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Descartes (1596-1650)

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 Introduction

 Main (philosophical) works:

Discourse (1637)
Meditations (1641)
Principia Philosophicae (1644)

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 Methodology
 Introspection and anti-elitism

My plan has never gone beyond trying to reform my own

thoughts and construct them upon a foundation which is all
my own. (Discourse on the Method; CSM I: 118)

Good sense is the best distributed thing in the world … the

power of judging well and of distinguishing the true from false
—which is what we properly call ‘good sense’ or ‘reason’—
is naturally equal in all men, and consequently that the
diversity of our opinions does not arise because some of us are
more reasonable that others but solely because we direct our
thoughts along different paths and do not attend to the same
things. (Discourse on the Method; CSM I: 111)
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 Break away from the Scholastic tradition:

And if I am writing in French, my native language, rather than

Latin, the language of my teachers, it is because I expect that
those who use only their natural reason in all its purity will
be better judges of my opinion than those who give
credence only to the writings of the ancients. (Discourse on
the Method; CSM I: 151)

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 Cartesian Feminism
 Poullain de la Barre (1647-1723)
 Published anonymously in 1673 On the Equality of the Two Sexes.

(Poullain de la Barre (2002). Three Cartesian Feminist Treatises.

U. of Chicago Press)

 He brings Cartesian objectivity to gender issues in addressing

cultural inequalities between the sexes.

 By systematically employing Cartesian methodology Poullain

rejected tradition as a means of dealing with the issues of
feminism.

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 Based on Descartes’ cogito argument that establishes the
superiority o the mind over the body, Poullain extended the
challenge of rational thinking to the polemic of sex and gender.

 Since the mind has no sex, discrimination between the sexes

could not be accepted as the truth whether enshrined by
tradition or not.

 The female gender carried as much intellectual potential as its

male counterpart because a lack of physical strength had no
correlation with a weaker mind.

 Only customs and traditions have predetermined women

subordinate status.

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 Fallacious argument :
This is the way things have always been done, therefore they
should be done this way.

 Had women been allowed to engage in public responsibilities,

they would never have been excluded from it in the first place.

 To hold to custom and usage because they are sanctioned by

time (and male privilege) is pure prejudice.

 Poullain arguments apply to class distinction as well:

How many peasants might have become renewed scholars if
they had been given a chance?

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 Descartes Innovation/Main
Contribution
 Mathematics is Central

 “Scientific” Revolution:
Break away from Scholastics

 Philosophical Knowledge:
(i) unity
(ii) purity and
(iii) certainty

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 The Method of Doubt
 Descartes’ Method. Anti-elitist: truth is not reserved
to highly trained minds.

 Method of Doubt. An epistemological enterprise.

The malicious demon and the dream argument.
So, for the purpose of rejecting all my opinion, it will be
enough if I find in each of them [opinions] at least some
reason for doubt. And to do so I will not need to run through
them all individually, which would be an endless task. Once
the foundations of a building are undermined, anything built
on them collapses of its own accord; so I will go straight to the
basic principles on which my former beliefs rested. (First
Meditation; CSM II: 17)
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 I thought it necessary to do the very opposite and reject as if absolutely false
everything in which I could imagine the least doubt, in order to see if I was
left believing anything that was entirely indubitable. Thus, because our senses
sometimes deceive us, I decided to suppose that nothing was such as they led
us to imagine. And since there are men who make mistakes in reasoning,
committing logical fallacies concerning the simplest questions in geometry,
and because I judged that I was as prone to error as anyone else, I rejected as
unsound all the arguments I had previously taken as demonstrative proofs.
Lastly, considering that the very thoughts we have while awake may also
occur while we sleep without any of them being at that time true, I
resolved to pretend that all the things that had ever entered my mind were no
more true than the illusions of my dreams. But immediately I noticed that
while I was trying thus to think everything false, it was necessary that I, who
was thinking this, was something. And observing that this truth ‘I am
thinking, therefore I exist’ was so firm and sure that all the most
extravagant suppositions of the sceptics were incapable of shaking it , I
decided that I could accept it without scruple as the first principle of the
philosophy I was seeking. (Discourse on the Method; CSM I: 126-7)

 Within the methodology of doubt, the malicious demon is

merely supposed/posited for the sake of the argument.

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 The Cogito Argument
 The First Principle. This brings a stop to the doubt.

