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Twelfth Grade AP European History
Syllabus
AP
European History HOMEWORK FORMATT
Map
Quiz; AP European History
AP History Skills Basics:
AP History Skills
in detail:
Handouts on various content
topics
Teacher: Mr. Kay
East Lake High School
Purpose:
The purpose of this course is to teach you
European History from a European point of view in order for you to
pass the AP European History exam. If you do well enough on
the exam you will earn college credit and obtain money for your
school. The course will therefore be taught with the
expectation that you will do all the necessary work needed to pass
this test.
Overview:
This course will cover the major topics in
European history from the Renaissance to the present. It will
focus on Europe and how Europeans reacted to the rest of the world.
It should be remembered that this is NOT a world history course and
that the student should not assume that because we are studying
Europe that Europe is more important than anywhere else.
Today, Europeans are some of the most powerful and influential
people in our world and their history is very important to an
understanding of world history. However, at different periods
of time, different areas of the world have been powerful. For
example, during the Ming dynasty in China or during the rule of the
Pharaohs in Egypt, Europe was an inconsequential backwards place.
All areas of the world have had their time of glory and all areas of
the world have contributed to our history (for example, surgery was
invented in Egypt as well as other areas). Some of the major
topics we will cover are the Renaissance, the French Revolution, the
Scientific Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, World Wars I and
II and the Cold War.
Supplies:
It is expected that all students will have
their own supplies which includes a three ring binder that we will
use to keep both a notebook and a writing folder. Please note
you can choose to have paper in your three ring binder to serve as
your notebook but you must have a folder that can be turned in
separately for the writing folder
Grades:
Grades are to be determined based on the
following formula: Tests=60%, Quizzes=30%, Homework= 10%.
The low percentage on homework is because you will use it during
quizzes. There will be a quiz on every chapter at the
beginning of class BEFORE the teacher has reviewed it and if you do
not do your homework then your quiz grade will be substantially
lower. Quiz formats will include 5-10 AP multiple choice
questions and one essay question that you will write a thesis
statement for and provide facts as support. Tests will be AP
style tests with multiple choice, DBQ and essay.
You will also get a double test grade for the book you will choose
to read by the end of semester 1. (More on this later.)
The Curve
Historically, grades in AP classes tend to be
remarkably low. This is because of the difficulty of the work
and the variety of skill levels in a class. Since as honor
students bound for college, we do not want to see anyone’s GPA
destroyed there will be points earned in the replaying of history in
class. It should be clear that since this is extra potential
points that there are no guarantees. You can still find
yourself with a low grade if you do not do the work. In
addition, since these points are added after the curve has been
determined, there is no guarantee they will be enough to change the
grade. This grade change will never be more than 4 percentage
points and usually much less. However the added incentive will
make our reenactments more realistic.
Attendance:
It is extremely important that you be here for
every class. However if you are forced to be absent then any
assignment (including a quiz or a test) that was due on the day you
were absent is due on the day you return. Work will not be
accepted unless the absence is excused and absences may be confirmed
by parental contact. You are also responsible for all work
done during your absence. It is highly recommended that you
obtain the phone number of several classmates so that you may obtain
any make-up work.
**************************************************************
Please note that your first homework
assignment is to send me an email stating that you understand the
syllabus!
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**Please note in order to respect privacy
and the rights of minors, these email addresses will not be given
out.
AP European History
HOMEWORK FORMATT
HOMEWORK CHART
Name___________________
Chapter Title and Number________________________________________________________________________
Time Frame:___________________________
Main Ideas/Events:
Summation/Results
PAGE2 and beyond
***********************************************************
pp.________
Dates
Section
Title:
Meaning
SPECIFICS!!!
Maps/Charts
Map
Quiz; AP European History
For numbers 1-33
match the word to the key on the map and fill out your scantron.
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Atlantic ocean
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Mediterranean Sea
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Black Sea
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Agean Sea
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Caspian Sea
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North Sea
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Adriatic Sea
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Alps
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Pyrennees
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Urals
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Compass North
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South
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East
-
West
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Russia
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England
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France
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Germany
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Italy
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Poland
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Czech Republic
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Norway
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Sweden
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Denmark
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Greece
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Turkey
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Crimea
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Ukraine
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Straits of Gibraltar
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Ireland
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Finland
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Iceland
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Normandy
AP History Skills Basics:
The following skills are necessary for success on the
AP Exam. These are used at all
levels of questions and in all the essays and short answers.
All quizzes and tests will reflect these skills and all
students should be proficient at all levels to succeed.
For more detail go to:
http://www.sargenotes.com/historical-thinking-skills---old.html
AP History Skills:
1. Historical Causation
Historical thinking involves the ability to identify,
analyze, and evaluate the relationships among multiple historical causes and
effects, distinguishing between those that are long-term and proximate, and
among coincidence, causation, and correlation.
Proficient students should be able to:
Compare causes and/or effects, including between
short-term and long-term effects.
Analyze and evaluate the interaction of multiple causes
and/or effects.
Assess historical contingency by distinguishing among
coincidence, causation, and correlation, as well as critique existing
interpretations of cause and effect.
2. Patterns of Continuity
and Change over Time
Historical thinking involves the ability to recognize,
analyze, and evaluate the dynamics of historical continuity and change over
periods of time of varying length, as well as the ability to relate these
patterns to larger historical processes or themes.
Proficient students should be able to:
Analyze and evaluate historical patterns of continuity
and change over time.
Connect patterns of continuity and change over time to
larger historical processes or themes.
3. Periodization
Historical thinking involves the ability to describe,
analyze, evaluate, and construct models that historians use to divide
history into discrete periods. To accomplish this periodization, historians
identify turning points, and they recognize that the choice of specific
dates accords a higher value to one narrative, region, or group than to
another narrative, region, or group. How one defines historical periods
depends on what one considers most significant in
society — economic, social, religious, or cultural life — so historical
thinking involves being aware of how the circumstances and contexts of a
historian’s work might shape his or her choices about periodization.
Proficient students should be able to:
Explain ways that historical events and processes can
be organized within blocks of time.
Analyze and evaluate competing models of periodization
of European history.
4. Comparison
Historical thinking involves the ability to describe,
compare, and evaluate multiple historical developments within one society,
one or more developments across or between different societies, and in
various chronological and geographical contexts. It also involves the
ability to identify, compare, and evaluate multiple perspectives on a given
historical experience.
Proficient students should be able to:
Compare related historical developments and processes
across place, time, and/or different societies, or within one society.
Explain and evaluate multiple and differing
perspectives on a given historical phenomenon.
5. Contextualization
Historical thinking involves the ability to connect
historical events and processes to specific circumstances of time and place
and to broader regional, national, or global processes.
Proficient students should be able to:
Explain and evaluate ways in which specific historical
phenomena, events, or processes connect to broader regional, national, or
global processes occurring at the same time.
Explain and evaluate ways in which a phenomenon, event,
or process connects to other similar historical phenomena across time and
place.
6. Historical
Argumentation
Historical thinking involves the ability to define and
frame a question about the past and to address that question through the
construction of an argument. A plausible and persuasive argument requires a
clear, comprehensive, and analytical thesis, supported by relevant
historical evidence — not simply evidence that supports a preferred or
preconceived position. Additionally, argumentation involves the capacity to
describe, analyze, and evaluate the arguments of others in light of
available evidence.
Proficient students should be able to:
Analyze commonly accepted historical arguments and
explain how an argument has been constructed from historical evidence.
Construct convincing interpretations through analysis
of disparate, relevant historical evidence.
Evaluate and synthesize conflicting historical evidence
to construct persuasive historical arguments.
7. Appropriate Use of
Relevant Historical Evidence
Historical thinking involves the ability to describe
and evaluate evidence about the past from diverse sources (including written
documents, works of art, archaeological artifacts, oral traditions, and
other primary sources), and requires paying attention to the content,
authorship, purpose, format, and audience of such sources. It involves the
capacity to extract useful information, make supportable inferences, and
draw appropriate conclusions from historical evidence, while also noting the
context in which the evidence was produced and used, recognizing its
limitations and assessing the points of view it reflects.
Proficient students should be able to:
Analyze features of historical evidence such as
audience, purpose, point of view, format, argument, limitations, and context
germane to the evidence considered.
Based on analysis and evaluation of historical
evidence, make supportable inferences and draw appropriate conclusions.
8. Interpretation
Historical thinking involves the ability to describe,
analyze, evaluate, and construct diverse interpretations of the past, and to
be aware of how particular circumstances and contexts in which individual
historians work and write also shape their interpretation of past events.
Historical interpretation requires analyzing evidence, reasoning, contexts,
and points of view found in both primary and secondary sources.
Proficient students should be able to:
Analyze diverse historical interpretations.
Evaluate how historians' perspectives influence their
interpretations and how models of historical interpretation change over
time.
9. Synthesis
Historical thinking involves the ability to develop
meaningful and persuasive new understandings of the past by applying all of
the other historical thinking skills, by drawing appropriately on ideas and
methods from different fields of inquiry or disciplines, and by creatively
fusing disparate, relevant, and sometimes contradictory evidence from
primary sources and secondary works. Additionally, synthesis may involve
applying insights about the past to other historical contexts or
circumstances, including the present.
Proficient students should be able to:
Combine disparate, sometimes contradictory evidence
from primary sources and secondary works in order to create a persuasive
understanding of the past.
Apply insights about the past to other historical
contexts or circumstances, including the present.
Send comments and questions to
Professor Gerhard Rempel, Western New England College.
Louis XIV: THE SUN
KING
“L’Etat C’est Moi!”
“Un Roi, Une Loi, Une Foi”
1694-1778
(FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET)
For nearly 50 years Voltaire preached freedom of thought and denounced
cruelty and oppression in all its forms. Voltaire was bourgeois, not a
democrat. He believed in reasonable dissent. He believed in natural religion
and praised French artistic and cultural achievement during the Age of Louis
XIV. Politically he advocated the concept of Enlightened Despotism. Above
all others Voltaire stood as the champion of reason and tolerance. As a
young man he was known in Paris for his plays and his wit and conversation.
He once offended the aristocrat Chevalier de Rohan, who, too proud to fight
a duel with a commoner ordered his servants to give Voltaire a street
beating. He was then ordered to the Bastille. By agreeing to leave France
Voltaire was granted his freedom. He immediately left for England.
While in England he found that he could say what he pleased and was not
beaten for it. He quickly fell in love with a country where literary men and
scientists were highly respected. In 1727 he attended the funeral of Isaac
Newton and later wrote that he was overwhelmed to see "a professor of
mathematics buried like a king."
During his tenure in England he wrote Letters on the English (1733).
"The English, as a free people choose their own road to heaven. Here the
nobles are great without insolence, and the people share in the government
without disorder."
In 1734 he returned to France and his Letters on the English was
published in his own country. Unfortunately this work angered both the
government and the church and it was ordered to be burned in public as being
"scandalous, contrary to religion, to morals and to respect for authority."
Such a sentence only served to spur others to sample the forbidden fruit.
Once again to avoid the Bastille, Voltaire went into hiding, this time with
friends in Lorraine.
These early experiences set the stage for the remainder of Voltaire's life.
Voltaire developed an extreme hatred for oppression and for the rest of his
life he waged a personal war on intolerance and persecution for opinion's
sake. He found that only in foreign countries (Switzerland, Holland, England
and Prussia) could a man say what he thought about religion and politics.
