Introducing Descartes

INTRODUCING

Descartes Dave Robinson • Chris Garratt Edited by Richard Appignanesi

Icon Books UK

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Previously published in the UK and Australia in 1998 under the title Descartesfor Beginners and in 1999 under the current title

Text copyright © 1998 Dave Robinson Illustrations copyright © 1998 Chris Garratt The author and artist have asserted their moral rights. Originating editor: Richard Appignanesi No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Printed and bound in Singapore by Tien Wah Press

The Modern Beginner Everyone agrees that modern philosophy began with Descartes. Why "modern"? Because he insisted on thinking for himself, rather thanjust accepting what he had been taught. By this method, Descartes believed he could establish the philosophical and mathematical foundations for all of human knowledge - an ambitious quest which eventually turned out to be strangely personal and deeplysubjective. Descartes' philosophy is like a spiritual journey which he invitesthe reader to join, and which he always promised would produce extraordinary results ...

I shall bring to light the true riches of our souls, opening up to each of us the means whereby we can find within ourselves all the knowledge we may need for the conduct of life and the means of using it in order to acquire all the knowledge that the human mind is capable of possessing •••

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Early Days and Youth

His health was poor and so he was granted permission to stay in bed everymorning until 11 o'clock- a habithe keptto in adultlife. Descartes always set aside a few morning hoursfor concentrated thought and devoted-therest of the day to rest and relaxation. 4

Shortly after leaving La Fleche, Descartes wrotea bookthat no longer survives called The Art of Fencing, which gave detailed instructions on the different techniques and strategies necessary to beat your opponent. Descartes was said by some to have been as good a swordsman as he was a philosopher. He would have made an interesting fourth musketeer. Descartes' first published work was a small treatiseon music.

Eventually he went on to study law at the University of Poitiers and, although he qualified as a lawyer, he neverpractised. 5

The Soldier Instead. Descartes decidedto travel and see a bit of the world.

He was a small man. with a large head. a big nose and a rather feeble voice. Nevertheless. he became a soldierandjoinedthe army of Maurice of Nassau of the Netherlands. and then the German army of Maximilian of Bavaria. The whole of Europewas beingtorn apart by the conflicts known as the Thirty Years War (1618-48). Descartes wasn't cut out for the military life- he consequently absented himselffromwar and politics. III am a spectatorrather than an actor in the comediesof life."

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Onereason for this was a chance meeting on 10 November 1618in the town of Breda in Holland. Descartes had seen a placard written in Dutch and so asked a passing stranger to translate it for him. The stranger was Isaac Beeckman, who soon became a close friend.

Beeckman encouraged me to think ahout pursuing the life of the mind, rather than the more adventurous hut futile life of a soldier.

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Descartes' Three Dreams On 10 November 1619, Descartes found himself stuck in the smalltown of Neuburg-on-Danube. He was a ratherunenthusiastic soldierof 23 en route to seethe coronation of Ferdinand II in Frankfurt. Butthe Bavarian winter was severe and he had to postpone his journey. the onsetof Winterdetained me in lodgings where, becausethere was no conversation to amuse me and happily having no worries or passions to trouble me, I stayed all day shut up alone in a stoveheatedroom, whereI was completelyfree to commune with myself about my own thoughts. II• • •

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The First and Second Dreams The thoughtsthat Descartes had in this stove-heated room, surrounded by blizzards, changed the whole of Western philosophyfor ever. He had the most extraordinary sequence of vivid dreams.

When he awoke he spent the next two hoursterrified that this strange vision had been put into his mind by some evil demon. His next dream wasn't much of an improvement - he heard a huge thunderclap and found himselftrapped in a room full of fire and sparks. 9

The Third Dream Fortunately, his third dream was quieter. He was looking at several books by the side of his bed. There was an encyclopedia and an anthology of poems ...

I knew they were ordering me to devote the rest of my life to science and phi losophy, rather than to soldiering-

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Descartes had always been interested in mathematics and science, and his last dream told him that there was a way in which all human knowledge could be made into a unifiedwhole. "If we could see how the sciences linked together, we wouldfindthem no harderto retain in our mindsthanthe seriesof numbers. " He always believed in his dream and he never gave up the quest it had set him. Becauseof this odd night in a cold and strangetown, Descartes became the most important and influential philosopher of histime. 10

Descartes Settles in Holland Between 1619and 1623, Descartes travelled all over Europe. He claimed that he was almost murdered by some sailors when he was in Friesland, butfrightened them off with his sword. In 1623, he visited the shrine of the Virgin at Loretto - to fulfil a vow he'd madeafter his vivid dreams four yearsearlier. Hethen livedin Parisfor the nextfour years. But in 1628he moved to the Netherlands where he spent the restof his life. Perhaps he preferred the moretolerant Protestant society of Holland to his own countryof France.

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I could lead a life as solitary and as withdrawn as if I were in the most remote desert. In what other country could I enjoy such complete freedom?

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In 1635Descartes becamea father. He had formed a relationship with his servant Helene earlierin Amsterdam, and in that yearboth mother andchild cameto live with him in his rural retreat nearSantpoort. Tragically, his daughterFrancine died of scarletfever when she was only five yearsold - an eventwhich affected Descartes profoundly. Hehadno otherchildren.

Few people have sufficiently prepared themselves for all the contingencies of life.

It was whilst in Holland that Descartes eventually wrote his most famous works: Philosophical Essays (1637) (containing the famous Discourse on the Method), Meditations (1641) and the Principles of Philosophy (1644). 12

Scholasticism It is important to understand the conditions of philosophyand science that Descartes confronted in his time. When Descartes arrived on the intellectual stage of Europe, the Roman CatholicChurchhad dominated all intellectual activityfor manycenturies. Scholarsspenttheirtime attempting to integratethe wisdomof ancientclassical thinkerslike Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)with Christian teaching ratherthan making any attempt to discover new knowledge.

God has given reason to human beings. So any truths reached by reason must therefore automatically be reconcilable with Christian doctrine.

If any contradictions occur, faith takes precedence over reason. Ph ilosophy is the servant of theology.

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This traditional and deeplyconservative approach to knowledge is usually known as SCholasticism. Scholastic philosophy was essentially a grand metaphysical system of theology concerned with logical deductions from Christian dogma. Its practitioners, known as "schoolmen", wereacademic philosophers and usually clerics. The mostinfluential Scholastic was the Dominican theologian St Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) who became an incontrovertible authority on matters of faith and reason.

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The Early Days of Science Original thought was discouraged and new ideas had to be smuggled in underthe guise of commentary on oldertexts. Because of this profound respect for the past, scholars continued to believe in all of Aristotle's "science", no matterhow ridiculous or unbelievable it might be. Youfound out things by looking through old booksratherthan telescopes. If Aristotle saidthat toads could live on air, no one thought it worthwhile to have a look to see if it was true or not.

Scholastics accept Aristotle's unsatisfactori Iy empty and circular "explanations" for why things behave as they do. According to him, stones fall to the ground because they have a "propensity to fall to the ground". Descartes was impatientto discover newer and better ways of getting holdof knowledge and truth. 15

"Knqwledge" in Descartes' day was a bizarre mixture of fact and imagination, mythandthe occult, religious dogmaandwildconjecture. Renaissance "science" still included astrologyand alchemyand had an obsession with patterns and resemblances. Paracelsus (1493-1541), a Swiss physician who made original and importantdiscoveries in medical treatment, couldstillthinkintermsof occultparallels.

Behold the Satyrion root - is it not formed like the male privy parts? Accordingly magic discovered and revealed that it can resolve a man's vi ri lity and passion.

The times in which Descartes lived were strangelyboth medieval and "modern", when "science" as a special and uniquekind of human activitywas being invented. 16

In 1627, Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) produced accurate predictions of the elliptical orbitsof the planets. In Protestant England, Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was writing a book about the new power and exciting discoveries produced by"scientific" method. "Modem" scientists likeGalileo GalilC!i (1564-1642) wererapidly discovering that a lot of what Aristotle had said was nonsense.

Planets are not perfect spheres and the sun doesn't move.

Although manyof these new menwere"modem" in theirattitudes, in otherwaysthey werestill very"medieval". Noneof them ever questioned the existence of God (Descartes frequently invokesand employs Godas the guarantor of his philosophical doctrines).

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Mostof the great scientific thinkersof the 17thcenturywereChristian believers, although this didn't stopthem questioning manyof the "eternal truths"ruthlessly maintained by the Roman CatholicChurch. But in early 17thcentury Europe it was still dangerous to contradict official Church doctrine andprovoke the dreaded Inquisition. In 1629 Descartes was writing a work on natural phenomena (The World) which suggested that the universemight well have the sun at its centre. But in 1633he heardof Galileo'shouse-arrest in Italyfor suggesting the same thing, and so he wisely postponed publication of his own work.

This has so astonished me that I almost resolved to burn all my papers, or at least not let anyone see them •••

Descartes realized that his new ways of thinking would challenge the powerful academic world of Scholasticism and renderit obsolete. But, as he said, "I desire to live in peace and to continuethe life I have begununderthe motto - Keep out of the public eye if you wish to live a happy existence. n 18

What is Science? Descartes believed that there could be a new kind of systematic "scientific" procedure. Hetriedto explain thisby comparing knowledge to a tree.

Descartes was groping towards the kind of human activitywe now call "science". This is why some of the key words used by Descartes areconfusing for modern readers. Thewords "science" and"philosophy" are often indistinguishable and can meanall kindsof knowledge that we nowadays would no longercall "scientific". He did not makethe samekindsof rigid distinctions that we now do between philosophy and science. 19

Reduction to Mathematics Descartes hoped to showthatthere was an underlying unityto all the different branches of knowledge. But what wasthis unity? There was a growing belief amongst astronomers andscientists that mathematics ordirect observation rather than Aristotle orthe Bible might be the keys to understanding whatthe universe waslike.

Mathemltics expresses the basic fundamental structure shared by all branches of knowledge.

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Thisis oneof the main features of modern science, known as Reductionism. Numerous kinds of things are reduced and so explained interms of a much smaller number of basic features or "simple natures" ofreality. 20

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Descartes the Scientist Descartes was himself something of a scientist, although not a very successful or influential one. Someof his science stillmakes sense. He wasthe first person to publish the fundamental lawsof reflection in optics (thatthe angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection). But a lot of it now seems very odd. Descartes believed that all matterwas made upof tiny andinfinitely divisible "corpuscles". Forhim, all matter was "extension" (with length, breadth and height) and all extension matter- so the existence of a vacuum or atoms was just not possible.

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And because he had no coherent theory of.gravity, the Cartesian universe was madeup of swirling vortices - rather like whirlpools of matter. It was a modelof the universe accepted until ruthlessly demolished by Isaac Newton (1642-1727). Descartes also established the influential ideaof primary and secondary qualities.

The "Primary" qualities of corpuscles are their measurable mathematical properties such as extension and motion which are intrinsic to the corpuscles themselves.

Cause Descartes' contribution to the physical sciences is probably more conceptual than practical because he helped to change the way in which scientlsts mink about"cause". Scholastic science maintained that everything had a "final cause" and that this explained how and Why it behaved as it did.

For me, the "final causes" of things and events are a mystery that perhaps only God ~ knows. The scientist's job is to "investigate only those causes that are prior to effects and not to speculate on occult powers or ultimate pur oses. The Aristotelian view of the universe is almostanimistic - magnets attract ironbecause of their "magnetic qualities". Descartes was unimpressed by such unsatisfactory and circular explanations. His universe is mathematical and mechanistic, and so, predictable.

