4. 4
Without a proper understanding of Descartes’ view on
mind, it is impossible to discuss philosophy of mind.
The Father of Modern Philosophy
Rationalist (Reason)
Dualism
5. Sources of knowledge:
• Sense experience (empiricism)
• Reasoning alone (rationalism)
We truly know only that of which we
are certain (a priori). Since sense
experience (a posteriori knowledge)
cannot guarantee certainty, reason
alone must be the means for getting
knowledge
6. Sense experiences are often wrong.
I might be wrong about whether I have
a body or if there is a world apart from
my imagination (it may be a dream)
I might be wrong even about whether
my reasoning abilities (e.g., 2+3=5) can
be trusted (evil genius); so I should
suspend judgment
7. 7
DESCARTES’ PROBLEM
•Descartes sets his face against old authorities and
emphasized the practical character of philosophy and
he took mathematics as the model of his
philosophical method.
•He offers a program of human knowledge and
sought to construct a system of thought which would
possess the certainty of mathematics.
8. 8
•He was in agreement with the great natural
scientists of the new era: everything in [external]
nature must be explained mechanically – without
forms or essences, but he also accepted the
fundamental principles of the time-honored
idealistic philosophy and attempted to adapt them
to the demands of the new science: his problem
was to reconcile the mechanism of nature with the
freedom of the human soul
9. Classification of the Sciences
(a) The first part of true philosophy is metaphysics,
which contains principles of knowledge – what
came to be called epistemology, such as the
definition and principle attributes of God,
immortality of the soul, and of all the clear and
simple ideas that we possess;
(b) Physics, true principles of material things,
structure and origin of the universe, nature of the
earth, of plants, animals and man
10. Method & Criterion of Knowledge
Aim: to find a body of certain and self-evident truths.
•The method of mathematics is a key: begin with
axioms which are self-evident, then deduce logical
consequences.
•This method must be extended to philosophy.
•Descartes combs through the elements and levels of
knowledge, examines and discards all those claims
which are uncertain and arrives at…one thing is
certain: that I doubt or think – It is a contradiction to
suppose [think] that that which thinks does not exist
at the very time when it thinks.
11. Characteristics of Descartes’
Philosophical Method
• Accept as true only what is indubitable.
• Divide every question into manageable parts.
• Begin with the simplest issues and ascend to the
more complex.
• Review frequently enough to retain the whole
argument at once.
12. Descartes or Cartesian Doubt
The basic strategy of Descartes’s method of doubt is
to defeat skepticism on its own ground. Begin by
doubting the truth of everything—not only the
evidence of the senses and the more extravagant
cultural presuppositions, but even the fundamental
process of reasoning itself.
If any particular truth about the world can survive
this extreme skeptical challenge, then it must be
truly indubitable and therefore a perfectly certain
foundation for knowledge.
13. LEVELS OF DOUBT:
a) Perceptual Illusion
b) The Dream Problem
c) A Deceiving God
14. The Method of Doubt
The transition from opinion to knowledge requires a
massive intellectual upheaval, according to Descartes.
If he has a false opinion, it might be appealed to in
support of some other opinion, and this can be a source of
error.
•So it would be best for him to get rid of all his false
opinions.
•But at the outset, he does not have any way of
determining which of his opinions are false.
•His only recourse is to treat any opinion that he
had some reason to think might be false as if it were
actually false.
•In this way, he would do the best he could to
empty his mind of all false opinions.
15. Of course, he might well empty his mind of some true
opinions by this method.
If so, he could come to have knowledge of their truth
once he learned to recognize the difference between what
is true true and false.
•To illustrate this method, Descartes resorted to a
"homely" example of someone trying to avoid another
kind of contamination.
•Supposing he had a basket of apples and fearing
that some of them were rotten, wanted to take
those out lest they might make the rest go wrong,
how could he do that?
•Would he not first turn the whole of the apples
out of the basket and look them over one by
one, and then having selected those which he
saw not to be rotten, place them again in the
basket and leave out the others? (Reply to
seventh set of objections to the Meditations
AT481).
16. This analogy does not work perfectly, though.
oDescartes never tries to set aside all of his opinions.
•He instead progressively casts doubt on various groups of
opinions which are based on some preconceived notions
that he had.
