: “the idea of God which is [perfect and] in us must have God himself as its cause.”
      4. In the fourth meditation, he will prove that everything we clearly perceive is true, and also the nature of falsity.
      5. In the fifth meditation, he will not only give an account of corporeal nature in general, he wil give a second argument demonstrating the existence of God.
        1. This second argument will hinge on the idea that certainty of anything (even geometry) depends on the knowledge of God.
      6. Finally, in the sixth meditation, he will finally prove that the mind is “really distinct” from the body, and also make an argument about the existence of material things (aka. that there really is a world).
        1. His special point here, which he notes is actually the point of the entire Meditations, is that actually knowing that there really is a world is much harder than knowing one’s own mind or God, and that the latter are indeed the most certain principles of human intellection.
  2. First Meditation: What can be called into doubt
    1. Descartes noticed a while ago that a lot of what he believed was dubious, and based on dubious premises. He’s been wanting to take some time, sit at his desk, and really think things out from the ground up. He’s going to start doing that today, right now.
    2. He’s going to start by attempting to let go of any of his opinions that are not completely certain and indubitable; in other words, if he can find a reason to doubt something, he will.
    3. His knowledge has been given thus far to him by the senses, but he knows that the senses are likely to deceive him.
      1. While this happens from time to time with small things, it seems rather unlikely that he’s being duped tout court by his senses, aka. that he is not sitting by the fire, etc.
      2. But then again, what about his dreams? In his dreams, he experiences things that are a lot like what he’s experiencing now, which turn out to be false. He’s not sure that he could really tell whether he’s awake or asleep.
      3. But dreams, as he experiences them, are representations - they are modeled at least in some distant way on real things. This seems to imply that certainly some things are real.
      4. It further seems that this class would include corporeal things in general: bodies with extensions, qualtiites, sizes and numbers.
      5. He concludes that there are certain kinds of truths (analytic truths) that are about absolutely general things. So if physics and astronomy can be objects of doubt, arithmetic and geometry seem quite certain.
    4. From there, he wonders if God is trying to trick him with his certainty about these things.
      1. If God is supremely good, however, there’s no reason to believe he’d want to trick us.
      2. But if we can say that God’s not tricking us all the time, you’d think it follows that he would never trick us. Yet this is patently not the case. I am sometimes wrong about the nature of things.
      3. Contrarily, if there is no omnicient God, and we arrived here by accidents or causality or something else non-teleological, God can’t to lend his credibility to our perceptions, and all the more likely that we’re constantly decieved.
      4. In the end, Descartes realizes that he can’t say that he is without doubt about his belief in God, so he’s going to have to start somewhere else.
    5. In order to deal with this, Descartes will attempt a reductio ad absurdum using the contradictory (rather than the contrary) position: That there is some malicious demon of the utmost power trying to decieve him.
      1. Descartes is going to have to steel himself to his new doubts, and figure out a way to not fall under the sway of his demon.
  3. Second Meditation: The nature of the human mind, and how it is better known than the body
    1. Assuming now that all his sense-data is spurious, it seems that the only certain thing is that nothing is certain.
    2. Ipseity
      1. But in order for me even to doubt, does not this require that I, at least, am something? But I have no senses and no body.
      2. Further, if I’ve convinced myself that there’s no world as such either, doesn’t that preclude my existence? I had to do the convincing, so I must have existed.
      3. But what if (3.b.i-ii) are just products of the deceiver: but indeed, who is he deceiving? But deceive me as he might, “he will never bring it about that I am nothing so long as I think that I am something.”
      4. Hence, necessarily: I exist.
    3. Res cogitans
      1. But what is, exactly, that exists? Descartes now needs to practice his method of doubt on what it is that his “I” is.
      2. Descartes used to think he was a man. But what does this mean? To define man “rational animal” replaces one vague term with two.
      3. How about this: Descartes thinks that he is a body-soul complex. His body moved around, and his soul engaged in sense-perception and thinking.
        1. He doubts his body, though, insofar at least as it is a think with a definable location and shape, and that it takes up space at the exclusion of other bodies.
        2. He also doubts his soul at least insofar as it concerns his body, that is, viz. nutrition, movement, and sense-perception. But wait. What about thinking? He can’t seem to doubt that his “I” is “thinking”.
        3. Hence, he is, he exists as long as he is thinking. He is certain - without relying on his imagination (as would be required for him to have a shape, an image, a self-representation) - a res cogitans.