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Discourse on The Method Descartes' Essays of 1637 are about Optics, Meteorology and Geometry. But it is the Introduction to the essays which is now the most important - the Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and Seeking the Truth in the Sciences. (A development of an earlier unpublished work, Rules for the Direction of the Mind, written in 1628.) Descartes thought that there must be a "method" that would organizethe human searchfor knowledge so that it could becomemore systematicand successnn Discourse on the Method carefullyitemizesall the "Rulesfor the Direction of the Mind" that needto be followed if scientificinvestigation is to be more than a haphazard mixture of intuition and guesswork. This is where Descartes attemptsto show how it is possible to discover true knowledgejust by usinga few centralprocedural rules.

You accept only that which is - - - . You split large problems into smaller ones. clear to your mind.

You argue from the simple to the complex.

And Iina Ily you check everything carefully when you have finished.

He thoughtthat these rules could be the basis for a new kind of scientificlogic. 24

Clear in the Mind One rulethat Descartes stresses repeatedly is that true ideas must be "clearanddistinct" in your mind. By"clear'\ Descartes means that ideas in the mind must be as obvious and apparent to us as physical objects that we see with our eyes.

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I call a perception distinct if it is not only clear but also precisely distinguished from all others, so that it contains no element that is not clear.

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Thiskindof mental visual clarity makessensewhen we are doing geometry or mathematics. Weseenumbers andgeometric figures in our mindand we don't confuse one with another. And, if we have properly understood whatwe aredoing, then our mathematics or geometry will be correct. 25

What Is a Clear Idea? But if we applythis "clarity rule" to otherkindsof knowledge it seems moreambiguous and less helpful. We may have clearand distinctideas aboutall sortsof things- likethe earth being flat or the sun moving - but this offers us no guarantee that we are right. The problem with a lot of scientific truthsis thatthey areoften counter-intuitive. This means that science often goesagainst the deductions or intuitions of common sense.

How do you deduce that it is we on earth who are moving, not the sun?

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Descartes seemsto havethoughtthat scientific knowledge is ratherlike the axioms and deductions of geometry. The problem is that scientific theories oftenderivefrom observation of somekind and are consequently moreprovisional. If someone claimsthat all frogs are amphibious, this relates to our existing knowledge of what frogs are and what amphibious behaviouris, but both concepts ultimately rely on our observations of frogs.

We can't work out certain truths about frogs just by using our minds.

Geometry and scientific facts are different things.

But Descartes thought that the world was essentially mathematical and ~-'j could ultimately be studied and understood on that basis. . ~ ;!~~.

Logical and Causal Necessity Descartes was also not whollyclear in his mind aboutthe distinction between causal and logical necessity. If you say that 2+2 must be 4, thenthe "mustness" is logical. If your car breaks down and you say there must be a cause for it, the "mustness" is based on your past experiences with cars- the "mustness" is morepsychological than logical. Thisconfusion may haveled Descartes into believing .that you could havepurely geometric and hence necessary knowledge of the physical world.

••• the only principles we use are such as we see to be selfevident; if we infer nothing from them except by mathematical deduction and if all of these inferences agree accurately with natural phenomena; then we should, I think, be wronging God if we were to suspect this discqvery of the causes to be delusive.

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Can You Know Wax? Descartes didn'tthinkthat observation wasa complete waste of time. Investigating the world wasuseful - butonlyto confirm thatyour mathematical models were sound. In onestartling passage, Descartes claims that it is not really possible to know what "wax" is through the senses alone. When you look at wax, sometimes it is solid andsometimes liquid. "... it has not completely lost the tasteof honey; it retains someof the smellof theflowers from which it wasgathered, its colour, shape, size are manifest; it is hard, cold and easilyhandled, and it gives out a sound if you rap it with yourknuckle ..."

"... the waxis put by the fire. It loses the remains of its flavour, the fragrance evaporates, the colourchanges, the shapeis lost, the size increases, it becomes fluid and hot, it can hardlybe handled, and it will no longergive out a sound if you rap it. Is the same waxthen, still there?Of courseit is ... "

He then asks a rather odd question - how do we know that it is the samewax? It cant be through our senses which give us such contrary information about it. This meansthat III know the nature of this wax, not by imagination, but purely by mentalperception... I now know that evenbodies'EVe _not perceivedby the sensesor the imaginative faculty but onlyby the intelleet ... n It seems a ratherodd thing to say. One reason for this view is that Descartes is a committed Rationalist.

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·Rationalists and Empiricists Philosophers in the 17thand 18thcenturies tendto get classlned as either Rationalists or Empiricists. Rationalists thinkthattheonlyreliable kindof knowledge hasto comefrom our useof purereason. They are usually enthusiastic aboutpurelymental activities like mathematics and logic, and scathing aboutknowledge we get from our unreliable sense organs. Forthemthere is no such thing as knowledge which belongs to the senses ratherthanto the mind.

This is why I think we can be sure about the measurable "primar.y qualities" wax, but not its "secondary qualities" that we can only ever know through our senses.

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Rationalists will alwayshavedifficulty in making roomfor any knowledge claims made about how the world really is, as opposed to the necessary butmoreremote claims derived frommathematics andlogic. 31

Ernpiricist philosophers disagree. They believethat we can only really know what the external world is like by using our senses. We only know what wax is by seeing it, not by thinking about it. After we have used our senses, then we can form concepts of what kinds of objects we've been looking at.

And if we didn't actively apply these mental concepts to order and classify sensory information, we'd soon find the world an impossibly complex place to live in.

Nowadays the interminable debates between Rationalists and Empiricists seemratherpointless and sterileand Descartes' claimthat only one kind of mentalactivityis valuable seemstoo dogmatic. It seemsmore sensibleto say that our perception and reasoning actually workin tandemto form a composite interactive process that then generates knowledge. But his theories on wax aren't what make Descartes an important philosopher. He is more popularly known as the man who began by saying that it was impossible to know anything at all - and that's what we have to look at next.

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Brief History of Scepticism Ever since human beings got themselves civilized and started asking questions, there have been irritating individuals called"Sceptics" who believethat human beings can never really know anything for sure. Heraclitus (c. 500 B.C.) thought that the world was totally unknowable because it was always changing.

That is why you can never step into the same river twice.

Cratylus (c. 400 B.C.) was even more radical.

No, you can't even step into the same river oncel Both it and you ~re so changeable that words like "same" and "you" have no real meaning.

Cratyluswas very suspicious of words. He thought that their meanings changed in the time it took for them to leavehis mouthand enter other people's ears. So instead of talking, hejust wagged his finger. 33

The Pyrrhonists ThefirstgreatSceptics werecalled "Pyrrhonists". after Pyrrho of Elis (c. 360-272 B.C.). They were Athenians who taughtatPlato's Academy in the3rd and4th centuries B.C. The laterRoman thinker Sextus Empiricus (c. 200 A.D.) was their most famous spokesman because he produced a definitive textbook of their ideas andarguments. The Pyrrhonist big idea is a moral one.

It is best not to go on a great quest for the truth because it will only make you miserable.

Sextus explains the two main Pyrrhonist arguments which showwhy real knowledge is alwaysimpossible.

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The Pyrrhonist Arguments All appearances are deceptive andtherefore relative. This means that people's views about knowledge will always conflict. Different animals seethe world in different ways, andthere's no reason to believe that our singular human way of seeing the world is the "correct" one. Furthermore, human beings seetheworld differently depending on who and wherethey are.

A man standing on a cliff looking at a boat on the horizon wi II see the boat as small.

Whereas a man standing on the deck will believe if fobe large.

So is the boat small or large? How can we ever really know who is right? Allthat we can really knowis that we are ignorant.

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Theotherargument is moredifficult If we areeverto accept something as knowledge then we haveto find a proofor guarantee for it. This proofitselfneedssomekind of guarantee and so on,"for ever and ever.

This impossibly endless chain of warranties means that human beings can never possess guaranteed or certain knowledge.

( One obvious problem for the sceptics is that, if there is no suchthing as "knowledge, how can they themselves claimto knowthat all knowledge is an illusion? And the Pyrrhonist who said that he was happierwithout beliefs is fooling himself. Imagine this sceptic standing on the edgeof a cliff, still waving at the small boat on the horizon. If he had no beliefsat all aboutbody weight, gravity and dangerous placesand fell off, he wouldn't be happy for long.

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Sextus and Other Sceptics Sextus Empiricus was also a doctor and would have been impressed by modern medical science. He was a pragmatic and ratherunorthodox sceptic. Hethought doctors should be guided by first impressions and past experience.

They can then make sensible empirical judgements about treatment, rather th"an trying to search"for knowledge of mysterious and hidden causes of illness.

Pyrrhonists, however. neverdoubted that the physical world actually" existed.

Human knowledge is very limited. Only divine revelation from God can reveal the truth to humble mortals.

Human beings have to be humble and aware of the severe limitations on what they can know for certain.

The early Renaissance scholar Erasmus(1466-1536)

I assembled a huge variety of different sceptical arguments in my Apology for Raymond

Sehond.

Michel de Montaigne (1533-92) 37

But Descartes was more radical than any of them. In his Meditations .(1641), he uses doubt much more aggressively and questions everything ruthlessly - eventhe certainties of mathematics, as well as the existence of the physical world.

Descartes began work on Meditations in 1639. He had been living a relatively solitarylife in Holland for aboutten years and this is the book that finallymadehis reputation as the mostinfluential philosopher of the 17thcentury. The book is a vivid diary of his thoughts in the form of six Meditations, each one supposedly lasting a day.

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Cartesian Doubt Descartes' brand of scepticism is so unique that it is usually called "Cartesian Doubt". It is also systematic and morelike a "method" than a declaration of religious piety.

I realized that it was necessary ••• to demolish everything -completely and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything at all in the sciences that was stable and likely to last ...

In a letterhe wroteto a friend, Descartes explained hlsspeclal method , of doubting likethis ... Imagine someone has some apples which he wishesto store in a basket. A wise man will make quite sure that all the apples are perfect - because if an appledoes go rotten then it will eventually infect all the others. So, any apple that has even the slightest blemish has to be ruthlessly rejected as unsuitable. This is exactlyhow Cartesian doubtworks.

You examine all human knowledge and see if it can be doubted. If it is duhitahle and so "infected", then it must be mercilessly rejected as flawed.

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Any"apple" of knowledge that is finallyleft behindafterthis procedure would obviously be very special. It would be the real thing guaranteed, indubitable knowledge.

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How to Doubt Everything Descartes realized almost immediately that systematically doubting everysinglebit of human knowledge was impossible.' He would haveto repeat allthe scientific experiments that hadeverbeen performed, do all the mathematical deductions that had everbeen calculated, visit all the regions of the world, read all the bookseverwritten, andso on.

To get around this problem, I asked myself where all human knowledge comes from. I decided there are only two sources of knowledge: our senses and our reason.

Ourknowledge of the material world comes through our five senses, whereas our knowledge of thingslike mathematics or logiccomes through our reason. So, Descartes took a shortcut by asking if these fundamental sources could themselves be doubted. 41

Seeing Isn't Believing Descartes maintains that our human sense organs areoften unreliable as sources of true knowledge. Although he neverdoubts that we do have sensory experiences, we have no way of knowing for sure what causes them. Forexample, youmightbe out walking onthe moors and, through the mist, youseea manin the distance.

Your senses haveliedto you.

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You put a stick in water and it seems to bend as soon as it goes under.

You check the stick with your sense of touch and it feels straight. So either your eyes or your fingers are lying to you (or they both are!).

The problem is that you have no reliable way of knowing which of your two senses is the "correct" one. Descartesis not suggestingthat our senses·are always utterly unreliable. Presumablyour sensory information gives us a rough approximation to what is "out there" otherwise we wouldn't have survived for very long as a species. But the information that comes to us through our senses can be questioned and so must be ejected from the apple basket. A wise man no longer trusts that which has once deceived him. Knowledge produced by the senses is dubitable. 43

Dreaming Most of us don'tspend much of ourtimein deserts looking at mirages or- being madedizzyby optical illusions. If you holda pen in yourhand andlookat it in broad daylight in "optimum conditions", men surely you canbe certain that the information given you by yoursenses is correct and reliable? Howcan you doubtthat you are holding a pen and not something else? Descartes' second argument against thetestimony of the senses is usually called the "Dreams argument".

