DESCARTES AND KNOWLEDGE: The Method of Doubt and the Cogito

Introduction

Descartes as a Rationalist. Knowledge comes primarily from reasoning about the world rather
than through the senses.

Descartes’s aim: provide foundation for knowledge of the external world.

Knowledge

Idea of knowledge as a true belief that can be justified (Plato) – everything revolves around the
question of justification

Descartes says that justification is to be understood in terms of complete absence of doubt.

Knowledge is what is absolutely certain and enduring – in technical terms, what is indefeasible:
that is, that cannot be shown to be wrong. (This goes wholly against modern philosophy of
science, where the characteristic of a scientific theory is held to be one that might prove wrong.)

Foundationalism

Significance of Title: Meditations on the First Philosophy: indicates that Descartes is seeking
absolutely firm foundations for his theory of knowledge. He is a foundationalist.

The idea of foundationalism is that we organise our beliefs like a well structured building, with
firm foundations and support columns anchored to the foundation.

A system of justified beliefs will have a foundation of unshakeable first principles, and a
superstructure of further propositions anchored to the foundation via certain inferences.

So Descartes is saying: let’s demolish everything completely and start again from the
foundations with something that is absolutely certain. Then construct a system of beliefs every
one of which is absolutely certain because it’s linked to those above and below by logically valid
inferences.

Problem: just as constructing a building upon unstable land can cause it to fall, so one false
presupposition – such as the belief that the senses are reliable – threatens to make the whole
system collapse.

[Coherentism: No absolutely certain foundations. We are justified in our beliefs to the extent that
they cohere]

Scepticism

Descartes’ scepticism is first stage in constructing a system of certain truths. He is not a sceptic
of the kind who doubts only for the sake of doubting.

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The brain in a vat. One response to scepticism is that there is no good evidence to show that we
are misled about the nature of the world. The very fact that we usually identify mistakes
correctly shows that our brains work well most of the time. However this presupposes that the
human brain does provide accurate knowledge about the world.

There is no knockdown argument against the hypothesis that we are dreaming or brains in vats
but for this very reason the hypothesis makes no sense. If nothing can disprove some claim
then we have no reason for believing it in the first case?

Method of Doubt

Universal and systematic doubt in order to

…rid myself of all the opinions I had adopted…[to]…withhold belief from what is not
entirely certain and indubitable…I become my own deceiver, by supposing, for a time, that all
those [old and customary] opinions are entirely false and imaginary.

Descartes’s aim in these arguments is not to prove that it is impossible for us to know if anything
exists, but to show that all our knowledge of these things through the senses is fallible.

Fallibility of the Senses

Main idea: we never perceive external objects directly, but only as filtered through our
minds. Sense perception provides no guarantee that what we perceive corresponds to what
exists in the external world.

Information coming through the senses seemed to offer the “highest truth and certainty”
BUT the senses often mislead us: the tower that from a distance appears round but is really
square (Penguin edition p.154), the stick that seems to bend in water.

Response to the stick argument: we can use one sense to correct another: the sense of touch
to correct the sense of sight.

Descartes can respond: why should we trust the tactile sense rather than the visual?

Moreover, we note that every straight stick in water seems to be bent, and this allows us to
make a hypothesis and eventually discover scientific laws concerning refraction.

Sense experience normally seems to be reliable. Surely he cannot doubt “that I am here, sitting
by the fire, wearing a winter dressing-gown, holding this piece of paper in my hands, and so on”-
matters “about which doubt is quite impossible.”

BUT he might be dreaming:

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The Dream Argument

How often have I dreamt that I was in these familiar circumstances, that I was dressed, and
occupied this place by the fire, when I was lying undressed in bed?…there exist no certain
marks by which the state of waking can ever be distinguished from sleep.

[My experiences of dreaming that I was going to bed…]

Some dreams are indistinguishable from waking: I cannot tell whether I am dreaming or awake,
and my perceptions in dreams are often indistinguishable from those I have when awake. SO it is
possible that I am dreaming now and that all of my perceptions are false?

