Descartes what do we know

It might perhaps even happen that if I stopped thinking, I should at once altogether stop being. See e. Zalta ed. Unger, Peter. Augustine, The City of God Cambridge University Press Epistemology, or Theory of Knowledge by Thomas Metcalf. External World Skepticism by Andrew Chapman. The Gettier Problem by Andrew Chapman. Download this essay in PDF. Also in mp3 audio download. The editors are grateful to Marc Bobro for his review of this essay.

Charles Miceli teaches philosophy in New Jersey and in Asia. He received an MA from Fordham University and reads novels in his spare time. Skip to content Author: Charles Miceli Category: Historical Philosophy , Epistemology Word Count: If you are reading this, then you are probably looking at a screen or a piece of paper. Defeating Skepticism Once the Cogito is discovered, Descartes argues it can serve as a foundation for how to find other truths that are certain.

If the only thing we cannot doubt is that we can doubt, essentially that guarantees us having only the mechanism to doubt. No body. We could therefore be isolated brains, being manipulated by things unknown, our entire world a mirage.

For Locke, our understanding of the world comes from our experience of it. It is this experience that provides knowledge. He says, in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding :. Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas: — How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store with the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety Whence has it all the materials or reason and knowledge?

In that all our knowledge is founded; and from that it ultimately derives itself. He wrote that there were two types of qualities, ones that existed innately in an object or series of objects, such as size, number, or motion, and those that are wholly dependent on our perception of them , such as color or smell.

But light, heat, whiteness, or coldness are not more really in them than sickness or pain is in manna. Experience then, as long as we have an understanding of the limitations of our perception, will confer certain truths about the physical world we inhabit. Besides all that endless variety of ideas or objects of knowledge, there is likewise something which knows or perceives them and exercised divers operations, as willing, imagining, remembering, about them.

This perceiving … does not denote any one of my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them, wherein they exist or, which is the same thing, whereby they are perceived — for the existence of an idea consists in being perceived.

Because our knowledge of the world comes from our perception of it, it is impossible to conclusively know the existence of anything independent of our perception. Berkeley, wrote:. Hence, as it is impossible for me to see or feel anything without an actual sensation of that thing, so it is impossible for me to conceive in my thoughts any sensible thing or object distinct from the sensation or perception of it. This line of inquiry ultimately results in the entire physical world being called into question, as Berkeley observed:.

If we have any knowledge at all of external things, it must be by reason, inferring their existence from what is immediately perceived by sense.

If we can not know things outside of perception, and our perceptions are entirely unreliable, where does that leave us? What I really am is a mind [Lat.

So completely am I identified with my conscious awareness, Descartes claimed, that if I were to stop thinking altogether, it would follow that I no longer existed at all. At this point, nothing else about human nature can be determined with such perfect certainty. In ordinary life, my experience of bodies may appear to be more vivid than self-consciousness, but Descartes argued that sensory appearances actually provide no reliable knowledge of the external world.

If I hold a piece of beeswax while approaching the fire, all of the qualities it presents to my senses change dramatically while the wax itself remains.

II It follows that the impressions of sense are unreliable guides even to the nature of bodies. Privacy Policy. Skip to main content. Module 4: Exploring Epistemology. Search for:. Descartes The Meditations of Descartes Proof of the existence of god and the immortality of the human soul was an explicit concern for religious matters and did not reflect any loss of interest in pursuing the goals of science. The First Meditation, then, is an extended exercise in learning to doubt everything that I believe, considered at three distinct levels: 1.

Perceptual Illusion First, Descartes noted that the testimony of the senses with respect to any particular judgment about the external world may turn out to be mistaken. The Dream Problem Second, Descartes raised a more systematic method for doubting the legitimacy of all sensory perception.

I Severe as it is, this level of doubt is not utterly comprehensive, since the truths of mathematics and the content of simple natures remain unaffected. How, then, do unbounded doubt interpreters deal with this passage?

We can indeed take the point of the passage to apply to moments of careful attention: even while directly attending to the probabilistic matters taught by nature , we recognize that there are grounds for doubt; whereas, when directly attending to our epistemically best cognitions revealed by the natural light , we simply cannot doubt them. This reading renders the passage continuous with our reading of the other passages. In what sense is it an Archimedean point on interpretations rendering it vulnerable to doubt?

Insofar as the cogito is the first cognition noticed to resist any efforts at a direct doubt, it can be said to play an Archimedean role. For it exemplifies the kind of cognitions Descartes employs in his constructive efforts, arguing for a solution to the sceptical problem.

