René Descartes: Systematic Doubt as a Philosophical Method PDF

5 Rene Descartes: Systematic Doubt as a Philosophical Method In earlier times the most important entity was either the state (the Greek city-state) or the Church. Nowadays it tends to be the individ¬ ual, and not just any individual but ME! Have you ever wondered how the self came to be at the ce...

5 Rene Descartes: Systematic Doubt as a Philosophical Method In earlier times the most important entity was either the state (the Greek city-state) or the Church. Nowadays it tends to be the individ¬ ual, and not just any individual but ME! Have you ever wondered how the self came to be at the centre of our concerns in the modern age? Blame Descartes, say the philosophers. But is this fair? Life Rene Descartes was born in the village of La Haye in 1596. This village is about 35 miles south of the city of Tours in central France. (You won’t find it on the map any longer because it has been renamed in honour of the philosopher and mathematician.) The house in which Descartes was born is now a tiny museum at 29 rue Descartes, in the village of Descartes. Ren6 Descartes Rene Descartes: Systematic Doubt as a Philosophical Method 71 At the age of 8, Descartes was sent to the nearby Jesuit college of La Fleche (now a military academy). He remained there for eight years, studying logic, philosophy and mathematics. He was a gifted and eager pupil. He was, however, quite a delicate boy and was often allowed to stay late in bed in order to rest. It is said that on such an occasion, while watching a spider construct a web, he worked out the principles of coordinate geometry. He was, in later life, grateful to the Jesuits for the education he had received, and believed it to have been of extremely high quality. Descartes resolved to study in ‘the great book of the world’, and decided to take up a military career, mostly outside France. A military career seems a very odd choice for one whose health was so delicate. However, he saw military service in Germany, Bavaria, Hungary and Bohemia. It is said he accepted no pay for his military service, and combined army life with the study of mathematics, philosophy and music. Descartes reputedly had several dreams which eventually persuaded him that his mission in life was to seek the truth by means of reason. In thanksgiving for this revelation he resolved to go on a pilgrimage to the house of Our Lady of Loreto in Italy; however, he didn’t make the visit until much later. He lived in Paris for a while, but is said to have found it distracting. Descartes wrote a number of books. These were quickly translated into French at a time when learned people still corresponded in Latin. Among his works were Treatise on the World, Discourse on Method, Meditations on First Philosophy and Passions of the Soul. He delayed the publication of his Treatise on the World because Galileo had been con¬ demned by the Inquisition for false teaching. Descartes lived mostly in Holland, and this may have been because censorship there was less strict than elsewhere. In 1649 Descartes accepted an invitation to visit the court of Queen Christina of Sweden, who was anxious to learn modern phil¬ osophy. However, the harsh Swedish winter was bad for his health. The Queen also expected him to conduct his lessons at five o’clock in the morning! This was all too much for poor Descartes: he was used to lying in bed thinking until quite late in the day. He became ill with 72 A Brief History of Philosophy a fever and died on 11 February 1650, after only five months in Sweden. Descartes never married. He was a quiet, retiring gentleman, said to be kind and generous to his servants. He was a devout Roman Catholic, yet intent on occupying himself with problems which could be solved by reason alone. He consciously set out to construct a new philosophical system. Intuition is the immediate grasping of truth without the aid of reasoning. Deduction is drawing conclusions by a process of reasoning from established facts; a series of propositions following definite rules, drawn from the axioms and rules of inference. Epistemology is that part of philosophy which studies the history, methods and principles of knowledge. Ontology is the study of being as being, being in itself. Cartesian method is the philosophical method of Descartes. (Descartes = Cartesian) Timeline 1591 Introduction of the use of letters to represent quantities in algebra 1592 Galileo invents the thermometer 1596 Birth of Descartes 1603 Death of Elizabeth I 1604-12 Descartes at college at La Fleche c. 1614-26 Descartes as a soldier/philosopher 1614 Napier's logarithms 1618 Start of Thirty Years'War 1619 (10th November) the day in the stove 1620 Francis Bacon's New Organon c. 1626-28 Descartes in Paris Rene Descartes: Systematic Doubt as a Philosophical Method 73 1628-49 Descartes in Holland 1637 Descartes' Discourse on Method 1638 Galileo's law on the movement of the pendulum 1641 Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy 