Descartes - Lecture 3
3. More on the Method of Doubt
The Third and Deepest Level of Doubt
For some reason many commentators (including Williams) lazily refer to this ground for doubt as the evil demon hypothesis. Now a malicious demon does make an appearance in the First Meditation, but the grounds for doubt actually invoked by Descartes at this point relate to the cause of our existence.
The meditator begins by invoking his long-standing opinion that there is an omnipotent God who made him the kind of creature he is. However an omnipotent God would, it seems, have the power to deceive us in even the simplest and most obvious matters.
Descartes does have some extreme views on eternal truths and omnipotence (AT 7 380, Fifth set of Replies). He denies that anything’s immutability is independent of God’s decision. See also AT 7 436 Sixth Set of Replies. God could have made it true that two times four does not equal eight.
However he does not need to invoke these extreme views in order to arrive at his deepest level of doubt. A simpler possibility suffices: an omnipotent God could have made us believe that two times four is seven even if it is actually a necessary truth that the product of these two numbers is eight. Thus our conviction that two times four equals eight does not guarantee that it is eight.
Descartes considers two ripostes: one is that God is generally thought to be benevolent as well as omnipotent, and hence would not choose to deceive us. However this argument, if it possesses any force, would appear to rule out our being deceived even occasionally, yet we plainly are so deceived. Ultimately Descartes is forced to construct a lengthy account of how our intellectual errors do not reflect on God’s benevolence (See Meditation IV).
The second riposte is a denial that an omnipotent God exists. But if we are not created by an omnipotent being, then the imperfections of the mechanisms that have brought us into existence might easily have left us so flawed that we go astray in even the simplest matters.
The meditator has no answer to these arguments at this stage in the Meditations. Thus he is forced to admit that there ‘is not one of my beliefs about which a doubt may not properly be raised.’ So if he wants to discover any certainty, he must withhold assent from these former beliefs just as carefully as from obvious falsehoods.
Acting on this resolution is difficult however.
Thus the psychological device of imagining that he is the dupe of a malicious demon.
Questions from Previous Lecture
Isn’t thinking a sensory experience in itself?
No. What senses are supposed to involved in one’s awareness that one is thinking or one’s awareness of what it is that one is thinking
Not all awareness is sensory/perceptual awareness
However central cases of sensory awareness characteristically involve conscious awareness as well as other components – distinguishing our awareness of the mental state in which we are put when we see a table from our awareness of the table itself.
What is an irresistible premiss? (Mentioned by Williams)
It’s a premiss that cannot be doubted by any inquirer who is attending carefully to the content of that premiss (what that premiss means). Possible example for Descartes: ‘God is no deceiver’
Better, perhaps, from our perspective: ‘All triangles have three sides and three interior angles’
Why does Descartes question all his beliefs save his belief in God?
Implicitly the meditator does question this belief. See the summary at the beginning of Meditation II of the scope of the doubts raised in Meditation II. ‘Is there not a God, or whatever I may call him, who puts into me the thoughts I am now having? But why do I think this, since I myself may perhaps be the author of these thoughts.’
Moreover in Meditation III the meditator is made to say ‘Since ... I do not yet even know for sure whether there is a God at all’.
It also seems plain from the huge effort Descartes subsequently puts into constructing arguments for the conclusion that God exists, that he is certainly not taking God’s existence for granted. His existence is something that needs to be established rather than simply something that can be used without hesitation to ground other Cartesian beliefs.
Also in Meditation I the hypothesis that God does not exist is introduced as one that might seem plausible to some people, and that hypothesis is not refuted or dismissed as plainly false in that particular meditation.
It was difficult to Descartes to discuss this issue in explicit terms because of the danger of accusations of impiety.
Also as a matter of psychological autobiography, it seems most unlikely that Descartes himself ever did have any real doubts about the existence of God or the physical world or other people. The phenomenon of bracketing off a belief while retaining it.
If we cannot entirely trust our senses, then what can we trust?
Descartes is about to begin the process of trying to set out his alternative way of proceeding. In a sense finding this alternative, justifying it, and showing how to apply it is what the remaining five Meditations are all about.
This begins by locating a sample belief that is supposedly certainly true – that we ourselves exist. He then inspects this belief to see what makes it certainly true. Not it seems the senses. He can recognize its truth even in a situation where he is imagining himself not to have any body or senses. Descartes’ own diagnosis is that what makes it certain is that he clearly and distinctly perceives it to be true. He then seeks out other beliefs that share this characteristic. There is the complication of one final sceptical challenge – when he is not actually confronted by a belief with this characteristic, it sometimes seems to him when he is contemplating the hypothesis of a deceiving God that this characteristic might not be an absolutely reliable guarantee of truth. This final problem is allegedly resolved by his ability to construct his proofs of the existence of God and his reflections on the relationship between power, deceit, and malice.
 Descartes - Lecture 4 |
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