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A General Theory of Cartesian Clarity and Distinctness Based on the Theory of Enumeration in the Rules

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Kurt Smith
Kurt Smith
Affiliation:
Bloomsburg University
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Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , Spring 2001 , pp. 279 - 310
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Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 2001

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References

Notes

1 Curley, E. M., “Analysis in the Meditations: The Quest for Clear and Distinct Ideas,” in Essays on Descartes' Meditations, edited by Rorty, Amélie Oksenberg (Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1986), pp. 169–70.Google Scholar

2 Alanen, Lilli, “Sensory Ideas, Objective Reality, and Material Falsity,” in Reason, Will, and Sensation, edited by Cottingham, John (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), pp. 237–38.Google Scholar

3 Nelson, Alan, “The Falsity in Sensory Ideas: Descartes and Arnauld,” in Interpreting Arnauld, edited by Kremer, Elmar (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), p. 24.Google Scholar

4 Both Curley and Alanen, at least as I understand them, will have to reject the view that clarity and distinctness are scalar. In addition to the differences that I emphasize at the beginning of this article, there are other sorts of differences: for example, compare Nelson's, Alan “Descartes's Ontology of Thought,” Topoi, 16 (1997): 163–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which is, I think, an ontological account, with Stephen Gaukroger's Descartes: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 117–24Google Scholar, which is a psychological account; or Humber's, James “Recognizing Clear and Distinct Perceptions,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 41 (1981): 487–507CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and his “Clarity, Distinctness, the Cogito, and ‘I’,” Idealistic Studies, 17 (1987): 15–37, which is a linguistic account.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 The work's original name is Regulae ad Directionem Ignenii (Rules for the Direction of the Mind). I shall abbreviate the title by simply referring to the work as the Rules. Henceforth, all references to Descartes's work will cite the Adam, and Tannery, volumes, Oeuvres de Descartes, 11 vols. (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1983).Google Scholar These will be abbreviated as “AT,” followed bythe appropriate volume and page numbers. I have whenever possible used the Cottingham, Stoothoff and Murdoch, translation in three volumes of The Philosophical Writings of Descartes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).Google Scholar This will be abbreviated as “CSM,” followed by the appropriate volume and page numbers. The AT and CSM numbers will be cited, side by side, separated by a semicolon. Most citations of Descartes's work will be included in the body of the essay.

6 Given what Descartes says in the Optics about how visual sensory data enters the brain, it is easy to infer that if the eyes were shut, that part of the brain responsible for communicating motions to the gland from the eyes would be inactive—unless, of course, as Descartes says, one had overstimulated the visual sensory system by looking at a bright light or the sun. In such cases, the system would still be active and one would continue “to see” what might be described as an x“after-image” (AT, VI, p. 130; CSM, I, p. 168).

7 Here, “see” is not sensory but intellectual perception.

8 Gaukroger claims that Beeckman had in fact replied to Descartes on this (a letter dated May 6), but says that whether it “ever reached Descartes, we do not know.” See his Descartes: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 102.Google Scholar Further, Gaukroger does not believe that “there are any respects in which Descartes' interest in Lull can be said to have influenced his own thoughts in any significant way…” (Ibid..). In respect to this latter claim, I disagree with Gaukroger.

9 Ong, Walter J., Ramus: Method, and the Decay of Dialogue (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958), p. 56.Google Scholar

10 See, for example, Topics, Bk. I, Chap. 1,100a1-25. Use of the enumeration can be found in other ancient works, for example, in Plato's Timaeus.

11 Yates, Frances, Lull & Bruno, Vol. 1 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982), p. 117.Google Scholar

12 Ong, Ramus: Method, and the Decay of Dialogue, p. 93. The characterization comes from Franco Burgersdicuius' Institutionum Logicorum Libri Duo (1645), Preface.

13 Ibid., pp. 30–32.

14 The formal definition of a partition is:

Let A be a non-empty set. A partition of A, denoted by P, is a subset of the power set of A, p (A), such that (where C denotes a class):

(i)If C є P, then C ‡ Ø.

(ii) If C 1 є P, C 2 є P, and C 1 ‡ c 2, then C 1 ∩ C 2 = Ø.

(iii) ∪ C = A.

C є P

The definition comes from Zehna, Peter and Johnson, Robert, Elements of Set Theory (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1962), p. 71.Google Scholar

15 See, for example, what Descartes says in Rule Seven (AT, X, pp. 390–91; CSM, I, p. 27).

16 Marion, Jean-Luc, “Cartesian Metaphysics and the Role of the Simple Natures,” The Cambridge Companion to Descartes, edited by Cottingham, John (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 In dividing the large subclass of extended things into dimensions, Descartes is able to ground his theory of equations. This would be developed more fully in the Geometry. In particular, Descartes says that dimensions and qualities are expressed by way of exponential notation. The exponent tells us how many dimensions are in play (AT, VI, pp. 371–73). The connection between the subclasses of dimensions and the formation of equations might be seen thus: a member of the speed subclass multiplied (related) to a member of the sized subclass is identical to (is related to) a member of the quantity of motion subclass (AT, VIIIA, p. 61; CSM, I, p. 240). And so, suppose that the speed of A is 3 units (of speed), and the size of A is 2 units (of size), the quantity of motion is, consequently, 6 units (of quantity of motion—speed by size). An object B whose speed is 2 units and whose size is 3 units would thus give us the same quantity of motion, namely, 6 units. For a criticism of this sort of example, see Leibniz, G. W.Discourse on Metaphysics, in G. W. Leibniz: Philosophical Texts, translated by Francks, Richard and Woolhouse, R. S. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), Art. 17, pp. 69–71.Google Scholar

18 The word that Descartes uses is “confusio,” which literally means “mixed together.”

19 Descartes' Conversation with Burman, translated by Cottingham, John (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), p. 25.Google Scholar

20 Ibid..

21 It can be found even earlier. See, for example, Rule Eleven (AT, X, pp. 407–408; CSM, I, p. 37).

22 The relative and the relation are not identical. “The ‘relative’… is what shares the same nature, or at least something of the same nature, in virtue of which we can relate it to the absolute and deduce it from the absolute in a definite series of steps. The concept of the ‘relative’ involves other terms besides, which I call ‘relations’” (AT, X, p. 382; CSM, I, p. 21; my emphasis).

