Descartes, Discourse on the Method; Meditations on First Philosophy

In senior year of high school, I took a terrible class called humanities. It was a blow-off class, one that I felt I had earned after four years of AP and honors classes, that ostensibly surveyed major developments in the humanities. In practice, we, as 18-year-olds who were about to go off to college, watched movies and wrote surface-level analyses of monumental works. One such analysis was of Descartes’ famous quote, “I think, therefore I am.” We were asked to “interpret” this quote in terms of what we thought it really meant. One could not really have asked more of the teacher, but it is a very silly assignment.

Today, we will talk about Descartes’ philosophical project: the ways in which it reflected the work of his antecedents, the ways in which it surpassed them, and the difficulties it entailed. Although I sound like a broken record, I have to say that if there is a break between medieval and modern, between old and new, it is to be found in Descartes. Had he not lived, it would be difficult to imagine what our world would be like today.

Something Old, Something New

For all my insistence that Descartes represents a brave new frontier in Western thought, it is impossible not to notice how distinctly medieval much of his approach is. When he begins by saying that he “stayed all day shut up alone in a stove-heated room, where I was completely free to converse with myself about my own thoughts,” one imagines that he is following the Scholastics, living in monasteries and hand-copying books, despite his apparent distaste for their philosophical approach: “For it seem to me that much more truth could be found in the reasonings which a man makes concerning matters that concern him than in those which some scholar makes in his study about speculative matters.” Descartes wishes to return philosophy to more practical concerns, ones that men can grasp with their hands, rather than the speculative philosophy of an Aquinas or an Anselm.

Yet it is a testament to the importance of language that Descartes, despite his clear efforts to the contrary, can escape neither the vocabulary nor the methodology of his predecessors. When he investigates the existence of God, which we will discuss later on, he distinguishes between formal reality and objective reality, between being and modes of being. While he may give these ideas his own flavor, they are not his but those of medieval philosophers. Try as he might, he cannot escape the circumstances of his time and the influence of those who came before. Perhaps this observation is not so much an indictment as a compliment: Descartes uses the tools available to him yet his project exceeds what those tools had already accomplished.

The Method

Just as it was fashionable in the classical era to write treatises beginning with “of” (such as “De Anima,” “of the soul,” by Aristotle), so was it popular in Descartes’ time to speak of “methods,” and the man himself is no different. In Discourse on the Method, he puts forth his method for attaining knowledge. He considers it successful, though it is only in its infancy: “I feel I have already reaped such fruits...that I cannot but feel extremely satisfied.”

Descartes, however, retained that quality that Bertrand Russell considered necessary for philosophy: he doubted. He felt confident in his method, but there could be no certainty. “Yet I may be wrong: perhaps what I take for gold and diamonds is nothing but a bit of copper and glass. I know how much we are liable to err in matters that concern us, and also how much the judgments of our friends should be distrusted when they are in our favour.”

Moreover, he doubted that his method could be used by anyone else. Descartes felt that reason was complete in humanity, a belief that stemmed from his belief in God. For if God-given reason was what separated men from animals, there could be no doubt that it exists “whole and complete in each of us.” Whole and complete reason did not preclude, however, getting his method wrong. Descartes believed that people are of two principal kinds. Either they believe themselves “cleverer than they are [and] cannot avoid precipitate judgments and never have the patience to direct all their thoughts in an orderly manner”, or  they have “reason or modesty to recognize that they are less capable of distinguishing the true from the false than certain others by whom they can be taught.” The former, even if they could use his method, would in their arrogance not wish to, and the latter would be so overwhelmed by the number of available methods that they could not choose.

Where does Descartes fall in this binary? He considers himself closer to the second type, as he grew up with many different teachers and therefore “discovered that nothing can be imagined which is too strange or incredible to have been said by some philosopher.” Yet he is also unlike them, because while they are so paralyzed by multiplicity that they no longer believe in truth, Descartes sees all beliefs as rooted in “custom and example… rather than any certain knowledge,” meaning that “a single man is much more likely to hit upon them [proof of truths] than a group of people.” For this reason, Descartes chooses to shut himself up in his home and think rather than look for knowledge elsewhere. We should note here that Descartes recognizes the same truth that Montaigne did, that belief and even many things we could call “certainties” are really just custom, yet he does not see this fact as opposed to his goal of knowledge.

We see that despite having a surface-level similarity to the scholastic philosophers, Descartes is really quite different. Though his method is a touch monastic, he is not relying on anyone else’s knowledge, even if he admits that he cannot completely free himself of influence. Nor is he following earlier classical philosophers, though his distrust of received knowledge sounds like the Greek skeptics, for they, he says, “doubt only for the sake of doubting and pretend to be always undecided,” whereas his only goal is knowledge and certainty.

