Descartes - Lecture 5
5. The Cartesian Circle
Arnauld’s original formulation of the potential problem facing Descartes (Fourth Set of Objections – AT VII 214)
‘I have one further worry, namely how the author avoids reasoning in a circle when he says that we are sure that what we clearly and distinctly perceive is true only because God exists.
But we can be sure that God exists only because we clearly and distinctly perceive this. Hence, before we can be sure that God exists, we ought to be able to be sure that whatever we perceive clearly and evidently is true.’
In broad terms, Arnauld’s accusation is that Descartes is guilty of using his `proofs' of the existence of God to establish the trustworthiness of our faculty of clear and distinct perception while simultaneously relying on that very faculty to vindicate the premisses and inferential steps utilised within those proofs.
A formulation of the circularity objection intended to present Descartes’ position as self-contradictory
1) Prior to reviewing the arguments contained in the Meditations, we are not entitled to be certain that God exists and is no deceiver.
[If we are already entitled, why bother with the arguments?]
2) Those arguments can generate an entitlement to be certain that God exists only if we are entitled to be certain prior to reviewing them that whatever we clearly and distinctly perceive is true.
[Prima facie, at least, it seems not implausible to suppose that arguments can yield an entitlement to be certain only if we are entitled to be certain that their premisses are true and the inferential moves made within them are valid, and by Meditation III Descartes already seems to have dismissed every mental faculty other than clear and distinct perception as incapable of yielding certainty.
3) As a result of reviewing the arguments contained in the Meditations, we do become entitled to be certain that God exists and is no deceiver.
[If we don’t, then these arguments have failed to achieve Descartes’ objective]
4) Therefore we are entitled to be certain prior to reviewing those arguments that whatever we clearly and distinctly perceive is true.
5) Unfortunately this conclusion seems to contradict the claim at AT 7 71 (5th Meditation) that the certainty and truth of all knowledge depends uniquely on our awareness of the true God, and the following claims:
‘Although it needed close attention for me to perceive this [that it is self-evident that the supreme being exists] I am now just as certain of it as I am of everything else which appears most certain. And what is more I see that the certainty of all other things depends on this, so that without it nothing can be known’ Fifth Meditation (AT VII 69).
‘[if] we did not know that everything real and true within us comes from a perfect and infinite being then, however clear and distinct our ideas were, we would have no reason to be sure that they have the perfection of being true' Discourse on the Method (AT VI 39).
The assertion that if he sets aside his awareness of the existence of God, `then I can convince myself that I have a natural disposition to go wrong from time to time in matters which I think I perceive as evidently as can be' Fifth Meditation (AT VII 7O).
His talk of a doubt arising from ‘our ignorance about whether our nature might not be such as to make us go wrong even in matters which seemed to us utterly evident' Principles of Philosophy (AT VIIIA 16).
‘whenever my preconceived belief in the existence of God comes to mind, I cannot but admit that it would be easy for him, if he so desired, to bring it about that I go wrong even in those matters which I think I see utterly clearly with my mind’s eye’ Third Med (AT VII 36)
‘as soon as the opportunity arises I must examine whether there is a God, and if there is, whether he can be a deceiver. For if I do not know this, it seems that I can never be quite certain about anything else’ Third Med (AT VII 36)
Descartes’ own response to the charge of circularity (AT VII 245-246)
He claims that he has already explained why he is not guilty of circular reasoning in his reply to the Second Set of Objections, where he made a distinction between what we in fact perceive clearly and what we remember having perceived clearly on a previous occasion.
To being with ‘we are sure that God exists because we attend to the arguments which prove this’. Subsequently however ‘it is enough to for us to remember that we perceived something clearly in order for us to be certain that it is true. This would not be sufficient if we did not know that God exists and is not a deceiver.’
Turning to the reply to the Second Set of Objections (AT 7 140):
Under Thirdly he claims that when he said that we can know nothing for certain until we are aware that God exists, I expressly declared that I was speaking only of knowledge of those conclusions which can be recalled when we are no longer attending to the arguments by means of which we deduced them. (This seems disingenuous, as this is certainly not how he introduced the need to prove that God exists in the relevant section of the Meditations)
Not surprisingly Descartes’ comments generated what might be called the memory solution to the alleged circularity.
This attempt to clear Descartes of the charge of circularity maintains that Descartes always accepts that clear and distinct perception itself is utterly trustworthy. What the proofs are supposedly intended to supply is a guarantee that we can trust our memories of having clearly and distinctly perceived something to be true.
Unfortunately this seems a mistaken interpretation:
1) Many of the above quotes say nothing about memories of clear and distinct perceptions.
2) What good would these proofs be? At t1 we have a clear and distinct perception that p. At t2 we don’t trust our memory that we had a clear and distinct perception that p. So we rehearse a proof that God exists. At the end of rehearsing that proof we believe that God exists and that we have reason to believe that God exists. At t3, however, that proof is, in turn, only something we remember. So if t2 we needed to rehearse a proof that God exists in order to be entitled to trust our memory of clearly and distinctly perceiving at t1 that p, won’t we at t3 need to rehearse that proof again in order to be entitled to trust our memory of clearly and distinctly perceiving at t2 that p? How can the efficacy of a clear and distinct perception that God exists persist through time when this efficacy allegedly fails in the case of other clear and distinct perceptions? (We could suppose that the proof eventually comes to constitute an ever-present intuition/clear and distinct perception in the meditator’s mind. Descartes does, after all, say that we can attentively consider more than one thing at a time (Descartes’ Conversation with Burman, p.6). But this approach doesn’t fit the text.)