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It maynot seem verylikelyto youthat this is the case, but can you prove thatit isn't?Descartes thought thatyoucouldn't. There is noone obvious testthat clearly andindUbitably indicates which kind of mental state youare experiencing at anyone time. You just can't prove that youaren't dreaming. Even close-up confrontational experiences canbe doubted and so must be ejected fromthe basket. 44

Rationalists and Reason We know that Descartes was a Rationalist philosopher who believed thatreliable knowledge mustcomefrom reason, and notthrough our susceptible human senses. So his attacks on the reliability of the senses shouldn't come as a big surprise. Plato (c. 428-347 B.C.)had similar ideastwo thousand yearsearlier. He agreed that onlyknowledge produced by rational mindscould be reliable and stable.

But I thought that we could always be certain about mathematics, geometry and logic. Such knowledge is pure and "necessary".

Two and two must and will always makefour. So perhaps this kind .of mental knowledge is unquestionable andso immune from highly corrosive Cartesian doubt? 45

The Invisible Demon Descartes disagreed. Even mathematics and logic can be doubted in the end. He reminds us that we all commonly makemistakes in mathematics. So how do we know that we don't make errors all of thetime?

We may I.hink that mathematics is self-regulating and testable, but there might just be an invilihle demon who continuously hypnotizes us into thinking that our mathematics is correct.

So, Descartes suggests, throughout history, human beings mighthave been doing mathswrongly. The invention of this special and ratherodd invisible demon mightseemlike a desperate last-minute sceptical contrivance by Descartes. But his point is that even this "pure" knowledge, obtained through reason, is dubitable.

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No sober person would acceptthat such an odd demoncould exist, but none of us can prove that he doesn't.

Modern versions ofthe invisible demon argument involve horrorstories of brains in jars being stimulated by electrodes or peoplestrapped permanently into V.R. machines. If your senses wereconstantly being electrically stimulated to produce a wholeseries of ersatz"experiences" in your mind, or making you believe in odd mathematics - how would you ever know?

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00 Our Senses -L ie to Us? Descartes' arguments seem very convincing. Butthey aren't always entirely plausible. We only knowthat our senses "lie"to us because, eventually, theythen reveal the "truth". We ultimately knowwe've been talking to a stone pill.~r and not a man, because our eyestell us so. Butthis doesn'tinvalidate Descartes' argument.

We still-get conflicting messages from our senses and the information they produce, so they can be doubted.

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Nevertheless, it's an odderargument than he admits. Youcould say that it's not our senses that lie to us, but our interpretation of the information theygive us.Sensory information Is mediated by us. We see a tall grey shapein the mist and we then infer.that it's a man. Our sense of sightdoesn'tlie to us, it's we who misinterpret.

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Are We Awake or Not? And is it true to say that it's impossible to distinguish between our waking and dream experiences? It's possible that Descartes was quite sincere aboutthis argument. His own dreams were oftenvery vivid and he took them very seriously. But many peoplewould say that our dream experiences areclearly distinguishable from conscious ones.

There may not be one obvioustest for dreams, but there probablyis an alternative checklist of verygoodindicators.

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Somephilosophers also say that it just isn't possible to doubt whether you are sound asleepwhen you are, in fact, sound asleep, so there is something incoherent aboutDescartes' argument. Otherphilosophers and psychologists disagree - they think you can doubtin your dreams.

But I would respond by pointing out that Vie can never be absolutely and totally sure that we are awake. There is a smudge of doubt there that just cannot be erased.

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Invisible Demons? So, what aboutthe "invisible demon"? Here Descartes does seem to be desperate for a sceptical argument. Perhaps we are always hallucinating and our senses are in thrallto a malicious (and extremely busy) invisible demon. But can we seriously believe.that"our" mathematics is systematically wrong? If 2+2 "really" equals5 or 3 and not 4, how can it be mathsat all? This argument againstrational knowledge seems less convincing.

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The Impossibility of a "Private Language" Thereis also something very odd aboutthis Cartesian kind of universal scepticism. Descartes always assumes that his thoughts are totally private and independent of the world.

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rtl" , But what is he thinking with? His thoughtsare composed of words in eitherFrench or Latin. These words are part of a language which has a set of grammatical rules, conventional meanings, and a whole complex historyand a culturebehind it. Noneof that linguistic and cultural historycan be doubted. 52

Having private sceptical thoughts in a private sceptical head is more difficult than it looks. Descartes also assumes that he is awareof his mental states of "knowing", "doubting", "being sure", and so on. So any philosopher who claimsto be a total sceptic is really a bit of a fraud. Descartes came clean fairlyearlyon.

He always admitted he was playing a special kind of philosophical game- merely the temporary suspension of his beliefs. So by suspending some of them, he is actually holding othermore sophisticated beliefs aboutwhy his temporary scepticism is necessary.

53

Back to the Basket But, for a briefmoment, Descartes almost convinces us that the apple basket of knowledge must remain empty. All of our knowledge mightbe contaminated at source. It may not be, but we cannotguarantee that it isn't. All of it can be doubted. Our senses might be lyingto us, we could be dreaming, or an invisible demonmightbe fooling us. It's the cumulative effectof all of thesearguments that is ultimately so powerful andconvincing.

And if Descartes was a true sceptic, his philosophy would have ended there and he could havegone back to growing vegetables in his garden. Buthe isn't a true sceptic: Thereis one extraordinary appleleft that hasthe rightto remain in the basket. 54

The Last Apple: Cogito ergo Sum Bygoing through this process of rigorous doubt, Descartes eventually discovered something ratherextraordinary. Whathe realized wasthat there was alwaysone thing that he could neverdoubt- the fact that he wasdoubting or thinking. Andthinking just can't happen in mid-air. There has to be a consciousness or minddoing it, so Descartes can't doubtthat he existseither. Hence the famous Cogito ergo Sum "Ithinktherefore I am". Or perhaps moreaccurately: therearethoughts, so there mustbe a mind.

While I could pretend that I had no body and that there was no world ••• I could not, for all that, pretend that I did not exist. I saw this from the mere fact that I thought of doubting the truth of other things-.

55

So, wonderfully and paradoxically, as soon as you try to doubt the Cogito, you confirmit. It is a truth that has no dependency on the senses, and even more remarkably, is alsoimmunefrom the attentions of the invisible demon.

Even he can't make us doubt doubting. Doubting is a very special kind of thinking.

We could, for instance, be hypnotized by the demon into thinkingthat we have legs and were walking, but we just can't be fooled about doubting. At last Descartes has a perfect indubitable apple to put in the basket. 56

What is the Cogito? The Cogito is an extraordinary discoveryandthe first principle of all of Descartes' work. It has influenced all kindsof modern philosophy, as well as literature, art, socialscienceand religion. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-80) founded his version of Existentialist philosophy on it. The issues and problemsthat it raises have kept many philosophers in workfor many years. It is still not whollyclear exactlywhat the "Cogito" actually is.

Some philosophers believethe Cogito i.s a real factual discoveryabout human beingsand the universe(a "synthetic" proposition). 57

Otherssay it is merelya statement which clarifies the meaning and interrelatedness of concepts like "thoughf'and"existence" (merely an empty"analytic" proposition).

But no 'one doubts the certainty of the Cogito.

Although there is some debate as to whether its certainty is logical and timeless or psychological, subjective and temporary.

It remains oneof the most important discoveries of Westem philosophy and perhaps marks the spot where modern philosophy begins and Scholasticism ends. It also began a branch of philosophy now called the Philosophy of Mind- aboutwhich there is morelater in this book. 58

The Cui de Sac of the Cogito But wonderfully certain though the Cogitois, it seemsto be a bit of a deadend. If you doubt or think, then, at that exact moment, you can guarantee that your mind existsor that you are conscious. Butthis kindof temporary private knowledge is of limited use.

I was always clear in my oWn mind that my radical system doubt was just a beginning.\

0' 59

Public Knowledge Knowledge has to be public so that it can be read about in books andjournalsand kept in libraries. It is vitalthat scientific knowledge is repeatable, testable anddemocratic, otherwise it remains no more than personal beliefsin the privacyof an individual mind. Descartes compares the limited certainty of the Cogitoto an "acrobat who always lands onhis feet".

Progress is always slow and limited. How are we always to find truths such as we can be as firmly convinced of them as we are of our own existence? 60

The Clear and Distinct Rule So Descartes had to convertthe privatetemporary knowledge of the Cogito into something which is more publicand permanent. He felt that if he could discoverwhat it is about the Cogito that makesit so certain, then he should be able to uncovera universal rule which would offer similarguarantees of certainty aboutotherkindsof knowledge. Hetried to produce this rulewith an argument likethis:

Therefore whatever I clearly and distinctly perceive will be true. The "clearanddistinct" rule is the first onefromthe Discourse on the Method, where it is a statementof caution. Now, in the Meditations, it becomes a powerful tool of discoverywhich Descartes believeswill enable himto jumpfromthis limited, private certainty to a broader, more flexible certainty aboutotherkindsof knowledge. 61

Problems of the Clear and Distinct Rule Descartes shared the view of many 17th centuryphilosophers that thinking aboutideasin our mindsis ratherlikewatching a kind of mental cinema screen. An idea should hit us with the same clarityand immediacy as objects hit our eyes when we see them. But Descartes' explanation of the "clearanddistinct" rule isn't itselfveryclear. He seems to change his mind both about what it is and about how important or reliable it is. In the Discourse he suggests that "thereis somedifficulty aboutwhat is distinct", and yet in the later Meditations he maintains that "wecannot be in error in this way'. "Clear" and "distinct" are relative terms. Whatis clear and distinctto you may be very fuzzyto me.

The~e's nothing to stop the invisible demon from inserting ideas of breathtaking clarity into our minds in order to fool us. This is why Descartes has to bring God into it.

62

The Need for God Before Descartes can rely on the "clearanddistinct rule", he needsto remove the threat of the evil demon. The bestway to do this is to bring in a God who will never deceive us and will always guarantee that any clearanddistinctideasthat enterour minds will be true. So Descartes has to set out to prove that God exists. He begins by saying that he already has a clear and distinctidea of God in his mind. His ideas about Godarethe standard andtraditional theological onesabouta perfect, infinite, immutable andpermanent being.

The Trademark Argument

When God makes us, He stamps the innate idea of Himself into our minds. Descartes thoughtthat humanbeingswere all born with a rather odd mix of innateideas, including those of mathematics, the soul and God's existence. He then relieson the old and odd Scholastic "Causal Adequacy Principle" to reinforce his claim. The Principle relies on a set of beliefs. 64

And reality is a matter of degree, so that some things are "more real" than others•

= --

. The cause of the idea of God must therefore be more real than the idea itself. So, God must exist.

God may well exist, but not because of the Causal Adequacy Principle. Ideasin the mind are "real" in a very different sort of way from the way in which things or beings are "real"- even divine ones. It seems that some of the old Scholastic doctrineswere still verydifficultfor Descartes to discard. He was a great and originalthinker, but, like all of us, also a product of histime.

65

The Cartesian Circle But whatis worse, Descartes' argument is now infamous for being the "Cartesian circle". Descartes uses that which he wishes to proveas oneof his premises. Youcan't guarantee the clearanddistinct rulewith a truth-telling d>eity if you'vealready claimed that you knowhe exists because you havea clear and distinctideaof him in your mind. Descartes needs God to guarantee his ruleand the ruleto guarantee that God exists.