Descartes indeed uses the cogito to clarify the epistemically privileged status of clear and distinct perception, even formulating clarity and distinctness as underwriting a general rule for discovering truth.

The passage occurs in the second paragraph of the Third Meditation:. Though interpretations differ, the context of the passage indicates the rule is treated as provisional — i. On two counts, the announcement of the rule is carefully tinged with caution, in anticipation of the revelation to come two paragraphs later that even clearly and distinctly perceived matters are vulnerable to the Evil Genius Doubt.

Section 5. If even clear and distinct perception is subject to doubt, how is the meditator to make progress? How can he construct arguments in the effort to solve the sceptical problem? For it seems that in the very process of arguing for a truth rule, Descartes is already employing that very rule. In his strategy for making constructive arguments, Descartes builds on the fact that clearly and distinctly perceived matters appear to us to be utterly telling, i.

So, by employing none other than premises and reasoning that are clearly and distinctly perceived, we can make rational progress — this, notwithstanding that those very same proofs fall vulnerable to indirect doubt, once our attention is no longer clear and distinct. The following Fifth Meditation passage illustrates the point:. Of course, Descartes will need some sort of final solution to the problem of ongoing indirect doubt.

In the meantime, he has his meditator attempting to move forward, constructing anti-sceptical arguments. The broader argument unfolds in two main steps. The first main step involves Third Meditation arguments for the existence of of an all-perfect God. From these arguments the meditator concludes:. Note that the Fifth Meditation advances a further argument for God. In the interests of space, and of focusing on epistemological concerns, however, these arguments will not be considered here.

It is this second main step of the broader argument to which we now turn. But this is too fast. Essentially this point is made in the First Meditation, at the introduction of the Evil Genius Doubt. In short, the most straightforward consequence of an all-perfect creator would seem to be the universal rule: If I form a judgment, then it is true.

What emerges is an instance of the problem of evil, here applied to judgment error. As the passage reasons:. These First Meditation remarks set the stage for the discussion that comes in the Fourth Meditation. Descartes needs a theodicy for error — theodicy being an effort to explain how God is compatible with evil. The theodicy needs to show that the existence of an all-perfect God is compatible with some forms of judgment error, but not others; somehow, God allows error in our sensory judgments, while guaranteeing the inerrancy of judgments based on clear and distinct perception.

In contrast with the First Meditation setting, the context of the Fourth Meditation comes on the heels of a demonstration of the existence of an all-perfect God. Seeking to resolve the problem, the meditator investigates the causes of error. In the course of the discussion, Descartes puts forward his theory whereby judgment arises from the cooperation of the intellect and the will : the role of the intellect is to consider a perceptual content — i.

The investigation concludes that the blameworthy cause of error lies in our improper use of our will. Neither the intellect nor the will is inherently defective though each is, of course, finite , nor is there inherent defect in the design of how they cooperate — i. In short, actual mistakes of judgment arise from user error:. The theodicy that emerges is a version of the freewill defense. Accordingly, we should thank God for giving us freewill, but the cost of having freewill is the possibility of misusing it.

Since error is the result of misusing our freewill, we should not blame God. Not only is the theodicy used to explain the kinds of error God can allow, it serves to clarify the kinds of error God cannot allow. On occasions when my perception is clear and distinct, my assent is involuntary and thus not a result of a misuse of my freewill. Since, on occasions of clarity and distinctness, my assent is the unavoidable consequence of my God-given cognitive nature, God would properly get the blame if those judgments resulted in error.

Therefore, they are not in error; indeed they could not be. That an evil genius might have created me casts doubt on my clear and distinct judgments. That, instead, an all-perfect God created me guarantees that these judgments are true. A clever strategy of argument thus unfolds — effectively inverting the usual reasoning in the problem of evil:. The first premise is argued in the Third Meditation.

The second premise arises from the discussion of the Fourth Meditation. Whatever I perceive clearly and distinctly is guaranteed true, because I am the creature of an all-perfect God. The broader case to overcome radical doubt is not yet complete.

It seems that perfect knowledge is not yet within his grasp. Moreover, the demonstration itself looks suspiciously circular — the so-called Cartesian Circle a problem to which we now turn.

