René Descartes (A.D.

1596 -1650)
Discourse on Method & Meditations

Slide: Key Words

• Cartesian: relating to Descartes and his ideas (adjective)

• Indubitable: not open to doubt
• Introspect: to look inward, to examine oneself
• Ubiquitous: found everywhere
• Intuition: the immediate grasp of a truth for which no further reason needs to be
given

Slide: Bio

Educated in Jesuit schools and instructed in mediaeval philosophy

After graduating, thinks all philosophy is doubtful
Prefers mathematics for its precision and certainty and wants to put philosophy on a
similar footing
Discourse on Method (1637): outline of his method
Meditations (1641): more detailed

The Search for a New Foundation

• Tear down the house of scholastic philosophy built on shaky foundations (pg. 8)
• Get rid of all mere opinion and custom and nd something I can know for certain.

Everyone thinks that he’s right… I want proof. Not just prejudice, custom, and
opinion.
If philosophy is shaky, the entire house falls
establish lasting foundations for order
Rejection of authority…just because you’re told is not good enough.
Building metaphor: He resolves not to build on old foundations, or to lean upon
principles which, he had taken on faith in his youth.
example and custom are not enough! Most prior philosophy is just elevated
custom…opinions which have become habitual, widely held.
He doesn’t want to be governed by appetites and teachers, but by reason.

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Mathematics… rmly founded.

“I compared the writings of the ancient pagans that deal with morals to very proud
and very magni cent palaces that were built on nothing but sand and mud.” Pg 5

Distinguish the true from the false…(this is his project)

Search for foundations!!

“Concerning philosophy I shall say only that, seeing that it has been cultivated for
many centuries by the most excellent minds that have ever lived and that,
nevertheless, there still is nothing in it about which there is not some dispute, and
consequently nothing that is not doubtful…” (pg 5)

NOTICE THIS:

The prime or principal philosophical question for Descartes is:

What do I know? What can I know beyond doubt?

The possibilities of knowledge.

That’s not necessarily the starting point of Plato or Aristotle or Aquinas. They start
with something more like: what is there?

They ask about being.

The question about knowing is not the rst question they ask.

But for Descartes, it is absolutely rst. He asks about knowing. He wants to know what
he can know with certainty.

Aristotle, Plato, Aquinas presuppose the fact of knowing. They have theories about
how knowing takes place, but that isn’t rst. It’s within the context of a larger
philosophical enterprise which doesn’t doubt the possibility of knowing.

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 But here Descartes seeks a new foundation. For him, the question about knowledge
is the starting point and nothing more in philosophy is possible until this question is
settled:

Can I know anything?

• Set the whole house of philosophy on a new foundation.

• The question is: what kind of foundation?

“Whatever I have up till now accepted as most true I have acquired either from the
senses or through the senses” (7:18)

NOT sensation.
Remember Aristotle…. The Aristotelian model was broadly accepted. It’s what
Descartes inherited.
But he thinks it’s not good enough.
Based on sensation. Everything in the intellect is rst in the senses.
But sensation, as we will see, is not reliable. It can be false and confused. The
certainty we want is not to be found there.

Thought as Foundation

• He nds the foundation within himself

• He isolates himself (pgs. 6-7) and goes within his own mind

NOTICE how different this process is from the philosophers we’ve looked at so far. It’s
worth spending time thinking about this.

RETREAT from external chaos into the peace and order of the mind.

Socrates and the Greek philosophers engaged in dialogue… that’s where they did
their philosophizing. Descartes retreats from the world and all those contradictory
opinions and philosophizes on his own.

INDIVIDUAL reason is adequate for the discovery of real truth.

TURN TO THE SUBJECT

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Posture of philosophy: positions himself alone. Solitary thinker considering radical
questions.

Potent conception of the philosopher and the practice of philosophy

It was not always so. Different ways of considering the position of the philosopher, in
the midst of a community of re ection and deliberation, mutual questioning. Didn’t
we see that in Socrates? How different this is?

Socrates interrogates people. He goes out. He looks for a truth independent of

himself, greater than himself: acknowledging what he doesn’t know and then looking
for it beyond himself.

What Descartes is doing is EXACTLY the opposite. Faced with under certainty, he
doesn’t look out. He doesn’t investigate the world or interrogate people. He
RETREATS. And in his isolation, he introspects.

Introspection. He interrogates himself!!! This is crucial to his method.

Remove himself as far as possible from the world, from human community, and there
to perform a thought experiment, with these ambitious goals which stand at the head
of the rst meditation: the existence of God and the distinction of the human soul
from the body.

He compares himself to a man walking in the pitch dark, feeling his way around
slowly.

It is from his isolation In the midst of the destruction of his identity, that he hopes to
forge this new conception of God, the world, and himself.

He sheds what is most personal to him, his connectedness to the world and the
voices of others, and to his own beliefs and convictions.

Extricate himself from human mess

Cartesian starting point and ambition are strangely inhuman….. rebellion against the
uncertainties and dif culties of human life. Intolerance of the unresolved and the
inherently ambiguous. Yearning for a kind of purity.
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 All indistinctness and indecision removed, and everything stands revealed in a new
and irresistible clarity. You don’t have to be Descartes to have thought in this way…
puri cation of life and being through reduction… refusal of the ordinary.

Iris Murdoch, English novelist and philosopher, said in one of her lectures: It’s always
an important question to ask of any philosopher: what is he or she afraid of?

This might be helpful for understanding Descartes.

He’s afraid of the human mess. He wants a philosophical system which is

independent of human opinion, of human society, objective, veri able, indubitable.

The question we have to ask: is it reasonable to seek that kind of foundation? Does it
belong to human beings to have a clear intuition or logical demonstration of all
things, or do we have to proceed on something like trust or faith?