66

The Ontological Argument Descartes also produced his own variation of yet anotherold Scholastic argument for the existence of God, knownas the "Ontological" argument. Thetheologian St Anselm (1033-1109) is usuallygiventhe creditfor inventing it. The argument goeslikethis. 1. God is a totally perfectbeing.

2.·Total perfection mustinvolveexistence. Because ideas are inferiorto thingsthat exist- remember? And if God is perfect, he can't be a mere inferior idea, can he? 3. Therefore God exists.

Descartes' Ontological argument is slightlydifferent. Hisclearand distinct idea of God is of a totally perfectbeing, so God must be totally perfect, and so on.

67

A Series of Leaky Proofs The Ontological prooffor God's existence isn't very convincing. You \ attempt to magicGod into ~xistence through the wayyou definehim, as if words had the power to make ideas real. Descartes wants us to acceptthat our knowledge of the external world is flawed or even hallucinatory. Yet, at the.same time, he wants us to accept that all clear and distinct ideas are true and that they will be guaranteed by a Deity whose existence he then tries to prove with a seriesof leaky"proofs". What Descartes is up against is the fundamental problem for all Rationalist philosophers.

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Descartes' "solution" is that God has created eternal truths about us and-the world and that, if we perceive them as clear and distinct, then they areguaranteed.

68

Making Mistakes Another worryfor Descartes is that, if God guarantees clear and distinct ideas, why is it that conscientious peoplestill make mistakes? Much depends on how you view human potential. Some philosophers, like Benedictus de Spinoza (1632-77), believe that human ability is virtually infinite in capacity.

Given enough time, the human mind could mature and grow until it became virtually infallible and could see "the big picture".

I'm more pessimistic. For me, the human mind will always be finite and capable of error. Only God can have this kind of infinite mental capacity. 69

Intellect versus Will Descartes has a theory about why the human mind will always be of limitedability. We cometo believe or makejudgements aboutthingsafterexercising two of ourfaculties - our intellect and ourfree will. Ourmindsmaydecide that the angles of a triangleadd up to 180degrees, but then we have to choose to believe that this is so. Provided we always chooseclear and distinct ideas, then,according to Descartes, we cannot makemistakes.

The problem is that we often choose to believe confused, unclear ideas. Our wi II power is often more influential than our intellect.

Ourfreedom to choose is itselfinfinite and is a gift from God- to a large extent, it is what makesus human.

70

But it is the overriding powerof this free will which is the reason why we often dofall disastrously intoerror. Ashuman beings wetend to exercise ourfreedom of choice waybeyond the confines of the clearanddistinct ideas arrived at by the understanding. For some reason, Godhasgiven ustotal freedom butlimited understanding.

The only remedy is for us to restrain our will and abstain from judgement more than we do, and to restrict our knowledge claims to clear and distinct ideas.

With this explanation, Descartes has been able to hold on to his doctrineof divinely certified clear and distinctideas,and at the sametime to explain why human beings get things wrong all the time. 71

Belief Is Cheap Descartes does not altogether provide a plausible explanation of human error. It seems odd to suggest that we constantly believe thingsthat we don't understand. If we don't understand quantum theory, how can we believe it? Descartes' answeris that "understanding" means "fully understanding". We may think we understand something, but we don't. Belief is cheap. Trueunderstanding is lessfrequent thanwe realize.

And even when we do see that which is clear and distinct, we don't always ·choose itf

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72

Belief and Faith When we recognize that 2+2 = 4, then, according to Descartes, we perceive this mathematics as a clear and distinctidea, and then choose to believe it or make a "judgement" about it. But when we "perceive" that 2+2 = 4, it's not obviouswhetherwe are holding an idea in our mindsor making some kind of decisionaboutthat idea. If we hold clear and distinct ideas in our minds, then, in a way, we have already made a decision abouttheir status. Thereis something odd aboutlinking choosing and believing in the way Descartes does.

If someone says "I choose to believe it", the implication is that they could choose not to, but belief usually isn't like this. We don't have a lot of leeway.

It's as if Descartes confusesbelief with faith.

A Good Bet This confusion between beliefand faith is often a problem for Descartes. Belief is connected with rationality andevidence. Faith is not reallya kind of belief, but morean act of will. If, for example, you think that God's existence is provable, then you don't needto havefaith in Him. Butthe Church ofteninsiststhat Christians needboth beliefandfaith. The French thinker Blaise Pascal (1623-62) famously suggested that it is rational to chooseto believe in God. This is known as "Pascal'swager".

Even if the evidence for God's existence is slim, a sensible gambler will choose to believe in Him, since to do so is a good bet.

If I'm wrong, well, death is final. If I'm right, then everlasting bliss awaits me.

But is this gam~le an example of belief or faith?

74

By Section Fourof Meditations, Descartes thinks he has fixed a rule for establishing truth, validated God's existence, proved the facts of his own consciousness and existence, explained why human beings make mistakes and suggested that God is the guarantor of certain rather special ideasin our minds. Descartes has reinstated the statusof the sortof knowledge that we acquire through our reason and intellect.

R"ightl I think I'll do a bit of gardening before writing the next sections.

A Quiet Life in Holland When Descartes was writing his philosophy, he needed total peace andquiet. Healsobecame increasingly tiredof certain individuals attempting to embroil himin various kindsof religious controversy. For thesegood reasons, he didn't like too many peopleto know his address in Holland. He moved several times and had all his maildirected to the house of hisfriend Mersenne.

I have told Mersenne to lie to everyone about where I live.

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76

One man who did manageto track him down was called de Sorbiere. He spentmuchof his time goingaround Europe as a kind of amateur collector of intellectuals. Hearrived unannounced at Descartes' retreat and was received with'remarkable politeness. He described Descartes' lifelikethis.

He was in a little chateau of fine situation about two hours from the sea. He had a sufficient staff of servants ••• a nice garden with an orchard beyond it; and all around pastures from which stood out steeples of various heights, tiII in the far horizon they seemed mere points. He could go in a day by canal to Utrecht, Rotterdam, Haarlem or Amsterdam.

77

In middle age, Descartes started wearing wigs madespecially in Paris. He had a collection of four when he died. He was a neat dresserand usually wore black. He carried a sword when he travelled any distance fromhome. He lived a very simple lifefor a gentleman.

Hisfavourite dish was omelette madefrom eggsthat he always insisted were at leastten days old.

78

Although he took exercise everyday, he nevertheless spentat least twelve hourseveryday in bed, where he did most of his thinking and some of his writing.

I have a horror of doctors and refuse to be bled.

He regarded his own body as if it were a well-made machine which would workbestif regularly exercised and left to its owndevices.

Descartes had few servants. He was always very generous to them, and sometimes to strangers. One day an impoverished peasant shoemaker called Rembrantsz arrived at his large housein Endegeest and askedto see the famous philosopher. The servants sent him away twice without tellingtheir master. Descartes got to hear abouthim and subsequently had long philosophical discussions with him.

80

Descartes was a compulsive letter writer. He wrote several every evening andonelonglettereveryfortnight to his childhood friend Mersenne. He corresponded with the obscure and the famousin manydifferent countries. He insisted that prosestyleshould be simple, clear anddirect at all times. He was in favourof morewidespread literacy and thoughtthe spelling of wordsshould reflect the way they werepronounced. At varioustimes Descartes expressed an interestin a Universal Language.

He also thought it would be a good idea to invent a special philosophical languagein which it would always be possiblefor mento thinkclearly. 81

Meditations on Perception In Meditations 5 and 6, Descartes goes on to ask whether it is possible to restore the knowledge thatwe acquire through perception. Hethinks that we can now be certain of mathematical ideas, but what kind of knowledge can we get of the external world outside of our minds? It's a problem for Descartes and all Rationalist philosophers.

You can have lots of clear and distinct ideas about triangles and triangularity, but can you ever know whether.any. a~tually · e~j~t in t~e w~r.I 'dt : · -. .

Clearanddistinct ideasare "determinant" - they describe the "essences" of thingsbut do not help us to know whether there's any chance of ever seeing them. 82

Descartes was quite happy to admit that we do have sensory experiences but maintained that we never have these experiences directly. He is a "representative realist" who believes that we only ever perceive the world indirectly through internal mental images or ideas.

But, if God IS good, why would he equip us with senses that are so indirect and unreliable? What is Descartes' answerto this?

83

Bringing in God Again Descartes' answer is a bit of a compromise, and relies on an appeal to God'sgoodness a second time. He is convinced that at leastthose clear and distinct ideas that enter our minds about material objects must reflect some formof external reality. If wehavecertain clearanddistinct ideas of objects in the world, then Godwill guarantee thattheseideas willcorrespond to whatis actually "outthere". Butthe onlyclearand distinct ideas we can be sureof are mathematical ideas.

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Objects in the world may notcorrespond exactly to our sensory impressions of them. So it's a bit of a compromise. Godonly misleads ./ us some of thetime.

84

Mathematical Certainties This is the point Descartes is making when he examinesthe piece of wax. When cold, it appears to be hard and even audible. When hot, it becomes liquid and silent. Becauseit is a "body", he can be certain that it is "extended" - eventhough it is a very protean threedimensional object.

Its true mathematical nature can always be perceived by the mind alone.

This seems an odd belief - that we know what wax is purely from an exercise of the mind, independent of our senses. His point may be a goodscientific one, though. It is the underlying mathematical structure of thingsthat gives us the real truth aboutthem. The beliefthat true knowledge has to be mathematical - of that which is stable and unchanging - is not new to Descartes, as we'll see next.

85

Ancient Greek Mathematics The ancient Greeks werethe first to recognize that numbers seemed to have an odd life 9f their own. Pythagoras (c. 550-500 B.C.) was so impressed by them that he thoughtthey should be worshipped!

The visible world is merely an illusion that hides the real mathematical reality of things.

Thereare "Platonist" mathematicians who tend to agreewith the view of Platothat mathematics "pre-exists" and is the real structure of the universe. 86

Is the Universe Mathematical? The way that the number Pi keeps cropping up as a constant in all sorts of practical mathematical problemsseemsto indicatethat mathsis embedded in the material world in some way. Sunflowers and pine conesfollow Fibonacci numbers (1,2,3,5,8,13, 21,34 etc.).

Andeven apparently random and chaoticthingslike cloudsfollow fractal geometric patterns. Mathsseemsto be universal.

87

Descartes the Mathematician Descartes is famous as a mathematician as well as a philosopher. He gavehis nameto "Cartesian coordinates" and began certain conventions nowcommon to mathematicians, likerepresenting unknowns by the letters x, y and z and knowns by a, b, and c. He invented the modern way of expressing squares and cubes by usingsmallnumbers (as in 42 ) . He greatlyadvanced analytic geometry, which generally makes solving geometric problems simpler. In La Geom8trie, Descartes showed how you can use algebrato recognize manytypical problems in geometry andbring together those which are related. Partlybecause of his success in doing this, he came to believe that all human knowledge could eventually be mathematized.

88

The Rigour of Mathematics In the last of his three famous dreams, Descartes believed he had been shown the way in which to unite the whole of sciencewith this one "method" of mathematics. Mathematics, andespecially geometry, offer guarantees and a deductiverigourthat made a deep impression on Descartes. If you accepta few "self-evident" axiomsin geometrylike "paraJlellines never meet"and "the shortestdistancebetween two pointsis a straightline", then it is possiblefrom such small beginnings to deducea rich body of reliableknowledge. Descartes obviously thought that similarly large amountsof knowledge were obtainable from his axiomthat "matteris extended substance".

So, for me, physics really means constructing mathematical models.

89

But What is Mathematics? So mathematics does seem universal. That's why, if we wantto contact beings in othergalaxies, it makessense to broadcast mathematical and notlinguistic messages.

They won't speak English out in deep space, but we do assume that their maths wi II be our maths.