•If he were indeed to set aside every opinion he had, he
would have nothing left on which to base the rest of the
investigation.
After having taken as false as many of his opinions as are subject
to the slightest rational doubt, Descartes could feel secure with
those that he could not rationally doubt.
•His basic strategy was to try to discover in his indubitable
beliefs a mark of their truth, and then use that mark to recover
some of the provisionally-discarded opinions.
•In practice, it turns out to be harder to dispel the grounds for
doubting some opinions than the grounds for doubting others.
17. Doubts About Bodies
A constant theme in Descartes is a distrust of the evidence that
we take to be produced by the bodily senses (sight, touch, taste,
smell, hearing).
Skeptics had always pointed to the conflicts between the
sensible appearances of things.
For example, a tower seems round from a distance and
square close-up.
The fact of perceptual variation provides some reason to
doubt any opinion about the specific characteristics of
material things formed on the basis of the way they appear
in sense-perception.
It might be thought that the doubt induced by perceptual
variation is limited to objects with respect to which he is not in an
optimal position: they are too small or too far away.
Opinions such as that he is sitting by the fire in his dressing
gown seem to be beyond doubt, at least given that he is not
mad.
18. But one does not have to be mad to doubt what seems most
obviously true about material objects.
Descartes notes that in his dreams he has often been quite
convinced that he was sitting by the fire in his dressing gown
when he was in fact lying naked in bed.
Moreover, he lacks any apparent means for determining
whether he is dreaming or awake, so there is reason to doubt
even the most obvious of his perceptually-based opinions about
what is going on in the material world.
At this point, Descartes for the sake of argument supposes that he
is dreaming and has no body at all.
Even if this were so, the images of his dreams would have to
come from something.
And if that something were not composite like his body, it would
at least have to be something "even more simple and general."
•First, there is "corporeal nature in general," along with its
extension.
•Second, there are the characteristics of corporeal things, such
as their quantity, size, number, place and time.
In the Second Meditation, Descartes will argue that
these are the fundamental attributes of bodies.
19. He suggests that his opinions about these simple and
general matters are not subject to rational doubt,
because they are true whether he is asleep or awake.
His examples are that two and three equal five, and
that a square has at most four sides.
"It does not seem possible that such obvious
truths should be subject to the suspicion of being
false" (Meditation One).
20. At this point, Descartes raises the strongest skeptical
objection of all.
It is based on a long-held opinion that he was created
by a God who is powerful enough to do anything.
If that opinion is true, it seems that God could have
created no corporeal nature at all, yet made him in such
a way that what appears to him looks just like a
corporeal world.
So now he has reason to doubt that a corporeal world
exists.
21. When thinking about this God, Descartes comes
to an even more fundamental doubt.
He has the opinion that other people have made
errors in matters about which they think they know
most perfectly.
He asks rhetorically whether God could have made
him so as to be deceived all the time about such
simple matters as whether two and three make five.
And on the supposition that he came from some
lesser cause than God, the possibility of his being "so
imperfect that I am always deceived" is even stronger.
22. One of the main questions in Descartes scholarship is
whether Descartes had dug a hole so deep that he could
not climb out.
Descartes is famous for having introduced "an evil
genius, supremely powerful and clever, who has directed
every effort at deceiving me" (Meditation One).
•It is easy to think that the evil genius would be
capable of deceiving us in the way just described, i.e.,
by having made us to be radically imperfect.
•But in fact, the genius would be fooling us only in the
first way described, merely by making everything
appear the way it would were there a corporeal
world.
23. Because of this limitation, the scope of "demon doubt"
is limited to his opinion about the existence of the
material world.
Descartes makes the supposition of an evil genius
because his opinion would otherwise remain highly
probable.
He is intent on conceiving his old opinions as "wholly
false and imaginary," for reasons that become clear
only in the Second and Sixth Meditations, where
Descartes argues for the separate existence of body
and mind.
Contemporary theorists of knowledge tend to regard
the existence of the evil genius as a doubt that must be
cleared away before we can know that material things
exist, rather than as a mere supposition.
24. COGITO, ERGO SUM
I mistrust every report of my senses, I regard the
material world as nothing more than a dream, and I
suppose that an omnipotent God renders false each
proposition that I am even inclined to believe. Since
everything therefore seems to be dubitable, does it follow
that I can be certain of nothing at all?