1643 Louis XIV King of France 1649 Descartes' Treatise on the Passions 1649-50 Descartes in Sweden 1650 Death of Descartes Thought The slow arrival of modernity Between the Renaissance and the nineteenth century, control of culture slowly became the business of the state rather than the Church. Government steadily came to have more influence in many areas of life. Many national states replaced their kings (said to have received their authority from God) with other forms of government. The trading classes increasingly got their hands on the levers of power. The new culture was, in the main, ‘liberal’. The new institu¬ tions never sought to control philosophers to the extent that the medieval Church did. This modern era had a new outlook. There were two gradual but obvious changes. The. first was the decline in the authority of the Church, in particular (but not only) that of the Roman Catholic Church. The second was the growing authority of science. The new science appealed to reason. It was piecemeal, making its discoveries in small steps; it no longer wished to lay down a complete system. The pronouncements of the medieval Church were made as if they were announcing absolute truth. New scientific truths were announced tentatively, on the basis of probability, and were open to correction and change. The temper of the new scientific mind was questing rather than authoritarian. The society in which such values are foremost tends to be a dynamic society, with fewer fixed points of 74 A Brief History of Philosophy reference, and a smaller number of certainties. The scientific outlook tends to be ethically neutral. Modern philosophy still has a subjective leaning. This is quite obvious in Descartes who built up all knowledge on the basis of the certainty of his own existence. The founder of modern philosophy Descartes is quite rightly considered to be the founder of modern philosophy. He was the first philosopher of high, inventive ability to be influenced by the new physics and astronomy. He wrote not as a teacher but as an explorer. His style was lively rather than stuffy. Descartes was determined to reinvent philosophy from the begin¬ ning, relying on reason alone, without trusting the authority of any philosopher who had gone before. He wanted to avoid all conjecture and rely only on what was clear and evident. He was convinced that he must work with clear, distinct, abstract ideas. He spoke of intuition and deduction as the most certain routes to knowledge. It is important to note that Descartes was looking for the order of knowing, not the order of being. For him the important enquiry concerned epistem¬ ology rather than ontology. Thus we may claim that the modern era in philosophy began with Descartes. The day in the stove Modern philosophy began on 10 November 1619, the day that Descartes spent in a stove and came out with ‘the idea of a universal method for discovering truth’. How could he have spent a day in a stove? What did he mean? Various suggestions have been put forward. It may have been a small room which was heated with a stove, possibly the only heated room in the house. On the other hand, the fireplace may have been in an alcove with the chimneybreast jutting well out into the room, so that one sat in the alcove, under the mantelpiece, beside the fire. Whatever it was, it was there that modern philosophy was born. Rene Descartes: Systematic Doubt as a Philosophical Method 75 It was in that stove in Germany that Descartes decided to make a clean sweep, to do away with all scholastic philosophy and to start afresh. From it came the first great philosophical and scientific work to be published in a modern language (French rather than Latin). Descartes wanted it to be accessible to ‘those who use only their natural reason in its pure state’. The book was called Discourse on Method, and in it Descartes laid out the four rules of his method. It is to them that we now turn. The Cartesian rules The fact that one has lots of rules, observed Descartes, is often an excuse for not getting things right. (He felt that a state was often better ruled when it had fewer rather than many laws.) Therefore he resolved to have only four rules. When modern politicians talk of the advantages of'deregulation'they unconsciously echo Descartes. 1. He accepted nothing as true unless he knew it evidently to be so. He would accept nothing unless it presented itself so clearly and distinctly to his judgement that he had no reason to doubt it. This is the rule of clear and distinct ideas. 2. He divided each of the problems he examined into as many elem¬ entary subdivisions as he could, and as were necessary to resolve the problem. This is the rule of analysis. 3. He conducted his thoughts in an ordered manner. He would start with the simplest and easiest ideas to understand. He would progress by degrees towards the most complicated. This is the rule of progression from the simple to the complex. 