No onequite knows what mathematics actually is, and some mathematicians aren'tverysurethemselves. It's stillnotclearwhether mathematics is something we invent or something we have discovered. 90

Mathematical Relativism The reassuring view of a single universal mathematics has been challenged by the morerecent invention (or discovery!) of very plausible andsuccessful "alternative geometries". Before this happened, everyone thought that Euclid (c. 300 B.C.) had "discovered" the onetrue geometry encoded in the universe. It now seems reasonable to suppose that there is nothing ubiquitous about Euclidean geometry. It may be a localized human investigative tool that just happens to makegood senseto us.

Perhaps it is just that our human brains are "wired up" for our kinds of maths.

And that's the only way, at present we can understand what surrounds us.

91

Formalists This relativist or "Formalisf view statesthat mathematics is no morethan a human invention, a closed and "empty" system of deductions produced froma set of initial self-evident axioms. Formalists declare that mathematics does not reveal the mysteries of the universe to us, but is reallymorelikechess- a self-regulating andconsistent game.

This means that mathematics can produce elegant and complex "models" of truth, but cannot ever be the truth itself.

Because mathematics is a "closed" system, it is hard to see how it could provide us with "new" knowledge aboutanything otherthan itself. Maths for the formalists can only everbe valid or invalid. Words like "true" or "false" just don't apply. 92

The Success Story Descartes himself was a committed Platonist. He thought that reason would discover scientific truth- and his confidence is based on a faith in mathematics. He seems to havebelieved that all human problems could eventually be mathematized. To someextent this vision of his has become a reality.

In my own day, it was mathematical application that made business, accountancy, astronomy, optics and navigation so successful.

In our ownday,theoretical sciences like nuclear physics, astrophysics, chemistry, genetics, ecology, economics, linguistics andcomputer sciences would not existwithout mathematics. 93

In the last yearsof the 20th century, scientists hopeand believethat theywilldiscover the last great unifying theoryof all- the Theoryof Everything (orT.O.E.) - uniting the lawsof gravity, electromagnetism, radioactivity andthe strong nuclear force(thatholdsneutrons and protons together inside the nucleus).

If this theory does exist and can be discovered, at present there is only one sure thing we ~_c_an say about it.

94

It wi II be expressed in mathematical terms.

Mathe.matical Humans Manymathematicians are still resolute Cartesians. As mathematical human beings, we believethat the universeis mathematically organized and patterned, and, so far, for us, it seems to be that way. When we investigate very smallnuclearparticles or very remote blackholes, mathematics seems to describeand explain such strangephenomena with clarityand predictive power.

Even moresurprisingly, scientists continually findthat previously invented "Formalist" mathematics subsequently oftenhaspractical "Platonist" applications. 95

The Mathematization of Everything Noonereally knows for surewhether "our" mathematics provides us withuseful models that offerus only approximate guides to what the universe is like, or whether it tellsusthe whole truthandnothing but. Descartes' dream has mademodern science possible and powerful in ways that he could neverhave imagined.

But the mathematization of everything may be neither possible nor desirable.

Mostmodern scientists would probably alsostress howmuch science stillhasto be empirical.

96

A blindfaith in the powerof mathematical deductive models certainlyled Descartes to somevery odd conclusions in the natural sciences.

Mathematical reasoning reveals that water freezes more rapidly when it is boi led. This presumably can only be established by conducting an experiment.

Mathematicians don't have a way of establishing such empirical truths, however elegant their maths might be Mathematics has some small part to play in the human sciences, such as psychology and sociology, but, so far, humanemotions, behaviour, culture, historyand civilization itselfseemsafefromthe grasp of mathematical formulae. (Although somephilosophers and mathematicians believethat one day there may be newer and more flexible kindsof "softmaths"that may succeed in doingthis.)

97

Res Extensa Descartes heldto the Pythagorean and Platonist ideasthat the visible world is merely an illusion that hidesthe mathematical reality of things. So there is nothing especially new about Descartes' view that we can onlyeverhaveknowledge of the mathematically certain res extensa (the width, breadth and heightof matterthat occupies space).

Such knowledge is safe and secure because it lies in the geometric world of clear and distinct propositions.

Properties likehardness andcolour are relative, unmeasurable, andare subjective sensations produced in human mindsby'the objects, but not actually present in them. So objects possess reliable "primary qualities" as well as the odderand more puzzling "secondary qualities".

98

For Descartes, the universeis alreadyencoded with mathematical information whichit is the job of mathematicians to detect.

Mathematical knowledge is the only kind we can ever have about the world which is true.

This mathematical visionencouraged Descartes to depictthe universe as one huge singularthing which occupies space. His cerebral and abstract pictureof the world is a grey and prosaicone - as if everything in the universe is reduced to a universal homogenous grey "extended" porridge.

99

So,for Descartes, virtuallyeverything that existsis res extensa - matter which can be mathematically measured and known for certain by the human mind. Descartes' view of the human bodyfollowson from this.

He thought that this was obviously the case with all our non-conscious physical functions like breathing and blinking. This opinion led Descartes to hisextraordinary and chilling beliefthat animals werenon-conscious and so the noisesthey made when being vivisected'were only those a machine would make when being disassembled. Screams of pain were justmechanical noises! 100

Thiswasthe rathergruesome sideto Descartes' intellectual activities. He viewed all animal.and human bodies as mere animated machines, and so enjoyed disassembling them to see how they "worked". He must havestartled someof the butchers in Amsterdam. He daily visitedtheir shops and took home rather large parts of variousanimalswhich he thendissected.

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101

Because of his interest in automata, Descartes once had one madein the likeness of a younggirl whichcould makesomehuman-like noises and moveits limbs. He took the ingenious deviceon board a ship, packed in abox Unfortunately the ship's captain was curiousabout the box, thinking perhapsthat Descartes was a kidnapper.

I opened it and was horrified when the mechanical doll started to move and speak.

Hethrewit overboard, convinced thatthe horrible thing hadto be the work of the devil. Descartes was not pleased. $'"0 T~ 'TORY 6CE~ •• • •

102

Res Cogitans Theonething thatdoesn'tfit intoDescartes' metenaast picture is the human beingor res cogit~ns - the "thinking substance". Descartes still employed termslike "sub~ance" and"-essence" fromScholastic philosophy. A "substance" is something that is unique and depends on nothing elsefor its extstence. The"essence" of something is that element of it which makesit part o~ a class.

Atriang Ie has to have three sides if it is to join the class called triangles.

It can haveother"accidental" properties likeits size, butthat's notthe "essential" property that makes it a triangle. So it is the "essence" of a mind thatit thinks. 103

Cartesian Dualism Descartes came up with the ideathat human beings are madeof two substances. Th~y haveconscious minds as well as physical bodies. Sothere aretwo kinds of substance in the world - minds and matter.

The physical world is made up of one single substance. But each human mind is unique, and so each one is a separate substance.

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This"Cartesian dualism" is fundamental to all of Descartes' philosophy. It sounds veryfamiliar to everyone in the Western world because of the Christian doctrine which declares thatall human beings have"souls". Descartes remained a Catholic all his lifeandthought that he could give thedoctrine of souls philosophical respectability. And even people with nostrong religious beliefs arestillrather fond ofthispsychological and emotional "picture" of whatconstitutes human beings. Manyof us would liketothink thatourminds arenotmortal.

104

The Dualist Argument Descartes' view of the soul isn't exactlyorthodox Christianity. He uses words like"mind", "soul" and "intellect" interchangeably, andthey allrefer to the samething, evenif they haveratherdifferent connotations. (The word "soul" didn'talwayssignifysomeimmortal entityfor thinkersin the 17thcentury, although Descartes himselfdid see it that way.) In the second Meditation, he attempts to provethe proposition that mindsor soulsaretotallydifferent from bodies. (Theword"body" for Descartes means any physical object that occupies space, so the human body is a "body"!) His argument goes something likethis.

Thinking Existence Whatdefineshuman beings is that they think, not that they have a physical existence.

1/ From this I knew I was a I 'substance whose whole essence or nature is simply to think, and which does not require any place, or depend on any material thing in order to exist•••• Accordingly this "I" is entirely distinct from the body.

106

It's a complex argument, with ratherstartling conclusions. One is that our existence depends entirelyon our being conscious. Once we stop thinking, then we disappear!

Another conclusion is that our minds or souls continue to exist when our bodies die.

So Descartes' dualism adds weightto the traditional Christian ideathat our true selvesexist somehow independently of our physical bodies. 107

Problems with Cartesian Dualism It's veryreassuring, but not very logical. Just because we are unable to doubtthat we are thinking but can doubt that we have bodiesdoesn't prove that we exist separately from our bodies. Descartes implies that if something can be doubted, then we should proceed on the assumption thatit is falserather than uncertain.

It would be rather like saying that because I can doubtthat there is life on otherplanets, then there isn't. He's usingthe act of doubting as a kind ofproof. 108

Another Argument Later on, in the sixth Meditation, Descartes employs another argument to prove that human beings consist of two kinds of substance. He uses his"clear anddistinct rule" again.

Because I can clearly and distinctly perceive the mind as existing separately from the body, then the mind must have a separate existence of its own.

It's not a very impressive argument - again, partlybecause of the internal weaknesses and ambiguities ofthe "rule" itself. 109

Human Beings and Language Descartes alsothought that therewas someempirical evidence for his dualist doctrine. Human beings signal their uniqueness by the waysin which they use language. Human beings aren'tlike programmed linguisticmachines.

They respond verbally to different situations in a huge variety of often unpredictable ways. Animals aren't like this. They aren't conscious, and so their behaviour and language are repetitive and mechanical.

If you teach a magpie to say good-day to its mistress when it sees her approach ••• it wi II be the expression of the hope of eati ng. ••• But the use of words, so defined, is peculiar to human beings.

Nowadays we mightsay that human linguistic ingenuity and flexibility are"stimulus-free" and a directresult of howour brains are wired up thanks to ourcomplex evolutionary history. Butfor Descartes, the immense flexibility of human linguistic responses wasyet another proof oftheexistence of an immortal thinking soul. 110

Brains or Minds? So, is he right? Are we immortal souls? For Descartes, consciousness andthinking are clearand immediate, as if our mindswerealways transparent and open to inspection. Butit's not at all clearthat thinking and consciousness are non-corporeal processes. Mostphilosophers and neuroscientists would now say that we all need physical brainsfor theseevents to take place.

But this doesn't mean that there aren't physical, chemical and electrical processes going on "behind" all the thinking and allowing it to happen in the first place.

That which actually does the thinking is probably a physical thing - the brain. 111

Effects of Brain Damage Neuroscientists who conduct experiments with patients who have suffered from braindamage haveno doubtat all that thinking mindsare physiological phenomena.

Aphasia is an inability to perform exactly the sorts of thinking tasks that Descartes claims are not physical in origin.

Thismeans thatdamage to our brain will usuallygreatlyimpairour mental processes. If the bodyceases to exist, then so will thought. Descartes disagreed. He maintained thatthe mindWould continue to haveabstract conceptual thoughts afterthe extinction of the physical bodyandthe brain. It sounds a rather dull sortof afterlife. 112

Mind-Body Interaction Another obvious problem for Cartesian dualism is mind-body interaction. If human beings consist of two utterlydistinct substances, then theyjust can't interact. Butit is fairly obvious that a mental event, likethat of choosing, can cause a physical one to occur. (You want a piece of cake, so your arm reaches out for one). A physical event can also cause a mental one. (My bodyfeels the pain of a pin stuck into my arm which thenregisters strongly in my mind.)

But if the mind is a wholly non-physical "soul" how can it cause the body to perform certain movements? I

How can thoughts "push"? And how can physical events like pain

experienced by the body affect the mind? And if mind is non-extended

(doesnot exist in time or spacein the way that bodies do), wheredoes this interaction take place? 113

Descartes wiselygave up on this problem in the end, but initiallyhe did attempt to explain how it is that soul-like mindsand physical bodies can interact.