3) Descartes’ Conversation with Burman (p.5). ‘I have nothing to say on the subject of memory. Everyone should test himself to see whether he is good at remembering. If he has any doubts, then he should make use of written notes and so forth to help him.’ Descartes, it seems, is utterly uninterested/unaware of the threat posed by the kind of memory scepticism raised by Bertrand Russell. Though it might be thought that Descartes ought to be concerned about this given his 2nd Meditation assertion ‘I will believe that my memory tells me lies, and that none of the things that it reports ever happened’
Margaret Wilson’s attempted solution: degrees of clearness and distinctness
Wilson suggests that Descartes’ proofs of God amount to an attempt by Descartes to use claims that he perceives to be true with the utmost clarity to vindicate the reliability of claims that are backed only by perceptions of lesser clarity and distinctness. It is difficult to imagine, though, how anyone could sincerely believe that all the various premisses and inferential principles used in Descartes' arguments for the existence of God are more clearly and distinctly perceived to be true than a proposition like 2 + 2 = 4, yet propositions of this latter kind do seem to be questioned in the First Meditation. It also seems that Wilson's attempted solution to the problem of the circle fails to take due account of those textual passages where Descartes appears to be going out of his way to emphasize that before we have established the existence of a non-deceiving God, our clear and distinct perceptions remain susceptible to some form of doubt no matter how clear and distinct they may happen to be.
A more promising approach
The difference between having an actual clear and distinct perception and thinking about the support that would properly be given to a claim by clear and distinct perception. (The example of a charismatic preacher)
Much of what Descartes has to say suggests that he wishes to present his stance as one that accepts that one cannot be certain that all the clear and distinct perceptions that might be vouchsafed to one are true unless one is first certain that God exists and is no deceiver, but holds that one can be certain that God exists by merely having a clear and distinct perception of his existence even though one has not yet argued one's way to the conclusion that all one's clear and distinct perceptions must be true.
Unfortunately the situation is complicated by the fact that some of Descartes' comments nevertheless suggest that his worries about the epistemic value of clear and distinct perceptions prior to their supplementation by a proof of the existence of God are more wide-ranging than the above response acknowledges. See several of the passages cited above.
In consequence I'm inclined myself to suppose that the most promising way of attempting to extricate Descartes from the circularity charge is to hold that these more diffuse worries are worries about the durability of psychological certitude. We can then insist that Descartes never goes back on the view that if one clearly and distinctly perceives that x is true at time t1, one can have no GENUINE reason for doubting that x is or was true at time t1 even when one is merely remembering that one clearly and distinctly perceived that x. The sole difference between actually having a clear and distinct perception that it is true that x and merely remembering that one once had a clear and distinct perception that x is simply that it is allegedly psychologically impossible in the former case to be at all uncertain about the truth of the claim that x. This combination of psychological and logical certainty means that at the moment we actually clearly and distinctly perceive that it is true that x, then we have perfect, absolutely certain knowledge that it is true that x.
When we are no longer clearly and distinctly perceiving that x, this psychological certitude is potentially threatened. Even though we can have no genuine reasons for doubting that it is true that x if we are merely remembering that we once clearly and distinctly perceived that x, we may DELUDE ourselves, by speculating about the possible existence of an omnipotent deceiver, into thinking that such genuine reasons for doubt do exist. However this illusion of having genuine grounds for doubt cannot sustain itself if reflection on the notion of an omnipotent deceiver simply brings to mind an intuitive proof of the existence of an omnipotent God who is no deceiver. Thus the person who has familiarised himself with Descartes' proof of the existence of God will never lack confidence in the trustworthiness of any specific clear and distinct perception even when that perception is no longer actually before the mind. And it is in this respect that his knowledge is more perfect than that enjoyed by an atheist. A clear and distinct perception that it is true, at time t1, that x means that the atheist, just like the believer, can have no genuine reasons to doubt that it is or was true at time t1 that x even when he is simply remembering that clear and distinct perception. However the atheist, unlike the believer, can fall into confusion on this issue and take himself to have good reasons for doubt even though he does not, in fact, have any such reasons.
A residual problem
Let us suppose that we accept that a clear and distinct perception that p is incompatible with it being false that p. Unfortunately this still seems to leave open the possibility that we might mistakenly take ourselves to have a clear and distinct perception that p in circumstances when we do not genuinely have such a perception. Now one way of responding to this problem would be to insist that having a clear and distinct perception is simply a matter of believing oneself to have a clear and distinct perception. However this response seems to guarantee that we are no longer dealing with anything that can plausibly be regarded as an infallible criterion of truth. But if we continue to affirm that there is an epistemologically important difference between having a clear and distinct perception and merely believing that one is having a clear and distinct perception, then our worries about the ability of people to discriminate between the two situations are likely to be greatly reinforced by the fact that Descartes, conditioned as he was by historical and temperamental factors, genuinely took his unsatisfactory arguments for the existence of God to be self-evidently valid. Thus it seems that those of us who reject these arguments cannot legitimately dismiss the possibility that we may seem to others, either now or at some point in future, to be just as much in error about those things that currently strike us as self-evident or clearly and distinctly perceived.
Is the charge of formal circularity important?
Even if we salvage Descartes from this charge, are we not left simply with unsupported confidence in clear and distinct perception? Initially we followed Descartes in what seemed to be his attempts to vindicate this confidence. However taking this project seriously leads to circularity. Thus we scaled the project down. But in doing this, aren’t we simply leaving obvious doubts unanswered?
 Descartes - Lecture 6 |
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