4. He carried out such complete and frequent reviews that he was certain to have left nothing out. This is the rule of synthesis. It is important to note that thinking a problem through involves two major movements of the mind: analysis and synthesis. 76 A Brief History of Philosophy Analysis: breaking down the problem into clearly understood elements. Synthesis: placing all the elements together so that one gets an overall picture. The method of systematic doubt In order to have a totally secure basis on which he could build his new philosophy Descartes decided that he would doubt everything that could possibly be doubted. He noted that it was possible to be deceived with regard to what our senses tell us. Sometimes my table looks very dark brown, sometimes very light brown; it often depends on which way the light is shining on it and, indeed, on how strong the light is. So which is the right way to describe the colour of my table? It is possible to be deceived with regard to the nature of one’s body. People who have had an arm or a leg amputated often feel a pain or an itch, apparently in the missing limb. Their bodies have deceived them. It is possible to be deceived with regard to the subject-matter of mathematics. We’ve all got our sums wrong! Am I even deceived about my own existence? Is there anything at all that cannot be doubted? ‘I think, therefore I am’ Yes, there is something that cannot be doubted, said Descartes. I am sitting here doubting everything. If I am doubting, I must exist! ‘I think, therefore I am.’ (lJe pense, done je suis.’) One of the most famous phrases in the French language, it is generally known the world over in its Latin form: ‘ Cogito, ergo sum.’ The argument is often referred to as ‘the Cogito’. But there is a further problem: can being exist quite apart from the knowledge we have of it? Descartes put forward thinking as the fun¬ damental certainty about existence. It was the only immediate datum. This is the way he had started all over again from the very beginning. But from now on all existence would appear to depend on Rene Descartes: Systematic Doubt as a Philosophical Method 77 the existence of thinking, which was easier to know than any other form of existence. Descartes was happy to say that thought was the only immediate reality. Some of his rationalist successors would say it was the only reality! Descartes made mind more certain than matter, and my mind (for me) more certain than any other mind. Why was he so sure that his Cogito was correct? Because it was clear and distinct. What did Descartes mean by ‘thinking’? ‘Everything that is done in such a way that we perceive it immediately by ourselves; that is why not just understanding, willing, imagining, but also feeling is the same thing as thinking.’ Discourse on Method (1637) Correct philosophical method is only to accept ideas that are clear and distinct and therefore cannot be doubted; to divide complex questions into simple basic questions; to proceed from the simple to the complex; to review all steps in reasoning. When one puts this method into practice one must doubt all propo¬ sitions except: 'I think, therefore I am.' I am a thinking substance who has an idea of God. I could not have derived the idea of a perfect being from my own experience, so God must exist as the source of my idea. Imperfect contingent beings could not exist without a perfect being. God must necessarily exist, for if he did not he would not be a perfect being. The God who exists provides the ground for our knowledge about the external world, but we must only accept those ideas that are clear and distinct and beyond doubt, for the reliability of the senses and reason derives from God. Body and mind Descartes decided that he was essentially a thinking being. From there he worked out that the soul or mind (that part of him which 78 A Brief History of Philosophy did the thinking) was totally separate and distinct from his body, and also easier to know than his body. He saw the mind and the body as running parallel, but not con¬ nected. One way to grasp his idea is to think of two alarm clocks stand¬ ing side by side. The first alarm clock has no bell, but it has hands; the second alarm clock has no hands but has a bell. When the set time shows on the first alarm clock, the bell on the second clock rings. But they are not connected. Mind and body are not connected; they only appear to be. Think of a piece of wax, said Descartes, its qualities are apparent to the touch. These qualities change under different conditions: heat the wax and it gets soft; cool it and it gets hard. These qualities are not the wax itself, said Descartes. This is understood by the mind, not perceived by the senses. Knowledge of objects must therefore come about through the mind, not the senses. Proof of the existence of God Descartes cast doubt on everything to do with the external world. He affirmed his own existence because he was a thinking being. His own existence could be grasped immediately in the act