Further reading : On discussions of truth criteria in the 16th and 17th centuries, see Popkin On the dubitability of clear and distinct perception including the cogito , see Carriero , ff , Newman and Nelson He first argues from clearly and distinctly perceived premises to the conclusion that an all-perfect God exists; he then argues from the premise that an all-perfect God exists to the conclusion that whatever is clearly and distinctly perceived is true.

Despite its prima facie plausibility, Descartes scholarship generally resists the vicious circularity interpretation, based on numerous textual considerations. But even putting those texts to the side, it should be surprising that the project would be viciously circular. As Thomas Lennon notes:. The Third Meditation arguments for God define one arc:. That the broader argument unfolds in accord with these two steps is uncontroversial.

The question of interest concerns whether, strictly speaking, these arcs form an epistemic circle. The statement of Arc 1 admits of considerable ambiguity.

How one resolves this ambiguity determines whether the arcs strictly form a circle. Arc 1 : The conclusion that an all-perfect God exists is derived from premises that are clearly and distinctly perceived — i. Arc 2 : The general veracity of propositions that are clearly and distinctly perceived is derived from the conclusion that an all-perfect God exists. The italicized segment of Arc 1 marks an addition to the original statement of it, thereby clarifying the circularity reading.

Interpreted in this way, Descartes begins his Third Meditation proofs of God by presupposing the general veracity of clear and distinct perception. If there is one point of general agreement in the secondary literature, it is that the texts do not sustain this interpretation. How then should Arc 1 be understood? There are countless interpretations that avoid vicious circularity, along with numerous schemes for cataloguing them.

Arc 1 : The conclusion that an all-perfect God exists is derived from premises that are clearly and distinctly perceived — indeed, premises belonging to a special class of truths that are fully immune to doubt prior to establishing the general veracity of propositions that are clearly and distinctly perceived.

Again, the italicized segment marks an addition to the original statement of Arc 1. More precisely, the Evil Genius Doubt is on this reading bounded in the sense that its sceptical potency does not extend to all judgments: a special class of truths is outside the bounds of doubt. Exemplary of this special class are the cogito and, importantly, the premises of the Third Meditation proofs of God. Propositions in this special class can be perfectly known, even by atheists. Thus, the need on this interpretation for Arc 2 in the broader project.

The other main kind of interpretation avoids circularity in a different manner. More precisely, the Evil Genius Doubt is on this reading unbounded in the sense that it undermines all manner of judgments — even the cogito , even the premises of the Third Meditation proofs of God — when the mind is no longer attending to them clearly and distinctly.

Insofar as the meditator assents to the steps of these proofs, he does so not because of having an understanding of clear and distinct perceptions as being guaranteed true, but because the mind cannot but assent to them while attending clearly and distinctly. Importantly, if doubt is thus unbounded there is no circularity. The premises contributing to the conclusion of an all-perfect God remain vulnerable to hyperbolic doubt.

It is the unboundedness of hyperbolic doubt that underwrites the No Atheistic Perfect Knowledge Thesis. A central feature of this interpretation is worth repeating. It is natural for critics to ask why the arguments of Arc 1 are accepted by the meditator if, indeed, Evil Genius Doubt remains in play. The answer lies in our earlier discussion of the indirect manner in which the doubt undermines clear and distinct perception Section 4.

However, the meditator does not yet have perfect knowledge of those premises, nor of their conclusions. How, then do those matters finally rise to the status of perfect knowledge? We return to this issue, below. At present, the focus is on the issue of circularity. Though bounded and unbounded doubt interpretations both avoid vicious circularity, each confronts further difficulties, both textual and philosophical. Unbounded doubt interpreters must explain why, in the final analysis , the Evil Genius Doubt eventually loses it undermining potency.

The first proposition is included in the list of examples that are undermined by the Evil Genius Doubt see the fourth paragraph of the Third Meditation.

The second proposition is a premise in a Third Meditation argument for God — a proposition immune to doubt, according to bounded doubt interpretations. What is supposed to be the relevant difference between these propositions? Given the indirect manner in which Evil Genius Doubt operates, there seems no clear explanation of why the doubt succeeds in undermining the first proposition but is somehow resisted by the second.

Further awkward for this interpretation is that the cogito is included in the list of examples that that same fourth paragraph passage implies is vulnerable to doubt. Granting an unbounded doubt interpretation, why — in the final analysis — does the Evil Genius Doubt eventually lose its undermining potency? But precisely such moments are when hyperbolic doubt does its undermining work.