NB Distinguish several different dream-related sceptical doubts

(1) I can doubt whether I am awake NOW or (2) whether I am EVER awake. Dreams may be (3)
indistinguishable from our waking life even AFTER waking-up or similar to waking WHILE
DREAMING, but not upon waking.

Response to the dream argument: Our waking actions have a connectedness to them that
dreams lack. Dreams go erratically from one incident to another.

Hobbes: suppose we dream the connections?

The Deceiving God Argument

God being all powerful has the power to deceive us even about mathematical knowledge

The Evil Demon Argument

Descartes assumes that an evil demon exists who has deceived him about everything.

I will suppose, then, not that Deity, who is sovereignly good and the fountain of truth, but that
some malignant demon, who is at once exceedingly potent and deceitful, has employed all his
artifice to deceive me…

Does Descartes gain anything by replacing the dreaming scenario with the demon
scenario?

(a) When I dream, I must dream of something: that is, my dream must have content, even if
it is only of complete darkness. So that content must have come from somewhere. So not
everything can have come into my mind from nothing.

But in the demon scenario, everything might be instilled by the demon

(b) The demon scenario in some sense requires the possibility of a supernatural entity

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Can God deceive me about mathematical truths? Could he convince me that 2+3 do
NOT equal 5? Surely not, because I can always verify that 2+3=5 by counting 2, then 3
object and counting the result.

THE ARGUMENT FOR DESCARTES’S OWN EXISTENCE: THE COGITO

Descartes examines his beliefs to see if any survives the doubt arising from the possibility of the
evil demon deceiving us about everything

He finds it is impossible to doubt that he exists: how could he be deceived unless he existed in
order to be deceived? Whether he is being deceived about the existence of his body or not, he
still exists.

But I had the persuasion that there was absolutely nothing in the world, that there was no sky and
no earth, neither minds nor bodies; was I not, therefore, at the same time, persuaded that I did not
exist? Far from it; I assuredly existed, since I was persuaded.

Cogito, ergo sum (I am thinking, therefore I exist). Not used in the Meditations. Here he writes
“I am, I exist”

Note two features of the cogito

(1) A first-person formulation is essential : third-person claims, such as “Descartes thinks,” are
not certain for others
(2) It must be formulated in the present tense

NB returning to the analogy of building a house, this ‘first certainty’ is not itself the foundation
upon which to build further knowledge, but rather the firm ground upon which he stands as he
restores his beliefs.

BUT if all I know for certain is that I exists and if I doubt all that is uncertain, then I arrive at
solipsism, the view that nothing exists but myself and my thoughts.

How does Descartes escape this?

With (1) the notion of clear and distinct ideas, the cogito being a prime example and (2) the
ontological argument to prove the existence of God.

Criticisms of the cogito

(1) Missing premise

Descartes’s argument is

I am thinking,
Therefore, I exist

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To conform to the classical syllogism, it needs an extra premise

I am thinking,
Whatever has the property of thinking, exists
Therefore, I exist

Is the new premise true? Rather than supposing a being that is thinking, should Descartes have
just said: “there is some thinking going on”?

Bertrand Russell says that Descartes begs the question - that he presupposes what he intends to
establish. “…the word ‘I’ is really illegitimate”… Descartes should have instead, stated the
conclusion as ‘there are thoughts’.

Bernard Williams responds that Descartes is correct up to a point: it is impossible to make sense
of “there is some thinking going on” without attaching that thinking to something. In other
words, there must be something that thinks.

There is more to being in pain than is expressed by saying that there is pain. There is pain
plus a point of view - the pain is mine. We have to attach the feeling or the thought to
something capable of feeling or thinking.

(2) The self as a thinking thing reveals nothing about the outside world

Thinking is another attribute of the soul; and here I discover what properly belongs to myself.
This alone is inseparable from me. I am - I exist: this is certain [but] I am therefore, precisely
speaking, only a thinking thing, that is, a mind.

