Meditations on First Philosophy

1. Meditations on First Philosophy Philosophy 1 Spring, 2002 G. J. Mattey

2. The Religious Crisis • The Protestant Reformation destroyed the universal intellectual authority of the Roman Catholic Church • Individual conscience was offered as a higher authority • One philosophical issue was how to adjudicate this dispute • Another was what role reason should play

3. The Scientific Crisis • Natural philosophers such as Galileo challenged the Aristotelian account of the natural world • Mathematical explanations appeared preferable to teleological explanations • Hobbes’s account of the natural world seemed to exclude any role for God

4. The Skeptical Crisis • The writings of the ancient skeptics had been recovered during the Renaissance • Powerful skeptical arguments were mobilized by philosophers such as Montaigne • These arguments threatened religious as well as scientific belief

5. The Problem of the Criterion • This problem was posed by ancient Pyrrhonian skeptics • How can a dispute (e.g., authority vs. conscience) be settled? • One may not appeal to what is in dispute • So a new criterion is needed • If the new criterion is in dispute, the problem arises once again

6. René Descartes • Born 1596 • French • Studied under the Jesuits • Invented analytic geometry • Pursued many scientific investigations • “Father of modern philosophy” • Died 1650

7. Descartes’s Contributions • Produced a comprehensive mathematical system of the world, with “laws of nature” such as inertia • Looked for new first principles of philosophy in pure reason • Tried to refute skepticism decisively • Attempted to prove that the mind an autonomous being, distinct from the body

8. Preconceptions • The Aristotelian account of knowledge began with notions acquired from sense-perception • Descartes held that these “preconceptions” acquired in youth are the source of error • He sought to overturn the preconceptions of his youth, thus purging his mind of error

9. The “Method of Doubt” • Descartes sought a method of removing all at once his erroneous opinions • He would treat as false any opinion that was open to the slightest doubt • Once all dubious opinions were removed, he would see what survived • He would build on this foundation an edifice of knowledge free of preconceptions

10. Doubts About Specific Objects • My opinions about specific objects are based on sense-perception • Opinions about obscure objects (e.g., small or distant ones) are dubious because I am often deceived by our sensory input • Opinions about near and familiar objects (e.g., “I am seated next to the fireplace”) are dubious because I have no criterion for distinguishing my waking states from my dreaming states

11. Doubts About General Objects • My mistaken opinions about specific objects depend on my opinions about general objects (e.g., shapes) • People make errors regarding even the simplest things (e.g., that 2+3=5) • I may have been made so that I can be deceived even about them • A powerful God could have brought it about that the natural universe does not exist • A lesser cause or chance could easily have brought it about that I am defective

12. Sustaining Doubt • The method of doubt requires that for now I treat my opinions about sensed specific and rationally known general objects as false • A uniform way of keeping my doubts in mind is by assuming that there is a powerful evil genius who is exerting its will to deceive me • Still, it is difficult to sustain this doubt due to laziness

13. If I Am Thinking, I Exist • Is there anything left that is not subject to doubt? • Perhaps it is some specific object that is not perceived through the senses • Such an object is myself, since I must exist in order to doubt at all (Augustine) • In the period of time when I think (cogito) I am something, an evil genius cannot bring it about that I am nothing

14. I Am a Thinking Thing • What is the I which, necessarily, exists when it is thinking? • It is a thinking thing (res cogitans) • It need not have any bodily characteristics, since it has been assumed that there are no bodies and no knowledge of general things • So what I am is not known by imagination, which simulates shapes

15. What a Thinking Thing Does • Most characteristics of a thinking thing are conditions that allowed me to reject my former opinions • Doubting • Understanding • Affirming • Denying • Willing • Refusing

16. Imagining and Sensing • The same thing that doubts, understands, etc. also: • Imagines many things, even when not willing to do so • Notices many things that appear to arise from the senses • It imagines things as if bodies exist • It “senses,” i.e., seems to see, hear, feel, etc. • I cannot doubt that these are powers in me • They can all be classified as “thinking”

17. Intellectual Perception • Suppose that bodies exist: how could they be known? • The senses reveal nothing constant in them • The imagination cannot comprehend their infinite possible variations • They are perceived only through inspection by the intellect, which understands their constant features: extension, flexibility, mutability • The intellectual inspection that reveals the nature of bodies even more clearly reveals the nature of mind

