Thinking’s History: Descartes and the Past Tense of Thought (original) (raw)

Descartes and the 'Thinking Matter Issue'

Lexicon Philosophicum, 2022

In this paper, I aim to address a specific issue underpinning Cartesian metaphysics since its first public appearance in the Discourse right up until the Meditations, but which definitely came to the surface in the Second and Fifth Replies. It involves the possibility that to be thinking and to be extended do not actually contrast as two entirely different properties; hence, these two essences cannot serve as the basis for a disjunctive, real distinction between two corresponding substances, the mind and the body. I dub this problem the ‘thinking matter issue.’ I suggest that Descartes’s concerns about the ‘thinking matter issue’ characterizes and structures the entirety of Meditation Two and its connection with Meditation Six, especially in the attempt to covertly implement what I refer to as Descartes’s ‘prejudice strategy.’ The core of the ‘prejudice strategy’ lies in the idea that the ‘thinking matter issue’ is just a false problem, one raised by the inadequate notions of the mind and the body that we apply to this problem. In section 1, I set out the way in which the ‘thinking matter issue’ emerged in Descartes’s philosophy after the first exposition of his metaphysics in the Discourse. Section 2 deals with the new argumentative path Descartes draws for the Meditations and with the new role that he assigns to the inference about the mind’s non-physical nature after the cogito. In section 3, I contend that the ‘prejudice strategy’ structures Meditation Two and, partially, Six. Section 4 shows that Descartes himself reveals this in his Replies to the Second and the Fifth Set of Objections. In section 5, I delve into Descartes’s foundational theory of the ‘prejudice strategy,’ i.e. his theory of infancy as set out especially in the Replies to the Sixth Set of Objections.

Descartes: Ideas and the Mark of the Mental

Philosophiegeschichte und logische Analyse, 2000

Although Cartesian scholars rarely agree on even the most fundamental aspects of Descartes' theory of ideas-e. g., what ideas are, how they represent, what clarity or material falsity are-almost all of them agree that Descartes creates a novel manner of understanding the mental in terms of cognitive transparency. 1 This is an interpretation of Descartes' view of the mind according to which I cannot fail to know with certainty that I am thinking and what it is that I am thinking while I am thinking about it. In the case of ideas, this interpretation says that we always have an immediate and infallible access to the object represented by an idea, and that this is the mark of the mental-to use Rorty's phrase 2-i.e., that this is one certain mark by means of which we can tell that a particular representation is a mental operation. Here I shall put forward some compelling reasons to reject this manner of understanding ideas-and thus the realm of the mental-in Descartes and shall defend an alternative interpretation according to which there is a distinction in Descartes between what an idea appears to represent and what it 5 See her Descartes, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), 112. However, in a more recent work of hers, "Descartes on the Representationality of Sensation," (in Central Themes in Modern Philosophy. J. A. Cover and Mark Kulstad, eds.; Hackett, 1990; 1-22), she appears to think that Descartes' notion of material falsity, though not fully explained, is not necessarily disastrous. Also, Martha Bolton, in her "Confused and Obscure Ideas of Sense," in Essays on Descartes' Meditations, ed. by Amelie Oksenberg Rorty (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1986), 393, thinks that the notion of material falsity in Descartes is a disaster because it entails that "the cognitive content of an idea can diverge from the object of the idea." She herself, however, does accept that there could be a non-disastrous version of the distinction between what an idea appears to represent and what it actually represents (Ibid., 395)-although she does not explain precisely what this version is.

Descartes or the origins of modern thinking

Annals of Philosophy, Social and Human Disciplines, 2016

Descartes is considered to be the founder of modern rationalism. This is a clear statement which, however, does not show the manner in which rationalism as such appeared in the history of science, taking into account the turmoil of the Renaissance centuries, the significance of the Reform and the birth of modern science. As a founder of a new metaphysics, Descartes, through his work, remains par excellence the case in which the scholastic and Renaissance aftermaths as well as the Reform mutations are mixed in a new synthesis that will be called modernity. This study focuses on reinterpreting Cartesianism from this perspective in the vast context of modernity's metaphysical significance – it is a hypothesis that will need to be developed not only by means of hermeneutical instruments but, especially, by means of those instruments belonging to the history of culture and anthropology.

AN APPRAISAL OF DESCARTES' MEDITATIONS ON FIRST PHILOSOPHY.

Descartes’ disillusionment of the kind of knowledge he received from his predecessors, the scriptures and the senses made him set out his ingenious gigantic inquiry into the basis of not just acquiring certain knowledge but purifying the epistemic discipline by reining it from undue empirical infiltration; a discipline he felt had become toxic because of the uncritical and unscathed incursion of the traditional but paralyzed over-reliance on the information received from the senses. He was obsessed with the problem of intellectual certainty. Thus, the onerous task of building an edifice of knowledge that would be fortified enough that there will be no room for truths and doubts enveloped and led him to further seek to incarcerate as incriminating, the sensible data which was guilty of deception. Buttressing his reason for this, he opines thus: “…whatever I have accepted until now as most true has come to me through my senses. But occasionally I have found that they have deceived me, and it is unwise (as prudence dictates) to trust completely those who have deceived us even once… The Meditations on First Philosophy, evinces this Cartesian non-effaceable thesis. Being one of the most engaging collections of arguments in the history of philosophy, it was a masterpiece of Rene Descartes. It resembles in many ways St Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual exercises. It contains the most definitive and eloquent statements of Descartes’ philosophy. Throughout the meditations, Descartes’ primary concern was the undaunted search for epistemic certitude, but nevertheless, in the final three meditations he moves from the epistemological problem of certainty to metaphysical questions about reality. Here Descartes demonstrates the existence of God and the distinction between the human soul (i.e. mind) and body. The Meditations take the form of a challenging philosophical game. At each turn he produces a belief about which he is certain; then he uses his creative imagination to see if there is any way to see if he could be mistaken. The Meditations on First Philosophy is a vivid representation of Descartes’ thoughts.

