The
kind of certainty we can have for Descartes depends on clarity and distinctness
of perception, which is a criterion of truth that Descartes extracts in the
Third Meditation based on the cogito argument made in the Second Meditation
(Descartes, 1985, Vol. 1). In his Principles of Philosophy (Descartes, 1985,
p.207) Descartes explains that by clarity he understands what is present to the
attentive gaze of the mind and by distinctness what separates the content of
the mind from everything else. In the cogito argument we immediately perceive
the necessary connection between thinking and existence, it is not possible for
me to think and not exist. Further certainty may be distinguished into
subjective certainty and objective certainty. The cogito argument gives us only
subjective certainty because from it we can infer that we are thinking and that
we are constrained to think in a certain way as a matter of psychological
necessity but it does not allow us to answer scepticism about the object of
thought, since I may be constrained to think about the object in a certain way
without that object having those properties in reality. So, I may think that my
sensations are caused by a mind-independent physical world without it actually
being the case in reality. Descartes’s strategy is to show that there is
atleast one Idea within us that has maximal level of certainty allowing us to
infer objective validity (or certainty) and to establish the objective
certainty of other judgements like that about the external world based on the
objectivity of the most fundamental Idea. This Idea is the Idea of God. The
inference is made in the Third Meditation on the basis of the convergence of
the principle of causality and the principle of representation. According to
the former the Idea of God within us like any other Idea must have a cause and
according to the latter the archetype of the Idea must not be anything other
than what the Idea represents it to be. This is clear from the ‘formal’ and
eminent’ containment clause, the cause of an effect contains the reality of the
effect formally if it contains all the properties that the effect contains and
eminently if it contains them in a higher mode. The perfection found within an effect must be pre-contained within the
cause not just formally but eminently which is to say that the cause must be
the original source of those perfections. A picture for instance could have
been copied from another picture and that from another but this cannot go on ad
infinitum because the adequate cause of the picture must reside in something
that contains as much formal reality as the picture contains objectively and
must contain them eminently. The source of the perfection within a picture is
not another picture but the original person whose picture it is. Hence an Idea
couldn’t have been caused by another Idea and that by another and so on ad
infinitum because the source of the perfection of this series must lie
somewhere outside the series. This also implies that clarity and distinctness
are not just the properties of the perception of an Idea but also belong to the
Idea itself and that certainty is the product of the degree of reality found
within the Idea. In the Fourth Meditation Descartes establishes that God is
perfect and that imperfection is due to a defect and deception is an
imperfection and God being maximally perfect is devoid of all defects and so
the existence of evil is due to factors external to God. In the Sixth
Meditation finally Descartes gives us a proof of the existence of the
mind-independent physical world. The argument is based on the presence of
sensations within us leading us to form an idea of a mind-independent world and
it is an eliminative argument:
1. I
am aware of certain sensible objects (like heat and cold) within myself.
2. There
must be a cause of my ideas of sensible objects
3. The
cause of these Ideas are not within me because they do not presuppose thought
and are independent of my will
4. The
cause must be something other than myself that contains its effect, the
objective reality of Ideas, formally and eminently.
5. This
external cause must be either a) body (matter) or b) God or c) something
intermediate between the two.
6. It
cannot be (b) or (c) for in that case God would be deceptive
7. So
(a) must be the cause of my ideas of sensible objects
We
notice again that in premise (6) there is a convergence between principle of
causality and representation established though the lack of deception within
God. The presence of sensations within me leads me to think about the
mind-independent physical world, this points to a psychological necessity. This
subjective certainty is transformed into an objective certainty on the basis of
the validity of the Idea of God and the proof in the Fourth Meditation that
deception is due to a defect. So, the proof of external world does not have a
logical certainty i.e. its negation is conceivable but it has moral certainty
that God as the source of our Ideas will not produce Ideas within us that
mislead us even if it is possible that he could. This however permits only an
inference to the existence of mind-independent objects not that through the
ideas of sensible objects we can draw an inference about the essence of matter,
for the latter knowledge is not required for our survival which depends only on
a reliable transactions with the external world whose benefit and harm is
indicated by the kind of sensations (pleasure/pain) it produces within us.
Is
the argument successful? Even if Descartes is granted the conclusions about the
cogito argument, the existence of God and his lack of deception, the argument
is still not successful and the reason is his mind-body dualism. Mind and
matter have no logical connection whatsoever and in producing within us ideas
of matter God has already deceived us since the connection between the two is
based as it were on pure whim of God and not because mind and matter have
anything to do with each other. This trivializes the God is not deceptive
premise so if we can trivially conceive its violation, we can also trivially
conceive its preservation if we think that something other than matter must
have been the cause of ideas of sensible objects while at the same time, we can
say that God was not being deceptive. God cannot misguide us about something if
there was nothing to be misguided about in the first place.
References
Descartes, Rene. 1985. Philosophical Writings. 3 Vols.
Translated by John Cottingham. United Kingdom. Cambridge University Press.
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