18. Clear and Distinct Perception • I now know a number of things about myself • To know these things, I must know what it is for me to know them • The condition for knowledge is clarity and distinctness in the perception of what I affirm • It seems a general rule that whatever I perceive very clearly and very distinctly is true

19. The Return of Doubt • When I turn my attention to what I perceive very clearly and distinctly, I believe that I cannot be deceived about them • But when I turn my attention to my preconceived notion of God, I believe that I might have been made so that I can be deceived about them • To dispel this “very tenuous and, so to speak, metaphysical” doubt, it must be determined whether God exists and can be a deceiver

20. Truth and Falsity • Truth and falsity reside in judgments • Judgment embraces in thought something beyond the subject judged • The primary subjects of judgment are ideas • Ideas in themselves are neither true nor false (nor are acts of will) • Error arises most commonly when the idea is taken to be a likeness of something outside me

21. Grounds for Judgment • Why do I take it that my ideas are likenesses of things outside me? • I seem to have been taught so by nature: I spontaneously believe this • Natural impulses can give rise to error • But the “light of nature” always yields true judgments (e.g., “from the fact that I doubt, it follows that I am”) • The ideas come to me against my will • But they might be produced by something in me • Even if the ideas come from things outside me, they might not be likeness of them (e.g., the small image of the sun)

22. A Hierarchy of Ideas • Ideas as modes of thought are equal: one idea is no more an idea than another • But they are not equal in the objects they represent • An idea of a substance has more “objective” reality than that of an accident • An idea of an infinite substance has more objective reality than that of a finite substance

23. Cause and Effect • We know by the light of nature that the efficient cause of a thing has at least as much reality as its effect • This holds for objective reality as well as the “formal” reality of existing things • The cause of the objective reality of an idea must have at least as much reality as it does: it cannot get this reality from nothing

24. The Cause of Ideas • There must be a formal reality which is the cause of the objective reality of ideas • This formal reality might be an idea itself • But the causal chain cannot be infinite: there must be a non-idea causing the first idea • This is “a sort of archetype that contains formally all the reality that is in the idea merely objectively”

25. Escape from the Circle of Ideas? • Suppose there is an idea in me whose objective reality is so great that I cannot be the formal reality that is its cause • Then I am not alone in the world: the cause of that idea exists as well • Are there any ideas of this sort? • Different classes of ideas will have to be examined

26. Ideas of Finite Beings • I could be the cause of ideas of other men, animals or angels: they are like me • And I could be the cause of ideas of physical objects • Their sensory qualities are very obscure, and even if accurate, they are no more real than I • Their greatest objective reality is as substances, but I am a substance as well

27. The Idea of God • God is an “infinite, independent, supremely intelligent and supremely powerful” substance who created me and all else • The idea of God is not “materially false,” like that of heat or cold, because of its clarity and distinctness • I do not have the degree of reality needed to produce an idea of God • There is much in me that is merely potential and not actual

28. The Cause of Myself • Since it is easy to be blinded by preconceptions, I will ask whether I could exist without God • I did not get my being from myself, since I would have given myself all the perfections • I have not always existed, since I need something to sustain my existence over each moment of time, and I cannot perpetuate my own existence • I did not get my being from my parents, since they could not be the ultimate source of my idea of God

29. The Existence of God • The only way I can have an idea of God is by God’s causing me to have the idea • Since I and my idea exist, God exists • The idea of God in my mind is like a signature on a painting • The idea I have of God precludes God’s being a deceiver, since deception implies an imperfection

30. The Possibility of Error • God did not give me a faculty of judgment that would lead me to error if I did not use it properly • So error is the result of my improper use of my judgment • This is possible because of my finitude, the fact that I partake to some extent of nothing

31. The Cause of Error • Why do I err, since it seems that it would be better for me not to? • I cannot know what is best based on what appears to my mind • Error is the result of my faculty of choosing over-reaching my faculty of knowing • Will is infinite, but my understanding is limited • I resemble God most through the infinitude of my will

32. Willing • Willing is to be able to do or not to do the same thing, e.g., to affirm or deny it • A better account: willing is the mind’s movement toward or away from what is proposed by the intellect, in a way that we sense we are determined by no external force

33. Freedom of the Will • Freedom is the inclination to choose the course that appears to be good and true • This inclination may be based on clear understanding or an impulse implanted in me by God • In my judgment that I truly exist, “a great light gave way to a great inclination of my will” • Therefore, indifference is the lowest degree of freedom, since the intellect sees no reason to prefer one course to another