Angels and Demons

In Discourse, Descartes gives a rough sketch of his method, including the famous “I think, therefore I am.” More interesting I find is his use of the method in a different work, Principles of First Philosophy, in which he approaches the same problem with an even more skeptical mindset. Let us first be clear about what we’re speaking of.

Descartes begins with doubt. He, at whatever age he was when writing, possessed a collection of knowledge, all of which he put into doubt. We may think this means that he ends up at square one without any help, but he spies a way out:

“The mere fact that I thought of doubting the truth of other things, it followed quite evidently and certainly that I existed; whereas if I had merely ceased thinking, even if everything else I had ever imagined had been true, I should have had no reason to believe that I existed. From this I knew I was a substance whose whole essence or nature is solely to think, and which does not require any place, or depend on any material thing, in order to exist.”

There’s that old joke: Descartes walks into a bar, and the bartender asks, would you like to hear our specials? Descartes puzzles for a moment and begins, “I don’t think…” and disappears. We see though that he does not say that thinking is necessary for existence. Rather, without thinking, one cannot be sure of one’s own existence, for there is nothing else upon which to predicate existence. If one can think, doubt, whatever, then one must exist. This is the starting point of modern philosophy.

In Discourse, Descartes begins here and derives the existence of God, the being upon whose existence his existence is contingent. Yet in Principles, we see him go further: what if, he posits, all his thoughts, all the objects that pass through his vision, what if all of it is put there not by a benevolent God, but a demon bent on tricking Descartes?

“I shall think that the sky, the air, the earth, colours, shapes, sounds, and all external things are merely the delusions of dreams which he has devised to ensnare my judgment. I shall… resolutely guard against assenting to any falsehoods, so that the deceiver, however powerful and cunning he may be, will be unable to impose on me in the slightest degree. But this is an arduous undertaking, and a kind of laziness brings me back to normal life. I am like a prisoner who is enjoying an imaginary freedom while asleep.”

Of course, we see echoes of this idea in films like The Matrix or the “Vacation Goo” episode of American Dad. (Yes, that is the second example that comes to my mind.) Descartes understands, as in the external examples, that though a demon could be tricking him every moment of his life, he must still exist in order to be tricked. Existence is not in doubt, benevolent deity or otherwise. His demon only makes matters slightly more complicated. Descartes, though, is not shaken:

“For even if, as I have supposed, none of the objects of imagination are real, the power of imagination is something which really exists and is part of my thinking… For example, I am now 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 it is simply thinking.”

Seeming is an important idea in Descartes, and one which I don’t have a great grasp of. One often hears that Descartes employs circular reasoning, but I don’t think that’s true: his reasoning is too subtle to fall into such an obvious trap. He does, however, appeal to the idea of “seeming,” and in a way, this isn’t too strange. If he is working under the assumption that a demon is deceiving him at all times, he can judge nothing except by how it seems. Consider the following:

“We say that we see the wax [seal of an envelope] itself, if it is there before us, not that we judge it to be there from its colour or shape; and this might lead me to conclude without more ado that knowledge of the wax comes from what the eye sees, and not from the scrutiny of the mind alone. But then if I look out of the window and see men crossing the square, as I just happen to have done, I normally say that I see the men themselves, just as I say that I see the wax. Yet do I see any more than hats and coats which could conceal automatons? I judge that they are men. And so something which I thought I was seeing with my eyes is in fact grasped solely by the faculty of judgement which is in my mind.”

Being and seeming are tightly intertwined for Descartes. One does not ever simply apprehend; apprehension is always tied to comprehension. Recall Theseus’ speech from Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which he claims that the two are separate: “Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, / Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend / More than cool reason ever comprehends.” Shakespeare is ironically indicating that seeming is an important aspect of being, and Descartes uses that same idea here: in looking, we are always judging. It is such an observation that causes him in the Discourse to say that “believing something and knowing that one believes it are different acts of thinking.” When we glance out the window, we judge that we know without actually knowing. This will be important later on.

From this, Descartes coolly arrives at a principle: “I see that without any effort I have now finally got back to where I wanted. I now know that even bodies are not strictly perceived by the senses or the faculty of imagination but by the intellect alone, and this perception derives not from their being touched or seen but from their being understood.”  

