Descartes on Things

The French Renaissance mathematician, philosopher and writer René Descartes is arguably best

known in philosophical circles for the impact which his Meditations have had upon the western conception of

the mind and body. In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes sets himself the aim of removing all belief

of which he is not truly certain.

The first meditation begins with a lamentation of all the falsehoods, and the subsequent bodies of

knowledge that have so accumulated, which Descartes has believed throughout his life. Henceforth, he

resolves to discard all which there may be reason to doubt so that he may secure his knowledge on firmer

foundations. In lieu of calling into question each proposition which he may potentially doubt, Descartes takes

to examining the philosophical underpinnings of his knowledge. Descartes concedes that ‘whatever I had

admitted until now as most true I received either from he senses or through the senses’. Whilst it is

uncontentious to say that our senses are by and large trustworthy, Descartes notes the extent to which they

may deceive us. He gives the example of ‘small and distant things’ as an instance in which our senses provide

us with information that is not truthful. Despite this, Descartes asserts that in most all situations our senses are

to be relied upon. That he is ‘sitting next to the fire, wearing my winter dressing gown’ is something which he

claims one would have to be ‘mad’ not to count as a trustworthy sense-experience. Descartes does however

then go on to make note of the occurrence of dreams. It is perfectly conceivable that he may at some point

have a dream in which he is sitting by the fire in his winter dressing gown. Whilst his subjective experience of

the dream would be indistinguishable from actually sitting by his fire, he would of course merely ‘be lying

undressed in bed!’ The potential for dreams to deceive an individual is of importance for Descartes as, in

conjunction with the fact that ‘there are no definitive signs by which to distinguish being awake from being

asleep’, they show the extent to which almost the entirety of one’s experience may be deceptive. Descartes

likens the imagery found in one’s dreams to paintings. A painting, even when depicting a preternatural entity,

takes influence from natural objects. An example of this would be a painting of a centaur, as this is essentially a

composite image of a horse and a man. Even if a painter were to depict some entirely new and unfamiliar

concept, at least the colours within the painting would be drawn from real experience. By analogy, whilst

Descartes states that he may doubt composite entities, such as the imagery of his dreams, he cannot doubt the

primitive concepts out of which these composites are formed. Subsequently, whilst he labels the accounts of
‘physics, astronomy, medicine, and all the other disciplines that are dependent upon the consideration of

composite things’ as ‘dubious and uncertain’, he retains advocacy for mathematics and geometry on the

grounds that they ‘treat of nothing but the simplest and most general things’. He justifies this by the assertion

that ‘whether I am awake or asleep, two plus three make five and a square does not have more than four

sides’.

Upon further reflection however, Descartes notes that there may be reason to doubt even such

primitive truths. He argues that it is not beyond the remit of an omnipotent God to have provided him with a

false conception of mathematical truths, such that two plus three does not make five. Whilst it is arguable that

this constitutes a contradiction as God is by definition ‘supremely good’, Descartes rejects this notion

wholeheartedly. If he is deceived in some instances, such as in dreams and when viewing ‘small and distant

things’, then it cannot be the case the God is truly benevolent in this sense for if he were then Descartes would

have never originally been deceived. If of course there does not exist a God, a scenario which Descartes

considers, then he reasons we would have yet more impetus to doubt our senses as they would not have been

formed by a perfect creator. Bringing the first Meditation to a close, Descartes, in order to strip his knowledge

down to its most fundamental and indubitable core, supposes the existence of an ‘evil genius… who has

directed his entire effort at deceiving me’. By being forced into doubting everything, Descartes is assured by

the fact that he cannot therefore be misled by this genius.

Descartes first Meditation is important in that it sets the tone for the rest of his thinking, hence why I

have described it in such detail. His second Meditation, in which he pushes his scepticism somewhat further,

sees him suppose that the entirety of his memory is deceitful and that he has no senses whatsoever. On the

basis of this, he asserts that the only statement which shall be true is ‘the single fact that nothing is certain’.