The soul is co-extensive with the hody in the same sort of way that gravity co-exists with heavy hodies and can exert force upon them.

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He thinksthis explains why we feel the pain of a gash in the hand in a very immediate, powerful way. Human painis not perceived in a remote intellectual way, like the way in which a ship's captain "perceives" a gash in his ship's hull. 114

Butthis co-extensive view must be incorrect if soulor mindare nonextended anddo not exist in time or space. Descartes finallythought thattheremustbe a partof the brain in which this interaction occurred.

The pineal gland is where the mind or soul lives and interacts with the body.

Buteven if that weretrue - determining where spiritual and physical interaction takes placedoesn'texplain how it takes place. 115

Seeing and Hearing the World Although Descartes wasusually committed to his dualist view, he was prepared to qualify it in certain ways. Theproblem of mind-body interaction became even more obvious when heexamined certain kinds . of mental experiences, likeseeing and hearing, which presumably depend onthe existence of anexternal world. Descartes imagines the soul to berather likea little person or"homunculus" experiencing the world by some kind of internal process likewatching aninternal cinema

screen.

All our sensory experiences are "ideas" which exist in this private world. They are all we ever directly experience, so that we have no immediate access to the "external" world.

This is a confusing account of seeing and hearing. It seemsodd to talk aboutperceiving the world as if it is a similarprocess to how we think aboutideas. And more confusing.ly, ideas are oftentalked about by Descartes as if they were objects. This kind of talk about perception led English empiricist philosophers like John Locke (1632-1704) into an impossible linguistic and conceptual mazefor manyyears.

Perceiving and Imagining' Descartes thought that sensory experiences were a composite of both mental and physical processes. Doubting and understanding are purely mental andnon-physiological, but othermental processes like perceiving and imagining are a mixture of the two. Descartes thought that imagining depended on our previous experiences of the world.

,

118

.

Our imagination is slowerand less adequate because it involves physical processes in the brain.

This also explains why some sensations, like those of hunger and pain, are usually confused and vague and lack the clarity of the purer mental processes of doubting and understanding_

So, some mental statesare body-dependent, but others, like doubting, are "purer" andwould survive the deathof the body. 119

Trialism Explains Sensations Descartes' philosophy of mind isn't relentlessly andsimplistically dualist. 'Some thought processes are purelymental, others are an odderkindof mental-physical hybrid. Descartes eventually helda rather tentative but moresophisticated kindof "trialist" viewof the world andthe people in it. If we lookat a frog, then certain physical processes occurin our eyes, optical nerves and our brains. Our sensory experiences of the frog will tell us whatcolourit is and what noisesit makes. Our mindswill then makejudgements aboutits shape, size, weight, and so on.

Human beings have bodies which are "extended" and subject to physical forces in the world like all matter. But they are res cogitans as well. They can doubt, make judgements and understand with their minds.

Andthey also experience sensations suchas those of pain, hunger, sound and colour- sensations which have both physical and mental ingredients. 120

Inthe earlier dualist model, rocks, animals and human bodies arethings which possess merely extension. Human beings also possess thought buttheirsensations remain unexplained. Thetrialist viewseems to make more sense.

Rocks and all "bodies" remain. as extensive things, but animals are now beings that have sensations. Human beings are extended bodies, I) experiencers of sensation and .. '" non-corporeal minds. ~

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Although the trialist view has its own problems, it does seem to be a moreflexible account of what human beings are actually like. .

However, Descartes neverreallypursued this "trialist" view with any rigour. His mainview of us is still the rathercold and abstract one of mindsinhabiting bodies. As human beings, we are not like that. We are beings that feel, imagine and experience.as well as think and exist. Cartesian "people" stilldon't seemlike fullyqualified human beings to mostof us. 122

The Philosophy of Mind Descartes' conclusions are strange. Butalmost single-handedly, he began a whole branch of philosophy now known as the Philosophy of Mind. Minds are still a puzzle. We all havethem, although there is some doubtabout how long for. If we think aboutmindsas if they are physical objects in the world, then how they exist is very problematic. Minds clearly do exist, but not in the same way that arms and legs exist. For Descartes, mindsexistas souls- in a non-extended, nonphysical way. For materialists, this kind of explanation of mindsis frustrating, unscientific andfartoomystical.

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Philosophy of Mind is a complex subject with its arguments and jargon. Philosophers of mind can be dual aspect monists, occasionalists, epiphenomenalists, materialists, functionalists, behaviourists, cognitivists, or even "don'tknows". The directions that thesephilosophers have taken andthe kindsof problems they debate are almost all a direct result of Descartes' original discovery of the Cogitoand his own thoughts aboutit. The various debates aboutmind may sound like eccentric philosophers' gamesat times, buttheygo to the heartof how we human beings conceive of ourselves and how we think we fit into the world around us. Descartes may not have always produced very satisfactory answers to the problems he raised - but he set the agenda. 123

Open to Criticism Meditations on First Philosophy, published in 1641 in Latin, as we havejust seen. shows Descartes engaged in daily personal and private meditations on howto find a wholly certain and reliable basis for human knowledge. Meditations is more exploratory than doctrinal. Descartes insisted that his book was to be regarded as an open text to be shared with the reader.

124

Inthis spiritof openness, Descartes corresponded with manyof his contemporaries who all haddifferent viewsof the human mind. Their criticisms of the dualist doctrine andhis replies to themwereboth published in a section of Meditations called Objections and Replies. Philosophers like Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655) and Marin Mersenne (1588-1648) criticized Descartes for various reasons, but he was always confident that his ideas werevalid.

I shall he glad if people make the strongest objections they can, for I hope that in consequence the truth wi 1I stand out aU the better. 125

The Mind and Body Problem The problem with Cartesian dualism is stillthat mental and physical. worlds seem so verydifferent.

The physical world consists of . material objects which exist in s.pace and time and obey' certain laws that can be established by physics. 126

Howdoesmind operate on matterand matteron mind? Most philosophers produced their ownunique monist or dualist theories to answer theseproblems. The mind-body problem certainly exercised the minds of most17thcentury philosophers verygreatly. Theyemerged with different solutions which usually seem moretheological than philosophical.

Yet these two worlds interact and it's sfi II not really clear how.

127

Some Odd Answers Oneutterlyodddualisttheory is Occasionalism, popularized by Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715). He explains how mind and matter interact simplyby denying that they do so.

When you make the mental decision to move your arm, and then it moves, this is because God dai IV intervenes to orchestrate millions of coincidences of individual mental acts of will and their associated physical actions.

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'Mental thoughts and physical actionsjust coincide, they don't cause oneanother.

128

Thesolution of Benedictus de Spinoza (1632-77) is equally strange. Spinoza abandoned the "two substance" view of Descartes for a monist or "onesubstance" view. The Double Aspect Theory maintains that mental and physical events are merely different aspects of the samesubstance which, it turns out, is God.

God is the essence or nature of everything that exists.

And that is why mind and body exist in a constant state of coordination. 129

G.W. Leibniz (1646-1716) went for a variation on Malebranche's idea, sometimes called Psychophysical Parallelism. He explains it likethis.

Imagine thereare two clocksthat havebeen synchronized to tell the same time. It might look as if one causes the otherto tell the sametime, but bothclocks are whollyseparate. The same is true for mindsand bodies that alwaysseemto correlate.

Occasionalism suggests an answer, but one that seems to rely on a God who is unnecessarily busy. Leibniz submits that God establishes a harmony between the two from day one, and then ceases to interfere. 130

Epiphenomenalism is an equally odd version of dualism. It suggests that any interaction is all one way. Physical eventsin the body do cause mental events, but mental eventsnever cause physical ones.

When I raise my hand, I may well think that I willed this to happen, but I didn't.

Mymind is merely a convenient and perhaps comforting "epiphenomenon". It's an odd view, because it means that human beings have no suchthing as free-will, and that causation can operate inonedirection only. 131

How Did Brains Evolve Minds? From the verystart, manyscientists and philosophers haveworried about Descartes' model of the mind because of its metaphysical assumptions. Human beings are primates that haveevolved overtime. Many modern scientists find it difficult to accept that human beings are the onlyspecies that possesses non-physical minds or that such odd spiritual entities could haveevolved fromphysical beginnings.

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You could maintain that all lifeforms do possess soulsor mindsto some degree, although this seems hardto accept when youthinkaboutsome lowerlifeforms, such as spiders.

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The 20th century has witnessed the success of a materialist science that assumes that all things can be explained in terms of physical entities andforces, butirritatingly, mindsdon'tseem to be investigable in that sort of way.

Most scientists today maintain as a matter of principle that all physical events have physical causes.

We would like to leave God out of things if possible.

Neuroscientists are happywith talk about"firing synapses" in the brain, but shuffle about uneasily when they try to explain how non-physical thoughts causephysical actions. 133

What is Consciousness? Consciousness itselfshould be a biological phenomenon. We have evolved as beings withthis attribute. Andyet, it seems very different fromsome of our otherphysical processes, likegrowth anddigestion. It is different because of its SUbjectivity anduniqueness.

This is why I said there was only one kind of "extended substance" but as many "mental substances" as there are individual human beings. I

Nevertheless, it seems likelythat physical brain processes cause consciousness to exist, although the howand where of it remain very mysterious. It's also not whollyclearwhy human beings need consciousness in the first place. Somescientists now believe that science may be ableto explain consciousness by turning to something likequantum theory where the usual laws of causality dissolve. 134

Aspects of Consciousness So, the Cogitois a majorproblem. It certainly doesn'tseemto be as "clear anddistinct" as Descartes thought. For mostpeople, consciousnessis like a kindof "innerlight" thatdetermines "what it is liketo be me". Otherfeatures seem to be thoseof Unity, Intentionality, Central and Peripheral ability, an aptitude for gestalt perception, and a needfor familiarity. When we are conscious, we experience everything at the sametime in a unified manner.

Consciousness also usually has content or intentionality - it is directed atsomething.

Normally, we are anxious something rather than just "being anxious".

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We are usually conscious about different things on different

levels

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When we lookup from a book and lookat a room. we graspit as a whole andnot as disconnected bitsof wallandfurniture. We know what we are looking at. because we are familiar with the kinds of categories thatthings likechairs andwallpaper fit into. 136

Brains not Minds So consciousness is varied in its achievements - but is it a Cartesian non-physical entityor something moremundanely corporeal? Most neuroscientists claimthat all mental eventscan be explained in physical terms- usuallyby usingthe term "brain" and avoiding the awkward "mind" word. Theyresortto a kind of monism that they can live with.

By reducing all mental processes to physical events, " they become less worrying Iy metaphysical and subject to physical laws like everything else. But, however hardthey try to do this, somehow there are lots of aspects of human feelings, beliefsand painsthat don't seemto be explicable in this reductive way. Human beingsseemto be relentlessly dualistin the waysthat they think aboutthemselves. Materialists might claimto be explaining what mind and thoughts are, when perhapswhat they are really tryingto do is explain awkward things like consciousness out of existence. 137

Behaviourists The Behaviourist way out of the "mind dilemma" is virtually to denythe existence of mind altogether.

,. All descriptions of private ..."). me"~ta l ·experiences should be · "translated" into accounts ·of public dispositions and tendencies.

"Being sad"means crying and moaning. It is not someprivate mental event. There is no "ghostin the machine", as the Behaviourist philosopher Gilbert Ryle (1900-76) oncesaid. Behaviourists believe that to envisage human beingsas "souls in bodies" is a kind of category mistake - ratheras if we wereto confuse "Thursdays" with "tables". 138

Problems with Behaviourism But if this Behaviourist account of human beings weretrue,there could be no difference between someone being sad and someone pretending to be sad. Someone who was paralyzed and could not exhibit behaviour would presumably haveno mental life. Behaviourists alsoignore qualia - what it actually feels like to be in a particular state ofmind.