Voltaire lived for the limelight and thus wrote plays, which thousands saw
at the theaters. He tried his hand at a variety of literary endeavors:
entertaining tales (Candide), scientific treatises (The Philosophy
of Newton), poetry (On the Lisbon Earthquake), and letters,
always letters to nearly everyone of importance and acquaintance. But in all
of these he carried on his war against intolerance.
Additionally he was an historian and wrote a history of the world from
early times to his own (An Essay on the Manners and Spirit of Nations)
which was published in 1756. This was perhaps his most influential work.
He used history to demonstrate his theme that persecution and intolerance
were both unjust and useless. This was done by showing that the greatest
advancement in knowledge occurred when there was the greatest freedom of
thought. His writings demonstrated that this was best displayed during the
classical age of Greece and Rome, during the Renaissance and in the 17th and
18th centuries. He contended, that in the Middle Ages, when the church held
sway that thought was restricted and there "existed great ignorance and
wretchedness--these were the Dark Ages." Voltaire exaggerated both the
ancient world's qualities of good, and the Middle Ages' qualities of
"horror." But this only made people read his work all the more.
Voltaire was not an atheist, but he was against any and all religions that
were opposed to freedom of thought. Thus he became a bitter enemy of the
Catholic Church as it existed in France. As he aged he spewed a great and
greater venom against the church. Beginning in his early 60's he began to
sign his letters to his friends with the phrase "Ecraser l'infame!"
(Crush the infamous thing!) Voltaire clearly meant the spirit of persecution
but his enemies proclaimed that he was ridiculing the Catholic Church.
In 1762 the aged Voltaire began to champion the causes of strangers who
were persecuted unjustly. Such as man was Jean Calas a Huguenot shopkeeper
in Toulouse who was accused and convicted of murdering one of his sons on
the pretext that he wanted to become a Catholic. With anti Huguenots fervor
Jean Calas was tortured and then broken on the wheel and his other children
were forced to become members of monastic orders. There was never any real
evidence of murder presented. Voltaire saw this as clearly a case of
religious persecution and he worked to have the case overturned. Three years
later the case was retried in Paris and the verdict overturned. This case
became famous throughout Europe and earned Voltaire a great deal of honor as
the champion of human rights.
In the year of his death, 1778, Voltaire returned to Paris. He was met at
the frontier by a customs official who question him as the there being
contraband in his carriage. Voltaire's reply was "Nothing but myself."
Why was Voltaire so admired throughout Europe? Perhaps it is as one
observer replied when asked who was that man. She replied "That is the
savior of Calas." Perhaps it is because he live for a long time and wrote a
great deal. More than likely is stemmed from the fact that his works were
read because they were so well written. His works filled more than 90
volumes. He died on the eve of the French Revolution and helped to create a
atmosphere in which most people no longer believed in the divine right of
the state or the church.
The
Wit and Wisdom of Voltaire:
In general the art of government consists in taking as much money as
possible from one class of citizens to give it to the other.
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly
I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "Oh Lord, make my
enemies ridiculous" And God granted it.
Self Love never dies
The gloomy Englishman, even in his loves, always wants to reason. We are
more reasonable in France.
Men use thought only to justify their wrongdoings, and employ speech only to
conceal their thoughts.
It is said that God is always on the sides of the biggest battalions
All the reasoning of men is not worth one sentiment of woman.
To stop criticism they say one must die.
VOLTAIRE ON
SUPERSTITION
"Almost everything that goes beyond the adoration of a Supreme Being and
submission of the heart to his orders is superstition. One of the most
dangerous is to believe that certain ceremonies entail the forgivness of
crimes. Do you believe that God will forget a murder you have committed if
you bathe in a certain river, sacrifice a black sheep, or if someone says
certain words over you?...Do better miserable humans; have neither murders
nor sacrifices of black sheep...
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Lecture 7
The Medieval Synthesis and the Secularization of
Human Knowledge: The Scientific Revolution, 1642-1730 (2)
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If I
have seen further it is because I have stood on the shoulders of
giants.
---Isaac Newton
The end result
of my study of Newton has served to convince me that with him
there is no measure. He has become for me wholly other, one of
the tiny handful of supreme geniuses who have shaped the
categories of the human intellect, a man not finally reducible
to the criteria by which we comprehend our fellow beings.
---Richard Westfall, Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac
Newton
We can't imagine that the Scientific
Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries took place in a
vacuum. That is, we can't assume that modern science simply came
to be in a momentary flash of brilliance, nor that Copernicus or
Kepler or Galileo just woke up one morning and pronounced their
discoveries to a world which became somehow instantaneously
different (see
Lecture 6). Past historians have
looked at the history of modern science from precisely this
point of view. Like the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution
has been interpreted as explosive, a surge forward, a watershed.
On this score, John Herman Randall once remarked that:
One gathers,
indeed, from our standard histories of the sciences, written
mostly in the last generation, that the world lay steeped in the
darkness and night of superstition, till one day Copernicus
bravely cast aside the errors of his fellows, looked at the
heavens and observed nature, the first man since the Greeks to
do so, and discovered . . . the truth about the solar system.
The next day, so to speak, Galileo climbed the leaning Tower of
Pisa, dropped down his weights, and as they thudded to the
ground, Aristotle was crushed to earth and the laws of falling
bodies sprang into being.
[The Career of Philosophy, vol 1, 1962]
The scientists of the seventeenth century
-- those mathematicians, astronomers, and philosophers -- had
the enormous weight of centuries of thought resting on their
shoulders. Even Isaac Newton was aware of the debt he owed to
the past. Although this tradition was based largely on the work
of
Aristotle,
St. Augustine,
Aquinas and
Dante, the scientific revolutionaries
sought to break free from these traditional beliefs. They had to
forge a new identity. The scientific revolutionaries needed to
transcend
Plato, Aristotle,
Galen,
Ptolemy or Aquinas -- this was their
conscious decision. They not only criticized but replaced the
medieval world view with their own. And this quest for identity
would culminate in a world view that was scientific,
mathematical, methodological and mechanical.
However, this revolution was accomplished
by utilizing the medieval roots of science which, in turn, meant
the science of the classical age of Greece and Rome as well as
the refinements to that science made by Islamic scholars. They
used what they found at hand to create a new outlook on the
cosmos, the natural world and ultimately, the world of man. The
antecedents to this revolution in thought are found in the 11th
and 12th centuries when most of the ideas of the ancient Greek
philosophers were wed together into a new body of beliefs. These
beliefs were living and vital. We encounter them in the 12th
century Renaissance (see
Lecture 2). We find them at the school
of Chartres in the mid-12th century, or at the medical school at
Salerno near Naples in 1060. At Toledo in Spain, 92 Arabic works
had been translated along with Ptolemy in 1175. By the 12th
century, Arabic science and mathematics had found its way to
Oxford in England and to Padua in Italy. From the early 12th
century, then, there existed in Europe a continuous tradition of
scientific endeavor. And although this science was temporarily
overshadowed by the intellectual bulk of Aristotle in the
mid-13th century, this tradition was living in the 15th and 16th
centuries and well into the 17th.
This was the background and education of the scientific
revolutionaries. We must see their discoveries as shaped and
formed by this core of accepted ideas and not just spinning out
of empty space. The revolution in science did not occur quickly.
It developed over time. Although the medieval Church earned
absolute power, authority and obedience, science and scientific
thinking did flourish during the five centuries preceding that
watershed we call the Scientific Revolution.
By
the 17th century, science, scientific thinking and the
experimental method had become the territory of more men, and by
the mid-18th century, increasing numbers of women would be
included as well. For instance, In 1649 René Descartes yielded,
after much hesitation, to the requests of Queen Christina of
Sweden that he join the distinguished circle she was assembling
in Stockholm and personally instruct her in philosophy.
The New Science spread rapidly through education in universities
such as Oxford, Cambridge, Bologna, Padua and Paris. Science was
also diffused to a large audience through books. Each time a
Galileo, Descartes, or Newton published their findings, a wave
of replies followed. And each of these replies was followed by
other replies so that what quickly resulted was an ever growing
body of scientific literature. And, of course, there was at the
same time, an increasing number of men and women who were eager
for such knowledge.
By the end of the 17th century, new
societies and academies devoted to science were founded. There
were many who agreed with
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) that
scientific work ought to be a collective enterprise, pursued
cooperatively by all its practitioners. Information should be
exchanged so that scientists could concentrate on different
parts of a project rather than waste time in duplicate research.
Although it was not the first such academy, the Royal Society in
England was perhaps the first permanent organization dedicated
to scientific activity. The
Royal Society was founded at Oxford
during the
English Civil War when revolutionaries
captured the city and replaced many teachers at the university.
A few of these revolutionaries formed the Invisible College, a
group that met to exchange information and ideas. What was most
important was the organization itself, not its results: the
group only included one scientist,
Robert Boyle (1627-1691). In 1660,
twelve members, including Boyle and
Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723),
formed an official organization, the Royal Society of London for
Improving Natural Knowledge. In 1662, the Society was granted
its charter by Charles II.
The purpose of the Royal Society was Baconian to the core. Its
aims was to gather all knowledge about nature, particularly that
knowledge which might be useful for the public good. Soon it
became clear, however, that the Society's principal function was
to serve as a clearing center for research. The Society
maintained correspondence and encouraged foreign scholars to
submit their discoveries to the Society. In 1665 the Society
launched its Philosophical Transactions, the first
professional scientific journal. The English example was
followed on the continent as well: in 1666 Louis XIV accepted
the founding of the French Royal Academy of Sciences and by
1700, similar organizations were established in Naples and
Berlin.
The New Science was also diffused by public demonstrations. This
was especially the case in public anatomy lessons. Scientist and
layman alike were invited to witness the dissection of human
cadavers. The body of a criminal would be brought to the lecture
hall and the surgeon would dissect the body, announcing and
displaying organs as they were removed from the body.
Throughout major European cities there were wealthy men who,
with lots of free time on their hands, would dabble in science.
These were the virtuosi -- the amateur scientists.
These men oftentimes made original contributions to scientific
endeavor. They also supplied organizations like the Royal
Society with needed funds.
By
1700, science had become an issue of public discourse. The
bottom line, I suppose, was that science worked! It was
wonderful, miraculous and spectacular. For the 17th century
scientist -- a Galileo, a Newton or the virtuosi --
science produced the Baconian vision that anything was indeed
possible. Science itself gave an immense boost to the general
European belief in human progress, a belief perhaps initiated by
the general awakening of European thought in the 12th century.
It was the achievement of men like
Copernicus and
Galileo sift through centuries of
scientific knowledge and to create a new world view. This was a
world view based as much on previous science and knowledge as it
was on new developments derived from the scientific method.
The greatest scientific achievement of the 17th century was
clearly the mathematical system of the universe produced by
ISAAC NEWTON (1642-1727). It was
Newton who went far beyond Galileo by taking observations of the
heavens and turning them into measured and irrefutable fact.
Thanks to Newton, the western intellectual tradition would now
include a concrete and scientific explanation of the motion of
the heavens. Because of his greatness, the 17th century could
almost be called the Age of Newton.
Newton was in his own lifetime not regarded as a genius by his
contemporaries. His fellow scientists respected him and admired
him but they also disliked him. The reason is clear -- Newton
was not a happy man. He was dour, sour and made absolutely no
attempt to befriend anyone. Whenever someone happened to get too
close to him, he retired to his study. His thoroughgoing
Puritanism meant that he constantly subjected himself to
self-examination.