Having already detached himself from the conception that there exist any external entities (‘no sky, no earth,

no minds, no bodies’), he questions whether or not he may still exist. Able to convince himself of the fact that

nothing is certain, he begins to argue that he therefore must exist. Whilst he is capable of doubting any and all

n order propositions, he is unable to ever doubt the n+1 order proposition: that he doubts. If he is certain that

he is doubting, and by implication thinking, then he reasons that he must also be certain of the fact that he is a

thing which thinks and that subsequently exists. Descartes does note one exception to the above argument;

that he may be deceived by some supreme being. If he were constantly being deceived however, then there
must exist something -which is himself- that is capable of being deceived. On the basis of these two

arguments, Descartes concludes that the statement ‘“I am, I exist” is necessarily true every time I utter or

conceive it in my mind’.

Having putatively established his own existence, Descartes sets about determining what precisely he

has affirmed the existence of. He admits that he used to see himself as a man, ‘But what is a man?’ he asks.

‘Might I not say a “rational animal”? No, because then I would have to inquire what “animal” and “rational”

mean’. Recognising that he will ultimately be unable to define himself in such familiar yet abstract language,

he speaks of himself in terms of what he has already established; that he is a ‘thinking thing’. But what is

meant by a ‘thinking thing’, he asks; ‘Something that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, refuses, and

also senses and has mental images’. Descartes realises that although he may not doubt the existence of his

mind, he may doubt the existence of his body as the only evidence for its being stems from sensory

perception. Given that the body’s existence is contingent whereas the mind’s is not, Descartes thus proposes

that it is possible for him to exist without the presence of a physical body. He argues that he would not

necessarily cease to be himself in the absence of a body, however the converse is true in the absence of a

mind.

Descartes’ second Meditation attempts to establish that there is potential for a mind to exist sans

physical body. Whilst this is clearly an important step on the road to dualism, it on its own is not enough to

establish such a belief. Descartes’ arguments for substance dualism, the view that the mental and the physical

constitute two distinct elements, are not presented until the sixth Meditation. In the fifth Meditation he briefly

notes that all ideas which are ‘clear and distinct’, such as that of an equilateral triangle, are knowledgeable and

may have been the product of God. In the final Meditation he remarks upon this ‘I know that all the things I

conceive clearly and distinctly can be produced by God precisely as I conceive them’. Returning to what he has

already concluded upon, he asserts that the body and mind may too be regarded as ‘clear and distinct’. For

Descartes, the body refers to nothing more than its physical extension and the mind corresponds only to pure

thought. With this again emphasising the distinction between mind and body, Descartes states that in the

creation of bodies, God would not need to create minds; and that in the creation of minds, God would not

need to create bodies. This, for Descartes, accentuates the extent to which the body and mind may exist

separately of one another. Descartes’ argument here is not to show merely that God could have created minds
independent of bodies, or vice versa, but that it is in the very nature of the two substances that they may exist

independent of each other.

A further distinction which Descartes draws between the body and the mind is made in terms of

divisibility. He argues that, unlike a physical body, a mind cannot be broken down into more fundamental

parts. Of this he writes that ‘when I consider my mind, that is to say myself insofar as I am only a thinking

thing, I can distinguish no parts’. Different parts of our body are specialised to perform certain functions. The

mind, for Descartes at least, does not work in such a way. When in thought one does not rely on a certain part

of the mind, but rather uses their mind in its entirety. An objection may potentially be made to this on the

grounds of advances in neuroscience since the seventeenth century, however such a criticism risks missing the

point by mistaking the brain and the mind as identical.

Only now that I have given an exposition of Descartes’ arguments is it appropriate to ask whether or

not, and to what extent, they are convincing. Given the near-universalization of the phrase ‘I think, [therefore]

I am’ in modern culture, it is of little surprise that Descartes’ Meditations have found themselves on the

receiving end of much criticism and debate. Henceforth, I shall at first focus on the objections made to

Descartes’ proof of self-existence, and only then shall I detail the arguments made against his substance

dualism.