      4. A res cogitans, Descartes doubts, understands, affirms, denies, is willing, is unwilling, imagines, and has sensory perceptions.
        1. Namely, he doubts almost everything, but who nonetheless understands something, which he affirms to be true, and hence denies everything else, desires to know more, is unwilling to be deceived, imagines many things, and is aware of many things which apparently come from the senses.
        2. Note that sensory perception and imagination are included precisely insofar as they are simply modes of thinking, regardless of the actuality of their content.
    4. Res extensa
      1. Despite all this certainty, it’s nagging him that the corporeal things which he doubts seem to be much more distinct than the “puzzling ‘I’” of which he is now certain. He’s going to now attempt to see if he can be certain about anything out in the world.
      2. It seems basic to everyone that we can understand something about particular bodies. Descartes contemplates a piece of wax.
        1. This piece of wax has some properties: it tastes faintly of honey, smells faintly of flowers, it is cold, hard, and of a certain color, shape and size.
        2. Then he puts the piece of wax in the fire. Suddenly, all its properties change. Despite this, though, the wax remains.
        3. Taking all the properties away, Descartes realizes that the essence of the piece of wax is simply that it is a body with extension, flexibility, and changeability.
          1. Alarmed by his tendency to conflate perceptions with intellectual judgement, Descartes pontificates that he does not actually see the men walking outside the window, he sees hats and coats and judges them to be men.
          2. Descartes is glad now that even though his judgement may still contain errors, his knowledge requires a human mind, rather than simple animal perception.
    5. The new character of perception
      1. Descartes realizes now that while the fact that he can judge that the wax to exist does not necessarily entail the wax’s actual existence, it seems to entail his own. Further, his knowledge of the wax seems to actually establish more firmly the nature of his own mind.
      2. And with this, he now knows that even bodies are not strictly perceived by the senses or imagination, but by the intellect which judges them. Given that, it is clear that it is easier and more evident to perceive one’s own mind than anything else.
  4. Third Meditation: The existence of God
    1. The third meditation begins with Descartes “casting about” for what other things he might be able to know with certainty.
      1. He realizes that insofar as he knows with certainty that he is the thinking thing, he must also know what it is for him to be certain about something: he must perceive (conceive is probably more accurate) it clearly and dinstinctly.
      2. To put a finer point on it, even if the sky, the earth and the stars do not exist, he can be certain that his ideas of them do. The source of his initial mistake was in thinknig that there were things outside of him which were the sources of and resembled his ideas.
    2. Now he recalls that when he previously opened things like arithmetic and geometry to doubt, he did so because it occurred to him that perhaps God was trying to trick him about even those things which seemed most evident to him.
      1. Clearly, the only way to handle this kind of a situation will be “to examine whether there is a God, and, if there is, whether he can be a deceiver.”
    3. Before we can begin such an investigation, however, Descartes will need to classify his thoughts into the kind that bear truth, and the kind that bear falsity.
      1. First sub-classification: picture-thinking/representation (think of a man, a chimera, the sky, an angel, God) [D calls these “ideas”] and another class - which seem to have another kind of conceptual content - exemplified by things like volitions, emotions, judgements.
        1. The former class, ideas, considered soley in themselves, canoot be false; Descartes imagining a chimera is just as true as Descartes imagining a goat (regardless of whether a chimera exists).
        2. To the latter class applies a similar logic: Whether or not Descartes desires something wicked or nonexistent, it is nonetheless true that he desires it.
        3. So the class of thoughts to really be wary of are judgements, and again, the most common mistake is to judge that your mental representations conform to the world.
      2. Second sub-classification: The first element of the previous classification (representations/ideas) can further be divided into three classes.
        1. Innate ideas from which truth seems to come.
        2. Accidental ideas: Representations from sensory experience (seeing the sun, feeling the fire).
        3. Invented ideas: Hippogriffs, sirens, chimeras.
    4. Now as to (4.c.ii.ii), why does Descartes incline to think that those resemble things?
      1. First of all, because “Nature taught [him] to think this”, and secondly because Descartes has these ideas whether he wants to or not: the fire just makes him feel hot. So the obvious explanation is that the thing in question transmits its likeness to Descartes.
      2. What it means when he says that Nature taught him to think that is that he had a spontaneous impulse which lead him to believe it. This is not nearly such solid ground as the “natural light” by which, say, the cogito was revealed to him.
