History of Philosophy in the 17th & 18th Centuries

Another indication of his rationalist, anti-empirical, philosophy is given in his discussion of how you discover the true nature of something. Take, he says, a piece of wax. It has a taste, a smell, a cloud, shape and size, noise when rapped.

'Let us take ... this piece of wax. It has just been taken from the honeycomb; it has not yet quite lost the taste of the honey; it retains some of the scent of the flowers from which it was gathered; its colour, shape and size are plain to see; it is hard, cold and can be handled without difficulty; if you rap it with your knuckle it makes a sound.' Meditation 2 Cottingham p.84.

But then imagine it melting. All these features disappear, and others take their place.

He concludes that 'a distinct understanding of wax' cannot be got through the senses.

If I remove all these features, all the properties that change and so cannot be part of the continuing identity of the wax, what am I left with? Simply the conception of something that is extended. A 3-dimensional object capable of taking on an indefinite number of shapes.

Mental Substance

We have discussed Descartes' conception of corporeal substance, body.

The other substance he identified was mind, or minds. (Leaving out God.)

Descartes is famous foir insisting that 'I' as a thinking think am distinct from 'my' body. The thinking thing is mental, the body is corporeal. The most exciting theory about mental processes today (imho!) is that they are 'just' brain processes. How does Descartes argue against this possibility? How does he argue that thinking cannot be a process in the material world?

"Quite simply 'soul' ... and 'mind' ... are synonymous in Descartes. Both are merely convenient labels for res cogitans - that which thinks ... ; and what Descartes has in mind here is the whole range of conscious mental axtivity." Cottingham, Descartes, Oxford, 1986, Blackwell, p. 111.

"I can doubt the existence of my body but not my mind"

Descartes seems to be arguing that the mind can't be material when he says in a passage we have looked at before:

'Next, I attentively examined what I was, I saw that while I could pretend that I had no body, and that there was no world and no place for me to be in, I could not for all that pretend that I did not exist. ... From this I knew that I was a 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' - that is, the soul by which I am what I am - is entirely distinct from the body ... and would not fail to be whatever it is even if the body did not exist.''

Descartes, Discourse Part IV , Cottingham Descartes, p.112 [The link is to a different translation. Close the window when you are done.]

Is this valid? The argument appears to be:

I can doubt the existence of my material body, but I can't doubt the existence of my mind. Therefore the mind can't be material. - ?

The argument from clear and distinct perception

Another argument for the immateriality of the mind appears in the 6th Meditation:

"I know that everything which I clearly and distinctly understand is capable of being created by God so as to correspond exactly with my understanding of it. Hence the fact that I can clearly and distinctly understand one thing apart from another is enough to make me certain that the two things are distinct since they are capable of being separated, at least by God. Thus, simply by knowing that I exist, and seeing at the same time that absolutely nothing else belongs to my nature or essence except that I am a thinking thing, I can infer correctly that my essence consists solely in the fact that I am a thinking thing. ..I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, in so far as I am simply a thinking, non-extended thing; and on the other hand I have a distinct idea of body, in so far as this is simply an extended, non- thinking thing. And accordingly it is certain that I am really distinct from my body and can exist without it."(AT VII 78; CSM II 54)

Descartes, Meditation IV , Cottingham Descartes, p.113 [The link is to a different translation. Close the window when you are done.]

Can you make anything of this? Some propositions seem to be being made, but how exactly do they relate to the the conclusion we are looking for, namely that "I ... can exist without my body"

Here is one proposition: The clear and distinct idea I have of myself is the idea of a thinking thing.

Here is another: I can be sure that this thing has just the one essential property - the property of thinking. (This is established by the following consideration: I can 'think away' all properties except this one. Eg I can think of myself as an entity even though I imagined this entity as lacking weight, smell, extension. The one thing I can't imagine myself as lacking is thought.)

"For if something can exist without some attribute, then it seems to me that that attribute is not included in its essence." Descartes, Meditations, Fourth replies; Cottingham, Descartes p.114.

Can anything be added to these to give the looked-for conclusion?

Descartes' critics, saying it can't, insisted that there was nothing here to stop the thesis that that which does the thinking may be corporeal: 'It may be that the thing that thinks is the subject to which mind, reason or intellect belong, and this subject may be something corporeal' Thomas Hobbes, 5th Objection in the Meditations; Cottingham's Descartes, p.115.

The divisibility argument

"There is a great difference between the mind and the body inasmuch as the body is by its very nature always divisible while the mind is utterly indivisible. For when I consider the mind, or myself in so far as I am merely a thinking thing, I am unable to distinguish any parts within myself; I understand myself to be something quite single and complete. Although the whole mind seems to be united to the whole body, I recognize that if a foot or an arm or any other part of the body is cut off nothing has thereby been taken away from the mind (AT VII 86; CSM II 59). "

Descartes, Meditation VI , Cottingham Descartes, p.116 [The link is to a different translation. Close the window when you are done.]

Dualism and its alternatives

Let us just note that his recognition of just two 'types' of substance is the basis for calling him a dualist.

Overhead 12

'There are two orders of reality or of existence: anything that exists or has some degree of reality - whether substance, attribute, or mode; whether created or uncreated; whether dependent or independent - exists either as a body, as part of corporeal, extended, reality, or as mind, as part of 'incorporeal' , 'spiritual', thinking reality.'

He never considers whether there might be more than two. He does consider that there might be fewer than two (unless you count God).

Materialism

He considered and rejected materialism., the view that the whole of reality is material. Hobbes

Overhead 13

Hobbes: 'mind is nothing more than motion occurring in various parts of an organic body.'

Overhead 14

Mersenne: What if

'it turned out to be a body which, by its various motions and encounters, produces what we call thought? How do you demonstrate that a body is incapable of thinking, or that corporeal motions are not in fact thought? the whole system of your body, which you think you have excluded, or else some of its parts - for example those which make up the brain - may combine to produce the motions which we call thoughts.'

This blog of Michelle's sets out the argument that there can't be nothingness

W. p.21,2.

Idealism

The alternative monism is that all the modes Descartes thought belonged to the principle attribute of corporeal substance belonged in fact to thought. This is the view that Leibniz was to arrive at, and one which Berkeley (1685-1753) developed.

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