Don't Walk Away, René

ii.

After formally rejecting everything that can be doubted, Descartes finally comes upon something that cannot: himself.  He must exist, if only to be the one who is deceived about everything else.  But he can still doubt whether he is a man, or a creature at all.  He is only, essentially, "a thing that doubts, understands, [conceives], affirms, denies, wills, refuses; that imagines also, and perceives."

But among these he makes a distinction between, on the one hand, sensation and imagination, which have to do exclusively with the senses (since to imagine is to create sensible images); and, on the other, thinking as such, the intellect.  He demonstrates the primacy of intellect over sensation and imagination in the production of knowledge using the example of a piece of wax that, in being melted near the fire, loses all its original sensible qualities; yet is still recognized by the mind as having persisted as one thing. 

The nature of a thinking thing, likewise, is recognized by the intellect and not the senses or the imagination. 

I gather that "clear and distinct" images are privileged somehow beyond the present text, though I don't yet see how.  Possibly he is referring to a previous articulation of this same argument and counter-argument from the mists of the history of philosophy, which is largely unknown to me.  I know that Augustine covered some of this same territory.

Because I could not quite make sense of this part of the Second Meditation, I have sent up a philosophical flare, so to speak, to notify my friend Muad'Dib of the impasse, and await his aid. 

Don't Walk Away, Renê

i.

In his First Meditation, Descartes sets about to reject, provisionally, anything about which he can entertain any doubt, so as to discover whether there is anything certain that could serve as a foundation for other knowledge. He does this by assuming for the sake of argument that everything he is experiencing is an illusion; that in reality he is not seated by a fire surrounded by familiar objects; that, furthermore, he does not even have a body with sense organs, limbs, and so on; even that there is no sky or earth to support and contain other things; and that there is, in general, not even such a thing as an extended body that takes up space and has a shape, such as could be the rudiment of the composite physical structures we encounter in actual experience, including our own bodies. Not only can we doubt particular objects and situations, since one can be as certain of their existence in dreams as in waking life, yet discover upon waking that none of it is true; but, says Descartes, we can also doubt general, mathematical truths, since I can be deceived in the midst of thinking about numbers in general as easily as I can in the midst of perceiving a particular thing.

I am very much in sympathy with Descartes on the desirability of getting to the bottom of things, if such a thing is possible, because, as he says, so many errors derive from any one false assumption that starting out with a set of prejudices about the world dooms any investigation of it from the outset. It is plausible, at least, that retreating from all the positions we have taken up about the world and ourselves to an impregnable stronghold of certain truth(s) would tell us where we stand with respect to knowledge.

I remark that Descartes' erasure of all that can be doubted is accomplished in two strokes, the first clearing away all knowledge of particular things, the second all abstract knowledge of the possibility of existing things. In the first case, it is the senses that fall under suspicion; in the second, thinking itself. But can we not then also be deceived about the argument that contains these assertions as premises?

If I can be deceived each time I add two and three, can I not also be deceived each time I think that some particular combination of premises necessitates a particular conclusion?

I have long admired Diogenes of Sinope, the founder of the Cynic school, who is said to have lived in a tub in the marketplace in Athens.  I have appropriated his tub for my purposes here, and I want all who read my words and comment on them to feel that they, too, are in a tub, with me; that rank and station will count for nothing; and that our words must speak for themselves, as there is no room for anything else. 

I'm a student of philosophy in the broadest sense of the term; I'm uncredentialled and at the moment unmatriculated.  I do have academic ambitions, but I'm also critical of the institutions that make philosophy almost exclusively a professional affair.  In my view every thinking being is born into the mysteries that provoke philosophy, and I regard it as unfortunate that the average person feels unqualified to approach them directly. 

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A friend of mine, the meta-ethicist Muad'Dib Kenobi-Seagull, has kindly offered to tutor me in some key texts in the philosophical tradition.  We are to begin with Descartes' Meditations; then move on to selections from Kant's First Critique; and then on to Husserl.  I have foundered on the waters of phenomenology for years, and Muad'Dib has offered to throw me a line and tow me safely into the channel.  It is a generous offer, and I hope someday to have occasion to repay the kindness.  I will be posting here on topics that arise in our working through these texts.