I have convinced myself that there is absolutely nothing in the

world, no sky, no earth, no mind, no bodies. Does it follow tat I
too do not exist? No: if I convinced myself of something then
I certainly existed. But there is a deceiver of supreme power
and cunning who is deliberately and constantly deceiving me. In
that case I too undoubtedly exist if he is deceiving me; and let
him deceive me as much as he can, he will never bring it about
that I am nothing so long as I think that I am something. So
after considering everything very thoroughly, I must finally
conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true
whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind.
(Second Meditation; CSM II: 16-7)

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 At least as I have discovered it—thought; this alone is
inseparable from me. I am, I exist—that is certain. But for
how long? For as long as I am thinking. For it could be
that were I totally to cease from thinking, I should totally
cease to exist. (Second Meditation; CSM II: 18)

 The cogito argument does not rest on the standard

syllogistic reasoning:
(1) Whatever is thinking exists
(2) I am thinking
So: (3) I exist

When someone says ‘I am thinking, therefore I am, or I

exist’, he does not deduce existence from thought by
means of a syllogism, but recognizes it as something self-
evident by a simple intuition of the mind. This is clear
from the fact that if he were deducing it by means of a
syllogism, he would have to have had previous knowledge
of the major premiss. (Second Set of Replies; CSM II: 100)
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 Why not “I see, I exist” or “I walk, I exist”?

For example, I am not seeing light, hearing a noise, feeling

heat. But I am asleep, so all this is false. Yet I certainly seem
to see, to hear, and to be warmed. This cannot be false;
what is called ‘having a sensory-perception’ is strictly just
this, and in this restricted sense of the term is simply
thinking. (Second Meditation; CSM II: 19)

 “It seems that I see” = “I think”

“It seems that I see, so I exist” = “I think, so I am”

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 Is the Cogito an Inference?
When someone says ‘I am breathing, therefore I exist’, if he
wants to prove he exists from the fact that there cannot be
breathing without existence, he proves nothing, because he
would have to prove first that it is true that he is breathing,
which is impossible unless he has also proved that he exists.
But if he wants to prove his existence from the feeling of the
belief he has that he is breathing, so that he judges that even if
the opinion were untrue he could not have it if he did not exist,
then his proof is sound. For in such a case the thought of
breathing is present to our mind before the thought of our
existing, and we cannot doubt that we have it while we have it.
(Letter to Reneri for Pollot, April or May 1638; CSMK III: 98)

 Qualia (sensations):
are central, self-reflection, introspection
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 External World

 If external objects exist, their true nature is

perceived by the intellect, not by the senses
(which can deceive us). Hence introspection is
crucial.

 Thus, the importance in Descartes of the

system of ideas.

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 Grasping/Entertaining Ideas of
Substances
 One does not grasp a substance per se: one grasps a
property of that substance.

 When we come to the mind qua substance, though,

the property one grasps of that substance is its
thinking property.

 An idea may not represent a thing in the real world,

yet when one entertains an idea one cannot not seem
to have an idea.

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 Reply to Gassendi:

[Y]ou [Gassendi] make an incidental criticism as follows:

although I have not admitted that I have anything apart from a
mind, I nevertheless speak of the wax which I see and touch,
and yet this is impossible without eyes and hands. But you
should have noticed that I had carefully pointed out that I
was not here dealing with sight and touch, which occur by
mean of bodily organs, but was concerned solely with the
though of seeing and touching, which, as we experience
every day in our dreams, does not require these organs. (Reply
to Gassendi; Fifth Set of Replies; CSM II: 249)

 Scepticism: From “It seems that I perceive” we

cannot infer the existence of the external world.

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 “I think, I am” qua Scientific Starting Block

 Ontological Commitment. Ontology deals with the

part of metaphysic concerning the question what kind
of things there are.

 Quine’s slogan: “to be is to be the value of a

variable”.

[E]ntities of a given sort are assumed by a theory if and only if

some of them be counted among the values of the variables, in
order that the statements affirmed in the theory be true. (Quine
1953)

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 Quining Descartes:

With the cogito argument one is ontologically

committed to the existence of oneself qua thinking
thing.

In order to be successful in committing ourselves to

the existence of other things our theory must
ultimately rely on the first principle (the cogito) and
brings in only other indubitable, necessary, truths.

Descartes will appeal to God and this appeal can be

seen to be scientifically driven.
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 The Self
 Myself qua Substance

[F]rom the mere fact that each of us understands himself to be a

thinking thing and is capable, in thoughts, of excluding from
himself every other substance, whether thinking or extended, it is
certain that each of us, regarded in this way, is really distinct
from every other thinking substance and from every
corporeal substance. (Principles of Philosophy 1. 60; CSM I:
213)

 Main Question. How do we escape from the realm of

subjective-self awareness?

 God enters the picture.

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