He then sets up one of the most complex--and distinctly medieval--of his arguments on the distinction between (a) formal reality, the reality possessed by a substance; (b) objective reality, the reality possessed by ideas; and (c) eminent reality, which is not explicitly defined, but which seems to mean the reality that is acquired by a lower being from a higher being, as sunlight illuminates the world, which does not possess light in and of itself. Each has three hierarchical levels, which are, from greatest to least: infinite reality, finite reality, and modal reality. For example, God, or a being equivalent to God, would have infinite reality; a dog would have finite reality; and the position of a dog at a certain time would have modal reality. The reality of something in one level, e.g., a dog, must contain “more” reality than something in a lower level, .e.g., the position of a dog, in the sense that the position of a dog is predicated upon the existence of the dog. I have glossed over a lot of the details of his actual argument, and I hope I haven’t left out any important parts; but this seems to me the essence of what he’s saying.

“If the objective reality,” Descartes argues, “of any of my ideas turns out to be so great that I am sure the same reality does not reside in me, either formally or eminently, and hence that I myself cannot be its cause, it will necessarily follow that I am not alone in this world, but that some other thing which is the cause of this idea also exists.” This turns out to be true only in the case of God. For any finite thing Descartes believes he could have come up with: his ideas are confused enough (i.e., he understands so little about the nature of things from his sense perceptions alone) that he could conceivably just be inventing them all. ”For how could I understand that I doubted or desired -- that is, lacked something -- and that I was not wholly perfect, unless there were in me some idea of a more perfect being which enabled me to recognize my own defects by comparison?” He concludes: “The mere fact that I exist and have within me an idea of a most perfect being, that is, God, provides a very clear proof that God indeed exists.”

The existence of God, or an equivalent being, has thus been proved. Yet there is one more knot to be picked out. “And since God does not wish to deceive me, he surely did not give me the kind of faculty which would ever enable me to go wrong while using it correctly. There would be no further doubt on this issue were it not that what I have just said appears to imply that I am incapable of ever going wrong.” If, he argues, God is not a deceiver, then he (Descartes) should not be able to err when properly using his reason. Yet this does not cohere with his experience.

He investigates: “When I look more closely at myself and inquire into the nature of my errors...they depend on both the intellect and the [freedom of the] will simultaneously.” Intellect, however, is responsible for apprehension, not judgment. Moreover, intellect is limited, whereas will, Descartes believes, is not: “Indeed, I think it is very noteworthy that there is nothing else in me which is so perfect and so great that the possibility of a further increase in its perfection or greatness is beyond my understanding… It is only the will, or freedom of choice, which I experience within me to be so great that the idea of any greater faculty is beyond my grasp; so much so that it is above all in virtue of the will that I understand myself to bear in some way the image and likeness of God.” Though God is able to do more, and may have more control over will, each person is able to choose to either do or not do something of his own accord.

This follows nicely from the rest of his argument. Above, he argued that judgment greatly influences the intellect: when the intellect apprehends, judgment works to comprehend, and this faculty of judgment is derived from the will: “The scope of the will is wider than that of the intellect; but instead of restricting it within the same limits, I extend its use to matters which I do not understand.” And thus, “the perception of the intellect should always precede the determination of the will.” Descartes is saying, I believe, that we make judgments for which we do not have sufficient evidence, just as he observes beings walking outside his window and judges them to be men rather than automata. We overreach our grasp, and in this way participate in nothingness or non-being, judging on the basis of knowledge we do not possess. For him, this settles how we can make mistakes without God being a deceiver. We can now shelve the idea of a demon and move on to the question of whether material things exist.

Living in a Material World

He begins this investigation with one of my favorite topics, mathematics. Descartes argues that after learning the properties of a triangle, one can no longer disbelieve facts about triangles: they are properties one recognizes “whether I want to or not,” so ideas of things “which even though they may not exist anywhere outside me still cannot be called nothing.” He uses a corollary of this as another proof of God: “I ought still to regard the existence of God as having at least the same level of certainty as I have hitherto attributed to the truths of mathematics.” He backs this up with the following argument that I will skim over: 1) God and existence are inseparable, like mountain and valley. 2) Inseparability, however, does not imply existence: the fact that mountains and valleys are inseparable does not imply that mountains exist. 3) But since God is inseparable from existence itself, God must exist.

Returning to the matter of material objects, Descartes considers the difference between understanding and imagining, a difference that he can investigate because of the above conclusion about math. “When the mind understands, it in some way turns towards itself and inspects one of the ideas which are within it; but when it imagines, it turns towards the body and looks at something in the body which conforms to an idea understood by the mind or perceived by the senses.” Therefore imagination derives from understanding, in that imagination first requires understanding: we can imagine all sorts of chimera because we first understand something about animals. From this observation and the fact that God exists and is not a deceiver, Descartes builds the following argument: Sense perception requires an active object, which must be distinct from me. That object is either a corporeal (finite) substance or is an eminent substance, i.e., something put there by God. The options are indistinguishable to me. Since I have asserted that God is not a deceiver, they must have finite substance. QED.