Descartes claimed that one thing emerges as true even
under the strict conditions imposed by the otherwise
universal doubt: "I am, I exist" is necessarily true
whenever the thought occurs to me.
This truth neither derives from sensory information nor
depends upon the reality of an external world, and I would
have to exist even if I were systematically deceived.
25. “If I am deceived, then I must exist!”
I cannot doubt the truth of the
statement, “I exist.”
I can't think that I am not thinking because then I am
thinking; and if I am thinking, then I must exist. To doubt
my own existence, I must exist!
26. Existence of the external world
God induced in us a deeply rooted conviction of the existence
of an external world; if no such world existed he could not be
defended against the charge of being a deceiver [similar to the
evolutionary argument].
The existence in my mind of dreams and hallucinations is not
a counter argument since God has endowed me with the power
of intellect to dispel and correct such delusions.
This God is not a deceiver, but a truthful being, and our
sensations must therefore by caused by real bodies.
Descartes, strictly speaking, affirms one absolute substance –
God and two relative substances – mind and body, which exist
independently of each other but depend on God.
Descartes holds that God has given the world a certain
amount of motion: motion is constant: the germ of the principle
of conservation of energy.
27. The Cogito
‘‘I think’ cannot be doubted.
What am I? I am a thing that thinks. I cannot
doubt this, yet I can doubt whether I have a body.
So I can be separated from a body.
The mind is a separate substance from the body.
28. I know with certainty that “I” exist (Cogito
ergo sum), but
WHAT am “I”?
Am “I” my body? No, because I can doubt
the existence of my body, whereas I cannot
doubt the existence of myself (the “I”).
“I” am a thinking thing, a thing that
doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills,
refuses, imagines, and has sensations.
29. ‘Cogito ergo sum’ is an indubitable
proposition.
Doubting one’s own existence
presupposes one’s existence.
Now the questions arises:
(a) What is the nature of the statement
‘cogito ergo sum’?
(b) Is it a syllogistic inference like,
‘whatever thinks exists; I think; therefore, I
exist’?
30. Descartes says, it is not a syllogistic
inference; it is rather a self-evident truth
known “by a simple intuition of the mind.”
The scholars are divided among
themselves as to the exact nature of the
transition from ‘cogito’ to ‘sum’.
31. Bernard Williams has shown, there is
something unique about the ‘cogito’ which
cannot be replaced by any other verb, for
instance, ‘ambulo’. ‘Ambulo ergo sum’ is not
as self evident as ‘cogito ergo sum’.
Ambulo ergo sum
I walk, therefore I exists
32. Descartes has already proved in the
Second Meditation the existence of a
thinking being who has a clear and distinct
perception of mind as a thinking, non-
extended thing.
This is a proof of the non-mechanical
mind which is different from the body and
which is subject to mechanical laws.
34. Metaphysical Dualism: Reality is two-
dimensional, partly material and partly non-
material (minds, ideas, souls, spirits,
consciousness, etc.).
Metaphysical Materialism: Reality is nothing but
matter-in-motion-in-space-and-in-time. There are
no non-material realities.
Metaphysical Idealism: Reality is nothing but
Mind, Idea, Soul, Spirit, Consciousness, etc.
Matter does not exist (it’s an illusion?).
35. Application to the “mind-body problem”
Metaphysical Materialism: A person is nothing but a
physical organism (body only). "Mind" (consciousness) a
feature (function, epiphenomenon) of the body.
Metaphysical Idealism: A person is “consciousness only”
(mind, soul, spirit); not at all a material being.
Metaphysical Dualism: A person is a composite of (1)
“mind” (consciousness, intellect, soul, spirit) and (2)
body (automata).
38. Descartes declared that the problem of
‘cartesian interactionism’ was based on a
supposition—that heterogeneous substances
cannot interact—which he saw no reason to
accept. Descartes also continued to insist that
mind and body are united so as to form a
‘genuine human being’.
There is a divergence between the metaphysical
conception of himself as a pure incorporeal
substance that Descartes arrives at through his
dualistic arguments in the Discourse and the
Meditations.
