The Cartesian

World
René Descartes: Master of Doubt
 His Project

"And thus I realized that once in my life I had to raze

everything to the ground and begin again from the
original foundations if I wanted to establish anything
firm and lasting in the sciences."
 Epistemology
• “Episteme” + “logos” = Epistemology!
• “what can be known?”; “Can genuine
knowledge be obtained?”; “By what
method is true knowledge obtained?”!
• Basic concepts: subjectivity and
objectivity; truth; representation;
justification; interpretation;
consciousness; mind
Descartes’ 4 Innovations

• Systematic Doubt!
• Argues consciousness is the sole source of
certainty!
• Philosophy should mimic geometry!
• Dualism
 Descartes’ Method

• begins by dismantling of prior

knowledge--starting from the ground up !
• find a single example of absolute truth!
• this is used as a model for other truths!
• truth is determined by reference to this
model, not the external world!
• all of this is done through introspection
 Foundationalism

• all knowledge and justified belief rest

ultimately on a foundation of non-
inferential knowledge or justified belief!
• the foundations of knowledge are
“rock bottom” truths that themselves
cannot be demonstrated
Descartes
Method
The Director’s Cut
 Descartes’ 4-Step
Method
• ‘never to accept anything as true if I did not have evident
knowledge of its truth: that is, carefully to avoid precipitate
conclusions and preconceptions’!
• ‘to divide each of the difficulties I examined into as many
parts as possible’!
• ‘to direct my thoughts in an orderly manner, by beginning
with the simplest and most easily known objects in order to
ascend little by little … to knowledge of the most complex’!
• ‘throughout to make enumerations so complete and
reviews so comprehensive, that I could be sure of leaving
nothing out’
Systematic
Doubt
The Dream Argument
The Evil Genius
Cogito
 From Doubt to Cogito

• In order to doubt one must exist. When

one doubts, one must be exisitng.!
• therefore, to doubt, a thinking process,
means to exist
 Clear and
Distinct Ideas
strong and simple knowledge
 “Our inquiries should be directed ... to what we can clearly
and perspicuously behold and with certainty deduce ...”

“[One] should never believe that he has knowledge of anything of

anything which he does not mentally behold with a distinctness
equal to that ... which he knows most distinctly of all.”

“I term that clear which is present and apparent to an attentive mind

in the same way as we assert that we see objects clearly when ... they
operate upon [the mind’s eye] with sufficient strength.”

“But the distinct is that which is so precise and different from all
other objects that it contains within itself nothing but what is clear”
Examples of Clear and
Distinct Ideas

“What has been done cannot be undone”!

“It is impossible that the same thing can be
and not be at the same time”!
“He who thinks must exist while he
thinks”!
“I think, therefore I am”
 Descartes’ Causal Proof
I. NOTHING CAN COME TO EXIST WITHOUT A CAUSE.
2. ANY IDEA WE ENTERTAIN MUST HAVE A CAUSE.
3. EFFECTS CAN NEVER BE GREATER THAN THEIR CAUSES.
4. A CAUSE MUST BE AT LEAST AS GREAT AS ITS EFFECT.
5. THE IDEA OF GOD IS THAT GOD IS A PERFECT BEING, AND CREATOR OF ALL THINGS.
6. THERE ARE THREE POSSIBLE KINDS OF IDEAS: INNATE (BUILT
INTO MY NATURE), ACQUIRED, OR PRODUCED BY ME.

7. THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD (INFINITE, SUPREMELY INTELLIGENT, ALL

POWERFUL) ARE SO GREAT THAT THEY CANNOT BE DERIVED FROM HUMAN
IMAGINATION OR ACQUIRED IN EXPERIENCE.
8. THEREFORE. THE IDEA OF GOD MUST BE INNATE, OR CREATED ALONG
WITH ME AND PUT INTO ME PRIOR TO ALL EXPERIENCE.