From these facts, Descartes derives an immense amount of sanity: “Despite the high degree of doubt and uncertainty involved here, the very fact that God is not a deceiver, and the consequent impossibility of there being any falsity in my opinions which cannot be corrected by some other faculty supplied by God, offers me a sure hope that I can attain the truth even in these matters." He closes this with a wonderful thought: "Indeed, there is no doubt that everything that I am taught by nature contains some truth.”

Conclusions

I do not believe I have fully grasped the subtleties of Descartes’ arguments here, nor have I represented his reasoning perfectly faithfully. The basic structure, though, I think I have reproduced. Descartes’ greatest concern is understanding that God exists and is not deceiving him, and after this has been established, everything else becomes easy.

It is clear, however, that Descartes, for all his innovation and doubt, still relies on medieval ways of argument. His proof of God, to take one example, bears strong similarity to Anselm’s ontological argument. 

In Thomas Kuhn’s book on the Copernican revolution, he points out how Descartes used the recent discoveries about astronomy to develop a new system of physics which, unfortunately, turned out to be ridiculously wrong. Yet like Freud, it is not so important whether or not he was right: rather, he laid a foundation, that of rationalism, that would be picked up by Spinoza and Leibniz.

Stray Observations

• “Good sense is the best distributed thing in the world: for everyone thinks himself so well endowed with it that even those who are the hardest to please in everything else do not usually desire more of it than they possess.”
• Of his method: “Through this philosophy we could know the power and action of fire, water, air, the stars, the heavens, and all the other bodies in our environment, as distinctly as we know the various crafts of our artisans; and we could use this knowledge--as the artisans use theirs--for all the purposes for which it is appropriate, and thus make ourselves, as it were, the lords and masters of nature. This is desirable not only for the invention of innumerable devices which would facilitate our enjoyment of the fruits of the earth and all the goods we find there, but also, and most importantly, for the maintenance of health…”
• On publishing his method: “For this will give me all the more reason to examine [his ideas] closely, as undoubtedly we always look more carefully at something we think is to be seen by others than at something we do only for ourselves; and often what seemed true to me when I first conceived it has looked false when I tried to put it on paper.” Amen, brother.
• Aristotle’s followers, and the followers of any great mind “are like ivy, which never seeks to climb higher than the trees which support it, and often even grows downward after reaching the tree-tops. For it seems to me that they too take downward steps, or become somehow less knowledgeable than if they refrained from study, when, not content with knowing everything which is intelligibly explained in their author’s writings, they wish in addition to find there the solution to many problems about which he says nothing and about which perhaps he never thought. But this manner of philosophizing is very convenient for those with only mediocre minds, for the obscurity of the distinctions and principles they use makes it possible for them to speak about everything as confidently as if they knew it and to defend all they say against the most subtle and clever thinkers without anyone having the means to convince them that they are wrong…. But even the best minds have no reason to wish to know my principles. For if they want to be able to speak about everything and acquire the reputation of being learned, they will achieve this more readily by resting content with plausibility, which can be found without difficulty in all kinds of subjects, than by seeking the truth; for the truth comes to light only gradually in certain subjects, and it obliges us frankly to confess our ignorance where other subjects are concerned. But if they prefer the knowledge of some few truths to the vanity of appearing ignorant of nothing (and undoubtedly the former is preferable), and if they wish to follow a plan similar to mind, then in that case I need to tell them nothing more than I have already said in this discourse.”
• In which Descartes anticipates the fucking Chinese room argument by around 300 years: “I made special efforts to show that if any such machines had the organs and outward shape of a money or of some other animal that lacks reason, we should have no means of knowing that they did not possess entirely the same nature as these animals; whereas if any such machines bore a resemblance to our bodies and imitated our actions as closely as possible for all practical purposes, we should still have two very certain means of recognizing that they were not real men. The first is that they could never use words, or put together other signs, as we do in order to declare our thoughts to others. For we can conceive of a machine so constructed that it utters words, and even utters words which correspond to bodily actions causing a change in its organs (e.g. if you touch it in one spot it asks what you want of it, if you touch it in another it cries out that you are hurting it, and so on). But it is not conceivable that such a machine should produce different arrangements of words so as to give an appropriately meaningful answer to what is said in its presence, as the dullest of men can do. Secondly, even though such machines might do some things as well as we do them, or perhaps even better, they would inevitably fail in others, which would reveal that they were acting not through understanding but only from the disposition of their organs. For whereas reason is a universal instrument which can be used in all kinds of situations, these organs need some particular disposition for each particular action.”