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Circularity and Consistency in Descartes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Donald F. Dreisbach
Donald F. Dreisbach*
Affiliation:
Northern Michigan University
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Extract

The problem of the Cartesian Circle has been with us ever since the publication of the Meditations. This is quite remarkable, since the error of circularity which Descartes is accused of having committed is not a subtle one but is, if there is such an error, a gigantic blunder which is not difficult to discover, which was pointed out to Descartes shortly after the Meditations appeared, and which completely undermines Descartes’ primary project, the establishment of sure and certain knowledge. It is incredible that Descartes, a slow and careful thinker with considerable philosophical talent, could have made such an obvious and egregious error. It is much more plausible that there really is no circularity in Descartes’ argument, and that the charges of circularity grow out of a misunderstanding of Descartes’ intention or of the way in which his argument progresses.

The incredible, of course, is possible, and I am not proposing that the question of the circle be resolved merely by dismissing it, nor am I suggesting that the text be ignored in order to force consistency onto Descartes’ thought.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , March 1978 , pp. 59 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1978

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References

1 HR, I, 149. All such references are to The Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans. Haldane, E. S. and Ross, G. R. T. two vols. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1967).Google Scholar

2 HR, I, 150.

3 HR, I, 149.

4 HR, I, 158.

5 HR, I, 158.

6 HR, I, 158-59.

7 HR, I, 147.

8 HR, I, 160.

9 Med. III, HR, I, 165.

10 Med. III, HR, I, 162.

11 Med. III, HR, I, 166.

12 Med. III, HR, I, 165.

13 This argument is not really sufficient for Descartes’ purpose as it leads only to an uncaused being, not a perfect and undeceiving one. Descartes calls it an explanation of the first proof rather than a separate proof. Reply to Obj. I, HR, II, 12.

14 Med. III, HR, I, 171.

15 Principle X, HR, I, 222.

16 Principle XLIX, HR, I, 238-39.

17 For a further discussion of “common notions” and the relation in Descartes' thought of the common notions to the natural light, see Morris, John “Cartesian Certainty,” Australasian journal of Philosophy 47 (1969), pp. 161-68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A different treatment of this subject is given by Schouls, Peter A. “Descartes and the Autonomy of Reason,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 10 (1972), pp. 307-22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Schouls argues that Descartes’ doubt is directed at deduction but not intuition, and that the foundations of thought such as the common notions are known by intuition. Although SchouIs reaches the same conclusion that I do, that there is no circle in Descartes’ treatment of reason, I think his approach must be rejected because: (i) most of his textural evidence is drawn from the Rules, a work which Descartes neither completed nor published, and it is not clear to what extent the problems of the Rules are also the problems of the Meditations; (ii) Descartes never explicitly says in the Meditations that his doubt is directed at deduction but not intuition; and (iii) the object of intuition, Descartes claims, must be simple. Any movement of the mind is a form of deduction. But the foundation of the God argument, that there must be as much reality in the cause as in the effect, appears to be complex, involving the concepts of cause, effect, and their relation. And although the act of counting the sides of a square may be a form of deduction and thus subject to doubt, four-sidedness would, I think, be a part of one's intuition of a square, and this intuition would serve as a means of determining whether one had gone through the process of counting the sides correctly.

18 The concept of a natural light is traced back to Aquinas, and Descartes’ use of that concept is treated at length in Morris, John “Descartes’ Natural light,“ journal of the History of Philosophy 11 (1973), pp. 169-87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Principle L, HR, I, 239.

20 Reply to Obj. II, HR, II, 35.

21 Reply to Obj. II, HR, II, 42.

22 HR, II, 127.

23 Med. I, HR, I, 148.

24 HR, I, 103-4.

25 HR, I, 158.

26 Med. III, HR, I, 160.

27 Med. V, HR, I, 180.

28 Reply to Obj. V, HR, II, 226-27. Unfortunately, in the Principles (Principle XLIX, HR, I, 238-39) Descartes calls the common notions “eternal truths “ which makes it sound like they too are created extra-mental realities, and so require the divine guarantee. But he also there says that they have their “seat in our mind,” which would make them different from God's own eternal truths.

29 Reply to Obj. VI, HR, II, 251. Descartes first expresses his understanding of mathematical truths as eternal, created truths in two letters to Mersenne of 1630. Kenney, Anthony ed., Descartes: Philosophical Letters (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 11, 13.Google Scholar However, the doctrine that the eternal truths are created is not mentioned in the Meditations proper, and is only rarely discussed in any of his writings, doubtless because of the theological problems raised by positing eternal realities other than God. Exactly what Descartes meant by “essence” is therefore somewhat obscure. See Émile Bréhier, “The Creation of the Eternal Truths in Descartes’ System,” in Descartes: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Doney, Wiilis (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967), pp. 192–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 Reply to Obj. V, HR, II, 211.

31 Med. II, HR, I, 153. But it is a member of the list given in the Rules, HR, I, 39.

32 Frankfurt, Harry G. “Memory and the Cartesian Circle”, The Philosophical Review 71 (1962), pp. 504-11,CrossRefGoogle Scholar also available as a Bobbs-Merrill reprint.

33 Ibid., p. 506.

34 Rule VII, HR, I, 19.

35 Adam and Tannery edition, V, 148, translated and quoted by Frankfurt, op. cit., p. 511.

36 Med. V, HR, I, 183-84. A similar statement appears in Principle XII, HR, I, 224.

37 Bréhier, “The Creation of the Eternal Truths in Descartes’ System,” pp. 200–201.

38 Obj. II, HR, II, 29; Obj. IV, HR, II, 92.

39 HR, II, 115.

40 HR, II, 38.

41 HR, I, 238-39.

42 One commentator has remarked that “this obscure passage has confused his [Descartes’] readers far more than it has enlightened them.” Rose, Lynn E. “The Cartesian Circle”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 26 (1965- 66), p. 88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Rose admits that her own interpretation appears somewhat strained. And for a quite different interpretation of this same passage, see Nakhnikian, George “The Cartesian Circle Revisited”, American Philosophical Quarterly 4 (1967), p. 253.Google Scholar

43 Vrooman, Jack Rochford Rene Descartes: A Biography (New York: Putnam, 1970), pp. 143–47Google Scholar.

44 Reply to Obj. I, HR, II, 19.

45 Hughes, Robert D. III argues in his “Descartes’ Ontological Argument as not Identical to the Causal Arguments,” The New Scholasticism 49 (1975), pp. 473-65CrossRefGoogle Scholar, that the argument of Meditation V differs from those of Meditation Ill in that its intent is not only to prove that God exists but that His existence is eternal. I am not completely convinced that the earlier arguments fail to demonstrate God's eternal existence. However, if Hughes is correct he has gone a long way toward explaining why Descartes thought an additional God proof was necessary.