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Janet Broughton, Descartes's Method of Doubt. Princeton: Princeton University Press 2002. Pp. 216.
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Janet Broughton, Descartes's Method of Doubt. Princeton: Princeton University Press 2002. Pp. 216.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
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1 I follow Broughton in using the translations from CSM — except where I indicate that modifications are needed. References to Descartes are to be understood as follows: AT: Adam, Charles and Tannery, Paul eds. CEuvres de Descartes, 11 vols. (Paris: CNSR and Vrin 1964–1976);Google Scholar CSM: The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 3 vols. Cottingham, John Stoofhoff, Robert Murdoch, Dugald and (vol. 3 only) Kenny, Anthony trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1985–1991).Google Scholar
2 Curley, Edwin Descartes against the Skeptics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 For instance, like Margaret Wilson, Broughton sees the skeptical arguments as proposing causal scenarios on which the beliefs in question are false. See Wilson, Descartes, (London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1978)Google Scholar, 41. And like Frankfurt and Curley she sees Descartes as relying on arguments that do not involve a starting point about which he is certain. The Dependence Arguments do not involve starting with the claim that I am certain that I doubt something (Broughton, 193-5). For strategies that don't require certainty see Frankfurt, Harry Demons, Dreamers and Madmen (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill 1970), 177;Google Scholar Curley, 95.
4 Curley writes that ‘It is this project, the project of systematically reviewing one's past beliefs and casting out those which do not conform to the highest Standards of rationality, which defines Descartes's mature work’ (44). And Frankfurt writes that in the Meditations Descartes ‘is largely concerned with the problem of skepticism' (174).
5 See Curley, 86, 187-8. Broughton sees Curley's interpretation as most congenial to her own on this issue (99, n.l).
6 Descartes selon l’ordre des raisons, (Paris: Aubier 1968), 42. Or see the English translation, Descartes’ Philosophy Interpreted According to the Order of Reasons, trans. Ariew, Roger (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1984), 21.Google Scholar
7 Descartes writes that ‘there occurs to me [mihi occurrit] a clear and distinct idea of a being who is independent and complete, that is, an idea of God.’ Broughton follows the CSM translation ‘arises’ instead of ‘occurs to’ here. I have altered the translation. However one translates the term, clearly Descartes does not mean that he acquires such an idea, since his view as explained earlier in the Third Meditation, is that this idea is presupposed by his conception of himself. And his idea of God is innate. His view is rather that he becomes aware of, or notices, this idea.
8 There is some ambiguity in Broughton's Statements on this issue: sometimes she suggests that he uses a dependence argument to arrive at the claim that he has ‘an idea of a being of infinite perfection’ (106). On p. 146 she writes that he is trying to establish that he is ‘absolutely certain that he has precisely this idea,’ which could mean that he has an idea of God as a being of infinite perfection, or its meaning could be explained by what she says next: ‘he must be able to say that this idea is one that he could not have constructed simply from the materials that he presents to himself in self-reflection.'
9 My understanding of Broughton's views has benefited greatly from a Pacific APA author-meets-critic Session on her book (San Francisco, March 2003), in which I participated. When I cite her replies to objections they are taken from the written copy of her presentation in the Session. I am also grateful for further correspondence after the Session.
10 The sentence that best fits Broughton's Schema in this passage comes at the end of the passage: ‘I am, exist, necessarily is true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind’ (AT VII 25/CSM II17). But this sentence allows for all sorts of views of the connection between conceiving I exist and the certainty that I do. Broughton sees this Statement as a conclusion based on the previous reasoning, and that reasoning does not focus on doubts about the self existing.
11 Its importance was made vivid to me in recent conversation with John Carriero.
12 Both Curley and Wilson have suggested that Descartes was inconsistent on the issue, but I am not convinced. See Curley, 170-93; Wilson, 150-65.
13 It seems that an innatist like Descartes could not hold unqualifiedly that we are aware of everything that is in the mind: he is clearly committed to the idea that innate ideas are dispositions that can be actualized at some point in life. That issue I will simply leave aside.
14 For instance, see McDowell, ‘Singular Thought and the Extent of Inner Space’ (in Subject, Thought, and Context, Pettit, Philip and McDowell, John eds. [Oxford: Clarendon 1986], 137–68Google Scholar); Rorty, Richard Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1980), 54–9.Google Scholar
15 Malcolm, Norman ‘Descartes’ Proof that He is Essentially a Non-Material Thing,' in Thought and Knowledge, Essays by Norman Malcolm (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1977), 58–84;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Shoemaker, Sidney ‘On an Argument for Dualism,’ in Ginet, Carl and Shoemaker, Sidney eds., Knowledge and Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1983), 233–58Google Scholar
16 Wilson, 185-201. I have argued elsewhere that this last claim is connected to the mode-attribute relation as spelled out in the Principles. See my Descartes's Dualism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1998), ch. 1. I will assume that Descartes's definition of thought in terms of consciousness does not entail transparency. That would only be so if consciousness entailed knowledge (or knowledge of the right sort). For discussion see Radner, Daisie 'Thought and Consciousness in Descartes,’ Journal of the History of Philosophy 26 (1988) 439–52,CrossRefGoogle Scholar at 447, 449.
17 In the Pacific APA ‘Author Meets Critics’ Symposium on the book, Broughton responded that even the weaker sense of transparency she ascribes to Descartes ‘has no indispensable role to play’ in the Overall argument she attributes to him, and that this sense of transparency is merely ‘an instructive by-product of using the method of doubt.'