Isaac Newton was born premature on Christmas Day, 1642, the year
of Galileo's death. His family belonged to the gentry. He was
educated at Cambridge and was also a member and president of the
Royal Society. Although the Society was responsible for the
publication of his major writings, his relationships with its
members was strained. In the 25-30 years that Newton was a
member he attended its meetings only a handful of times. In
terms of religion he accepted the Church of England only
partially. Over time, he came to see the Bible more as an
allegory than as undisputed fact.
He was an unlikable man -- a solitary
genius. He worked in short bursts of energy and was always
hesitant to publish his findings. He had to be coaxed and
encouraged to make those simplifications necessary to
communicate a considerable body of thought. He quarreled
violently with those men (e.g.,
Hooke,
Leibniz and Flamstead) who questioned
his priority and superiority in fields he dominated.
Modern biographers have pretty much agreed that Newton -- our
"sober, silent, thinking lad" -- suffered a troubled childhood.
His father died in early October 1642, a month before Isaac was
born. For the first three years of his life he was sent out to a
wet nurse and then lived with his grandmother. During this time
his mother remarried, an act that did much to alienate Newton
from his mother. As a child, Newton was never shown much love or
affection. This may explain why he was always so isolated,
detached and unemotional.
Between 1660 and 1690, Newton devoted
himself to an
academic life at Cambridge. As the
Lucasian Chair of Mathematics he was expected to lecture on a
weekly basis, lectures which he frequently delivered to empty
classrooms. He embraced a number of academic interests but the
ones which interested him most were alchemy, theology, optics
and mathematics. No field of study took precedence over another
and he so he devoted as much of his energy and intellect to
alchemy as he did to theology and mathematics.
Like most scholars of the period, Newton had an amanuensis,
a young student who served him as an assistant who provided
Newton with meals as well as transcriptions of his lecture
notes. Newton was an absent-minded man. Stories of Newton's
behavior are, of course, well known. Newton was a deliberate
thinker, always hesitant to publish, always hesitant to move too
quickly. A call to dinner might have taken Newton an hour to act
upon. If, on his way to sup, his fancy was struck by some book
lying on the table, the meal would simply have to wait. He ate
poorly, slept irregularly and for the most part found the
outside world a terrible irritant from which he needed to
escape. [Readers interested in "Newton the Man," would do well
to consult Westfall's biography (mentioned above) as well as
Frank Manuel's excellent psycho-biography, A Portrait of
Isaac Newton (1968).]
In
1687, Newton finished his greatest work,
Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica
(The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy),
the last "great" work in the western intellectual tradition to
be published in Latin. It was this work, commonly called the
Principia, which secured Newton's place as one of the
greatest thinkers in the intellectual history of Europe. The
Principia is a dense work, but not totally
incomprehensible. He wanted to explain why the planets were held
in their orbits -- he wanted to know why an apple fell to the
earth. His answer was, of course, gravity. Newton not only
described the laws which explained gravity, he also invented the
calculus to explain the laws of gravity.
Even for those people who could not
understand Newtonian physics or mathematics, Newton had an
amazing impact, since he had offered irrefutable proof --
mathematical proof -- that Nature had order and meaning, an
order and meaning that was not based on faith but on human
Reason. With Newton, we find the important combination of two
important concepts -- Nature and Reason. His scientific
discoveries and his spirit dominated the thought of the 18th
century -- a century dubbed the Age of Enlightenment (see
Lecture 9).
In 1727, the year of Newton's death, the
English poet
Alexander Pope (1688-1744) composed an
epitaph for Newton's grave at Westminster Abbey. His epitaph was
short and precise and illustrates the importance of this
solitary genius. Pope wrote:
Nature and
Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.
How can it be that a poet who was then working on a new
translation of Homer, should come to write Newton's epitaph? Was
Pope also a mathematician? Hardly. The point is that Pope knew
that Newton had discovered something which would in the 18th
century become universally applicable to the new science of man.
If man, using his Reason, could deduce the laws of Nature, then
it seemed only a short step to apply those laws to man and
society. Is it any accident that the modern social sciences were
founded in the 18th century and in the wake of Newton's
achievement?
The Scientific Revolution gave the western world the impression
that the human mind was progressing toward some ultimate end.
Thanks to the culminating work of Newton, the western
intellectual tradition now included a firm believe in the idea
of human progress, that is, that man's history was one of the
progressive unfolding of man's capacity for perfectibility. From
this point on, man the believer was now joined by man the
knower. It was man's destiny to both know the world, and create
that world.
But, the Scientific Revolution also showed
man to be merely a small part of a larger divine plan. Man no
longer found himself at the center of the universe -- he was now
simply a small part of a much greater whole. The French thinker
BLAISE PASCAL (1623-1662), gave
perhaps the greatest expression to the uncertainties generated
by the Scientific Revolution when, in his
Pensées, he wrote:
For,
after all, what is man in nature? A nothing in comparison with
the infinite, an absolute in comparison with nothing, a central
point between nothing and all. Infinitely far from understanding
these extremes, the end of things and their beginning are
hopelessly hidden from him in an impenetrable secret. He is
equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he came,
and the infinite in which he is engulfed. What else then will he
perceive but some appearance of the middle of things, in an
eternal despair of knowing either their principle of their
purpose? All things emerge from nothing and are borne onwards to
infinity. Who can follow this marvelous process? The Author of
these wonders understands them. None but he can. |
4.
Cogito Ergo Sum
4.1 The
First Item of Knowledge
Famously, Descartes puts forward a very simple candidate as the “first item
of knowledge.” The candidate is suggested by methodic doubt—by the very
effort at thinking all my thoughts might be mistaken. Early in the Second
Meditation, Descartes has his meditator observe:
I have
convinced myself that there is absolutely nothing in the world, no sky, no
earth, no minds, no bodies. Does it now follow that I too do not exist? No:
if I convinced myself of something then I certainly existed. But there is a
deceiver of supreme power and cunning who is deliberately and constantly
deceiving me. In that case I too undoubtedly exist, if he is deceiving me;
and let him deceive me as much as he can, he will never bring it about that
I am nothing so long as I think that I am something. So after considering
everything very thoroughly, I must finally conclude that this proposition, I
am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or
conceived in my mind. (Med. 2, AT 7:25)
As the
canonical formulation has it, I think therefore I am (Latin: cogito ergo
sum; French: je pense, donc je suis)—a formulation which does not expressly
arise in the Meditations.
Descartes regards the ‘cogito’ (as I shall refer to it) as the “first and
most certain of all to occur to anyone who philosophizes in an orderly way”
(Prin. 1:7, AT 8a:7). Testing the cogito with methodic doubt is supposed to
help me appreciate its certainty. For the existence of my body is subject to
doubts that the existence of my thinking resist. Indeed, the very attempt at
thinking away my thinking is self-stultifying.
The
cogito raises numerous philosophical questions and has generated an enormous
literature. In summary fashion, I'll try to clarify a few central points.
First,
a first-person formulation is essential to the certainty of the cogito.
Third-person claims, such as “Icarus thinks,” or “Descartes thinks,” are not
unshakably certain—not for me, at any rate; only the occurrence of my
thought has a chance of resisting hyperbolic doubt. There are a number of
passages in which Descartes refers to a third-person version of the cogito.
But none of these occurs in the context of trying to establish categorically
the existence of a particular thinker (as opposed merely to the conditional
existence of whatever thinks).
Second,
a present tense formulation is essential to the certainty of the cogito.
It's no good to reason that “I existed since I recall I was thinking,”
because methodic doubt calls into question whether I'm having veridical
memories. (Maybe I'm merely dreaming that I was thinking, or maybe an evil
genius is feeding me false memories.) Nor does it work to reason that “I
shall continue to exist since I am now thinking.” As the meditator remarks,
“it could be that were I totally to cease from thinking, I should totally
cease to exist” (Med. 2, AT 7:27). The privileged certainty of the cogito is
grounded in the “manifest contradiction” (cf. AT 7:36) of thinking away my
occurrent thinking.
Third,
the certainty of the cogito depends on being formulated in terms of my
cogitatio—i.e., my thinking, or awareness/consciousness more generally. Any
mode of my thinking is sufficient: doubt, understanding, affirmation,
denial, volition, imagination, sensation, or the like (cf. Med. 2, AT 7:28).
My non-thinking activities, on the other hand, are insufficient. For
instance, it's no good to reason that “I exist since I am walking,” because
methodic doubt calls into question the existence of my legs. (Maybe I'm just
dreaming that I have legs.) A simple revision, such as “I exist since it
seems I'm walking,” restores the anti-sceptical potency (cf. Replies 5, AT
7:352; Prin. 1:9).
A
caveat is in order. That Descartes rejects the certainty of formulations
presupposing the existence of a body commits him to nothing more than an
epistemological distinction between mind and body, but not yet an
ontological distinction (as in substance dualism). Indeed, in the passage
following the cogito, Descartes has his meditator say:
And yet
may it not perhaps be the case that these very things which I am supposing
to be nothing [e.g., “that structure of limbs which is called a human
body”], because they are unknown to me, are in reality identical with the
“I” of which I am aware? I do not know, and for the moment I shall not argue
the point, since I can make judgements only about things which are known to
me. (Med. 2, AT 7:27)
Fourth,
and related to the foregoing quotation, is that Descartes' reference to an
“I”, in the “I think”, is not intended to presuppose the existence of a
substantial self. Indeed, in the very next sentence following the initial
statement of the cogito, the meditator says: “But I do not yet have a
sufficient understanding of what this ‘I’ is, that now necessarily exists”
(Med. 2, AT 7:25). The cogito purports to yield certainty that I exist
insofar as I am a thinking thing, whatever that turns out to be. The ensuing
discussion is intended to help arrive at an understanding of the ontological
nature of the thinking subject.
More
generally, one should keep distinct issues of epistemic and ontological
dependence. In the final analysis, Descartes thinks he shows that the
occurrence of my thought depends (ontologically) on the existence of a
substantial self—to wit, on the existence of an infinite substance, namely
God (cf. Med. 3, AT 7:48ff). But Descartes denies that an acceptance of
these ontological matters is epistemically prior to the cogito: its
privileged certainty is not supposed to depend (epistemically) on abstruse
metaphysics.
Granting that the cogito does not presuppose a substantial self, what then
is the epistemic basis for injecting the “I” into the “I think”? Many
critics have complained that, in referring to the “I”, Descartes begs the
question—that he presupposes what is supposedly established in the “I
exist.” Among the critics, Bertrand Russell objects that “the word ‘I’ is
really illegitimate”; that Descartes should have, instead, stated “his
ultimate premiss in the form ‘there are thoughts’.” Russell adds that “the
word ‘I’ is grammatically convenient, but does not describe a datum.” (1945,
567) Accordingly, “there is pain” and “I am in pain” have different
contents, and Descartes is entitled only to the former.
One
effort at reply has it that introspection reveals more than what Russell
allows—it reveals the subjective character of experience. On this view,
there is more to the phenomenal story of being in pain than is expressed by
saying that there is pain: in the former case, there is pain plus a
point-of-view—a phenomenal surplus that's difficult to characterize except
by adding that “I” am in pain, that the pain is mine. Importantly, my
awareness of this subjective feature of experience does not depend on an
awareness of the metaphysical nature of a thinking subject. If we take
Descartes to be using ‘I’ to signify this subjective character, then he is
not smuggling in something that's not already there: the “I”-ness of
consciousness turns out to be (contra Russell) a primary datum of
experience. And though, as Hume persuasively argues, introspection reveals
no sense impressions suited to the role of a thinking subject, Descartes,
unlike Hume, feels no pressure to reduce all of our concepts to sense
impressions. Descartes' idea of the self does ultimately draw on innate
conceptual resources.