      3. Secondly, just because his ideas don’t depend on his will doesn’t necessarly entail that they come from outside him. He could have some faculty inside him that produces them (e.g. the faculty that produces dreams).
      4. Finally, if these ideas did in fact come from things outside him, this doesn’t guarantee that the ideas will resemble the things. (For example, the sun looks quite small, and yet we know it is quite large. Both of these cannot resemble the sun itself.)
      5. Hence it was just some “blind impulse” that has led Descartes to believe up until now that there is some correspondence between his perceptions of things and the things themselves.
    5. Why a cause must be more perfect than its effect
      1. So, if a representation has both a subjective (mental) content and an objective content, then, regardless of the parity between the objective content as-represented and in-itself, a representation of something substantial seems to have more “objective reality” (more representational verisimilitude) than a representation of something “accidental.”
      2. By this same logic, a representation of God would have more “objective reality” than a representation of a given finite substance.
      3. Additionally, (this is sort of the Aristotelian argument) there must be as much of this “objective reality”/perfection in the total cause of effect n as in n itself.
      4. And hence, something cannot arise from nothing and the cause must be more perfect than the effect. This also holds for ideas.
      5. This entails that to have an idea of heat, it must be put there by a thing - heat - which is more perfectly “heat” than my mental representation of it.
      6. So, while a representation itself may require no formal reality except that which it derives from thought, in order for a /representation/ to contain some of this “objective reality” (representational verisimilitude), it must derive from a cause with at least as much formal/intrinsic reality as there is represented in my idea of the thing (insofar at least as something cannot emerge from nothing).
      7. “For just as the objective mode of being belongs to ideas by their very nature, so the formal mode of being belongs to the causes of ideas…by their very nature.”
      8. Further, as there cannot be an infinite regress, we’re going to require a “primary idea”, which will provide the “reality” for the subsequent chain of causal ideas.
    6. Isolating the primary causes of certain effects, and how we find out that Descartes is not alone.
      1. Now, let’s say Descartes has an idea whose objective reality turns out to be so great, that he can be sure that the same reality does not formally or immanently reside inside himself. Well, we know by the chain of reasoning above that Descartes is incapable of causing this idea. This means: Descartes is not alone.
      2. Examining the catalog of his ideas, Descartes finds ideas of himself, God, corporeal and inanimate things, angels, animals, and other men like himself.
        1. Of these, ideas which represent men, animals, and angels can be constructed from the ideas he has which represent himself, corporeal things, and God.
        2. Of the remaining, he can find nothing in his representations of corporaeal things that entails anything too great to have originated in himself. (Remember, all he can really say that he knows are that bodies have extention, motion, substance, duration, number.) Other properties: light, color, sound, smell, taste, temperature, he finds muddled and hence dubious, material falsities in which he may be representing non-things as things.
          1. In short, if his ideas about corporeal things are false, they are in fact only effects of a deficiency in his representational apparatus, whereas if they are true, the reality they represent is so slight that he can’t even distinguish them from non-things. Further all of the properties he can know about anything, he also finds in himself.
        3. All that remains now is the idea of God. And since his idea of god contains things like infinitude, omnicience, omnipresence, etc. it becomes increasingly hard to believe that ideas of these things could have possibly originated in him, who is finite, of limited intelligence, and localized in space.
          1. Further, since there is more (formal/perfect) reality in an infinite substance than in a finite one, it must be that his concept of the infinite preceded or caused his concept of the finite.
          2. How, he asks, could he have understood his own imperfections except by comparison to an idea of perfection?
          3. Descartes anticipates an objection here by suggesting that his concept of God is “utterly clear and distinct, and contains in itself more objective reality than any other idea…” and hence is less liable to be “suspected of falsehood.”
          4. The clarity of his concept of god then, relies not on his ability to grasp the manifold qualities of the infinite, but rather on his very ability to grasp “infinitude” as such. (One has to break impartial character here to ponder how Descartes could possibly imagine that he comprehended infinitude more clearly than coldness. Selah.)
      3. Descartes, in his weaker moments, however, still seems to find himself pondering the validity of the causal relationship between his idea of god and the actual god. He thinks he can close this nagging doubt down by working to prove that without such a being, he himself could not exist.
        1. If Descartes was the cause of his own existence, how would he desire anything?
        2. Given that it is much easier for him to acquire knowledge than it would been for him to emerge out of nothingness, it seems like if he could do the latter, he would have just given himself the former, and we wouldn’t need the meditations.