34. Using and Abusing Free Will • The indifference of the will extends to that about which we know nothing • It even extends to what is probable • My knowledge that it is not certain (e.g., whether I have a body) pushes me away from judging it as true • This diffidence is a proper use of judgment • But making an assertion or denial in such a case is abuse of my free will • If I am right, it is only through luck

35. No Complaints Against God • The ability to err might be thought to be grounds for complaint against God, but: • I should thank God for my limited intellect, since God owes me nothing • My will must be unlimited (and hence subject to error) because it is unitary • Error is privation, and hence not a thing • Even though God could have made me error-free, it was for the best that I was made as I was • I can still avoid error through self-restraint

36. So Do External Things Exist? • Some remaining issues about the nature of God and myself will be postponed • The main question is whether the doubts about the existence of external objects can be overcome? • The first step is to examine the ideas of external things for clarity and distinctness • This will reveal what they must be

37. Extension and Duration • I have clear ideas of two continuous quantities, extension and duration • Shapes and positions are understood through extension, and motion through extension and duration • They apply to true and immutable natures, whether or not external objects exist

38. Knowledge of Natures • Natures are not fabricated by me, as can be seen through geometrical demonstrations • I cannot refrain from assenting to judgments about them while perceiving them clearly • Even when my attention was on the senses, I still regarded mathematical demonstration as certain

39. Another Proof of God’s Existence • What I clearly and distinctly perceive to belong to a thing really does • I clearly and distinctly perceive that God’s nature is that of a supremely perfect being • It belongs to the nature of a supremely perfect being to exist always • So, God always exists

40. A Sophism? • We do not suppose that because a mountain is inseparable from a valley, a mountain exists: they may both fail to exist • So it seems possible to think of all God’s properties without God’s existing • But to reason this way is fallacious: it is existence itself that cannot be separated from God’s nature as a perfect being

41. Knowing God’s Nature • God’s nature, like that of a geometrical object, is not fabricated by me • God is the only being I can think of whose essence includes its existence • When I see that God now exists, I also perceived clearly that God has existed eternally • There are other features in God that I perceive and cannot remove or change

42. The Most Certain Knowledge • The main way in which we can tell that we know God’s nature is through the clarity and distinctness of the perception of it • This is revealed even if it was obscured initially by prejudice. • Once it is known, nothing is more certain, or known more easily than that God exists

43. Removing a Slight Doubt • The remaining “tenuous” doubt was about things which are no longer clearly perceived • God is not a deceiver, so if I remember that I had clearly perceived them, I can count on my memory • Errors in memory occur when the original perception was not clear • This holds even if I am always dreaming

44. Imagination • It seems that it follows from my use of the imagination that material objects exist • Use of the imagination requires more exertion than that of the pure intellect • I could exist as a pure understanding even without imagination • So a probable conjecture is that imagination depends on something else—a body

45. Sense • Some things are better known through sense than through the intellect • These include colors, sounds, tastes, pains • Can an argument for the existence of material things be based on the contributions of the mode of thinking called “sense”? • I must rehearse what caused doubt initially

46. Naïve Beliefs About Sense • Bodies—my own and others—seem to be the objects of sense • Associated with my body are ideas of pain and pleasure • Many other ideas are also associated with bodies • They come to me against my will, and so do not seem to come from me • “My body” seems particularly related to me

47. Doubts About Bodies • There are numerous perceptual illusions, even with respect to pain • I have no reason to believe that ideas in my dreams come from bodies, but I can dream anything I think I receive from bodies • I might be constituted by nature to be deceived about what is true • What is against my will could originate in me

48. Separating Mind from Body • God can make me without a body • So my essence consists entirely of my being a thinking thing • I am really distinct from my body • Imagination and sense depend on my mind as modes • But I can exist without them

49. Bodies Exist • My passive faculty of sensing requires an active faculty producing what is sensed • This faculty requires no act of understanding and it operates against my will • So, the active faculty is not in me • So, the active faculty is in another substance: God, a super-human spirit, or body • If it were not in body, God would be a deceiver • God is no deceiver • So, bodies exist

50. The Teachings of Nature • Nature is the handiwork of God • It teaches me about the relation of my mind and my body • I and my body form a single intermingled thing • It also teaches me which other bodies should be pursued or shunned • Anything else belongs exclusively to mind or to body • Nature does not teach me that there is a likeness between ideas and bodies