Fifth,
much of the debate over whether the cogito involves inference, or is instead
a simple intuition (roughly, self-evident), is preempted by three
observations. One observation concerns the absence of an express ‘ergo’
(‘therefore’) in the Second Meditation account. It seems a mistake to
emphasize this absence, as if suggesting that Descartes denies any role for
inference. For the Second Meditation passage is the one place (of his
various published treatments ) where Descartes explicitly details a line of
inferential reflection leading up to the conclusion that I am, I exist. His
other treatments merely say the ‘therefore'; the Meditations treatment
unpacks it. A second observation is that it seems a mistake to assume that
the cogito must either involve inference, or intuition, but not both. There
is no inconsistency in the view that the meditator comes to appreciate the
persuasive force of the cogito by means of inferential reflection, while
also holding that his eventual conviction is not grounded in inference. A
third observation is that what one intuits might well include an inference:
it is widely held among philosophers today that modus ponens is
self-evident, and yet it contains an inference. There is no inconsistency in
claiming a self-evident grasp of a proposition with inferential structure—a
fact applicable to the cogito. As Descartes writes:
When
someone says “I am thinking, therefore I am, or I exist,” he does not deduce
existence from thought by means of a syllogism, but recognizes it as
something self-evident by a simple intuition of the mind. (Replies 2, AT
7:140)
4.2 But
is it Knowledge?
There
are interpretive disputes about whether the cogito is supposed to count as
indefeasible Knowledge. (That is, about whether it thus counts upon its
initial introduction, prior to the arguments for a non-deceiving God.) Many
commentators hold that it is supposed to count as indefeasible Knowledge.
But the case for this interpretation is by no means clear.
There
is no disputing that Descartes characterizes the cogito as the “first item
of knowledge [cognitione]” (Med. 3, AT 7:35); as the first “piece of
knowledge [cognitio]” (Prin. 1:194, AT 8a:7). Noteworthy, however, is the
Latin terminology (‘cognitio’ and its cognates) that Descartes uses in these
characterizations. As discussed in Section 1.3, Descartes is a contextualist
in the sense that he uses ‘knowledge’ language in two different contexts of
clear and distinct judgments: the less rigorous context includes defeasible
judgments, as in the case of the atheist geometer (who can't block
hyperbolic doubt); the more rigorous context requires indefeasible
judgments, as with the brand of Knowledge sought after in the Meditations.
Worthy
of attention is that Descartes characterizes the cogito using the same
cognitive language that he uses to characterize the atheist's defeasible
cognition. Recall that Descartes writes of the atheist's clear and distinct
grasp of geometry: “I maintain that this awareness [cognitionem] of his is
not true knowledge [scientiam]” (Replies 2, AT 7:141). This alone does not
prove that the cogito is supposed to be defeasible. It does, however, prove
that calling it the “first item of knowledge” doesn't entail that Descartes
intends it as indefeasible Knowledge.
Bearing
further on whether the cogito counts as indefeasible Knowledge—available
even to the atheist—is the No Atheistic Knowledge Thesis (cf. Section 1.3
above). Descartes makes repeated and unequivocal statements implying this
thesis. Consider the following texts, each arising in a context of
clarifying the requirements of indefeasible Knowledge (all italics are
mine):
For if
I do not know this [i.e., whether God is a deceiver], it seems that I can
never be completely certain about anything else. (Med. 3, AT 7:36, trans.
altered)
I see
that the certainty of all other things depends on this [knowledge of God],
so that without it nothing can ever be perfectly known [perfecte sciri].
(Med. 5, AT 7:69)
[I]f I
did not possess knowledge of God … I should thus never have true and certain
knowledge [scientiam] about anything, but only shifting and changeable
opinions. (Med. 5, AT 7:69)
And
upon claiming finally to have achieved indefeasible Knowledge:
Thus I
see plainly that the certainty and truth of all knowledge [scientiae]
depends uniquely on my awareness of the true God, to such an extent that I
was incapable of perfect knowledge [perfecte scire] about anything else
until I became aware of him. (Med. 5, AT 7:71)
These
texts make a powerful case that nothing can be indefeasibly Known prior to
establishing that we're creatures of an all-perfect God, not an evil genius.
These texts make no exceptions. Descartes looks to hold that hyperbolic
doubt is utterly unbounded—that it undermines all manner of judgments.
Other
texts can be cited in support of the interpretation of the cogito as
indefeasible Knowledge. For example, we have seen texts making clear that it
resists hyperbolic doubt. Often overlooked, however, is that it is only
subsequent to the introduction of the cogito that Descartes has his
meditator first notice the manner in which clear and distinct perception is
both resistant and vulnerable to hyperbolic doubt: the extraordinary
certainty of such perception resists hyperbolic doubt while it is occurring;
it is vulnerable to hyperbolic doubt upon redirecting one's perceptual
attention. This theme is developed more fully in the next Section below.
As will
emerge, there are two main kinds of interpretive camps concerning how to
deal with the Cartesian Circle. The one camp contends that hyperbolic doubt
is utterly unbounded. On this view, the No Atheist Knowledge Thesis is taken
quite literally. The other camp contends that hyperbolic doubt is bounded;
that is, that the cogito, and a few other special truths, are in a lock box
of sorts, utterly protected from even the most hyperbolic doubt. This view
allows that atheists can have indefeasible Knowledge. These two kinds of
interpretations are developed in Section 6.
Further
reading: For important passages in Descartes' handling of the cogito, see
the second and third sets of Objections and Replies. In the secondary
literature, see Beyssade (1993), Hintikka (1962), and Markie (1992). For
especially innovative interpretations, see Broughton (2002) and Vinci
(1998).
5.
Epistemic Privilege and Defeasibility
The
extraordinary certainty and doubt-resistance of the cogito marks an
Archimedean turning point in the meditator's inquiry. Descartes builds on
its impressiveness to help clarify further epistemic theses. The present
Section considers two such theses about our epistemically privileged
perceptions. First, that clarity and distinctness are, jointly, the mark of
our epistemically best perceptions (notwithstanding that such perception
remains defeasible). Second, that judgments about one's own mind are
epistemically privileged compared with those about bodies.
5.1 Our
Epistemic Best: Clear and Distinct Perception and its Defeasibility
The
opening four paragraphs of the Third Meditation are pivotal. Descartes uses
them to codify the phenomenal marks of our epistemically best perceptions,
while clarifying also that even this impressive epistemic ground falls short
of the goal of indefeasible Knowledge. This sobering realization is what
leads to Descartes' infamous efforts to refute the Evil Genius Doubt, by
proving a non-deceiving God.
The
first and second paragraphs portray the meditator attempting to build on the
success of the cogito by identifying a general principle of certainty: “I am
certain that I am a thinking thing. Do I not therefore also know what is
required for my being certain about anything?” (AT 7:35). What are the
phenomenal marks of this impressive perception—what is it like to have
perception that good? Descartes' descriptive answer: “In this first item of
knowledge there is simply a clear and distinct perception of what I am
asserting” (ibid.).
The
third and fourth paragraphs help clarify (among other things) what Descartes
takes to be epistemically impressive about clear and distinct perception,
though absent from external sense perception. The third paragraph has the
meditator observing:
Yet I
previously accepted as wholly certain and evident many things which I
afterwards realized were doubtful. What were these? The earth, sky, stars,
and everything else that I apprehended with the senses. But what was it
about them that I perceived clearly? Just that the ideas, or thoughts, of
such things appeared before my mind. Yet even now I am not denying that
these ideas occur within me. But there was something else which I used to
assert, and which through habitual belief I thought I perceived clearly,
although I did not in fact do so. This was that there were things outside me
which were the sources of my ideas and which resembled them in all respects.
Here was my mistake; or at any rate, if my judgement was true, it was not
thanks to the strength of my perception. (Med. 3, AT 7:35)
The
very next paragraph (the fourth) draws the contrast, emphasizing the
impressive certainty of clear and distinct perception. As earlier noted
(Section 1.1), the certainty of interest to Descartes is psychological in
character, though not merely psychological. Not only does occurrent clear
and distinct perception resist doubt, it provides a kind of cognitive
illumination. Both of these epistemic virtues—its doubt-resistance, and its
luminance—are noted in the fourth paragraph:
[Regarding] those matters which I think I see utterly clearly with my mind's
eye … when I turn to the things themselves which I think I perceive very
clearly, I am so convinced by them that I spontaneously declare: let whoever
can do so deceive me, he will never bring it about that I am nothing, so
long as I continue to think I am something; or make it true at some future
time that I have never existed, since it is now true that I exist; or bring
it about that two and three added together are more or less than five, or
anything of this kind in which I see a manifest contradiction. (Med. 3, AT
7:36)
The
contrast drawn in the third and fourth paragraphs gets at a theme that
Descartes thinks crucial to his broader project: namely, that there is “a
big difference”—an introspectible difference—between external sense
perception, and perception that is genuinely clear and distinct. The
external senses result in, at best, “a spontaneous impulse” to believe
something, an impulse we're able to resist. In contrast, occurrent clear and
distinct perception is utterly irresistible: “Whatever is revealed to me by
the natural light—for example that from the fact that I am doubting it
follows that I exist, and so on—cannot in any way be open to doubt.” (Med.
3, AT 7:38) As Descartes repeatedly conveys: “my nature is such that so long
as I perceive something very clearly and distinctly I cannot but believe it
to be true” (Med. 5, AT 7:69; cf. 3:64, 7:36, 7:65, 8a:9).
Because
of the epistemic impressiveness of clarity and distinctness (notably, as
exhibited in the cogito), the meditator concludes that it will issue as the
mark of truth, if anything will. He tentatively formulates the following
candidate for a truth criterion: “I now seem [videor] to be able to lay it
down as a general rule that whatever I perceive very clearly and distinctly
is true” (Med. 3, AT 7:35). I shall call this general principle the ‘C&D
Rule’. The announcement of the candidate criterion is carefully tinged with
caution (videor), as the C&D Rule has yet to be subjected to hyperbolic
doubt. Should it turn out that clarity and distinctness—as ground—is
shakable, then, there would remain some doubt about the general veracity of
clear and distinct perception: in that case, the mere fact that a matter was
clearly and distinctly perceived “would not be enough to make me certain of
the truth of the matter” (ibid.). This cautionary note anticipates the
sobering realization of the fourth paragraph, that, for all its
impressiveness, even clear and distinct perception is in some sense
defeasible.
In what
sense defeasible? Recall that the Evil Genius Doubt is, fundamentally, a
doubt about our cognitive natures. Maybe my mind was made flawed, such that
I go wrong even when my perception is clear and distinct. As the meditator
conveys in the fourth paragraph, my creator might have “given me a nature
such that I was deceived even in matters which seemed most evident,” with
the consequence that “I go wrong even in those matters which I think I see
utterly clearly with my mind's eye” (AT 7:36). The result is a kind of
epistemic schizophrenia:
Moments
of epistemic optimism: While I am directly attending to a
proposition—perceiving it clearly and distinctly—I enjoy an irresistible
cognitive luminance and my assent is compelled.