        3. As he imagines would be clear to anyone who considers the nature of time, there is no actual difference between creating something and preserving it from moment to moment.
          1. And if this is the case, by what power is Descartes preserved? How does it come about that I who exist now will exist a little while from now? Descartes experiences no such power in himself. Hence, again, Descartes is certain that he is not alone.
          2. But why can’t we just say that Mr. and Mrs. Descartes (or some other mundane, existential cause) produced Descartes? Well, we might be able to, but what caused them? At the end of the chain, no matter how you slice it, whatever is responsible for the effect Descartes is a cause that actually contained within it those ideas which are the mental-genetic inheritance of Descartes.
          3. And further, if there is no difference between creation and preservation, and no one can we say that Mr. and Mrs. Descartes are responsible for preserving Descartes at the present moment.
        4. But what if all these ideas (infinitude, omniscience, omnipresence, etc) actually derive from a variety of disparate causes, and have no unified locale? Ah, Descartes tells us, but the unity of these causes is the most important idea I have about God’s perfection.
      4. Finally, given a “very clear proof that God exists”, Descartes sets out to determine how exactly he received this idea of God.
        1. It wasn’t from his senses: It didn’t come to him unexpectedly.
        2. It wasn’t invented by him: He can’t add or take away perfections from it at will.
        3. All that remains is that the concept of god is innate in him, right alongside with the concept of himself.
      5. To recapitulate: “I recognize that it would be impossible for me to exist with the kind of nature I have - that is, having within me the idea of God - were it not the case that God really existed.” (51-52)
      6. Finally, since God has after all necessarily turned out to be the thing with all the perfections, as opposed to Descartes’ posited demon, we can throw away the idea that God is out to trick Descartes. But why then is Descartes sometimes wrong?
  5. Fourth Meditation: Truth and falsity
    1. Given Descartes’ clear knowledge of himself, and of God, and of the fact that God is not trying to trick him, Descartes thinks that he can see a way forward to knowledge of the things in the world.
    2. Certainly, Descartes received his faculty of judgement - like all of his faculties - from God, which implies that as long as he’s using the faculty correctly, it shouldn’t deceive him.
      1. Nonetheless, Descartes is indeed prone to countless errors. He also believes that this is because his ontological status is decidedly in between pure positivity/being/God, and pure negativity/nothingness, and it is exactly insofar as he participates in this nothingness that he is himself lacking, and hence capable of wrongness.
      2. However, this can’t be the whole story, since error is not a pure ontological negation, but rather an epistemic lack or privation.
    3. But this doesn’t really gel with Descartes’ idea of a God, who would inevitably see no reason to give him an imperfect faculty of judgement.
      1. First, Descartes has to humbly admit that he doesn’t understand the reasons for all of God’s actions, and further, based on knowing his own finite nature, Descartes finds the search for such first causes useless.
      2. Second, when we look at the works of God, perhaps we should be considering the perfection of the totality rather than the assumed imperfection of a part. In short, perhaps the imperfection of Descartes’ judgements is simply a distortion of his limited perspective.
    4. On further reflection, Descartes notices that all of his errors stem from both his faculty of knowledge or his faculty of choice/free will simultaneously.
      1. Again, Descartes appeals to the fact that, ultimately, how much knowledge God chose to give him was up to God.
      2. On the other hand, he knows from experience that his free will is perfectly free or unrestricted (his free will is in fact the most extreme case of his internal infinitude Descartes can unearth).
      3. So, if Descartes can imagine a greater intellect, but not a greater faculty of free will. This leads him to believe that the source of his mistakes is not in fact his perfect (although limited) understanding, and certainly not his perfect freedom of choice, but rather, his inability to correctly scope the use of his intellection. Namely, his problem is that he tries to extend his intellect to matters he does not understand.
        1. On free will, Descartes notes that the more one inclines in one direction, the more one experiences freedom of will; indifference, he says, is the lowest grade of freedom.
      4. Hence his indifference about, say, matters of corporeal existence.
    5. For Descartes, then, the ethical choice is to refrain from judgement concerning all matters about which he cannot perceive the truth with sufficient clarity and distinctness. (He terms this “incorrect use of the free will.”)
      1. At the end of the day, he then decides that in those instances in which he errs, it is his own fault for overextending the finite intellect which is his lot as a finite, created being.
