1 Descartes (1596-1650)

1
1Descartes (1596-1650)
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Introduction

• Main (philosophical) works
• Discourse (1637)
• Meditations (1641)
• Principia Philosophicae (1644)

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Methodology

• Introspection and anti-elitism
• My plan has never gone beyond trying to reform
  my own thoughts and construct them upon a
  foundation which is all my own. (Discourse on the
  Method CSM I 118)
• Good sense is the best distributed thing in the
  world the power of judging well and of
  distinguishing the true from falsewhich is what
  we properly call good sense or reasonis
  naturally equal in all men, and consequently that
  the diversity of our opinions does not arise
  because some of us are more reasonable that
  others but solely because we direct our thoughts
  along different paths and do not attend to the
  same things. (Discourse on the Method CSM I 111)

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• Break away from the Scholastic tradition
• And if I am writing in French, my native
  language, rather than Latin, the language of my
  teachers, it is because I expect that those who
  use only their natural reason in all its purity
  will be better judges of my opinion than those
  who give credence only to the writings of the
  ancients. (Discourse on the Method CSM I 151)

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Cartesian Feminism

• Poullain de la Barre (1647-1723)
• Published anonymously in 1673 On the Equality of
  the Two Sexes.
• (Poullain de la Barre (2002). Three Cartesian
  Feminist Treatises. U. of Chicago Press)
• He brings Cartesian objectivity to gender issues
  in addressing cultural inequalities between the
  sexes.
• By systematically employing Cartesian methodology
  Poullain rejected tradition as a means of dealing
  with the issues of feminism.

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• Based on Descartes cogito argument that
  establishes the superiority o the mind over the
  body, Poullain extended the challenge of rational
  thinking to the polemic of sex and gender.
• Since the mind has no sex, discrimination between
  the sexes could not be accepted as the truth
  whether enshrined by tradition or not.
• The female gender carried as much intellectual
  potential as its male counterpart because a lack
  of physical strength had no correlation with a
  weaker mind.
• Only customs and traditions have predetermined
  women subordinate status.

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• Fallacious argument
• This is the way things have always been done,
  therefore they should be done this way.
• Had women been allowed to engage in public
  responsibilities, they would never have been
  excluded from it in the first place.
• To hold to custom and usage because they are
  sanctioned by time (and male privilege) is pure
  prejudice.
• Poullain arguments apply to class distinction as
  well
• How many peasants might have become renewed
  scholars if they had been given a chance?

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Descartes Innovation/Main Contribution

• Mathematics is Central
• Scientific Revolution
• Break away from Scholastics
• Philosophical Knowledge
• (i) unity
• (ii) purity and
• (iii) certainty

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The Method of Doubt

• Descartes Method. Anti-elitist truth is not
  reserved to highly trained minds.
• Method of Doubt. An epistemological enterprise.
  The malicious demon and the dream argument.
• So, for the purpose of rejecting all my opinion,
  it will be enough if I find in each of them
  opinions at least some reason for doubt. And to
  do so I will not need to run through them all
  individually, which would be an endless task.
  Once the foundations of a building are
  undermined, anything built on them collapses of
  its own accord so I will go straight to the
  basic principles on which my former beliefs
  rested. (First Meditation CSM II 17)

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• I thought it necessary to do the very opposite
  and reject as if absolutely false everything in
  which I could imagine the least doubt, in order
  to see if I was left believing anything that was
  entirely indubitable. Thus, because our senses
  sometimes deceive us, I decided to suppose that
  nothing was such as they led us to imagine. And
  since there are men who make mistakes in
  reasoning, committing logical fallacies
  concerning the simplest questions in geometry,
  and because I judged that I was as prone to error
  as anyone else, I rejected as unsound all the
  arguments I had previously taken as demonstrative
  proofs. Lastly, considering that the very
  thoughts we have while awake may also occur while
  we sleep without any of them being at that time
  true, I resolved to pretend that all the things
  that had ever entered my mind were no more true
  than the illusions of my dreams. But immediately
  I noticed that while I was trying thus to think
  everything false, it was necessary that I, who
  was thinking this, was something. And observing
  that this truth I am thinking, therefore I
  exist was so firm and sure that all the most
  extravagant suppositions of the sceptics were
  incapable of shaking it, I decided that I could
  accept it without scruple as the first principle
  of the philosophy I was seeking. (Discourse on
  the Method CSM I 126-7)
• Within the methodology of doubt, the malicious
  demon is merely supposed/posited for the sake of
  the argument.