I have certain knowledge of my existence only as a thinking thing (res cogitans). It is still
possible that my knowledge of external objects, including that of my body, could be false.
Therefore, my mind is known to me much more clearly and distinctly than is my body.

BUT in fact we seem to know things in the external world – things whose existence is doubtful –
better than ourselves.

Descartes is alluding here to the problem that we do not have direct knowledge of/access to our
selves.

BUT knowledge coming through the senses is inferior to that acquired through the
understanding. So my knowledge of myself as a thinking thing – knowledge acquired through
reasoning – is all that is initially certain. (Hence Rationalism)

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Wax Argument

Intended as proof that the understanding is superior to the senses.

Take, for example, this piece of wax…its colour, figure, size, are apparent (to the sight); it is
hard, cold, easily handled; and sounds when struck upon with the finger… But…let it be
placed near the fire…what remained of the taste exhales, the smell evaporates, the colour
changes, its figure is destroyed, its size increases, it becomes liquid, it grows hot, it can hardly
be handled, and, although struck upon, it emits no sound… Does the same wax still remain
after this change? It must be admitted that it does remain; no one doubts it, or judges
otherwise. What, then, was it I knew with so much distinctness in the piece of wax?
Assuredly, it could be nothing of all that I observed by means of the senses, since all the
things that fell under taste, smell, sight, touch, and hearing are changed, and yet the same wax
remains.

So “…this conception which I have of the wax is not the product of the faculty of imagination.”
[NB by imagination Descartes means information coming through the senses]

Reason/the understanding does not depend on the senses.

I must, therefore, admit that I cannot even comprehend by imagination what the piece of wax is,
and that it is the mind alone…which perceives it.

The judgement that this is the same wax despite the solid and the liquid forms being
different from each other proves that it is the understanding and not the senses that
provide certain knowledge of the world.

What does this remind us of?

Descartes’s belief in innate ideas places him in a Rationalist tradition going back to Plato.
The Allegory of the Cave is designed to show that knowledge of ultimate reality derives from
the intellect, not the senses. Plato likens what the senses reveal to shadowy images on the wall
of the cave. The intellect reveals the real world (of Forms) illuminated by bright sunshine.

Response to the Wax Argument

The real problem here is Descartes’ use of the word ‘same’: it is the same in the sense that it is
the original piece, with many of its properties (chemical etc.), BUT it is different in another
sense– that is, after heating many of its physical properties have changed.

The senses tell us that the wax is the same wax, so we learn how wax responds to heat. So the
senses advance our scientific knowledge by tracking the different states of the wax.
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Summary

Stage I: Sense perception provides no guarantee that what we perceive corresponds to what
exists in the external world. This is so for three reasons: (1) the fallibility of everyday waking
sense experience (the bent stick, the round tower) (2) our inability to know with absolute
certainty whether we are awake or dreaming, and (3) the possibility that we are being deceived
by an evil demon.

So: doubt everything

Stage II: Find something the existence of which cannot be doubted: that is, Descartes’s own
existence. The very act of doubting means that there must be an ‘I’ that is doing the doubting

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Do we get certain knowledge of the external world from Descartes arguments?

No, because (1) the Cogito is inconclusive, and by Descartes’s own method, anything uncertain
must be doubted.

(2) The notion of the self as a thinking thing tells us nothing about the external world

Even if he has established the existence of himself as a thinking entity he has not established the
existence of the outside world.

He uses the ontological argument in order to demonstrate the existence of God and then argues
that since God does not deceive us we are not systematically misled about those things we
perceive clearly and distinctly. Then we would have certain knowledge of the world?

The method of doubt still only might help to provide the foundation for certain knowledge if all
the other bits of the jigsaw fall into place at the same time: that is, the existence of a benevolent
God, the Cogito being sound, clear and distinct ideas etc.

David Lockwood November 2009