This means that upon diverting attention from the premises of Arcs 1 and 2, it is then possible to run the Evil Genius Doubt on their conclusions. It would thus seem that unbounded doubt interpretations leave us in a Sisyphus-like predicament. According to the myth, each time Sisyphus pushes his boulder near to the top of the hill, the boulder somehow slips away, rolling to the very bottom, and the whole process must start all over. By carefully constructing the arguments of Arcs 1 and 2, the meditator gains anti-sceptical momentum, pushing his project near to the goal of perfect knowledge.

Again, the hard question for unbounded doubt interpretations: Why, in the final analysis, does the Evil Genius Doubt eventually lose it undermining potency? One recent unbounded doubt interpretation Newman and Nelson offers a solution, including an explanation of why Descartes waits until the end of the Fifth Meditation to claim final victory over the sceptical problem.

Here is a sketch of the account. It thus seems that a final solution to the problem would need, somehow, to make it no longer possible to make sense of the relevant sceptical scenarios. Indeed, the interpretation has it the sceptical scenarios become self-evidently incoherent. The needed apprehension of God would need to be self-evident. For suppose my apprehension is grounded in a demonstration. Thus, the needed apprehension of God is a self-evident, clear and distinct conception that renders — as literally unthinkable — the very sceptical scenarios that underwrite indirect doubt.

A useful analogy lies in the doubt-resisting character of the cogito. If I attempt a direct doubt of own my existence, the effort is self-stultifying; I immediately apprehend that I must exist, in order to attempt the doubt. What Descartes needs is a similarly strong and immediate doubt-resisting outcome in connection with attempts at an indirect doubt.

That is, on occasions of trying to undermine clearly and distinctly perceived matters — e. The Fifth Meditation introduces various themes about innate truths, including the positive epistemic effects of repeated meditation: truths initially noticed only by means of inference might eventually come to be apprehended self-evidently. In the build-up to the passage claiming that the Evil Genius Doubt is finally and fully overcome, Descartes writes:. Given his newfound epistemic standing, the meditator would be unable to make coherent sense of the Evil Genius Doubt.

His clear and distinct perceptions would be fully indubitable, thereby counting as perfect knowledge. The interpretation helps explain two passages wherein Descartes purports to be detailing the final solution to the sceptical problem. In both passages, he can seem simply to be asserting that sceptical doubts are impossible, as if having forgotten the indirect manner in which his own hyperbolic doubt operates.

But if we take Descartes to be assuming that the apprehension of God has become utterly self-evident, both passages make more sense. The one passage arises in the Second Replies, in the context of rebutting an objection to the effect that, in the final analysis, it remains possible to doubt clear and distinct perception.

The other passage arises in the Fifth Meditation, in the concluding summary explanation of how the sceptical problem is finally overcome.

Absent a self-evident apprehension of God, the two passages appear inexplicable, with Descartes seeming to misunderstand the sceptical implications of his own Evil Genius Doubt. But on the self-evident God interpretation, both passages read as a summary of the anti-sceptical effects of it being impossible to conceive of God as a deceiver.

The interpretation also makes sense of why the final victory over scepticism is announced not at the end of the Fourth Meditation, but at the end the Fifth — after the further result concerning an enhanced, self-evident apprehension of God. To help clarify this further circle, Della Rocca focuses on a twofold question:.

As Della Rocca understands the broader Fourth Meditation argument, the claim that we should assent only to what we clearly and distinctly perceive is an essential step in the ongoing argument to establish the divine guarantee of clear and distinct perception. Since this step presupposes the eventual conclusion, that conclusion is based on circular reasoning:. Perhaps we can avoid this alleged circle.

Though Descartes can be read in this way, the texts support the following alternative understanding of the broader argumentative narrative. Early in the Third Meditation, having reflected on the epistemic impressiveness of the cogito , the meditator discovers that all , but only , clear and distinct perceptions are utterly assent-compelling. However, no step of that demonstration presupposes that clear and distinct perceptions have already been established as true; i. Summarizing the key steps:.

Granted, the meditator needs each of the demonstrative steps to be clearly and distinctly perceived.

However, he needs this not because of presupposing the conclusion to be proved, but in order to be in compliance with his own initial resolve, stated in the First Meditation. We noted in Section 1. Consider again the relevant Second Replies passage:. Indeed, the passage is plausibly read even more strongly: i.

Why does Descartes not add a truth condition, thereby ensuring that beliefs counting as perfect knowledge are true? In an influential book, Harry Frankfurt offers a provocative answer.