It also seems odd to suggest that we acquire beliefs somehow by observing our own behaviour.

And mental beliefs are quite clearly often the cause of behaviour.

For behaviourists this just isn't possible, because beliefand behaviour aresynonymous. The Behaviourist model just isn'tconvincing. A feeling of pain is one thing; but the behaviour we associate with pain is something quitedifferent. 139

Physicalists Physicalist or MindIBrain Identity theorists believe that mental and physical eventsare the same. To think about Descartes growing vegetables is no morethan a particular stateof the brain. To believe that"mind" and"brain" are different andto talk aboutthemdifferently is rather likesomeone whotalksabout"lightning" and"electrical discharges", believing thatthey are different thingswhen they are the same.

In principle, a neuroscientist could eventually givea detailed account of the brain statethat is my thoughtabout Descartes eating a carrotas "anactivity occurring in sector 13748of the subject's brain". 140

Problems Theproblem withthis explanation lies in the words"in principle". So far, neuroscientists are nowhere nearhaving this kind of detailed knowledge of wherethoughts occur in the brain, eventhough we as individuals all haveclearand immediate accessto our ownthoughts. Thoughts and brain processes just don't seemto be the same sorts of thing at all.

Also, individual thoughts just don't seemto be divisible or measurable in the way that brain states presumably would be, as physical phenomena. 141

When we experience our ownfeelings, likethose of painand desire (those qualla again!), they are uniqueto us.

They have a certain ufeel u to them which just doesn't seem to be reducible to physical brain states that outsiders can L...............~ observe and measure.

Token Identity theory tries to get around someof theseproblems by

suggesting that individual thoughts may be tokens(individual examples) of a type (an identical species of brain state). This means that two totallyidentical human beings couldhaveidentical brains in which were identical-brain states, andyet still be having utterlydifferent thoughts. If that is the case, then the relationship between the physical and the mental stillremains whollymysterious andbizarre. 142

Functionalism Functionalism is the mostrecent attempt to resolve thedilemma of what consciousness and thoughts are, and how they can be explained. Functionalism exploits a nowfamiliar computer analogy. Human thoughts are like software processed by the hardware - the human brain.

The phvsical brain consists billions possible neuron connections.

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It is the mental software that is crucial- not the physical brain activity. Thoughts, like software, don't have a spatial location. To ask where thoughts "exist" is like asking where Mozart's Requiem "exists".

143

Functionalists are still materialists, butthey expand whatis normally regarded as "material" or "physical" bytalking about"structures" or "systems" rather than matter. They stress how "exist" doesn'thaveto mean the sameas "tangible" or "visible". Thoughts and consciousness existon a kind of higherand moreconceptual level- just likecomputer software "exists". Mental statesare mental because of their causal relations.

Aclock can still be a clock, whether it is made of meta I springs or electrical impulses.

It's what the clock does and not what it is made of that defines it.

The sameis true of thoughts and consciousness. Both do existin the human brain, but could do so equally well in someotherkindsof alien being or sophisticated machine wired upquitedifferently to us. It'sthe sonware, notthe hardware that determines thought. 144

Problems It all sounds sensible enough. but at the endof the day. Functionalists still maintain that something likea human belief is eventually reducible to a bunch of firing neurons that produce the correct sortof causal relations. Mental states are functional states andfunctional states are physical states.

It is a more advanced view of minds than some other materialist monist views.

. But it still se'ems an odd, way of describing all our own deeply felt beliefs, hopes, pains and desires.

This attempt to push the meanings of "material" and "physical" as far as theycango is the mostrecent attempt to escape fromthe mysticism of dualism andthe obvious problems of behaviourism and physicalism. 145

Humans and Computers Functionalism alsoraises the issue of whether computers canreally think and be conscious as well. If it's the software that produces consciousness, andthe nature of the physical hardware involved is irrelevant, then presumably computers could eventually become conscious. The possibility of thinking machines was an ideathat interested Descartes. Hethought that it might well be possible to build an automaton that looked human, and seemed, on the surface, to think and uselanguage like we do.

Secondly, even though such machines might do some things as well as we do them, or perhaps even better, they would. inevitably fail in others, which would reveal that they were acting, not through understanding, but only from the disposition of their organs•••• Reason is a universal instrument which can be used in all kinds of situations •••

147

Can Computers Understand? Descartes seems to haveanticipated many of the current debates in the 20th century about artificial intelligence. Hewould probably have agreed with the philosopher John Searle (b. 1932) who argues that a computer canmanipulate dataefficiently butcan never understand it in the way that human beings do.

Human consciousness just "i,n't a digital or

computational phenomenon.

A computer is rather similar to 8 ,non-Chinese speaking manlocked in a room whoreceives, rearranqes andthen posts a whole series of Chinese characters according to a setof rules.

So computers may look as if they understand thoughtsand ideas, but they don't. This suggests that, although the computeranalogyand the functionalist theory may provide us with new ways of escaping from the dualistdilemma, they may still not tell us the wholestory about minds and thoughts and how they relate to physical brains.

And even if we could build a computer that eventually somehow became conscious, it still wouldn't explain what consciousness is II • •

149

It certainly seems oddto believe that a machine, however cleverly wired up with its owncircuits firing away, could everexperience pain in the inner, sUbjective and intensely unpleasant way that we human beings do. Human beings aredifferent fromeverything elseinthe world precisely because of our firstperson perspective.

We are part of the physical world, but perhaps we aren't reducible to it in the sort of "third person" perspective that materialism and science adopt.

The phenomena of consciousness andthought at present seem to be beyond the graspof both philosophers and scientists. Modern theories of mind often seem morelike attempts to side-step both as problems, perhaps because they are ultimately unsolvable. The last laugh may still lie with Rene Descartes. His Cogito is as mysterious a thing as it ever was. 150

The Principles In 1643, Descartes begancorresponding with Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, who was herself living in exile in Holland. She was an unusually intelligent 24-year-old and challenged Descartes with many disturbing questions about his views on the relationships between mind and body, reason, the passions and morality. In 1644, Descartes published his last great work, Principles of Philosophy, in which he gave accountsof metaphysics, physics and the physical universe.

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Hevigorously rejected muchof Aristotle's teleological doctrine (inwhich everything is supposed to have a final causefor its existence), and still tentatively suggested that it was the earththat moved around the sun and not the other way around. 151

Retirement Descartes subsequently supervised French translatlons of his Meditations and Principles fromtheiroriginal Latin. (Latin wasstill used as the universal language of scholarship throughout Europe.) Hespent the restof his life in the Netherlands countryside, eating vegetables from his owngarden and corresponding withfriends.

152

In 1648, a young scholar called Frans Burman visited the 52-year-old philosopher and wrotedown an account of all the conversations he had with Descartes.

The old philosopher now wanted to retreat from the world of constant academic squabbling and the stream of condemnations which came from both Protestant and Catholic theologians.

They have all mastered the art of denigration.

In 1649, he wrotehis last work, The Passions of the Soul, a book on ethics andthe goodlife.

153

Descartes and Ethics Perhaps wisely, Descartes has surprisingly little to say aboutethicsor politics in his philosophical works. Buthe was interested in the sortof life that we needto lead if we are to be happy and fulfilled. He was a great believer in science, whichhe thought would benefit human beings in the longrun by enabling them bothto be healthier andto live longer. .

Like the Stoic philosophers, I think that human beings would be wiser and happier if they used reason to guide and control their instincts and passions.

In Passions of the Soul, he maintains that passions and emotions like love, desire, hatred and joy, are experiences which arisein the soulbut are caused by the body.

This means that we musttrain ourselves to subdue thesemerely physiological events by exerting our will-power. If we could do this, then our lives would never be confused, and ourknowledge would increase rapidly.

We would live in a calm and untroubled scientific Utopia.

It sounds verydull. Perhaps it's an over-optimistic vision of whathuman beings are like and whatthey can achieve. In the centuries that have passed since Descartes started to think, human beings have seemed unable to control theirviolent and destructive passions. Furthermore, they have employed reason and science as much to serve thesepassions asto control them. 155

Invitation to England? Descartes almost made a journey to England in 1640at the invitation of Sir Charles Cavendish. One legend saysthat he paid a briefvisit in 1641, butthis seems very unlikely. He seems to havegoneoff the idea ofvisiting England.

Because I Was told that very

'ew Englishmen can speak French or Latin.

156

Invitation to Sweden Descartes had been corresponding with Queen Christina of Sweden for several years. In 1649, perhaps with a senseof relief, he accepted an invitation to be her philosophy tutor. Queen Christina wasan eccentric blue-stocking.

She was also an excellent horse-rider and spoke six languages. She had a rathermasculine voice and studied at least.sixhourseveryday. 157

All Frenchmen Dance ... Almost immediately afterhe arrived, the Queen asked himto dancein a ballet! Descartes sensibly refused.

158

Lessons at 5 A.M. Descartes had reservations aboutgoingto a land of "bears, rocks andice".

I was expected to provide the Protestant queen with tutorials on tangents at five o'clock in the morning during the winter months!

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He died of pneumonia in 1650, after onlya few months in Sweden. His dyingwordswere reported as: "9a man arne; il tautpartir. Thirteen yearslater his works were banned by the Roman Catholic Church and put on the Indexof Forbidden Books. II

He hadverylittleinterest in money. "Hewasmorecurious to understand and explain the metalsthan to amassthem." (Baillet) When he died he was relatively poor. 160

Descartes' letters onlyjust survived his death. Hetook mostof themto Sweden with him. Afterhis funeral, they were returned to Parisby boat. Butthe boat sank before it reached its destination and hundreds of his letters stayed underwater for threedays.

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Descartes' Legacy Descartes is often called thefatherof modem philosophy, for verygood reasons. Thequestions he askswill remain interesting as long as there arethinking beings in existence.

I recognized that radically different natural phenomena could all be shown to obey a few fundamental rules which could be expressed mathematically.

Descartes helped to produce our modern age, with its new ways of thinking about knowledge, in which magic andmysticism havebeen replaced byscientific andtechnological systems ofthought andcontrol.

162

AfterDescartes, science became moresystematized and its content and methodologies universally agreed upon. So Descartes is partly responsible for these relatively new ways of thinking we now call "scientific", which gradually emerged in the 17thcentury andwhich contributed to makethe world we live in todaythe way it is.

And although Descartes' universe is materialist, coldandgeometric, we ourselves remain non-physical and spiritual. 163

The Thinking Individual The lasting image of Descartes will probably alwaysbe that of the young mansittingoutthe Bavarian winterin his warmroom, determined to discover a new body of knowledge by thinking privatethoughts.

It sounds reasonable enough. But most modern philosophers now believe that his great project is fundamentally flawed. 164

The Postmodern Mind Not manypsychologists or philosophers now accept the Cartesian model of the mind as something "transparent" and so "open to inspection" by us.

20th century models of the mind suggest it to be a complex and mysterious assemblage of automatic "subsystems" which are totally inaccessible, and of which we are utterly unaware.

,

Furthermore, many modern philosophers stress how "our" thoughts are rarely as "private" to us as we like to imagine they are. We are social animals and we think with a shared publiclanguage something easyto forget when we sit down and think in isolation. 165

Thephilosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) spentmuchof his timedemolishing this Cartesian model of the mindandCartesian doubt by revealing how bothare incoherent.

beginning It is impossible for us to doubt the existence of an external world whose very langua_ge composes all our sceptical thoughts. Somepostmodern psychoanalysts, like Jacques Lacan (1901-81), believe that our common belief in a private individual self may itselfbe aconvenient illusion.

