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Doubt and Human Nature in Descartes's Meditations1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2012

Sarah Patterson
Sarah Patterson
Affiliation:
Birkbeck [email protected]
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Extract

Descartes is well known for his employment of the method of doubt. His most famous work, the Meditations, begins by exhorting us to doubt all our opinions, including our belief in the existence of the external world. But critics have charged that this universal doubt is impossible for us to achieve because it runs counter to human nature. If this is so, Descartes must be either misguided or hypocritical in proposing it. Hume writes:

There is a species of scepticism, antecedent to all study and philosophy, which is much inculcated by Des Cartes and others, as a sovereign preservative against error and precipitate judgement. It recommends an universal doubt, not only of all our former opinions and principles, but also of our very faculties… The Cartesian doubt, …were it ever possible to be attained by any human creature (as it plainly is not) would be entirely incurable; and no reasoning could ever bring us to a state of assurance and conviction upon any subject (Enquiry 12.3; emphasis added).

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 70 , July 2012 , pp. 189 - 217
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2012

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References

2 Gilson, Etienne, Etudes sur le rôle de la pensée médiévale dans la formation du système cartésien (Fourth Edition. Paris: Vrin, 1975), 186Google Scholar.

3 Hume, David, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, edited by Selby-Bigge, L.A., 3rd ed. revised by P.H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975)Google Scholar. References by section and paragraph number.

4 Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature, edited by Selby-Bigge, L.A., 2nd ed. revised by P.H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 187Google Scholar.

5 Op. cit. note 4, 183.

6 Op. cit. note 3, section 12, paragraph 23.

7 Reid, T., Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (1801)Google Scholar in Thomas Reid's Inquiry and Essays, eds. Beanblossom, R. E. and Lehrer, K. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983), 84Google Scholar.

8 Op. cit. note 6, 85.

9 Op. cit. note 6, 86.

10 References by volume and page number to Adam, C. and Tannery, P. (eds.) Oeuvres de Descartes, 11 vols. (Paris: Vrin, 1904)Google Scholar, and Cottingham, J., Stoothoff, R. and Murdoch, D. (eds.) The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Vols. I and II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) (AT 7 351, CSM 2 243)Google Scholar.

11 AT 7 16, CSM 2 11.

12 AT VII 36, CSM II 25.

13 AT VII 89, CSM II 61; AT VII 226, CSM II 159.

14 AT VII 9, CSM II 8.

15 AT VII 350, CSM II 243.

16 For other interpretations stressing the importance of cognitive reform in the Meditations, see Carriero's, J.Between Two Worlds: A Reading of Descartes's Meditations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009)Google Scholar, as well as D. Garber, ‘Semel in vita: The Scientific Background to Descartes's Meditations’ and G. Hatfield, ‘The Senses and the Fleshless Eye: The Meditations as Cognitive Exercises’, both in Rorty, A.O. (ed.) Essays on Descartes's Meditations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986)Google Scholar. Garber traces what he sees as a dialogue between Descartes and common sense in the Meditations; I would suggest that what he calls ‘common sense’ is what Descartes regards as prejudice. Carriero stresses Descartes's disagreements with Scholastic Aristotelian epistemology. Since Descartes regards this as grounded in childhood prejudices (see e.g. footnote 6 below), our approaches are not incompatible.

17 AT VII 21, CSM II 14. The supposition that we are deceived by an evil demon is not included here because Descartes does not introduce it as a reason to doubt our existing opinions. Instead, he introduces it to ensure that we do not assent to opinions we have found reason to doubt (AT VII 22-3, CSM II 15).

18 AT VII 21, CSM II 14.

19 AT VII 18, CSM II 12.

20 AT VII 17, CSM II 17, emphasis added.

21 I believe that a stronger claim can be made out: that (with one exception) the project of cognitive reform through doubt is (a) feasible and (b) necessary only for those who are subject to the founding errors of childhood. An exception is needed to allow for those whose beliefs are subject to major error and distortion independent of these founding errors. Descartes would not of course deny that there could be such people, nor that they could undergo and benefit from a further round of demolition and reconstruction. But for most human beings, Descartes believes, reform of the errors and biases originating in childhood is necessary and sufficient to remove the main cause of error in our beliefs.

22 Discourse II, AT VI 13, 14, CSM I 117.

23 Search After Truth, AT X 507, CSM II 406.

24 Seventh Replies, AT VII 481, CSM II 324; emphasis added.

25 Discourse II, AT VI 13, 14, CSM I 117.

26 Search After Truth, AT VII 508, CSM II 406.

27 Seventh Replies, AT VII 512, CSM II 349.

28 AT VII 507–8, CSM II 406.

29 AT VIIIA 5, CSM I 193, emphasis added.

30 AT VII 17, CSM II 12.

31 AT VII 18, CSM II 12.

32 See, for example, AT VII 158, CSM II 112.

33 AT VIIIA 35, CSM I 218.

34 Principles I.71, AT VIIIA 36, CSM I 219.

35 AT VII 157, CSM II 111.

36 AT VI 37, CSM I 129.

37 Second Meditation, AT VII 26, CSM II 17.

38 Third Meditation, AT VII 35, CSM II 25; Sixth Meditation, AT VII 75, CSM II 52.

39 These are not the only effects of the founding error. Thanks to our infant reliance on the senses and the vividness of sensory ideas, we form the belief that nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses, a tenet of Scholastic Aristotelian epistemology (AT VII 75, CSM II 52).