Writes Frankfurt:. The suggestion here is of some version of a correspondence theory. Also, on the most straightforward reading of the epistemic moves in the Meditations , Descartes is presupposing that at least some truths involve extramental metaphysical relations.

Consider that Evil Genius Doubt is, fundamentally, a worry not about whether our various clear and distinct judgments cohere , but about whether they accurately represent an extramental reality — i.

Interestingly, Frankfurt himself came to renounce the interpretation:. How then should we interpret the Second Replies passage, and how should we understand the absence of a truth condition? I suggest that the lack of a truth condition need not reflect an indifference about truth, as opposed to a view about how a concern for truth is properly expressed in an account of knowledge.

We can understand Descartes as wanting a fully internalist account whereby all conditions of knowledge are accessible to the would-be knower. On a justified belief rendering, his account of perfect knowledge is fully internalist; yet, with the addition of a truth condition, it is not — at least, not given a correspondence theory of truth, in the context of metaphysical realism.

Importantly, then, in attributing to Descartes a justified belief account, we need not thereby attribute to him an indifference concerning truth. Again, from that same passage:. Hatfield , , who expresses a related objection. Descartes himself makes a related point in connection with an atheist geometer who happens never to doubt his beliefs, simply because the Evil Genius Doubt never occurs to him:. But note that the objection is telling only insofar as the requisite indubitability is understood as merely psychological.

Yet clear texts indicate that Descartes regards clear and distinct perception as having epistemic import beyond mere doubt-resistance. His use of light metaphors, including the association of clarity and distinctness with the natural light , strongly convey a form of rational insight.

Imagine that the magic pill is so magical as to instill in us a clear and distinct understanding of the matters we perceive — i. But this objection misses a key point. As suggested in the Second Replies passage, Cartesian certainty — understood in terms of indubitability — does not, strictly speaking, rule out the broad possibility that we are in error. For texts concerning his final solution to hyperbolic doubt: see Fifth Meditation; Second Replies; letter to Regius 24 May For discussions of the role of the Fifth Meditation in the eventual, self-evident apprehension of God, see Newman and Nelson , Nolan , and Nolan and Nelson For examples of bounded doubt interpretations, see Broughton , Doney , Della Rocca , Kenny , Morris , Rickless , and Wilson For alternative schemes for cataloguing interpretations, see Hatfield and Newman and Nelson For an anthology devoted largely to the Cartesian Circle, see Doney For discussions of the role of truth in perfect knowledge, see Frankfurt and , Hatfield , Lennon , Loeb , and Newman and Nelson However, the existence of an external material world remains in doubt.

Descartes builds on a familiar line of argument in the history of philosophy, itself appealing to the involuntariness of sensations.

The familiar argument is first articulated in the Third Meditation. Speaking of his apparently adventitious ideas sensations , the meditator remarks:. Though some such involuntariness argument has convinced many philosophers, the inference does not hold up to methodical doubt, as the meditator explains:. We first examined this passage in regards to the Always Dreaming Doubt. That doubt raises the problem of the existence of external things. This sceptical hypothesis explains why the familiar involuntariness argument fails: the inference presupposes exactly what is at issue — namely, whether involuntarily received sensory ideas are produced by external things, rather than by a subconscious faculty of my mind.

Many philosophers have assumed that we lack the epistemic resources to solve this sceptical problem. For example, Hume writes:. Interestingly, Descartes would agree that experiential resources cannot solve the problem. By the Sixth Meditation, however, Descartes purports to have the innate resources he needs to solve it — notably, innate ideas of mind and body. Among the metaphysical theses he develops is that mind and body have wholly distinct essences: the essence of thinking substance is pure thought; the essence of body is pure extension.

This result allows Descartes to supplement the involuntariness argument, thereby strengthening the inference. As Descartes writes, this cause. It follows that my sensations are caused by external world objects — i.

It remains to be shown that these external causes are material objects. That is, the cause is either infinite substance God , or finite substance; and if finite, then either corporeal, or something else.

Descartes thinks he eliminates options a and c by appeal to God being no deceiver:. This is a problematic passage. But unless each step of the argument is clearly and distinctly perceived, Descartes should not be making the argument.

On one kind of interpretation, Descartes relaxes his epistemic standards in the Sixth Meditation cf. Schmitt , f. He no longer insists on perfect knowledge, now settling for probabilistic arguments. Though no decisive texts support the interpretation, it does find some support.

For instance, in the Synopsis to the Meditations , Descartes writes of his Sixth Meditation arguments:.