Descartes’ argument for self-existence relies on the fact that it is impossible to doubt that he is

thinking, for if he were to doubt that he were thinking then his very act of doubting would constitute sufficient

thought to label himself as thinking. Even if some malevolent ‘evil genius’ were to be the cause of his doubt,

there would needless to say still be something there which is being caused to doubt its capacity to think. His

conclusion, briefly put, is that if he is necessarily thinking, then it follows that he must exist as a thing which is

capable of thought. This argument constitutes Descartes’ preliminary certainty. The first criticism made against

Descartes’ point touches upon the fact that it fails to establish a genuine sense of ‘I’. We take as granted that

the same ‘I’ persists through time, that it is the same ‘I’ which endures from one thought to another. Not only

does Descartes fall short of demonstrating this but also, in conjunction with the hypothesis of the ‘evil genius’,

one can ask what justification there is for anything which exists throughout time being unitary. Perhaps all that

one may affirm is the existence of a mere succession of thoughts, none of which can truly be linked to the
other through some sort of ‘I’. Descartes does to an extent address this issue in Objections and Replies, the

appendix to the Meditations. He proposes that each thought necessarily requires a thinker, and that this

concept we can be sure of as it is clear and distinct. Whilst this assertion is approaching a tautological truth, it

by no means follows that this ‘thinker’ persists over time in the sense that we assume an ‘I’ does. Perhaps this

is not what Descartes attempts to establish however, perhaps it is enough merely to prove the existence of

something which is capable of thinking. Even if this is the case, it is difficult to reconcile with Descartes’ later

view of what is meant by the term ‘thinking thing’ (‘Something that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills,

refuses, and also senses and has mental images’). Implicit in this list of intransitives is that they all belong to

the same subject. For one subject to satisfy all of these criteria, it must be able to persist through time. Here,

Descartes is relying on something which he has not been able to demonstrate; namely the ability for what is

referred to as ‘I’ to exist temporally.

The 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche criticised Descartes’ rationale on several

grounds. In the first section of his Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche objects to Descartes’ conclusion on the

basis that it assumes the existence of an ‘I’, that there is such a thing as ‘thinking’, and that the ‘I’ can truly

know what ‘thinking’ is. Nietzsche argues that it would be more (although not necessarily entirely) appropriate

to conclude merely that ‘it thinks’. Again, the ‘it’ is not taken to refer to a third person entity, but operates in

an intransitive manner analogous to the ‘it’ in ‘it is raining’. The 18 th century German scientist Georg

Lichtenberg made a similar objection, noting that Descartes would only have been correct to assert that

‘thinking is occurring’, not that ‘I am thinking’. The existence of a thinking thing, Lichtenberg argues, is not

inferred from Descartes’ line of reasoning. In the same vein as the above two, the Danish philosopher Søren

Kierkegaard, in his Philosophical Fragments, added that Descartes’ cogito is essentially circular as it

presupposes the existence of an ‘I’, that which it sets out to prove. Kierkegaard adds, interestingly, that the

value of Descartes’ argument is found more in its psychological -rather than logical- appeal; that a thought

requires some thinker to exist in order to think that thought.

Having briefly outlined some of the major criticisms of Descartes’ cogito, I now intend to look over the

various responses to his proposed substance dualism. Much of Descartes’ arguments stems from his ability to

conceive of a body without a mind, and a mind without a body. It must be noted however, that simply because

one can apprehend the body and mind as existing separately one cannot therefore infer that one can actually
exist in the absence of the other. Furthermore, many philosophers such as Bernard Williams and Simon

Blackburn have pointed out that Descartes is guilty of committing the masked-man fallacy in his discussion of

body and mind. The masked man fallacy stems from an intermingling of intensional and extensional

propositions. The general form of the fallacy takes two intensional premises, examples being ‘I know what x is’

& ‘ I do not know what y is’, and attempts to infer an extensional conclusion based upon these two intensional

properties, ‘x is not y’. To commit the masked-man fallacy is to mistake intensional properties as extensional

properties which can then be used to determine identity relations via Leibniz’s principle of the indiscernibility

of identicals. The fallacy assumes that an intensional property, ‘I know what x is’, is a property of x itself.

Relating this back to the Meditations, Descartes argues essentially that the mind is independent of the body on

the grounds that he can conceive of the mind existing separate of the body. Here, the intensional property is

Descartes conception of the mind existing separately from the body. The extensional property, which

Descartes unjustly infers, is that the mind is therefore separate of the body. Descartes’ conclusion, that the

mind is separate from the body, supposes that the mind and the body are not identical. This, however, is not

implicated by any of Descartes’ reasoning.