Moments
of epistemic pessimism: When I am no longer directly attending—no longer
perceiving it clearly and distinctly—I can entertain the sceptical
hypothesis that the irresistible cognitive luminance is epistemically
worthless, being simply a trick played on me by an evil genius.
The
doubt is thus indirect, in the sense that these moments of epistemic
pessimism arise when I am no longer directly attending to the propositions
in question. This indirect operation of hyperbolic doubt is conveyed not
only in the fourth paragraph, but in numerous other texts, including the
following:
Admittedly my nature is such that so long as I perceive something very
clearly and distinctly I cannot but believe it to be true. But my nature is
also such that I cannot fix my mental vision continually on the same thing,
so as to keep perceiving it clearly; and often the memory of a previously
made judgement may come back, when I am no longer attending to the arguments
which led me to make it. And so other arguments can now occur to me which
might easily undermine my opinion, if I were unaware of God; and I should
thus never have true and certain knowledge about anything, but only shifting
and changeable opinions. For example, when I consider the nature of a
triangle, it appears most evident to me, steeped as I am in the principles
of geometry, that its three angles are equal to two right angles; and so
long as I attend to the proof, I cannot but believe this to be true. But as
soon as I turn my mind's eye away from the proof, then in spite of still
remembering that I perceived it very clearly, I can easily fall into doubt
about its truth, if I am unaware of God.For 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. (Med.5, AT 7:69-70; cf. AT 3:64-65;
AT 8a:9-10).
Granted, this indirect doubt is exceedingly hyperbolic. Even so, it means
that we lack fully indefeasible Knowledge. Descartes thus closes the fourth
paragraph as follows:
And
since I have no cause to think that there is a deceiving God, and I do not
yet even know for sure whether there is a God at all, any reason for doubt
which depends simply on this supposition is a very slight and, so to speak,
metaphysical one. But in order to remove even this slight reason for doubt,
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. (Med. 3, AT
7:36)
(Note:
The leading role played by the cogito in this four paragraph passage is
easily overlooked. Not only is it the exemplar of judging clearly and
distinctly (paragraph two), it is listed among the propositions (paragraph
four) that are compellingly certain while attended to, though undermined
when we no longer thus attend.)
What
next? How are we to make epistemic progress if even our epistemic best is
subject to hyperbolic doubt? This juncture of the Third Meditation (the end
of the fourth paragraph) marks the beginning point of Descartes' notorious
efforts to refute the Evil Genius Doubt. The efforts involve an attempt to
establish that we are the creatures not of an evil genius, but an
all-perfect creator who would not allow us to be deceived about what we
clearly and distinctly perceive. Before turning our attention (in Section
6), to these efforts let's digress somewhat to consider a Cartesian doctrine
that has received much attention in its subsequent history.
5.2 The
Epistemic Privilege of Judgments About the Mind
Descartes holds that judgments about one's own mind are epistemically better
off than judgments about bodies. In our natural, pre-reflective condition,
however, we're apt to confuse the sensory images of bodies with the external
things themselves, a confusion leading us to think our judgments about
bodies are epistemically impressive.The confusion is clearly expressed
(Descartes would say) in G. E. Moore's famous claim to knowledge—“Here is a
hand”—along with his more general defense of common sense:
I
begin, then, with my list of truisms, every one of which (in my own opinion)
I know, with certainty, to be true. … There exists at present a living human
body, which is my body. This body was born at a certain time in the past,
and has existed continuously ever since … But the earth had existed also for
many years before my body was born … (1962, 32-33)
In
contrast, Descartes writes:
[I]f I
judge that the earth exists from the fact that I touch it or see it, this
very fact undoubtedly gives even greater support for the judgement that my
mind exists. For it may perhaps be the case that I judge that I am touching
the earth even though the earth does not exist at all; but it cannot be
that, when I make this judgement, my mind which is making the judgement does
not exist. (Prin. 1:11, AT 8a:8-9)
Methodical doubt is intended to help us appreciate the folly of the
commonsensical position—helping us to recognize that the perception of our
own minds is “not simply prior to and more certain … but also more evident”
than that of our own bodies (Prin. 1:11, AT 8a:8). “Disagreement on this
point,” writes Descartes, comes from “those who have not done their
philosophizing in an orderly way”; from those who, while properly
acknowledging the “certainty of their own existence,” mistakenly “take
‘themselves’ to mean only their bodies”—failing to “realize that they should
have taken ‘themselves’ in this context to mean their minds alone” (Prin.
1:12, AT 8a:9).
In
epistemological treatments Descartes underwrites the
mind-better-known-than-body doctrine with methodic doubt. Other reasons
motivate him as well. The doctrine is closely allied with his commitment to
a representational theory of sense perception. On his view of sense
perception, our sense organs and nerves serve as literal mediating links in
the perceptual chain: they stand between (both spatially and causally)
external things themselves, and the brain events that occasion our
perceptual awareness (cf. Prin. 4:196). In veridical sensation, the
immediate objects of sensory awareness are not states of our sense organs
and nerves—much less are they external things themselves. Rather, the
immediate objects of awareness—whether in veridical sensation, or dreams—are
the mind's ideas. Descartes thinks that the fact of physiological mediation
helps explain delusional ideas:
[I]t is
the soul which sees, and not the eye; and it does not see directly, but only
by means of the brain. That is why madmen and those who are asleep often
see, or think they see, various objects which are nevertheless not before
their eyes: namely, certain vapours disturb their brain and arrange those of
its parts normally engaged in vision exactly as they would be if these
objects were present. (Optics, AT 6:141; cf. Med. 6., AT 7:85ff; Passions
26)
Various
passages of the Meditations lay important groundwork for this theory of
perception. For instance, one of the messages of the wax passage is that
sensory awareness does not reach to external things themselves:
We say
that we see the wax itself, if it is there before us, not that we judge it
to be there from its colour or shape; and this might lead me to conclude
without more ado that knowledge of the wax comes from what the eye sees, and
not from the scrutiny of the mind alone. But then if I look out of the
window and see men crossing the square, as I just happen to have done, I
normally say that I see the men themselves, just as I say that I see the
wax.Yet do I see any more than hats and coats which could conceal
automatons? I judge that they are men. (Med. 2, AT 7:32)
Descartes thinks we're apt to be “tricked by ordinary ways of talking”
(ibid.). In colloquial contexts we don't say it seems there are men outside
the window; we say we see them. But that this is our ordinary way of talking
does not help clarify the metaphysical nature of perception. These ordinary
ways of talking do suggest something about our ordinary ways of judging,
namely that judgments about external things are not the result of complex,
conscious inference, as if: “Well, I appear to be awake, and the window pane
looks clean, and there's plenty of light outside, and so on, and I thus
conclude that I am seeing men outside the window.” But again, from facts
about our ordinary ways of judgment formation it does not follow that we
directly perceive external things themselves. (To suppose otherwise is to
conflate epistemic directness and perceptual directness.) When all is
considered carefully, Descartes thinks we should conclude that our
perception does not, strictly speaking, extend beyond the mind's own ideas.
This is an important basis of the mind-better-known-than-body doctrine. In
the concluding paragraph of the Second Meditation, Descartes writes:
I see
that without any effort I have now finally got back to where I wanted. I now
know that even bodies are not strictly perceived by the senses or the
faculty of imagination but by the intellect alone, and that this perception
derives not from their being touched or seen but from their being
understood; and in view of this I know plainly that I can achieve an easier
and more evident perception of my own mind than of anything else. (Med. 2,
AT 7:34)
It is
generally overlooked that the mind-better-known-than-body doctrine is
intended as a comparative rather than a superlative thesis. For Descartes,
the only superlative perceptual state is that of clarity and distinctness:
only it is correctly characterized as our epistemic best. While holding that
introspective judgments are privileged, Descartes regards them as
nonetheless subject to error. Even introspective perception—e.g., our
awareness of occurrent pains and other sensations—must be rendered clear and
distinct to be counted among our epistemic best. Such matters are clearly
and distinctly perceivable, writes Descartes,
…provided we take great care in our judgements concerning them to include no
more than what is strictly contained in our perception—no more than that of
which we have inner awareness. But this is a very difficult rule to observe,
at least with regard to sensations. (Prin. 1:66, AT 8a:32; cf. Prin. 1:68)
Elsewhere, Descartes writes that we do “frequently make mistakes, even in
our judgements concerning pain” (Prin. 1:67). These mistakes arise because
“people commonly confuse this perception [of pain] with an obscure judgement
they make concerning the nature of something which they think exists in the
painful spot and which they suppose to resemble the sensation of pain”
(Prin.1:46, AT 8a:22). For Descartes, the key to infallibility is not simply
that the mind's attention is on its ideas, but that it renders its ideas
clear and distinct.
But how
could I be mistaken in judging, say, that I seem to see a speckled hen with
two speckles? Some philosophers hold that such judgments are infallible.
Descartes holds, to the contrary, that we can be mistaken—quite simply, by
thinking confusedly. To help appreciate his view, notice that our question
is the same, in kind, as asking whether I might be mistaken in judging that
I seem to see a speckled hen with two hundred forty seven speckles. Of
course I might be confused in that case. (Indeed, it is plausible to hold
that only in confusion could my thought seem like that.) Yet there is no
relevant difference that would explain why the one judgment is infallible
(not merely correct), while the other is fallible. For Descartes, both are
fallible; the relevant consideration distinguishing their susceptibility to
error is that the two-speckled case is so much easier to render clear and
distinct. But though simpler ideas are generally easier to make clear and
distinct, simplicity is not a requirement: “A concept is not any more
distinct because we include less in it; its distinctness simply depends on
our carefully distinguishing what we do include in it from everything else”
(Prin. 1:63, AT 8a:31; cf. Prin. 1:45).
Though
Descartes is quite clear as to the fallibility of introspective judgments,
people widely attribute to him a variety of related doctrines that he
rejects. Compare the doctrines of the infallibility of the mental—roughly,
the doctrine that sincere introspective judgments are always true; the
indubitability of the mental—roughly, that sincere introspective judgments
are indefeasible; and omniscience with respect to the mental—roughly, that
one has Knowledge of every true proposition about one's own present contents
of consciousness. (There is some variation in the way these doctrines are
formulated in the literature.) Consider two key texts often cited by those
who attribute such doctrines to Descartes:
I
certainly seem to see, to hear, and to be warmed. This cannot be false; what
is called “having a sensory perception” is strictly just this, and in this
restricted sense of the term it is simply thinking. (Med. 2, AT 7:29)
Now as
far as ideas are concerned, provided they are considered solely in
themselves and I do not refer them to anything else, they cannot strictly
speaking be false; for whether it is a goat or a chimera that I am
imagining, it is just as true that I imagine the former as the latter. As
for the will and the emotions, here too one need not worry about falsity;
for even if the things which I may desire are wicked or even non-existent,
that does not make it any less true that I desire them. Thus the only
remaining thoughts where I must be on my guard against making a mistake are
judgements. (Med. 3, AT 7:37)
On
close inspection, these texts make no claim about the possibility of
introspective judgment error, because these texts are not about formed
judgments. In these passages Descartes is isolating the components of
judgment. His two-faculty theory of judgment requires an interaction between
the perceptions of the intellect and the will's assent (a theory elaborated
in the Fourth Meditation). A sine qua non of judgment error is that there be
an act of judgment, but acts of judgment require both a perceptual act and a
volitional act. Descartes' claim that mere seemings “cannot strictly
speaking be false” is therefore innocuous: for in isolating the mere
seeming, he isolates the perceptual from the volitional. My merely seeming
to see a speckled hen with two speckles could not, per se, involve judgment
error, because it does not involve judgment.