9. IF THE IDEA OF GOD EXISTS AS AN EFFECT, BUILT INTO MY BEING, THEN

SINCE I EXIST AND THINK THIS WAY, MY CAUSE AND THE CAUSE OF THE IDEA
OF GOD MUST EXIST.
10. THE NATURE OF THE IDEA OF GOD IS SUCH THAT ONLY AN ACTUAL. EXISTENT,
PERFECT GOD COULD BE ITS SOURCE.
I I. THEREFORE. THE VERY FACT THAT I HAVE THE IDEA OF A PERFECT BEING MEANS
THAT THERE MUST BE A PERFECT BEING TO BE THE ADEQUATE CAUSE OF THIS IDEA.
Argument structure of Descartes’ Causal Proof

1 3

5 6
2 4

10

11
 Descartes’ Ontological Proof

1. GOD IS THAT BEING THAN WHICH NO GREATER CAN BE CONCEIVED.

2. GOD IS WHOLLY PERFECT, OR THAT ONE BEING WHICH HAS EVERY

PERFECTION OR IS PERFECT IN EVERY POSSIBLE WAY.
3. EXISTENCE IS A POSITIVE PROPERTY

4. IT WOULD BE A SERIOUS IMPERFECTION IN GOD OR ANYTHING ELSE NOT

TO EXIST.
5. GOD MUST HAVE EVERY POSITIVE PROPERTY TO
THE ULTIMATE DEGREE.
6. TO THINK OF GOD AS ONLY AN IDEA OR AS NONEXISTENT IS TO HUNK OF
THE BEING WITH EVERY PERFECTION AS LACKING AT LEAST ONE
PERFECTION, NAMELY. EXISTENCE.
7. TO ENTERTAIN THE CONCEPT OF THE PERFECT GOD, AND TO THINK OF
GOD AS NOT EXISTENT, AS ONLY AN IDEA IN THE MIND, IS TO CONTRADICT
ONESELF
8. THEREFORE, IF YOU UNDERSTAND THE ESSENCE (PERFECTION)
OF GOD, THEN YOU ALSO KNOW THAT GOD MUST EXIST.
Dualism
 Dualism

• There are two and only two things in

the universe:!
• matter!
• minds
 How do we know bodies
are different than minds?

• Leibniz’s Law of Identity:!

• The identity of things is a matter
always to be decided by the identity
of properties of those things
The Mind
THe Greek Mind
The Theatre of the Mind
The Beetle in the Box
Descartes’ Legacy
Rationalism
 Rationalism
• a system of knowledge which privileges reason
and intuition over sensation and experience !
• it regards all or most ideas (products of the
mind, not imagination) as innate rather than
mere accidents of coming in contact with the
external world!
• it places an emphasis on certain rather than
merely probable knowledge as the goal of
enquiry
 Rationalism

• Rationalists endorse at least 1 of these:!

• The Intuition/Deduction Thesis: !
• Some propositions in a particular
subject area are knowable by us by
intuition alone; !
• still others are knowable by being
deduced from intuited propositions
 Rationalism

• Rationalists endorse at least 1 of these:!

• The Innate Knowledge Thesis: !
• We have knowledge of some
truths in a particular subject area
as part of our rational nature.
 Rationalism

• Rationalists endorse at least 1 of these:!

• The Innate Concept Thesis: !
• We have some of the concepts we
employ in a particular subject area as
part of our rational nature
 Famous Modern
Rationalists

• Noam Chomsky!
• “Cartesian Linguistics”
 Solipsism
an epistemological or ontological position
that knowledge of anything outside the mind
is unjustified. The external world and other
minds cannot be known and might not exist
 3 Types of Solipsism
• Metaphysical!
• the individual self of the solipsistic philosopher
is the whole of reality!
• Epistemological!
• only the directly accessible mental contents of
the solipsistic philosopher can be known!
• Methodological!
• the individual self is the sole possible or proper
starting point for philosophical construction