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Language is prior to anv , individual. So, if our minds are essentiallv linguistic, then our human identity is undeniably social. It's much harderto sit downand think private thoughts than Descartes realized. And it's not whollyclear who is the "who" that is having these thoughts. 166

Although there are many scientists and phi losophers who think that the "problem" of consciousness will eventually be solved •••

There are many others who are coming to believe that conscious beings will ne"er unravel the mystery of consciousness •••

Tryingto give an explanation of consciousness may well be as impossible a task as solving what was around before the "Big Bang" created the universe. 167

"How do we really think?" Descartes' explanation of what it is to think and perceive is also problematic. At bottom his explanation is tautological. He ascribes to some internal "homunculus" or littlemanthe psychological phenomena he is investigating in the first place, so nothing reallygets explained.

He maintains that we "think" about "ideas" presented to us in the mind.

Rather as i' thinking were like the "real" us watching some kind internal mental "screen".

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This encourages the belie' that our perception is a private "inner" world, so that we can never have any direct access to the public "external" world. Mostpsychologists now maintain that our experience of the world is far moredirectandimmediate thanthis model implies. Theywould also stress howactiveand creative perception is - perceiving is morelike the brain instantaneously writing a novel, rather thana littlemangoing to the movies. 168

Knowledge and Certai nty Descartes' project of establishing a new systematic body of certain scientific knowledge derived from private thoughts andexpressed in mathematical form also seemsto be an illusion.

Our beliefs in scientific "laws" and causation are psychological and not logical.

Scientific knowledge can only ever be hypothetical and provisional.

Karl Popper (1902-94)

Twentieth-century scientists are usually awarethat their workmust always be regarded as only conjectural probability and that there is no such thingas the sortof certain scientific truththat Descartes thoughtthe mindcould acquire. 169

The Postmodern Condition Otherrecent philosophers like Paul Feyerabend (1924-94) and Michel Foucault (1926-84) stresshow scientific knowledge is as much a cultural and political phenomenon as otherkindsof knowledge.

So, Descartes may have been wrong to believe that we can ever acquire certain andsecure scientific knowledge. 170

What was, for him, merely a temporary strategy, now seems to us more like a fundamental truth about the human condition•

Nowadays, it's the Descartes who deuht. who seems more like our contemporary.

. .

/~~ ~

The universal scepticism that is postmodernism stems fromanother invisible demonaltogether - the loss of faith in the abilityof language to referto anything otherthan itself. Butthat's another story...

niversal scepticism that is postmodernism ste )Ie demon altogether - the loss of faith in the :0 anything other than itself. Butthat's another

rn that is postmoderni~ ther - the loss of faith i than itself But that's ar

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171

Further Reading One of the best features of Descartes' philosophy is the readability of his major philosophical works - something which can rarely be said about much 20th century philosophy. Descartes' prose is vivid, clear and lively. He encourages the reader to share in the workings of his very active mind. He presents his philosophy as autobiographical and personal intellectual adventures, and not as academic treatises. So, reading the man, as well as his critics, is a worthwhile experience. A good anthology of Descartes' writings can be found in Descartes' Philosophical Writings, ed. Anscombe and Geach (Nelson University Paperbacks, 1970). It contains Discourse on the Method and Meditations, together with Objections and Replies and various letters and extracts from other works. The translation of Descartes' works used by this author is the two-volume The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, translated by Cottingham, Stoothoff and Murdoch (Cambridge University Press, 1985). The best introduction to Descartes' philosophy is probably to be found in Descartes by John Cottingham (Blackwell, 1986). Cottingham's book Rationalism (Paladin Granada, 1984) is also very accessible and useful. There are many other useful critical works on Descartes. D.M. Clarke, Descartes~ Philosophy of Science (Manchester University Press, 1982). E.M. Curley, Descartes Against the Sceptics (Blackwell, 1978). A. Kenny, Descartes (Random House, New York, 1968). Jonathan Ree, Descartes (Allen Lane, 1974). B. Williams, Descartes, The Project of Pure Enquiry (Penguin, 1978). There are many books on the Philosophy of Mathematics. Here are a few. John D. Barrow, PI in the Sky (Clarendon Press, 1992). Carl Boyer, A History of Mathematics (Wiley, 1995). Davis and Hersh, The M"athematlcal Experience (Penguin, 1983), and Descartes' Dream (Penguin, 1988). Robert Osserman, Poetry of the Universe (Weidenfeld, 1995). Ian Stewart, Nature's Numbers (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1995).

Consciousness and the Philosophy of Mind books are published in alarming numbers. Here are a few recent ones. Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for The Soul (Simon & Schuster, 1994). Daniel C. Dennet, Kinds of Minds: Towards an Understanding of Consciousness (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1996). Owen Flanagan, Consciousness Reconsidered (MIT, 1995). Richard Gregory (ed.), The Oxford Companion to the Mind (Oxford University Press, 1987). David Hodgson, The Mind Matters: Consciousness and Choice in a Quantum World (Oxford University Press, 1995). Darryl Reaney, Music of the Mind: An Adventure into Consciousness (Souvenir, 1995). The Philosophy of Science is a daunting subject, but there are two excellent introductory books on the subject A.F. Chalmers, What is this thing called Science? (Open University Press, 1980). Anthony O'Hear, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (Oxford University Press, 1990). And for the doubters: Christopher Hookway, Scepticism (Routledge, 1990).

Acknowledgements The author of Introducing Descartes would like to express his thanks to Chris Garratt for helping to make a sometimes difficult book into a more amusing and accessible one. He also owes a large debt to his extremely experienced editor, Richard Appignanesi.

Layout assistants Sophie Garratt Timothy Garratt

Index alcbemy16 IXncient Greeks86 animals as feeUng beings 122 as machines100-1 Aristotle 13, 15 Art of Fencing, The5 astrology 16 atoms, Descartes'theory 21 Baron, Francis17 Beeckman, Isaac 7 Behaviourism 138-9 beliefvs. understanding 72-4 body, existenceof 105-9 brain and consciousness 111-2, 134 and mind132 Bunnan,Frans153 Cartesian circle66 ooordinates 88 doubt 39-40 dualismseedualism mindmodeldiscounted 165 universe22 CausalAdequacyPrinciple64-5 causal necessity28 cause 23 and effect 65 Christianity and philosophy 14 andscientificthinkers18 see also underGod clarity25-6 clearanddistinctideas61-3, 82-4 body and mind 109 and God 68-9 problems62 Cogito, the 55-61, 135 cogitoergosumsee Cogito, the computers and humans146-50 consdousness134-7,146-50 corpuscles21-2 Cratylus 33 demonsee invisibledemon Descartes birth 4 books banned 160 death160

as father 12 health4 legacy 162-71 life 4-12, 76-81 philosophy flawed 164 as a representative realist 83 retireme'nt152 school 4 and vivisection 100-1 Discourse on theMethod 12, 24, 61 clear anddistinctrule 61, 62 Double Aspect Theory 129 doubt 41-5 Cogito, the 54-9 dreams8-1 0, 44, 49-50, 89 dualism104-16 evidence 110 problems with 108,113,126 emotions154-5 empiricism 31-2 Empiricus, Sextus37 Epiphenomenalism 131 Erasmus37 Essays 24 essence 103 Euclid91 existentialism 57 extended substance 134 faith 73-4 Feyerabend,Paul170 Fibonaccinumbers87 final cause see cause first person perspective 150 fonnalists92 Foucault, Michel170 free will 70 Functionalism 143-7 Galilei,Galileo17 arrest 18 geometry91 God Double Aspect Theory 129 existence "proved" 62, 65, 68 faith 74 and mathematics 84 and Occasionalism 128 gravity 22 Greeks see AncientGreeks hearing116-7 Heraclitus 33 Holland, Descartessettles in 11

humanerror69-73 Hume,David 169

Netherlands see Holland Newton, Isaac 22

"IthinkthereforeI am" see Cogito, the see also body, existence of ideas, Descarteson 25-6 see a/so clear and distinct ideas imagination 118-19 immortality see soul invisibledemon 46-7,51,56,62

observation, importanceof 29 Occasionalism 128 occult 16 Ontological argument67 optics, Descartes' study of 2·1

Kepler,Johannes 17 knowledge doubting 41-5, 54 dubitable/indubitable 40 and mathematics 20 public 60 Pyrrhonist view 35 and science 16 and the senses 42-3 see a/so scepticism Lacan,Jacques 166 language110,166 law, Descartes'study of 5 "leaky proofs" 68 Leibniz, G.W. 130 lettersof Descartes 161 Locke,John 117 logicalnecessity 28 machines bodies as 100-2 see a/so computersand humans Malebranche, Nicholas128 mathematician, Descartes as 88-9 mathematics 10, 88-100 certainties 85-7 doubting 46 as humaninvention 90, 92 as truth 99 and the universe 87, 90, 95 Medftaffons38,75,124-5 clearanddistinctrule 61, 62 mentalstates 119

mind and body interaction 126-133 see a/so dualism existenceof 123 limitations of 69-73 origins132 and soul 105 see a/so dualism MindlBrainIdentityTheory 140-2 Montaigne, Michelde 37

Paracelsus 16 Pascal, Blaise 74 Passions of the Sou/154-5

perception25, 82, 118-19 belief and faith 73 empiricists vs. rationalists 31-2 Pyrrhonist view 34-6 Philosophical essays 12

philosophy in Descartes'time 13 and science 19 Philosophyof Mind,the 58, 123 physicalists see Mind/Brain Identity Theory pinealgland 115 planets, study of orbits 17 Plato 45,86 Platonist view held by Descartes 93,98 of mathematics 95, 98 Popper, Karl 169 PrincessElizabeth of Bohemia 151 Principles of Philosophy 12, 151 Psychophysical Parallelism 130 Pyrrhonists34-6 Pythagoras 86, 98 qualia 139 quantumtheory 134 Queen Christinaof Sweden 157-9 rationalism 30-2, 45 reality 65 reductionism 20 religion see Christianity,God representative realism83 res cogitans 103, 120 res extensa theory 98-100 RomanCatholicChurch see Christianity Ryle, Gilbert 138 Sartre,Jean-Paul 57 scepticism 33-43, 52-3 scholasticism 13-14 schoolmen 14

.science

in Des91rtes'time 13,16 and ph!~sophy 19 Searle, John 148 seeing 116-17 senses 142 knowledge through 41 lack of clarity 119 unreliability of 42-3, 48 shrine, visit to 11 sight see seeing software, thoughts as 143 Sorbiere, de 77 soul 104-8, 110-11,113-15 Descartes' image of 116, 123 interaction .with body 115 Spinoza, Benedictus de 69, 129 spirit see soul StAnselm67 St Augustine 37 St Thomas Aquinas 14 substance 103-4, 134 sun see planets, study of orbits Sweden, invitation to 157-9 swordsman, Descartes as 5

Theory of Everything (TOE) 94 Thirty Years' War 6 thinking 52,55, 164-71 and the brain 140-2 see also consciousness

The Authors Dave Robinson has taught philosophy to students for many years. He has recently written and illustrated Leading Questions, a book about postmodernist literary theory. He is also the author of Introducing Ethics and Introducing Philosophy. Chris Garratt is the illustrator of the BIFF cartoon strip in The Guardian. He is also the illustrator of Introducing Ethics, Introducing Postmoaemism and Keynes far Beginners.

existence of 105 Functionalism 143-7 mind and body interaction 126 substance see res cogitans thoughts see thinking Token Identity Theory 142 Trademark argument 64 trialism 120-22 truth and mathematics 99 understanding vs. belief 72-4 unity in knowledge 20 universal language 81 scepticism 52 universe of Descartes'time22-3 and mathematics 87, 90, 95 visual clarity 25-6 vivisection 100-1 will and faith 74 and the intellect 70-1 and subduing emotions 155 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 166 World, The 18