Further
reading: On discussions of truth criteria in the 16th and 17th centuries,
see Popkin (1979). On Descartes' doctrine of ideas, see Chappell (1986),
Hoffman (1996), Jolley (1990), and Nelson (1997). On the defeasibility of
clear and distinct perception (including the cogito), see Newman and Nelson
(1999). On contemporary treatments of infallibility, indubitability, and
omniscience, see Alston (1989) and Audi (1993).
6.
Cartesian Circle
In
Section 5.1, we left off with the fourth paragraph of the Third Meditation.
That passage makes clear that the Evil Genius Doubt undermines even clear
and distinct perception. In his Principles treatment, Descartes summarizes
the broader problem:
The
mind, then, knowing itself, but still in doubt about all other things, looks
around in all directions in order to extend its knowledge [cognitionem]
further. … Next, it finds certain common notions from which it constructs
various proofs; and, for as long as it attends to them, it is completely
convinced of their truth. … But it cannot attend to them all the time; and
subsequently, when it happens that it remembers a conclusion without
attending to the sequence which enables it to be demonstrated, recalling
that it is still ignorant as to whether it may have been created with the
kind of nature that makes it go wrong even in matters which appear most
evident, the mind sees that it has just cause to doubt such conclusions, and
that the possession of certain knowledge [scientiam] will not be possible
until it has come to know the author of its being. (Prin. 1.13, AT 8a:9-10)
How can
we overcome this lingering hyperbolic doubt? At the close of the fourth
paragraph of the Third Meditation, Descartes lays out an ambitious plan: “in
order to remove even this slight reason for doubt, as soon as the
opportunity arises I must examine whether there is a God, and, if there is,
whether he can be a deceiver” (Med. 3, AT 7:36).
The
broader argument that unfolds has seemed to many readers to be viciously
circular—the so-called Cartesian Circle. Descartes first argues from clearly
and distinctly perceived premises to the conclusion that a non-deceiving God
exists; he then argues from the premise that a non-deceiving God exists to
the conclusion that what is clearly and distinctly perceived is true. The
worry is that he presupposes the C&D Rule in the effort to prove the C&D
Rule. In what follows, I first clarify the key steps in the broader argument
for the divine guarantee of the C&D Rule. I then turn to the Cartesian
Circle.
6.1
Establishing the Divine Guarantee of the C&D Rule
Descartes' broader argument unfolds in two main steps. The first step is to
argue for the conclusion that an all-perfect God exists—a case he makes in
the Third Meditation. (The Fifth Meditation advances a further such
argument.) Though there is much of interest to say about his case for an
all-perfect God, it will not be considered here, in the interests of space,
and of focusing on epistemological issues.
The
second main step is to argue from the premise (now established) that an
all-perfect God exists, to the general veracity of the C&D Rule—the
conclusion that whatever is clearly and distinctly perceived is true. As
Descartes tells us: “In the Fourth Meditation it is proved that everything
that we clearly and distinctly perceive is true” (Synopsis, AT 7:15). It is
this second main step of the broader argument that I want to develop here.
It is
tempting to suppose that the second main step is unneeded. For is not the
C&D Rule a straightforward consequence of there being an all-perfect God?
This is too fast. It is by no means obvious why only the C&D Rule would be a
straightforward consequence, but not also a more general infallibility of
all our judgments. Essentially this point is made in the First Meditation,
immediately upon introducing the sceptical hypothesis that a supremely
powerful but deceitful creator “made me the kind of creature that I am”: the
meditator notices that this sceptical hypothesis is at odds with the
standard view of the creator, as being not only supremely powerful but
“supremely good,” adding:
But if
it were inconsistent with his goodness to have created me such that I am
deceived all the time, it would seem equally foreign to his goodness to
allow me to be deceived even occasionally; yet this last assertion cannot be
made. (Med. 1, AT 7:21)
In
short, the most obvious upshot of an all-perfect creator would seem to be
the following perfectly general rule for truth: If I form a judgment, then
it is true. But quite clearly, this rule for truth doesn't hold. The implied
reasoning makes this a special case of the tradition problem of evil—applied
here to judgment error:
There
is judgment error.
Judgment error is incompatible with the hypothesis that I am the creature of
a non-deceiving God.
Therefore, I am not the creature of a non-deceiving God.
This
First Meditation passage helps set the stage for the further inquiry that
will ensue. It anticipates Descartes' Fourth Meditation plans to offer a
theodicy for error. Indeed, the Fourth Meditation opens by revisiting the
problem, but this time having just proven that an all-perfect God exists—a
scenario generating cognitive dissonance:
To
begin with, I recognize that it is impossible that God should ever deceive
me. … I know by experience that there is in me a faculty of judgement which,
like everything else which is in me, I certainly received from God. And
since God does not wish to deceive me, he surely did not give me the kind of
faculty which would ever enable me to go wrong while using it correctly.
There
would be no further doubt on this issue were it not that what I have just
said appears to imply that I am incapable of ever going wrong. For if
everything that is in me comes from God, and he did not endow me with a
faculty for making mistakes, it appears that I can never go wrong. (Med. 4,
AT 7:53-54)
In an
effort to resolve the cognitive dissonance, the meditator begins an
investigation into the causes of error—an inquiry that eventually results in
a theodicy. It is in the course of developing the theodicy that Descartes
makes his case for the infallibility of the C&D Rule—in effect, arguing that
God is compatible with some error, but not with error flowing from clear and
distinct judgments.
In the
course of the discussion Descartes puts forward his theory of judgment,
whereby judgment arises from the cooperation of the intellect and the will.
The investigation concludes that the cause of error is an improper use of
the will: error arises when the will gives assent to propositions of which
the intellect lacks clear and distinct understanding. It is therefore within
our power to avoid error:
[If] I
simply refrain from making a judgement in cases where I do not perceive the
truth with sufficient clarity and distinctness, then it is clear that I am
behaving correctly and avoiding error. But if in such cases I either affirm
or deny, then I am not using my free will correctly. (Med. 4, AT 7:59-60)
The
theodicy that emerges is a version of the freewill defense. Accordingly, we
should thank God for giving us freewill, but the cost of having freewill is
the possibility of misusing it. Since judgment error results only when we
misuse our freewill, we should not blame God for these errors.
Not
only is the theodicy used to explain the kinds of error God can allow, it is
used to clarify the kinds of error God cannot allow. From the latter arises
a proof of the C&D Rule. God can allow errors that are my fault, though not
errors that would be God's fault. When my perception is clear and distinct,
giving assent is not a voluntary option—thus not explainable by the freewill
defense. In such cases, assent is a necessary consequence of my cognitive
nature: “our mind is of such a nature that it cannot help assenting to what
it clearly understands” (AT 3:64); “the nature of my mind is such that I
cannot but assent to these things, at least so long as I clearly perceive
them” (AT 7:65). Since, on occasions of clarity and distinctness, my assent
arises from the cognitive nature that God gave me, God would be blamable if
those judgments resulted in error. Therefore, they are not in error; indeed
they could not be. That an evil genius might have given me my cognitive
nature casts suspicion on these judgments. That an all-perfect God gave me
my nature guarantees that these judgments are true. A clever strategy of
argument thus unfolds—effectively inverting the usual reasoning in the
problem of evil:
There
is a non-deceiving God.
A
non-deceiving God is incompatible with the hypothesis that I am in error
about what I clearly and distinctly perceive.
Therefore, I am not in error about what I clearly and distinctly perceive.
The
first premise was argued in the Third Meditation. The second premise arises
out of the discussion of the Fourth Meditation. The result is a divine
guarantee of the C&D Rule.
By the
end of the Fourth Meditation, important pieces of Descartes' broader
argument are in place. Whether further important pieces arise in the Fifth
Meditation is a matter of interpretive dispute. (Elsewhere, I argue that
significant contributions are made.) In any case, the Fifth Meditation comes
to a close with Descartes asserting that indefeasible Knowledge has finally
been achieved:
I have
perceived that God exists, and at the same time I have understood that
everything else depends on him, and that he is no deceiver; and I have drawn
the conclusion that everything which I clearly and distinctly perceive is of
necessity true. … what objections can now be raised? That the way I am made
makes me prone to frequent error? But I now know that I am incapable of
error in those cases where my understanding is transparently clear. … And
now it is possible for me to achieve full and certain knowledge of countless
matters, both concerning God himself and other things whose nature is
intellectual, and also concerning the whole of that corporeal nature which
is the subject-matter of pure mathematics. (Med. 5, AT 7:70-71)
6.2
Circularity and the Broader Argument
Students of philosophy can expect to be taught a longstanding interpretation
according to which Descartes' broader argument is viciously circular.
Despite its prima facie plausibility, commentators generally resist that
interpretation.
Consider first what every plausible interpretation must concede: that the
two main steps of the broader argument unfold in a manner suggestive of a
circle—I'll indeed refer to them as ‘arcs’. The Third Meditation arguments
for God define one arc:
Arc 1:
The conclusion that a non-deceiving God exists is derived from premises that
are clearly and distinctly perceived.
The
Fourth Meditation argument defines a second arc:
Arc 2:
The general veracity of propositions that are clearly and distinctly
perceived is derived from the conclusion that a non-deceiving God exists.
That
the broader argument unfolds in accord with these two steps is
uncontroversial. The question of interest concerns whether, strictly
speaking, these arcs form a circle. The statement of Arc 1 admits of
considerable ambiguity. How one resolves this ambiguity determines whether
vicious circularity is the result. Let's begin by clarifying what Arc 1
would have to mean to generate vicious circularity, and then consider the
two mains kinds of ways that commentators prefer instead to construe the
first arc.
Vicious
Circularity interpretation:
Arc 1:
The conclusion that a non-deceiving God exists is derived from premises that
are clearly and distinctly perceived—premises accepted because of the
general veracity of propositions that are clearly and distinctly perceived.
Arc 2:
The general veracity of propositions that are clearly and distinctly
perceived is derived from the conclusion that a non-deceiving God exists.
Thus
rendered, Descartes' broader argument is viciously circular. The italicized
segment of Arc 1 marks a revision to the original statement of it. Some such
revision is needed for the vicious circularity interpretation. Thus
interpreted, Descartes does at the outset of the Third Meditation proofs of
God presuppose the general veracity of clear and distinct perception. That
is, he starts by presupposing the C&D Rule; he then tries to demonstrate the
C&D Rule. Evidently, this way of reading Descartes' argument has pedagogical
appeal, for it is ubiquitously taught (outside of Descartes scholarship)
despite the absence of any textual merit. If there is one thing on which
there is general agreement in the secondary literature, it is that the texts
do not sustain this interpretation.
How
then should Arc 1 be understood? There are countless interpretations that
avoid vicious circularity, along with numerous schemes for cataloguing them.
For present purposes, I'll catalogue the various accounts according to two
main kinds of non-circular strategies that commentators attribute to
Descartes. (The secondary literature offers multiple variations of each
these two main kinds of interpretations, though I won't here explore these
variations.)
Unbounded Doubt interpretations:
Arc 1:
The conclusion that a non-deceiving God exists is derived from premises that
are clearly and distinctly perceived—premises that are accepted, despite
being defeasible, because our cognitive nature compels us to assent to
clearly and distinctly perceived propositions.