Ideas and Reality in Descartes

Mind, Body, and Morality: New Perspectives on Descartes and Spinoza, edited by Martina Reuter and Frans Svensson. London: Routledge, 2019

This chapter explores some key issues within Descartes’s theory of cognition. The starting-point is a recent interpretation, according to which Descartes is part of a tradition of theorizing about human cognition, beginning from the idea that we are in principle capable of articulating or grasping the basic order of reality. Earlier readings often take Descartes to question whether we have any cognitive access to reality at all. On the new reading, Descartes instead defends a robust conception of our cognitive relation to reality—our cognition needs to be “determined by reality,” as John Carriero puts it. One important element of Carriero’s interpretation is that Descartes’s notion of idea is to be understood along the lines of the Aristotelian doctrine of formal identity between cognizer and cognized. Here it is argued that retaining the latter doctrine faces some difficulties, given the novel conception of the structure of reality defended by Descartes. This chapter proposes that he needs an alternative account of what it is for a cognizer to be determined by reality. Attending to some important differences between the innate idea of extension and that of God, the chapter concludes that Descartes may not have a fully worked-out account of his own. Considering some of the problems inherent in his views can, however, shed light on the, from our contemporary perspective, peculiar role both Spinoza and Leibniz give to God in accounting for cognition.

"Descartes without Clear and Distinct Ideas. A Proposal", Dianoia 34 (2022), 31-48.

The article advances a reading of Descartes's Meditations on First Philosophy that dispenses with "clear and distinct ideas". Since Descartes's lifetime, these concepts have become a trademark of his philosophy and a target for his critics, on account of their vagueness and inconsistency. The article provides evidence that, by and large, "clear and distinct ideas" were intended by Descartes to convey in simpler, catchier terms a much more elaborate argument, ultimately grounded on the system of the mind's faculties. The article argues that, through this enquiry, Descartes meant to provide a space of reasons wherein to establish key contentions of his philosophy, to include those involving the existence of both mind and bodies. The article concludes by showing that the traditional portrayal of Descartes as an unmitigated intuitionist is, at best, one-sided.

About Descartes: uses and misuses

Cultural Studies of Science Education, 2011

In this Forum paper I examine how Orlander and Wickman represent Descartes philosophy, noting that while it might be tempting to apply one facet of a philosopher's argument, such as Descartes separation of mind and body, by doing that we do not capture the development of his thinking. I propose the phenomenological philosophy of Edmund Husserl can assist researchers to move beyond simple dichotomies.

Anthony Grafton, “Descartes the Dreamer,” Wilson Quarterly, vol. 20, no. 4 (Fall 1996): 36–46

On the 400th anniversary of Descartes s birth, Anthony Grafton considers the forces that shaped the man and his thought by Anthony Grafton philosophers have theories. Good philosophers have students and critics. But great philosophers have primal scenes. They play the starring roles in striking stories, which their disciples and later writers tell and retell, over the decades and even the centuries. Thaïes, whom the Greeks remembered as their first philosopher, tumbled into a well while looking up at the night sky, to the accompanying mockery of a serving maid. His example showed, more clearly than any argument could, that philosophy served no practical purpose. Those who take a different view of philosophy can cite a contrasting anecdote, also ancient, in their support: after drawing on his knowledge of nature to predict an abundant harvest, Thaïes rented 36 WQ Autumn 1996 out all the olive presses in Miletus and Chios. He made a fortune charging high rates for them; better still, he showed that scholar rhymes with dollar after all. the other end of Western history, in the 20th century, Ludwig Wittgenstein held that propositions are, in some way, pictures of the world: that they must have the same "logical form" as what they describe. He did so, at least, until he took a train ride one day with Piero Sraffa, an Italian economist at Cambridge. Making a characteristic Italian gesture, drawing his hand across his throat, Sraffa asked, "What is the logical form of that?" He thus set his friend off on what became the vastly influential Philosophical Investigations, that fas-

Descartes's Meditations: An Introduction

2003

In this new introduction to a classic philosophical text, Catherine Wilson examines the arguments of Descartes's famous Meditations, the book which launched modern philosophy. Drawing on the reinterpretations of Descartes's thought of the past twenty-five years, she shows how Descartes constructs a theory of the mind, the body, nature, and God from a premise of radical uncertainty. She discusses in detail the historical context of Descartes's writings, and their relationship to early modern science, and at the same time she introduces concepts and problems that define the philosophical enterprise as it is understood today. Following closely the text of the Meditations and meant to be read alongside them, this survey is accessible to readers with no previous background in philosophy. It is well suited to university-level courses on Descartes, but can also be read with profit by students in other disciplines.