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Descartes' Doubt of Minds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Monte Cook
Monte Cook
Affiliation:
University of Oklahoma
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Extract

Early in the Second Meditation Descartes has found grounds to doubt his previous opinions, and following his resolve to reject as false anything not entirely indubitable, he rejects these opinions. He then asks whether there might remain something impervious to doubt that he has not yet considered. One item as yet unconsidered is his own existence:

I myself, am I not at least something? But I have already denied that I had senses and body. Yet I hesitate, for what follows from that? Am I so dependent on body and senses that I cannot exist without these? But I was persuaded that there was nothing in all the world, that there was no heaven, no earth, that there were no minds, nor any bodies: was I not then likewise persuaded that I did not exist? (HR I, 150)

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , Spring 1988 , pp. 31 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1988

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References

1 Here and elsewhere “HR” refers to Haldane, E. and Ross, G. R. T., The Philosophical Works of Descartes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968).Google Scholar

2 Cf. Curley, E. M., “Analysis in the Meditations: The Quest for Clear and Distinct Idea”, in Rorty, Amelie Oksenberg, ed., Essays on Descartes' Meditations (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986), 174Google Scholar, fn. 21.

3 At a parallel point in The Search after Truth (HR 1,315), Descartes seems to doubt other people; this is as close as he comes to explicitly doubting minds prior to the cogito.

4 Cottingham, John, Stoothoff, Robert, and Murdoch, Dugald, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), II, 17Google Scholar. This translation is, I think, clearer than the translation at HR I, 150–151.

5 This needs to be qualified. If one has grounds to doubt the physical, then one has grounds to doubt that the soul has certain functions (“attribute”) like nutrition that require the existence of body. If serving these functions is what makes something a soul, then to doubt the physical will be to doubt the soul. I have passed over this qualification because I want here to develop a criticism of Descartes that I shall answer in the next section.

6 Cf. Carriero, John P., “The Second Meditation and the Essence of the Min”, in , Rorty, Essays, 199–221.Google Scholar

7 See Daniel, Garber, “Semel in vita: The Scientific Background to Descartes' Meditation”, ibid., 81–116.

8 I try to avoid using the word “his” to refer to individuals that may be either male or female. In this case, there is actually some justification for using “his”. In a letter to Vatier, 22 February 1638, Descartes explained that in the Discourse, which was written in French, he “did not dare to go into detail about the arguments of the sceptics, nor to say everything which is necessary to withdraw the mind from the sense” because “these thoughts did not seem to me suitable for inclusion in a book which I wished to be intelligible even to wome”. Presumably, the Meditations, which was written in Latin, is directed only to men. (The quotation is from Kenny, Anthony, trans, and ed., Descartes: Philosophical Letters [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970], 46Google Scholar. Cf. HR II, 115–116.)

9 Ibid., 79 and 89.

10 I wish to thank Hugh Benson for his critical comments on an earlier version of this paper.