of thinking. What about that reality which can be observed by means of the senses? Its existence also needs to be demonstrated. Descartes did this by calling on God. Only the existence of a perfect being, who was incapable of deception, assured him that the existence of external bodies was not an illusion. On what philosophical grounds did Descartes believe in God? If one is alert to the fact that one is doubting, he said, one is aware of imperfection. We know about this imperfection as soon as we realize we make mistakes. But being aware of imperfection implies the idea of perfection. The idea of perfection could not have its origin in an imperfect being. Only an infinite and perfect being could cause the idea of perfection. This is a version of an old idea, originally put forward in the Middle Ages by Anselm, that existence is an essential part of perfection. If Rene Descartes: Systematic Doubt as a Philosophical Method 79 something is perfect and does not exist, then it is less than perfect, and to that extent is a contradiction in terms. This is known as the onto¬ logical argument for the existence of God. An imperfect being (such as a human person) is of necessity dependent upon the power of a perfect being (such as God). Imperfect beings depend both for their original existence and their continuing existence, hour by hour, upon a perfect being. What is rationalism? Descartes was a rationalist philosopher. Rationalists are contrasted with empiricists. (We will be looking at empiricism when we discuss David Hume in Chapter 8.) What is meant by rationalism? There are some statements that have to be true: they could not pos¬ sibly be false. Likewise, there are some statements that have to be false. Take for example: ‘One can’t be in two places at the same time.’ This is a necessary truth. What makes it a necessary truth? It is know- able a priori. That means that it has to hold true for all cases and just thinking about what it means will display its truth. Other statements j ust happen to be true. They are contingent. How many people are in the room with you as you read? The number could vary. There is no one number that has to be true. Look up from the book and count! This is the only way you can check the number of people in the room with you. This means that the number of people in the room with you now is knowable a posteriori: check it out and you have your answer. With an a priori statement you don’t have to look up. You know already that it has to be true or false. Looking up and checking is an example of empirical verification. A priori statements don’t need empirical verification. But do a priori statements give us information, or are they just another way of defining what has already been said? Such statements are said to be analytic: ‘A dog is a dog.’ ‘A square has four sides.’ ‘Quadrupeds have four legs.’ What each of these statements does is restate what has already been said. It is part of the definition of a square that it has four sides. It is part of the definition of a quadruped 80 A Brief History of Philosophy that it has four legs. Analytic statements just repeat in different words what you already know. They do not give us new information. A synthetic statement gives you new information: ‘There are 50 states in the United States of America.’ ‘Napoleon was defeated in 1815.’ ‘The Taj Mahal is in India.’ None of those statements restates in other words what has already been said. None of them has to be true. They all give information. (Check and you’ll see!) They are synthetic statements. Are all synthetic statements contingent, knowable a posteriorii? And are all analytic statements necessary, known a priori? Or are there such things as synthetic a priori statements: statements which give us fresh information but which are necessarily true? Empiricists claim that there are no such things as synthetic a priori statements. Rationalists claim that there are such things as synthetic a priori statements. Rationalists say that we get certain concepts from experience, but after we have got them in this way we see by‘rational insight’ that they have to be the way they are. Descartes was a philoso¬ pher of rationalist outlook; the first great thinker of the modern rationalist tradition. These notions will be particularly important when we look at David Hume and Immanuel Kant. Appraisal We can see that even though he resolved to make a total break with the past, Descartes carried with him a number of notions from the scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages. We see this in the way he brought God in to justify an inclination to believe in the existence of physical bodies. Nevertheless, the general thrust of his thought was innovative, radical and bold. His rules on analysis, clarity, progress and synthesis are still useful. Anybody who is extremely methodical and rational is still thought of as possessing a Cartesian outlook. But it is important to use the rules as an aid, not as a straitjacket.