Meditation Two

Where we left off: "I suppose that everything I see is false. I believe that none of what my deceitful memory represents ever existed. I have no senses whatever. Body, shape, extension, movement, and place are all chimeras. What then will be true? Perhaps just the single fact that nothing is certain." (63)

Is it possible that I (Descartes) don't exist?

"But there is some deceiver or other who is supremely powerful and supremely sly and who is always deliberately deceiving me. Then too there is no doubt that I exist, if he is deceiving me. And let him do his best at deception, he will never bring it about that I am nothing so long as I shall think that I am something." (64)
The Cogito " 'I am, I exist' is necessarily true every time I utter it or conceive it in my mind." (64)

Descartes puts this thought in a number of ways:
 

"Cogito ergo sum" (in The Principles of Philosophy)

"Je pense donc je suis" (in the Discourse on Method)

  What is Descartes getting at? How does the cogito work? Like this?
  P1: Anything which is thinking exists
P2: I am thinking
C: I exist   Q: Is it important that P2 is in the present tense and the first person?


This is perhaps a natural way to understand Descartes' point, but it is not what Descartes has in mind.

Notice that, in the Meditations, Descartes never says "I think therefore I am". This is significant.
 

In his Reply to the Second Set of Objections he writes:   "When someone says 'I am thinking therefore I am, or I exist', he does not deduce existence from thought by means of a syllogism [i.e., an argument] but recognizes it as something self-evident by a simple intuition of the mind." (AT VII 140) Q:  Why would Descartes want to avoid the idea that the cogito expresses an argument?


The Limits of the Cogito

It doesn't tell us anything much about what this 'I' is like. "I do not yet understand sufficiently what I am – I who now necessarily exist." (64)

What am I?
 

What did I think I was previously? I thought I had a body and a soul.  
"as to what this soul might be, I either did not think about it or else I imagined it a rarified I-know-not-what, like a wind or a fire … But as to the body I was not in any doubt." (64)


What about now?

 "Can I not affirm that I possess at least a small measure of all those things which I have already said belong to the nature of the body? I focus my attention on them, … , but nothing [that may not be doubted] comes to mind. … What about thinking? … it alone cannot be separated from me. I am, I exist – this is certain." (65) "But for how long? For as long as I am thinking; for perhaps it could also come to pass that if I were to cease all thinking I would then utterly cease to exist." (65) I am a thinking thing. *************

A Brief Digression - Aristotle on the Soul

[Note:  As with the material on Aristotle in the notes on the Phaedo, we will not discuss the material on Aristotle's view of the soul in class.  It won't be on the exam either.  You may, however, find it helpful.]

Before deciding he is a thinking thing, Descartes asks himself which of the various attributes he used to assign to the soul he can still be confident the soul possesses. His answer is: "What about being nourished or moving about? Since I now do not have a body, these are surely nothing but fictions. What about sensing? Surely this too does not take place without a body …" (65)
  Doesn't it seem odd to think the soul is responsible for nourishment, movement and sensation? Descartes' Scholastic background is showing itself here.  The Scholastic idea of the soul drew heavily on Aristotle's conception of the soul.  A brief look at that conception can make clear why Descartes says what does.


Aristotle on Form and Matter: Forms are very different for Aristotle than for Plato. Where Plato conceives of Forms as independently existing things, the same is not true for Aristotle.
Essentially, for Aristotle, a form is the organizing principle of matter. Matter without form is not anything at all. In this way, the word 'form' matches up with our modern use of it as meaning something like 'shape', but a form is more than simply a shape.
Aristotle on the Soul: For Aristotle, the soul is the form of a living body, i.e., it is the way the matter in the body is organized
Aristotle distinguished between different kinds of souls.
Plants had only a nutritive soul (i.e., they are organized in such a way as to be nourished, grow and diminish).

Animals had sensory/perceptual souls (i.e., they are organized as with a nutritive soul, but also with the ability to perceive and sense things).

People had rational souls (i.e., they are organized so as to have all of the above, plus reason).

It is this picture of the soul that Descartes has in mind when he thinks about what he used to believe.


**************

Back to Descartes: "At this time I admit nothing that is not necessarily true. I am therefore precisely nothing but a thinking thing; that is a mind, or intellect, or understanding, or reason … what kind of thing? I have said it already: a thinking thing." (65)

Q: Is Descartes endorsing Mind-Body Dualism here?

(Recall:  Mind-Body Dualism = the view that individuals are a composite of a non-physical soul/mind and a physical body.)

It might appear so, but Descartes denies this. From the Third Set of Objections and Replies: "I left [this issue] quite undecided until the Sixth Meditation, where it is proved." (AT VII 175)

Keep in mind the difference between:

(1) I have proved that I am nothing but a soul

and

(2) I have proved nothing but that I am a soul

 It's #2 that Descartes has in mind in the passage at the start of this section.
"But what then am I? A thing that thinks. What is that? A thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, refuses, and that also imagines and senses." (66) Q: Can Descartes be confident that he does all those things?   Q: Does anything else belong on the list? ***************************

Notice the trade-off in the items on Descartes' list:

The Strategy:  Sacrifice content for certainty For example: Regarding the idea that he senses he writes: "I now see a light, I hear a noise, I feel heat. These things are false, since I am asleep. Yet I certainly do seem to see, hear and feel warmth. This cannot be false. Properly speaking, this is what in me is called 'sensing.' " (66)

I can be certain that I sense, but this is a pretty watered-down idea of sensing.

 ******************

Rationalism

"But it still seems … that Corporeal things … are much more distinctly known than this mysterious 'I' which does not fall within the imagination." (66)

Descartes uses the Pieces of Wax example to claim that this appearance is misleading.  He argues for a position now known as rationalism – roughly, the theory that the ultimate source of knowledge is reason.

Contrast with empiricism – the senses are the ultimate source of all knowledge (e.g., David Hume 1711-1776 )

 ******************

The Piece of Wax - An Argument for Rationalism

For a moment, set radical doubt aside.

Start with a solid piece of wax. As you bring it close to a fire its physical properties alter. "Does the same wax still remain? I must confess that it does" (67)

How do we make this judgment?
 

"I grasp that the wax is capable of innumerable changes of this sort, even though I am incapable of running through these innumerable changes by using my imagination. Therefore this insight is not achieved by the faculty of imagination. … It remains then for me to concede that … I perceive it through the mind alone."(67-8)

"were I perchance to look out my window and observe men crossing the square, I would ordinarily say I see the men themselves just as I say I see the wax. But what do I see aside from hats and clothes, which could conceal automata? Yet I judge them to be men. Thus what I had thought I had seen with my eyes, I actually grasped solely with the faculty of judgment, which is in my mind." (68)
Descartes concludes that he was wrong when he thought earlier that corporeal things could be known more easily than the mind. He concludes that we can know about our minds/souls more clearly and more easily than we can know about physical objects.
"there is not a single consideration that can aid in my perception of the wax or of any other body that fails to make even more manifest the nature of my mind." (69)
[Philosophy 1200]