      2. The fact that his free will (which has longer arms than his intellect) allows him to overextend his intellect, further, certainly can’t be blamed on God.
        1. Despite this, Descartes can’t help noting that God /could have/ given him a perfectly clear intellect, or else the perfect ability to refrain from judgement when his knowledge was imperfect.
        2. And again, had God done so, Descartes feels that he would have been a more perfect man, which doesn’t necessarily imply a more perfect universe.
        3. And we end up with Descartes’ important ethical maxim: “…if, whenever I have to make a judgement, I restrain my will so that it extends to what the intellect clearly and distinctly reveals, and no further, then it is quite impossible for me to go wrong.” (62)
  6. Fifth Meditation: The essence of material things, and the existence of God considered a second time
    1. Descartes first sets for the inventory his thoughts, and see which thoughts of material things are clear and distinct.
      1. (1) Extension in space, (2) the number of parts of a thing, and (3) the sizes, shapes, positions, and motions of the parts all seem to fit the bill.
        1. Even more than that, when Descartes imagines geometrical figures, even if they have never existed outside of him, he is convinced that these figures have a determinate, immutable nature independent of his mind.
        2. Now, remembering that whatever is true must be (a) something, and that (b) Descartes must be clearly and distinctly aware of it. He has always imagined that abstract mathematical truths are among this class.
      2. Another thing which meets these two critera (6.a.i.ii.a-b) for truthiness is God.
        1. Descartes is clearly and distinctly aware of his idea of God, and part of his idea of God is that God exists (in other words, without existing, God would certainly be imperfect).
        2. However, just because Descartes can picture a mountain and a valley, that don’t necessarily make a mountain and a valley exist in the world. However, this actually ends up working in God’s favor; in the same way mountain-valley is a logical entailment, so is God-existence. So, while Descartes is free to picture a horse with or without wings, he is not free to picture a God without the property of existence (God exists essentially).
    2. After his longish second proof of God’s existence, Descartes quickly concludes that he can no longer be persuaded by the argument he set forth before (viz. dreaming: cf. 2.c.ii).
      1. Given that (1) the certainty and truth of all his knowledge depends on his certainty of God, and particularly now that (2) he has a criterion for separating the true from the false - namely, when he understands something to be clear and evident - Descartes can no plainly see that knowledge is possible on countless matters, including elusive matters of corporeal nature.
  7. Sixth Meditation: The existence of material things, and the real distinction between the mind and the body
    1. Now what remains is to determine that material things exist. At least they are capable of existing, insofar as they are the subject of pure mathematics.
    2. Imagination, it occurs to Descartes, seems to be nothing more than the application of cognition to a body which - in being “intimately present to it” - must exist.
      1. There is a distinction to be drawn between imaginging (a triangle, which entails a mental picture) with a thousand-sided figure (which entails no mental picture); it is the effort which is entailed in drawing a mental picture which clues Descartes to this difference.
      2. Further, he thinks that his power of imagining is not essential to himself, unlike his power of understanding.
      3. This can be described as such: When the mind understands, it turns toward itself, and when it imagines, it turns outward, toward a body.
      4. Given this, it seems probable that since we can be sure of our faculty of imagination, we can be sure of the body which enables it. Although this is still only a probable conjecture.
    3. Now we turn to sensory perception:
      1. What the pre-Meditations Descartes thought about the objects of sensory perception.
        1. He thought that he had a body: head, hands, feet, etc. and that this was himself.
        2. He also gauged that his body could be affected by other bodies to feel sensations.
        3. Among these sensations was one, sight, that seemed to allow him to distinguish other bodies out there in the world.
        4. He also figured that these things were real things and not part of his mind, and that his ideas resembled these things.
        5. Further he figured that one of these bodies was his, and that this one seemed to be able to provide some sensations that corresponded with his mental states.
        6. All this he believed de facto, without ever really sitting down at his desk and figuring out whether it was true or not.
      2. Why he doubted (7.c.i)
        1. His faith in the senses was undermined. Things that looked round from a distance appeared square closer up, etc.
        2. Not only his external sense either. Here he appeals to phantom limb syndrome; he couldn’t even be sure that when he was feeling pain, the pain was true.
        3. No sensory experience he has ever had seems to be exclusive to waking or to dreaming, and hence, he couldn’t find a compelling reason to believe his waking experiences were caused in any way different than his sleeping ones (that is, by his mind).