40 Synopsis, AT VII 16, CSM II 11. This last remark about the aim of the Meditations should be taken with a pinch of salt, given Descartes's confession to Mersenne that the work contains all the foundations of his physics (see AT III 298, CSM III 193).

41 AT VII 162, CSM II 115.

42 AT VII 157, CSM II 111; emphasis added. It is because of the importance of attentive meditation, Descartes explains, that he wrote ‘Meditations’ rather than ‘Disputations’ or ‘Theorems and Problems’ (AT VII 157, CSM II 112).

43 AT VII 12, CSM II 19.

44 AT VII 158, CSM II 112.

45 AT VII 18, CSM II 17.

46 AT VII 22, CSM II 15.

47 AT VII 22, CSM II15.

48 It is particularly difficult for us to doubt the existence of our own bodies because we are taught by nature that we are intermingled with them to make one thing. Presumably that is one reason that Descartes explicitly discusses the feasibility of doubting the existence of our hands and bodies in the First Meditation. At first he suggests that only the insane could do this; then he points out that in dreams we believe false things about our own bodies (AT VII 18–9, CSM II 13).

49 AT VII 22, CSM II 15.

50 AT VII 18, CSM II 12.

51 AT VII 82–3, CSM II 57–8.

52 AT VI 83, CSM II 57.

53 AT VIIIA 36, CSM I 219.

54 AT VII 441, CSM II 297, emphasis added.

55 AT VII 60, CSM II 41.

56 I.71, AT VIIIA 36, CSM I 219.

57 AT VII 438, CSM II 295–6.

58 AT VII 234, CSM II 164.

59 AT VII 233, CSM II 163.

60 AT VII 82, CSM II 56.

61 AT VII 83, CSM II 57.

62 AT VII 83, CSM II 58.

63 AT VII 437–8, CSM II 295; see also AT VII 32, CSM II 21.

64 AT VII 87–8, CSM II 60.

65 AT VII 24, CSM II 16.

66 Second Meditation, AT VII 27, CSM II 18.

67 AT VII 28, CSM II 19.

68 AT VII 29, CSM II 20.

69 AT VII 35, CSM II 25.

70 AT VII 39, CSM II 27.

71 AT VII 40, CSM II 27.

72 AT VII 22, CSM II 15.

73 AT VII 80, CSM II 56.

74 AT VII 81, CSM II 56.

75 AT VII 82, CSM II 56–7, emphasis added.

76 Why is what our nature teaches only guaranteed to contain some truth? We learn later in the Sixth Meditation that our inner sensations sometimes deceive. This occasional deception of the senses is a natural and unavoidable consequence of our composite nature as human beings, so it is compatible with the perfection of our creator (AT VII 88–9, CSM II 62).

77 AT VII 82–3, CSM II 57.

78 The fact that our creator is not a deceiver guarantees that any falsity in our opinions is correctible by some faculty that is part of our natural endowment (AT VII 80, CSM II 55–6).

79 AT VII 83, CSM II 57–8.

80 AT VI 83, CSM II 57–8.

81 AT VII 82, CSM II 57.

82 AT VII 82, CSM II 57

83 AT VII 12, CSM II 9.

84 AT VII 12, CSM II 9. The Synopsis states that ‘this exercise [sc. of doubting the existence of all things, especially material things] is also of the greatest benefit since it enables the mind to distinguish without difficulty what belongs to itself…from what belongs to body’ (AT VII 12, CSM II 9).

85 AT VII 131, CSM II 94.

86 AT VII 24, CSM II 16.

87 AT VII 131, CSM II 94.

88 Descartes explains in the Principles that ‘our mind is unable to keep its attention on things without some degree of difficulty and fatigue; and it is hardest of all for it to attend to what is not present to the senses or even to the imagination’ (AT VIIIA 37, CSM I 220).

89 AT VII 162–3, CSM II 115.

90 AT VII 53, CSM II 37.

91 AT VII 16, CSM II 11.

92 AT VII 35, CSM II 24.

93 Synopsis, AT VII 13, CSM II 9.

94 AT VII 32, CSM II 21.

95 The confusion of the two is readily explained within Descartes's framework. Clear and distinct perception inclines the will to assent (AT VII 59, CSM II 41), but so does a habit of assenting.

96 AT VIIIA 37, CSM I 220.