Arguably the greatest difficulty facing any instantiation of Cartesian dualism is the question of how

the mind and body interact. Given that Descartes has already asserted the body to be no more than extension

and the mind no more than thought, one must address the issue of how the two are to enter in so intimate a

union. Of particular concern is the objection raised both by Pierre Gassendi and Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia;

how is it that a mind (of no extension) can exert a causal influence over a body (consisting of nothing but

extension). If I raise my hand, then it is clear that under the assumption of Cartesian dualism that the cause of

this action is my mind. If I experience a physical sensation, heat for example, then this clearly has an effect on

my mind. How exactly my mind is to interact with my body is a problem which Descartes admitted he was

never truly able to solve. This question, oft referred to as the mind-body problem, has provoked a variety of

responses. Some, such as Nicolas Malebranche and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, took this as evidence that

the mind and body do not interact despite appearances to the contrary. Others, including George Berkeley,

regarded the problem as insurmountable; thus devising metaphysical frameworks in which everything that

exists is either extended or mental. Descartes did put forward many of his own responses, the best known of

which claims that the interaction between mind and body is facilitated by and located within the pineal gland.
Due to the ad hoc nature of this assertion, it is of little surprise that it has come to be disproven by modern

science.

The final criticism regarding Descartes’ dualism which I shall touch upon here is that given by the

British philosopher Gilbert Ryle in his 1949 work The Concept of Mind. As in the objections above, Ryle attacks

the notion of minds existing as separate entities which may interact causally with the body. According to Ryle,

Descartes conception of the mind constitutes a category mistake. A category-mistake, briefly put, refers to the

treatment of entities of different logical types as if they were of the same type. Ryle gives the example of a

foreigner visiting Oxford University for the first time. You show them Christ Church, the Bodleian Library and

the Ashmolean Museum. Upon the conclusion of their tour, they thank you before asking ‘but where is the

University?’ By asking this question, the foreigner has committed a category-mistake. The foreigner has

assumed that the University falls into the same category as Christ Church and all the other buildings of the

University. However, as Ryle writes, ‘the University is just the way in which all that she has already seen is

organized. When [the buildings and offices] are seen and when their coordination is understood, the University

has been seen’. Referring back to my earlier definition, the fallacy arises because the University, of a type one

greater than its buildings, is mistaken for being of the same type as its buildings. The University represents the

class determined by the function which may be approximated here as ‘I see’, and hence this function is

undefined and subsequently meaningless when it takes as argument ‘the University’. Ryle remarks that

category mistakes are most commonly made by those who do not fully understand the terms which they are

using, and hence find difficulty in determining precisely what is referred to by them. He adds that ‘theoretically

interesting category-mistakes are those made by people who are perfectly competent to apply concepts, at

least in the situations with which they are familiar, but are still liable in their abstract thinking to allocate those

concepts to logical types to which they do not belong’. A clear reference to Descartes, Ryle then goes on to

criticise him on the grounds that the Meditations is founded upon ‘a family of radical category mistakes’.

Firstly, Ryle makes the point that the notion of mind and body being polar opposites relies on the assumption

that they are of the same logical type. In addition, Ryle argues that the traditional dualist representation of

mind and body, the ‘official doctrine’, is misleading in that it too treats mental and physical processes as being

of the same type. Arguing against the notion of what he terms ‘a ghost in a machine’, Ryle writes that ‘a

person’s thinking, feeling, and purposive doing cannot be described solely in the idioms of physics, chemistry
and physiology, therefore they must be described in counterpart idioms’. Ryle adds that the origin of

Descartes’ category mistake is likely found in his conflicting scientific and theological interests. He writes, ‘As a

man of scientific genius he could not but endorse the claims of mechanics, yet as a religious and moral man he

could not accept, as Hobbes accepted, the discouraging rider to those claims, namely that human nature

differs only in degree of complexity from clockwork’. Ryle argues that it is this, combined with Descartes’ belief

in causality and freedom of will, which render the Meditations’ categorical mistakes inevitable.