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The Cogito Argument

• The First Principle. This brings a stop to the
  doubt.
• I have convinced myself that there is absolutely
  nothing in the world, no sky, no earth, no mind,
  no bodies. Does it follow tat I too do not exist?
  No if I convinced myself of something then I
  certainly existed. But there is a deceiver of
  supreme power and cunning who is deliberately and
  constantly deceiving me. In that case I too
  undoubtedly exist if he is deceiving me and let
  him deceive me as much as he can, he will never
  bring it about that I am nothing so long as I
  think that I am something. So after considering
  everything very thoroughly, I must finally
  conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, is
  necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me
  or conceived in my mind. (Second Meditation CSM
  II 16-7)

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• At least as I have discovered itthought this
  alone is inseparable from me. I am, I existthat
  is certain. But for how long? For as long as I am
  thinking. For it could be that were I totally to
  cease from thinking, I should totally cease to
  exist. (Second Meditation CSM II 18)
• The cogito argument does not rest on the standard
  syllogistic reasoning
• (1) Whatever is thinking exists
• (2) I am thinking
• So (3) I exist
• When someone says I am thinking, therefore I
  am, or I exist, he does not deduce existence
  from thought by means of a syllogism, but
  recognizes it as something self-evident by a
  simple intuition of the mind. This is clear from
  the fact that if he were deducing it by means of
  a syllogism, he would have to have had previous
  knowledge of the major premiss. (Second Set of
  Replies CSM II 100)

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• Why not I see, I exist or I walk, I exist?
• For example, I am not seeing light, hearing a
  noise, feeling heat. But I am asleep, so all this
  is false. Yet I certainly seem to see, to hear,
  and to be warmed. This cannot be false what is
  called having a sensory-perception is strictly
  just this, and in this restricted sense of the
  term is simply thinking. (Second Meditation CSM
  II 19)
• It seems that I see ? I think
• It seems that I see, so I exist ? I think,
  so I am

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Is the Cogito an Inference?

• When someone says I am breathing, therefore I
  exist, if he wants to prove he exists from the
  fact that there cannot be breathing without
  existence, he proves nothing, because he would
  have to prove first that it is true that he is
  breathing, which is impossible unless he has also
  proved that he exists. But if he wants to prove
  his existence from the feeling of the belief he
  has that he is breathing, so that he judges that
  even if the opinion were untrue he could not have
  it if he did not exist, then his proof is sound.
  For in such a case the thought of breathing is
  present to our mind before the thought of our
  existing, and we cannot doubt that we have it
  while we have it. (Letter to Reneri for Pollot,
  April or May 1638 CSMK III 98)
• Qualia (sensations)
• are central, self-reflection, introspection

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External World

• If external objects exist, their true nature is
  perceived by the intellect, not by the senses
  (which can deceive us). Hence introspection is
  crucial.
• Thus, the importance in Descartes of the system
  of ideas.

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Grasping/Entertaining Ideas of Substances

• One does not grasp a substance per se one grasps
  a property of that substance.
• When we come to the mind qua substance, though,
  the property one grasps of that substance is its
  thinking property.
• An idea may not represent a thing in the real
  world, yet when one entertains an idea one cannot
  not seem to have an idea.

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• Reply to Gassendi
• You Gassendi make an incidental criticism as
  follows although I have not admitted that I have
  anything apart from a mind, I nevertheless speak
  of the wax which I see and touch, and yet this is
  impossible without eyes and hands. But you should
  have noticed that I had carefully pointed out
  that I was not here dealing with sight and touch,
  which occur by mean of bodily organs, but was
  concerned solely with the though of seeing and
  touching, which, as we experience every day in
  our dreams, does not require these organs. (Reply
  to Gassendi Fifth Set of Replies CSM II 249)
• Scepticism From It seems that I perceive we
  cannot infer the existence of the external world.

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• I think, I am qua Scientific Starting Block
• Ontological Commitment. Ontology deals with the
  part of metaphysic concerning the question what
  kind of things there are.
• Quines slogan to be is to be the value of a
  variable.
• Entities of a given sort are assumed by a
  theory if and only if some of them be counted
  among the values of the variables, in order that
  the statements affirmed in the theory be true.
  (Quine 1953)

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• Quining Descartes
• With the cogito argument one is ontologically
  committed to the existence of oneself qua
  thinking thing.
• In order to be successful in committing
  ourselves to the existence of other things our
  theory must ultimately rely on the first
  principle (the cogito) and brings in only other
  indubitable, necessary, truths.
• Descartes will appeal to God and this appeal can
  be seen to be scientifically driven.

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The Self

• Myself qua Substance
• From the mere fact that each of us understands
  himself to be a thinking thing and is capable, in
  thoughts, of excluding from himself every other
  substance, whether thinking or extended, it is
  certain that each of us, regarded in this way, is
  really distinct from every other thinking
  substance and from every corporeal substance.
  (Principles of Philosophy 1. 60 CSM I 213)
• Main Question. How do we escape from the realm of
  subjective-self awareness?
• God enters the picture.