18 Rorty, 124
19 See Principles 1.9, Fifth Replies, AT VII 352/CSM II 244.
20 In her APA response Broughton rightly pointed out that much of what happens in the Meditations is the meditator figuring out ‘what actually belongs to his ideas and how to categorize them.’ And this is a reason why she does not want to attribute a strong version of transparency to Descartes.
21 Broughton carefully phrases her version of transparency: she does not hold that for Descartes just any self-report emerges as indubitable, but only ‘carefully worded self-reports’ (134, 137). I am not sure what restrictions this qualification implies. What she explains when she introduces this phrase is Descartes's refinement of his judgment when he retreats from claiming certainty that he sees light to the claim that he seems to see light (134-5). But for my argument it won't be very important in what other ways she thinks the reports should be carefully worded, since I question the claim that any robust sense of transparency should be attributed to Descartes.
22 And it explains why, as Broughton points out (123), earlier Descartes had not offered any argument for his claim that he is a ‘mind, intelligence, intellect, reason.’ For extensive discussion of the relationship of Descartes to the Aristotelians on these issues, see Rozemond, ch. 2.
23 Wilson, 75-6
24 For Descartes's conception of the relationship between substance, mode and attribute see Principles 1.53.
25 I have used the Moerbeke Latin translation of De anima, which was widely used by Descartes's scholastic predecessors and can be found, for instance, in Aquinas' commentary.
26 The references are to Aquinas, In Aristotelis librum de anima commentarium, Pirotta, Angelo M. ed. (Turin: Marietti 1948)Google Scholar, and Summa theologiae (New York: Blackfriars and McGraw-Hill 1964-). For the Summa I use the Standard procedure of referring by part, question, and if needed, number of objection.
27 Francisco Suárez, De anima, in Opera omnia, vol. III (Paris: Vivès 1856).
28 This view was quite Standard. See also Eustacius of Paul, St Summa philosophica quadripartita (Paris: Carolus Chastellain 1609) III, 347;Google Scholar Coimbra Commentators, Commentarii in tres libros de anima Aristotelis Stagiritae (Lyons, 1604), 192. Eustacius offers the following caveat: ‘Since error, properly speaking, belongs to judgment — of which there is none in the senses — a sensory power can be said to err only in the sense that it induces into error a superior power to which judgment does pertain.' Suárez’ discussion of common sensibles, which coincide with the modern category of primary qualities, is complex. For instance, he writes that sight can't be mistaken about something having size, or shape taken generally, while it can be mistaken about what particular size or shape an object has. But sight can be mistaken about other common sensibles even taken in general (De anima III.X.3): these include rest, motion, number (see Anneliese Maier, ‘Die Mechanisierung des Weltbilds im 17. Jahrhundert in Zwei Untersuchungen zur-Nachscholastischen Philosophie [Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura 1968] 13-67, at 17).
29 In addition, it seems easy to imagine that Aristotelians who held that light is not what is seen but what makes sight possible would accept strong Claims about the certainty of the judgment that I see light as well as the judgment that I see color. And the claim that I seem to have a perception of light is a very generic claim about which it is easy to see that one might think it's not susceptible to mistakes, unlike, say, the claim that I seem to see a lavender tulip.
30 One might object that merely making the point about the proper sensibles is not enough to offer a full defense of the mental nature of (an aspect of) sense perception, since it includes more than just proper sensibles. Surely Descartes aims to include (an aspect of) all sense perception?
Now first of all, it might simply be natural to assume that the representations of all sensory Contents have the same ontological Status so that an argument about proper sensibles should generalize accordingly. But let me also propose the following, rather speculative line of thought. As Descartes and at least some scholastics agree, sense perceptions proceed as a result of the sensing subject being affected by proper sensibles. In the Sixth Replies Descartes divides sense perception into three grades. The first grade is the physical component. The second grade of Sensation, which is the first mental grade, includes ‘perceptions of pain, pleasure, thirst, hunger, colors, sound, taste, smell, heat, cold, and the like’ (AT VII437/CSM II 294). This list includes proper sensibles (as well as objects of inner Sensation, which I will leave aside), but not common sensibles. The third grade includes judgments about common sensibles, about the size, distance and shape of the object. So the perceptions of proper sensibles initiate the mental component of the process of sense perception.
Suárez expresses a view similar to Descartes. He writes that the proper sensibles are distinguished from common sensibles because the former, but not the latter imprint their own species, or change (immutare) the subject (see his De anima III.8.1). (This view was not universal, however. Some thought the common sensibles also imprint species on the external senses, others that they imprint on the sensus communis. For discussion, see Maier, 16-26.) On this view again, sense perception begins with proper sensibles: they are what produces the changes in the sensing subject that give rise to sense perception.
Thus Sensation of proper sensibles is more likely to be physical than other components of sense perception Descartes wishes to assign to the mental: it is what's closest to the physical part, aspect, grade of sense perception on Descartes's view, its immediate eff ect. Consequently, in this context, it is most important to argue that sensations of proper sensibles are mental, and perception of common sensibles will follow.
31 At this point it might be instructive to compare Descartes's discussion with those found among others engaged in examinations of skepticism in his period. This is a comparison Broughton did not pursue, and that goes beyond the scope of this paper.
32 Broughton offered this reponse in her presentation in the APA author-meets critic Session.