23 We might want to say that there is an adventitious idea of pain that has no elements other than simply the pain. But even this idea would not be as easily confused with the obscure judgement Descartes mentions than would the idea of pain in a body part. I am willing to consider this road, since it will fit nicely with the theory that I am developing here (at least in respect to clarity), but I am inclined to try first to get a case that allows Descartes to attribute to the idea in question a sense of “confusion” that is already on the table.

24 I say “can” here because purely intellectual ideas can also be clear in the weak sense. So, clarity in the weak sense is not co-extensive with ideas of imagination and sense.

25 Perhaps the idea of pain can be “separated out” from the more complex idea of pain in a body part. If this is done, and the idea of pain is simple, that is, it is an unanalyzable simple, I see no reason to deny that it is CS1.

26 The idea of God contains necessary existence. But, insofar as God is necessary, he is possible. So, the necessary existence contained in the idea of God is possible (the principle that I have in mind is that all necessary things are possible). So, my claim that “all ideas that exhibit natures contain possible existence” is compatible with Descartes's view.

27 The idea of the union is difficult. There are places in which Descartes will say that “the natures of mind and body are not only different, but in some way opposite (contrariae)” (AT, VII, p. 13; CSM, II, pp. 9–10). If we take contrariae seriously, and hold that thought and extension are “mutually inconsistent ideas,” then it would seem that the union (the human being) is an impossible object like the finite-infinite being. If this is right, then the idea of the union would not be Cw, but would be utterly obscure. But I find it implausible to think that Descartes held the union to be an impossible object. What I am inclined to say is that the idea is neither Cs1 nor Cs2, since the union is neither an unanalyzable simple, nor does the idea exhibit the relation that unifies thought and extension. In my view, the idea is Cw. This is consistent with my claiming that the idea of pain in a body part is Cw. Further, I think this makes better sense of the sort of thing Descartes says to Elizabeth in which the idea of the union, derived from a certain “primitive notion or idea,” and aided by the senses, is said to be clear (AT, III, p. 691; CSM, III, p. 227).

28 Curley, “Analysis in the Meditations,” pp. 169–70.

29 Alanen, “Sensory Ideas, Objective Reality, and Material Falsity,” pp. 237–38.

30 Nelson, “The Falsity in Sensory Ideas,” p. 24.

31 I will discuss these concepts as construed by the Attention Grabber Theory in more detail below.

32 Ibid..

33 As a result, the underlying ideational element is “obscured” from mental view. Such an idea, in addition to being confused, would be obscure.

34 Nelson, “Descartes's Ontology of Thought,” p. 168, n.26.

35 Field, Richard W., “Descartes on the Material Falsity of Ideas,” The Philosophical Review, 102, 3 (July 1993): 309–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 Ibid., pp. 317–30.

37 As I will show below, there is a way to interpret Alanen and Field so that their calling the idea of pain in a body part obscure is perfectly in line with Descartes's view.

38 It seems to me that Nelson may prefer to hold that the idea of pain, and not the idea of pain in a body part, is the idea that Descartes says is clear, it being perhaps “intensely” before the mind. It is an intense idea of an unanalyzable simple. So, he may insist on Cs1.

39 If, instead of the set of primary attributes we enumerated the set of finite substances, which according to Cartesian metaphysics would amount to our producing a partition the members of which are the sets of thinking and extended things, and human beings were members of neither set, then we could conclude that either human beings cannot be an object of inquiry (given this specific metaphysical enumeration), or that human beings are not finite substances. In his “The Unity of Descartes's Man,” The Philosophical Review, 95, 3 (July 1986): 339–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Paul Hoffman argues that human beings are substances. If he is right, given the argument above, it would follow that human beings are not (according to Cartesian metaphysics) possible objects of inquiry. This may put some pressure on the possibility of a medical science.

40 The Attention Grabber Theory, as I understand it, would say that the relation comes to be exhibited when whatever was obscuring it from view is removed. This could be an idea or a judgement.

41 I would like to thank Patricia Easton, Keith Hay, and Charles Young for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. I would also like to thank Alan Nelson for allowing me on special occasions to work out the main ideas of this article by way of short presentations in his Descartes seminars at the University of California, Irvine. In connection to this, I should thank those of the Southern California Cartesian Circle who, on many occasions, gave my view a real run for its money. Thus, in addition to Easton and Nelson, I thank Ken Brown, Dave Cunning, Paul Hoffman, Ed McCann, Larry Nolan, and Alice Sowaal. Further, I am indebted to James Humber for his excellent comments on a short version of this article presented at the 96th Annual Eastern Division Meetings of the American Philosophical Association, in Boston, MA (December 1999). Lastly, I want to thank the editors and anonymous referees of Dialogue for providing a series of outstanding comments that led to significant improvements in this article