        4. He also simply couldn’t rule out that his natural constitution was prone to error, since he didn’t know his maker “(or at least was pretending not to).”
        5. Finally, he had no trouble refuting his old (7.c.i) beliefs.
      3. What he now believes about them
        1. Everything that he clearly and distinctly understands corresponds exactly with his understanding of it. (If he perceives two things to be distinct, they are distinct, since they are “capable of being separated, at least by God.”
        2. Given that, and that he is clearly and distinctly aware of himself as the res cogitans and also of (distinctly) a body, it is certain that he is distinct from his body, and can exist without it.
        3. Further, he can clearly and distinctly understand himself without appeal to his faculties of sensory perception and imagination, but not vice versa.
        4. The passive faculty of sensory perception requires another, active faculty to enabe its use and hence to produce his sense-perceptions. This faculty is clearly not in him, since he doesn’t have to be in any way active to active sensory perception. Therefore, it must have been created by another something.
        5. This other something, then, must be another substance that contains either formally (intrinsically) or immanently all the reality which exists objectively (as representational content) in the ideas produced by Descartes’ imagination (cf. 4.e).
        6. So, finally, the cause of these representations either has to be a body that intrinsically contains the reality which the representations represent it having, or else it’s God, in which case that reality is immanent.
        7. Which seems to finally lead us to the fact that if God isn’t deceiving us, why would we have ideas of corporeal things that are actually transmitted immanently by God.
        8. Hence, corporeal things exist, whether or not my representations reflect them perfectly. (Again the criterion for determining whether they do or not is a clear and dinstinct understanding).
    4. Hence, there is no doubt that everything Descartes is taught by nature contains some truth. Here are the things that nature seems to be most clearly teaching:
      1. Descartes has a body.
      2. Descartes is closely joined to his body (via pain, etc.)
      3. Other bodies besides Descartes’ exist, which are different from each other, and differently attractive to Descartes, and hence can affect him/his body.
    5. However, Descartes has also to use his infamous criterion to distinguish these things with things that are results of his history of ill-considered judgements. Examples of the latter:
      1. That space in which nothing is occurring to stimulate his senses is empty.
      2. That color, temperature, taste, etc. are present in bodies and not in Descartes.
    6. (7.d-e) has taught Descartes that while sense-perceptions may be inevitable, it was not “taught to him by nature” to just blindly trust them without the help of intellection.
      1. And hence, he can conclude, that sense-perception was given to him precisely to ward of those things that are harmful to the complex (body-mind) of which the mind is a part, and hence are only sufficiently clear and distinct with regards to this task.
      2. But what about when a man eats a poision cookie? Why is sense-perception capable of being tricked? Simply, we appeal again, because of its finitude.
      3. But what about a sick person who eats, and then pays the price? Well, says Descartes, a badly made clock observes the same laws of nature a well-made one does. But this doesn’t exactly justify God’s divine will that nature can trick us in this way.
        1. First, the body is divisible, and the mind is not.
        2. Second, the mind is not affected by all the parts of the body, just the brain (or even a small part of the brain).
        3. Third, Descartes notes that, e.g. the foot is connected to the brain by nerves. However, he says, you could cause the same sensation by pulling on that same nerve somewhere in the calf, or torso, or neck, or whatever.
        4. Finally, any movement in the part of the brain that immediately affects the mind can produce just one corresponding sensation. Hence, Descartes imagines that God has designed a system that chooses the statistically best possible sensation for a person’s continued health and well-being.
        5. Hence, when a sick person gets the signal to eat, this is just the most statistically probable signal to continue the good health of the body.
      4. Hence, “notwithstanding the immense goodness of God” the body-mind complex is bound to mislead us from time to time for purely mechanical reasons.
    7. Descartes now decides that since he can rely at least statistically on his senses, and with even greater reliability on a complex of senses-memory-intellect.
      1. Accordingly, the dream-reality confusion (2.c.ii) can now be dismissed in light of the fact that he’s just noticed that his dreams are not linked up in his memory in the same way his waking actions are.
      2. And finally, he can be sure that, using a sense-memory-intellect complex, and remembering that God’s not out to trick him, he should be completely free from error.
      3. Of course, he doesn’t have time to sit down and think about everything he does before he does it, so in practice he will continue to make errors, but that’s just life.
Written by Paul Tulipana, and posted to Sorglose Nacht on November 27, 2008
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