Arc 2:
The general veracity of propositions that are clearly and distinctly
perceived is derived from the conclusion that a non-deceiving God exists.
Again,
the italicized segment marks a revision to the original statement of Arc 1.
I call this an ‘Unbounded Doubt’ interpretation, because this kind of
interpretation is, in part, a consequence of construing hyperbolic doubt as
unbounded. The Evil Genius Doubt is unbounded in the sense that it
undermines all manner of judgments—even the cogito, even the premises of the
Third Meditation proofs of God. It is the unboundedness of hyperbolic doubt
that underwrites the No Atheistic Knowledge Thesis. But if doubt is
unbounded, then there is no circularity. For Arc 1 does not presuppose the
general veracity of the C&D Rule.
A
question immediately arises for such Unbounded Doubt interpretations. Given
that hyperbolic doubt is unbounded, why then are the arguments of God
accepted? Why does the meditator assent to them, given lingering hyperbolic
doubts? The answer arises from our earlier discussion of the schizophrenic
manner in which hyperbolic doubt operates (Section 5.1). Lingering
hyperbolic doubt can only take hold when we are no longer attending clearly
and distinctly to the propositions in question. While we thus attend, the
propositions are assent-compelling: “my nature is such that so long as I
perceive something very clearly and distinctly I cannot but believe it to be
true” (Med. 5, AT 7:69; cf. 3:64, 7:36, 7:65, 8a:9).
The
other main kind of interpretation avoids circularity in a different kind of
way. Let's consider that alternative.
Bounded
Doubt interpretations:
Arc 1:
The conclusion that a non-deceiving God exists is derived from premises that
are clearly and distinctly perceived—premises that are, however, taken from
a special class of protected truths, in that the general veracity of clear
and distinct perception remains in doubt.
Arc 2:
The general veracity of propositions that are clearly and distinctly
perceived is derived from the conclusion that a non-deceiving God exists.
Once
again, the italicized segment marks a revision to the original statement of
Arc 1. I call this an ‘Bounded Doubt’ interpretation, because this kind of
interpretation is, in part, a consequence of construing hyperbolic doubt as
bounded. The Evil Genius Doubt is bounded in the sense that its sceptical
potency does not extend to all judgments: a special class of propositions is
outside the bounds of doubt. Exemplary of this special class of propositions
are the cogito and, importantly, the premises of the Third Meditation proofs
of God. Propositions in this special class can be indefeasibly Known even by
atheists.
Not all
clearly and distinctly perceivable propositions are in the special class. In
order to extend indefeasible Knowledge to all such propositions, it is
necessary to establish the general veracity of the C&D Rule. Thus, the need
for Arc 2 in the broader project, and thus the lack of circularity.
Though
both Bounded Doubt and Unbounded Doubt interpretations avoid vicious
circularity, each must confront a host of further difficulties, both textual
and philosophical. Avoiding the charge of vicious circularity marks the
beginning of the interpreter's work, not the end. Charity minded
interpreters must confront hard questions arising from their positions
concerning the bounds of doubt. The Unbounded Doubt interpreter must explain
why, in the final analysis, Descartes thinks the Evil Genius Doubt
eventually loses it undermining potency. The Bounded Doubt interpreter must
explain why, in the first place, Descartes thinks the Evil Genius Doubt's
potency does not extend to propositions in the special class. Space does not
permit us to develop these further difficulties here.
The
present essay surely paints a more sympathetic picture of the Unbounded
Doubt strategy, for that strategy accords well with the more global
interpretive account that I have been portraying. Putting to the side my
interpretive preferences, it must be said that both kinds of interpretations
are developed very subtly and persuasively in the secondary literature.
Further
reading: For Descartes' response to the charges of circularity: see the
Fourth Replies. For texts concerning his final solution to hyperbolic doubt:
see Fifth Meditation; Second Replies; letter to Regius (24 May 1640). For a
treatment of the Fourth Meditation proof of the C&D Rule, see Newman (1999).
For examples of Unbounded Doubt interpretations, see Curley (1978 and 1993),
DeRose (1992), Loeb (1992), Newman and Nelson (1999), Sosa (1997a and
1997b), and Van Cleve (1979). For examples of Bounded Doubt interpretations,
see Broughton (2002), Doney (1955), Della Rocca (2005), Kenny (1968), Morris
(1973), Rickless (forthcoming), and Wilson (1978). For an anthology devoted
largely to the Cartesian Circle, see Doney (1987).
7.
Proving the Existence of the External Material World
The
opening line of the Sixth Meditation makes clear Descartes' principal
objective, in this final chapter of his work: “It remains for me to examine
whether material things exist” (AT 7:71). Establishing their existence is
not a straightforward matter of perceiving them, because “bodies are not
strictly perceived by the senses” (see Section 5.2 above). Descartes'
strategy has two main parts: first, he argues for the externality of the
causes of sensation; second, he argues for the materiality of these external
causes. From these two steps it follows that there exists an external
material world. Let's consider each phase of the argument.
7.1 The
Case for the Externality of the Causes of Sensation
Descartes builds on a familiar argument in the history of philosophy, an
appeal to the involuntariness of sensory ideas. The familiar argument is
articulated back in the Third Meditation. Speaking of his apparently
adventitious ideas (putative sensations), the meditator remarks:
I know
by experience that these ideas do not depend on my will, and hence that they
do not depend simply on me. Frequently I notice them even when I do not want
to: now, for example, I feel the heat whether I want to or not, and this is
why I think that this sensation or idea of heat comes to me from something
other than myself, namely the heat of the fire by which I am sitting. (Med.
3, AT 7:38)
At this
Third Meditation juncture, the meditator remains in doubt about the
existence of anything but himself—that is, himself insofar as he is a
thinking thing, a mind. The familiar, involuntariness argument amounts to
this:
Sensations come to me involuntarily (I'm unaware of causing them with my
will).
Therefore, sensations are caused by something external to me.
Therefore, there exists something external to my mind—an external world.
Though
some such involuntariness argument has convinced many philosophers, the
inference from 1 to 2 does not hold up to methodic doubt, as the meditator
explains:
Then
again, although these [apparently adventitious] ideas do not depend on my
will, it does not follow that they must come from things located outside me.
Just as the impulses which I was speaking of a moment ago seem opposed to my
will even though they are within me, so there may be some other faculty not
yet fully known to me, which produces these ideas without any assistance
from external things; this is, after all, just how I have always thought
ideas are produced in me when I am dreaming. (Med. 3, AT 7:39)
Methodic doubt raises the problem of the existence of the external world.
For all I Know, my “waking” experiences are produced by processes similar to
those producing my dreams. I cannot with certainty rule out the hypothesis
that my sensations are produced by a subconscious faculty of my mind, rather
than by external objects. For all I Know, there might not be an external
world. My inability to rule out this sceptical hypothesis explains why the
familiar involuntariness argument fails. For the inference from 1 to 2
presupposes exactly what is at issue—that involuntarily ideas are not caused
by a subconscious faculty of my mind.
Many
philosophers have assumed that we lack the epistemic resources to solve this
sceptical problem. For example, Hume writes:
By what
argument can it be proved, that the perceptions of the mind must be caused
by external objects … and could not arise either from the energy of the mind
itself … or from some other cause still more unknown to us? It is
acknowledged, that, in fact, many of these perceptions arise not from
anything external, as in dreams, madness, and other diseases. … It is a
question of fact, whether the perceptions of the senses be produced by
external objects … But here experience is, and must be entirely silent.
(Enquiry Sec. 12)
Interestingly, Descartes would agree that experiential resources cannot
solve the problem. By the Sixth Meditation, however, Descartes purports to
have the innate resources he needs to solve it—namely, the innate ideas of
mind and body. Among the metaphysical theses he develops is that mind and
body have wholly distinct essences: the essence of thinking substance is
pure thought; the essence of body is pure extension. In a remarkable
maneuver, Descartes invokes this distinction to refute the sceptical worry
that sensations are produced by a subconscious faculty of the mind: “nothing
can be in me, that is to say, in my mind, of which I am not aware,” and this
“follows from the fact that the soul is distinct from the body and that its
essence is to think” (1640 letter, AT 3:273). This result allows Descartes
to supplement the involuntariness argument, thereby strengthening the
inference from line 1 to line 2. For from the additional premise that
nothing can be in my mind of which I am unaware, it follows that if
sensation were being produced by activity in my mind, then I'd be aware of
that activity on the occasion of its operation. Since I'm not thus aware, it
follows that my sensations are produced by causes external to my mind. The
cause, remarks the meditator,
cannot
be in me, since clearly it presupposes no intellectual act [viz., no
volition] on my part, and the ideas in question are produced without my
cooperation and often even against my will. So the only alternative is that
it is in another substance distinct from me … (Med. 6, AT 7:79)
If
follows that there exists an external world that causes my sensation. It
remains to be shown that the external causes are material objects.
7.2.
The Case for the Materiality of the Causes of Sensation
On
Descartes' analysis, the possible options for the external cause of
sensation are three:
God
material/corporeal substance
some
other created substance
That
is, the cause is either an infinite substance (God), or finite substance;
and if finite, then either corporeal, or something else. Descartes
eliminates options (a) and (c) by appeal to God being no deceiver:
But
since God is not a deceiver, it is quite clear that he does not transmit the
ideas to me either directly from himself, or indirectly, via some creature …
For God has given me no faculty at all for recognizing any such source for
these ideas; on the contrary, he has given me a great propensity to believe
that they are produced by corporeal things. It follows that corporeal things
exist. (Med. 6, AT 7:79-80, italics added)
This is
a highly problematic passage. The “great propensity” here referred to is not
the irresistible compulsion of clear and distinct perception, and yet
Descartes is nonetheless invoking a divine guarantee. The moves Descartes is
here making raise difficult interpretive questions. According to the early
position of the Meditations, we're to withhold judgment except when our
perception is clear and distinct. Yet here, Descartes appears to think we're
licensed to form a judgment in a case where our perception is not clear and
distinct. Why does Descartes think this inference is licensed?
On one
kind of interpretation, Descartes relaxes his epistemic standards in the
Sixth Meditation. He no longer insists on indefeasible Knowledge, now
settling for probabilistic arguments. Though there are no decisive texts
indicating that this is Descartes' intent, the interpretation does find some
support. For instance, in the Synopsis Descartes writes of his Sixth
Meditation arguments:
The
great benefit of these arguments is not, in my view, that they prove what
they establish … The point is that in considering these arguments we come to
realize that they are not as solid or as transparent as the arguments which
lead us to knowledge of our own minds and of God … (AT 7:15-16)
The
remark can be read as a concession that the Sixth Meditation arguments are
weaker than the earlier arguments about minds and God. Of course, one need
not read the remark this way. And other texts are unfavorable to this
interpretation. For example, in the opening paragraphs of the Sixth
Meditation Descartes considers a probabilistic argument for the existence of
external bodies. Though he accepts it as an argument to the best
explanation, the argument is dismissed for the express reason that it
grounds “only a probability”—it does not provide the “basis for a necessary
inference that some body exists” (Med. 6, AT 7:73). This is a puzzling
dismissal, assuming Descartes has relaxed his standards to probable
inference.
On
another kind of interpretation, the troubling argument does not mark a
relaxing of epistemic standards. Instead, Descartes is extending the
implications of his discussion of theodicy in the Fourth Meditation. I
earlier argued (Section 6.1) that Descartes thinks he demonstrates the
divine guarantee of the C&D Rule by showing that an all-perfect God cannot
allow us to be in error about what we clearly and distinctly perceive.