Is this a human way of proceeding?

• On what he knows intuitively he will rebuild knowledge through a process of

reasoning.
• One thought in particular will serve as the new foundation.

Representationalism

• Essential background to understand what Descartes is up to.

• Partition between mind and world.
• No direct access.
• The world is represented to us through our thoughts.
• I think my hand is in front of me. Everything comes to me in thought.

This is why we must look to thought for foundations. Thought is the only thing to
which I have direct access.

Thought alone cannot be separated from him. (Pg 65)

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The Method of Doubt: A Skeptical Method

• Ubiquitous doubt.
• Descartes will doubt everything which can be doubted.
• This is to nd the foundation. He wants to Bring back God and the world.

Don’t misunderstand this!

Descartes is not a radical skeptic.
As he says: he’s not doubting for the sake of doubting.
He’s not doubting because he wants to prove that there’s no certain knowledge.
Not a skeptic: the world is rational and comprehensible. We can have true
knowledge.
He wants to nd certainty by applying a TEST… by sifting his thoughts to nd
something RELIABLE.
He compares it to a bushel of apples…. Tossing out the rotten ones so that only the
pristine apples remain.
His doubt is methodological.
The idea is not that these doubts are probable, but that their possibility can never be
entirely ruled out.

He will doubt everything that can be doubted in order to bring it back.

Slide: Mind- God - World

Then he develops a TEST of what’s worthy of the foundation.

Then from the foundation he rebuilds his knowledge. This is in the fashion of a
mathematic proof, which begins with axioms (things that are assumed to be true, the
truth of which is given e.g. 2+2 = 4) and proceeds by logical deduction to prove
other things.

The First Meditation: What can be called into doubt (pgs. 59-63)

• Particular sense experience (the senses can deceive)

• Sense impressions in general (everything might be a dream)
• Simple ideas, including mathematical and logical truths, and even my own body.
(The powerful demon or evil genius)

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What does he do? Not waste time….whats the fastest way to kill a tree
Skeptical scenarios to get to the bottom of the tree: sense experience, dream
possibility.

Do I have hands? Did anything my memory exist represent?

All my senses are chimeras…the evil genius

The Second Meditation

Slide: “I think, therefore I am.”

In the midst of all this doubt, Descartes believes he has found a way out. Something
he’s certain about. Something which evades the ubiquitous doubt. Something

I can’t doubt that I’m doubting

(Read 63-64) “I have persuaded myself that there is absolutely nothing {64} in the
world: no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies. Is it then the case that I too do not exist?
But doubtless I did exist, if I persuaded myself of something. But there is some
deceiver or other who is supremely powerful and supremely sly and who is always
deliberately deceiving me. Then too there is no doubt that I exist, if he is deceiving
me. And let him do his best at deception, he will never bring it about that I am nothing
so long as I shall think that I am something. Thus, after everything has been most
carefully weighed, it must nally be established that this pronouncement “I am, I exist”
is necessarily true every time I utter it or conceive it in my mind.”

In the very attempt to doubt that I’m thinking… proving I’m thinking.

By thinking, he doesn’t mean a cold intellectual process of pure reasoning. He means

any kind of conscious awareness, including of sensations, imagination.

NOT: I’m smart, therefore I am

NOT: If I’m really smart and I produce good ideas, I know I exist.

Not intellectual elitism. It’s not that you have to have a good thought.

The very act of thought, whatever thought, which I have, proves that I exist.
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Because someone has to do the thinking and I know that it’s me doing it.

Whatever the content of my mind, whatever I’m thinking about, whether it’s true or
false… I always know for sure that at least I am thinking.

I think therefore I am = necessary truth.

The ONE THING that survives the ubiquitous doubt: the demolition of everything
doubtful.

And he takes a further step. He concludes:

Slide: “I am…nothing but a thinking thing.”

This is the beginning of his metaphysical dualism. Dualism of mind and matter.

Reminder We have access to only the world of our ideas; things in the world are
accessed only indirectly. What we have immediate access to is thought!!!

“But what then am I? A thinking thing. And what is that? Something that doubts,
understands, af rms, denies, wills, refuses, and also senses and has mental images.”

“I am not that concatenation of members we call the human body.” 65

I am something, even if I suppose the body to be nothing.My existence does not

depend on matter. My thoughts are not extended in space… you can’t point to a
thought.

My own body is represented to me through thought. If I have a body, it is being

represented to who I really am, namely my soul.

The person is the soul. Res cogitans.

Gilbert Ryle: ghost in the machine. Body as machine, unfolding according to strict
physical laws. Soul as the seat of reason and choice. Problem of interaction. Two
realms: the realm of matter, whose nature is extension in space, and the realm of the
mind, which is non-spatial.
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But how do they interact?
Problem of interaction now crops up.

Criticism: Smuggling

• Does he really doubt everything? Language, logic, the reliability of reason?

• Categories taken from the real world are found in the cogito.
• Therefore = causation
• I, thing = personal identity, object continuity

Does he really doubt everything? No… there are some things he assumes
Sense experience, memories, but he doesn’t doubt his grasp of language, the ideas,
he assumes reason, assumes it’s reliable.
Couldn’t the evil genius make us think reason is reliable… couldn’t the demon
provide the concept of “I”.. couldn’t he provide the PNC, truth better than falsity.

Criticism: we can’t follow him

• The problem of solipsism (from latin solus ipse, “the self alone”): the present self is
all that can be known to exist.
• The reality of our past memories and the reality of other minds must be logically
inferred. This runs counter to experience.
• Second Criticism: should we follow him?
• You can’t follow him down the rabbit hole. If you do you never come out again.
• So as to arrive at certainty.

Descartes famously “resolved no longer to seek any other science than the
knowledge of myself.”

Read:
Dream of Descartes - Maritain

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