Suppose Descartes holds that there are other cases in which an all-perfect
God cannot allow us to be in error; and suppose these other cases are
circumstances like those instanced in the highly problematic passage—namely,
the following circumstances: (i) I have a great propensity to believe, and
(ii) God provided me no faculty by which to correct a false such belief. The
upshot would be a proof similar in structure to the proof of the C&D Rule,
though one that argues to a more expansive conclusion:
There
is a non-deceiving God.
A
non-deceiving God cannot allow me to be in error in cases in which (i) I
have a great propensity to believe, and (ii) God provided me no faculty by
which to correct a false such belief.
Therefore, I am not in error in cases in which (i) I have a great propensity
to believe, and (ii) God provided me no faculty by which to correct a false
such belief.
The
conclusion of this argument presents a more expansive rule of truth than the
C&D Rule, in that it licenses more kinds of judgments. Assuming Descartes
could establish premise 2, he would be entitled to this more powerful rule,
and without having relaxed his standards of indefeasibility.
I
believe that Descartes holds that premise 2 follows from his Fourth
Meditation discussion. Prima facie, this may seem ad hoc. But I believe that
Descartes takes the Fourth Meditation discussion to clarify a more general
circumstance of error that an all-perfect God cannot allow, than merely the
circumstance of clear and distinct perception. In the relevant Sixth
Meditation passage Descartes adds that from “the very fact that God is not a
deceiver” there is a “consequent impossibility of there being any falsity in
my opinions which cannot be corrected by some other faculty supplied by God”
(Med. 6, AT 7:80). And elsewhere he writes that we would be “doing God an
injustice” if we implied “that God had endowed us with such an imperfect
nature that even the proper use of our powers of reasoning allowed us to go
wrong” (Prin. 4:43, AT 8a:99). Assuming this interpretation is correct (I
defend it elsewhere), Descartes' moves in the problematic passage are not ad
hoc. And as will emerge, Descartes looks again to call on this same more
expansive rule, in his effort to prove that he is not dreaming.
A final
observation. It is often unnoticed that the conclusion of Descartes'
argument for the existence of an external material world leaves significant
scepticism in place. Granting the success of the argument, there is an
external material world causing my sensations. But for all the argument
shows—for all the broader argument of the Meditations shows, up to this
point—I might be a mind that is linked to a brain in a vat, rather than to a
full human body. This isn't an oversight on Descartes' part. It's all he
thinks the argument can prove. For even at this late stage of the
Meditations, the meditator does not yet Know himself to be awake.
Further
reading: For a variation of the Sixth Meditation argument for the existence
of the external material world, see Descartes' Prin. 2.1. See also Friedman
(1997), Garber (1992), and Newman (1994). On the respects in which the Sixth
Meditation inference draws on Fourth Meditation work, see Newman (1999).
8.
Proving that One is Not Dreaming
By
design, the ambitious project of founding Knowledge unfolds all the while
the meditator is in doubt about being awake. This of course reinforces the
ongoing theme that Knowledge does not properly include judgments of external
sense. In the closing paragraph of the Meditations, Descartes revisits the
issue of dreaming. He claims to show how, in principle—even if not easily in
practice—it is possible to achieve Knowledge that one is awake.
A
casual reading of the passage might suggest that Descartes offers a
naturalistic solution to the problem (viz., a non-theistic solution), in the
form of a continuity test: since continuity with past experiences holds only
of waking but not dreaming, checking for the requisite continuity is the
test for ascertaining that one is awake. Remarks taken from the final
paragraph of the Sixth Meditation suggests this reading:
I now
notice that there is a vast difference between [being asleep and being
awake], in that dreams are never linked by memory with all the other actions
of life as waking experiences are. … But when I distinctly see where things
come from and where and when they come to me, and when I can connect my
perceptions of them with the whole of the rest of my life without a break,
then I am quite certain that when I encounter these things I am not asleep
but awake. (Med. 6, AT 7:89-90)
This
naturalist “solution” prompts two obvious criticisms, both raised by Hobbes
in the Third Objections. First, the solution runs contrary to Descartes' No
Atheistic Knowledge Thesis: since the continuity test does not invoke God,
it appears, as Hobbes notes, “that someone can know he is awake without
knowledge of the true God” (AT 7:196). (Evidently, Hobbes too interprets
Descartes as holding the No Atheist Knowledge Thesis.) Second, as Hobbes
adds, it seems one could dream the requisite continuity: one could “dream
that his dream fits in with his ideas of a long series of past events,” thus
undermining the credibility of the continuity test (AT 7:195).
Mirroring our discussion in Section 7.2, one kind of interpretation has it
that Descartes relaxes his epistemic standards in the Sixth Meditation. He's
aware that the naturalistic “solution” does not stand up to methodic doubt,
but he's not attempting to refute the Now Dream Doubt by establishing
indefeasible Knowledge. A problem for this interpretation is that it does
not square with Descartes' reply to Hobbes' first objection. Writes
Descartes: “an atheist can infer that he is awake on the basis of memory of
his past life” (via the continuity test), but “he cannot know that this
criterion is sufficient to give him the certainty that he is not mistaken,
if he does not know that he was created by a non-deceiving God” (Replies 3,
AT 7:196). Evidently, Descartes' “solution” is not supposed to be available
to the atheist. Taken at face value, this reply rules out that Descartes'
intended solution involves relaxed standards—indeed, it rules out any
naturalistic solution.
On
closer inspection, the Sixth Meditation passage does not put forward a
naturalistic solution, but a theistic solution. The argument there has the
meditator concluding that he is awake, in part, because “God is not a
deceiver” (AT 7:90). How does the argument go? Recall, in the proof of the
external material world, that Descartes invokes the following (divinely
guaranteed) truth rule, namely:
I am
not in error in cases in which (i) I have a great propensity to believe, and
(ii) God provided me no faculty by which to correct a false such belief.
I
suggest that in the dreaming passage Descartes is again invoking this rule.
The passage opens with the meditator observing the following:
I can
almost always make use of more than one sense to investigate the same thing;
and in addition, I can use both my memory, which connects present
experiences with preceding ones, and my intellect, which has by now examined
all the causes of error. Accordingly, I should not have any further fears
about the falsity of what my senses tell me every day; on the contrary, the
exaggerated doubts of the last few days should be dismissed as laughable.
This applies especially to … my inability to distinguish between being
asleep and being awake. (Med. 6, AT 7:89)
Referring to the worry that he's dreaming as exaggerated suggests that
condition (i) is met—that is, suggests that he has a great propensity to
believe that he is awake. As such, he needs only to establish condition
(ii), and he'll have a divine guarantee of being awake. Notice that an
important theme of this opening passage concerns the meditator's faculties
for correcting sensory error—suggesting condition (ii). In context,
Descartes' appeal to the continuity test can indeed be understood in
conjunction with condition (ii). The meditator remarks (speaking of
apparently waking experience):
[W]hen
I distinctly see where things come from and where and when they come to me,
and when I can connect my perceptions of them with the whole of the rest of
my life without a break, then I am quite certain that when I encounter these
things I am not asleep but awake. And I ought not to have even the slightest
doubt of their reality if, after calling upon all the senses as well as my
memory and my intellect in order to check them, I receive no conflicting
reports from any of these sources. For from the fact that God is not a
deceiver it follows that in cases like these I am completely free from
error. (Med. 6, AT 7:90; italics added)
Central
to the inference is the meditator's effort to check the correctness of his
belief, by means of his various faculties. The cases like these to which
Descartes refers look to be those where conditions (i) and (ii) are both
satisfied. Recall what Descartes writes in conjunction with the proof of the
external material world: from “the very fact that God is not a deceiver”
there is a “consequent impossibility of there being any falsity in my
opinions which cannot be corrected by some other faculty supplied by God”
(Med. 6, AT 7:80). On the reading that I am proposing, Descartes' theistic
solution to the dreaming problem turns out continuous with his argument for
the external material world.
What
about Hobbes' second objection—in effect, that one could dream both (i) and
(ii)? Descartes' response to the objection is somewhat ambiguous: “A dreamer
cannot really connect his dreams with the ideas of past events, though he
may dream that he does” (AT 7:196). No one denies the truism that the
dreamer cannot really connect his dream with his waking past, which is one
reading of this response. And the concession that the dreamer can
nonetheless “dream that he does” is, on the most obvious reading,
devastating to the broader account: for the account is supposed to entail,
as Descartes writes, that “from the fact that God is not a deceiver it
follows that in cases like these I am completely free from error.” So, if
the dreamer can dream conditions (i) and (ii), then the implication is that
God is a deceiver. If, therefore, the broader account is to be plausible,
Descartes needs it that the continuity test cannot be performed in a
dream—not with rigor, at any rate. What Descartes' concession must mean is
that it can mistakenly seem to a dreamer that he has rigorously applied the
continuity test, just as it can mistakenly seem to a perceiver who's wide
awake that her perception is clear and distinct. Perhaps, then, in saying
that the “dreamer cannot really connect his dreams with the ideas of past
events,” Descartes means that the dreamer cannot rigorously perform the
continuity test, no matter how hard he tries. By analogy, it is plausible
for Descartes to hold that a drunken perceiver cannot really render her
ideas clear and distinct, no matter how hard she tries.
Whatever is the correct interpretation, Descartes is cognizant of the
impractical nature of proving that one is awake. In the closing lines of the
Meditations, he thus writes:
But
since the pressure of things to be done does not always allow us to stop and
make such a meticulous check, it must be admitted that in this human life we
are often liable to make mistakes about particular things, and we must
acknowledge the weakness of our nature. (Med. 6, AT 7:90)
Chapter 24 Life in the Changing Urban Society
Name:
__________________________ Date: _____________
6. |
illegitimacy explosion |
16. |
What were the major problems facing nineteenth century European
cities? How and with what degree of success were these problems
addressed? |
17. |
One of the most fundamental changes in the second half of the
nineteenth century in Europe was the decline in birthrates. Explain
some of the reasons for this decline and discuss its consequences. |
18. |
Marx had predicted in 1848 that European society would be
increasingly polarized into two classes: bourgeoisie and
proletariat. What was the reality of the European social structure
in the second half of the nineteenth century? |
19. |
The place for women in the latter half of the nineteenth century
seemed to be the home. Why? What other options did European women
have? How did economic considerations affect women's career
decisions? |
20. |
How did European states' intervention in the daily lives of ordinary
people increase during the nineteenth century? Can you connect this
intervention with trends in European thought? |
21. |
Family life in the second half of the nineteenth century was
profoundly different from that of preindustrial Europe. Describe the
changes¾including
attitudes toward sexuality, illegitimacy, kinship ties, parenting,
and standards of living¾along
class lines. In what ways does Stephan Zweig's The World of
Yesterday, excerpted in “Listening to the Past,” illuminate
attitudes toward sexual morality and gender? How does the history of
the family in the nineteenth century exemplify the gap between
elites and common people? |
22. |
Much of the change in urban life in the 1800s was the result of
scientific advances. What were the contributions of science to the
improved urban environment and the economic and social structure of
Europe? |
23. |
The second half of the nineteenth century has been called the Golden
Age of Science. How was this reflected in the literature and
philosophy of the time? |
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read any info you want-
look over basic information
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Take your time understanding it.
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click on 1945-1959
and read/scan
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click on history again;
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scan through other topics
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|