III. Cartesian Dualism: Descartes

Question 1

What is Descarte’s goal in the Meditations?

Answer 1

Descartes wants to reconcile the apparently conflicting claims of science and religion:

• Permit science to be pursued without religious constraint, and defend it against other charges.
• Show that the claims of religion are not undermined by the findings of contemporary science of his time.

Question 2

What were the relevant fields of the “New Science” to which Descartes subscribed? (2)

Answer 2

1. New cosmology: The replacement of the ‘Aristotelian/Ptolemaic’ picture of the universe by the ‘Copernican’/’Galilean’ picture.
2. New physics: ‘Corpuscular’ philosophy–the idea that all observable phenomena could be accounted for in terms of
   (a) basic properties of material elements - ‘corpuscles’;
   (b) laws governing the behaviour of corpuscles, re movement and results of collisions.

Question 3

How did the “New Science” challenge the traditional claims of Christian religion? (2)

Answer 3

1. Earth is no longer at the centre of things, nor do we have a distinction between super-lunary and sub-lunary realms. Earth is just one more bit of matter in the overall scheme of things.
2. The place for God, ‘free will’, and the rational/immortal soul in the context of such a ‘clockwork’ universe is questionable.

Question 4

What were some of the skeptical challenges to science in Descartes’ time? (2)

Answer 4

1. Since science tells us that our sensesmisrepresentthe ways things are, and since science is based on the evidence of oursenses, doesn’t science undermine its own credibility?
2. Also questions about theassumptionsto which scientists often appealed, drawn from the purelyintellectualinquiries of theologians and philosophers - ‘scholastics’ here.

Question 5

What is the sketch of Descartes’ goals in the Meditations? (5)

Answer 5

1. To show that the scientific enterprise can be defended against its critics. It can be provided with firm and unquestionable intellectual foundations.
2. To see that the proper basis ofallknowledge, including scientific knowledge, is not sense-experience butreason, which must always regulate our tendency to rely on our senses alone. [Rationalism vs empiricism]
3. To show that reason, properly exercised, doesn’t support either skepticism about science or skepticism about religion.
4. To show that the defence of science and the defence of religion are inextricably intertwined, since the justification of science only goes through if we first justify our belief in the existence of the Christian God.
5. Central for our purposes, the reasoning, and more generally ‘thinking’, capacities whose proper exercise can furnish us with knowledge both in science and theology are capacities that depend upon our beingthinking thingsonly contingently associated with our physical bodies. i.e. They depend upon our being or having CM’s.

Question 6

Why does Descartes reject basing his philosophy on existing science? (3)

Answer 6

1. This would presuppose one of the things to be shown: the trustworthiness of existing science.
2. Existing science rested on appeals to questionable ‘philosophical assumptions’.
   *3. Pessimistic meta-induction: Science itself undergoes change, so why should present science be any more enduring than past science?
   (not Descartes’s own objection)

Question 7

Why does Descartes reject basing his philosophy on commonsense beliefs?

Answer 7

Such beliefs differ between societies and individuals.

Question 8

On what does Descartes model his philosophy? What does this consist of?

Answer 8

The geometrical or mathematical model:
Begin by establishing our foundations (axioms), and then explore what follows from those axioms (theorems).

Question 9

How does Descartes arrive at what he believes to be appropriate axioms, given that the axioms have to betrueand capable of grounding all of our knowledge?

Answer 9

• Descartes adopts methodological doubt: He operates on the principle that, if there is anyreasonable basisfor doubting whether something is true, it cannot be accepted as an axiom.
• The idea is that, if somethingwithstandsall attempts to rationally doubt it, it must be true.

Question 10

How is Descartes’ strategy at arriving at axioms similar to a game of solitaire?

Answer 10

1. Take all your existing beliefs as the ‘pack’ - see if any of them withstand all rational doubt, in which case they can be ‘laid down’ on the table.
2. Once certain ‘axioms’ have been isolated, go through the ‘pack’ again and see if any other beliefs cannowbe accepted as indubitable, given one’s axioms.

Question 11

How does assuming a deceiving evil genius prove to Descartes that he exists?

Answer 11

For Descartes to be deceived, he must exist in the first place.

Question 12

What does Descartes believe this ‘I’ is, the existence of which he has proven beyond the possibility of any reasonable doubt in positing an evil genius?

Answer 12

• ‘I’ isa thinking thing.
• All other elements in his ‘naive’ view of himself - in particular, his having a physical body and sense organs - can still be doubted. Therefore, they must be ‘logically independent’ of the existence of himself as a ‘thing that thinks’.

Question 13

How does Descartes formulate his argument for CMs in the Discourse on the Method?

Answer 13

P1: I can doubt whether anything physical exists.
P2: I cannot doubt whether I, as a thinking thing, exist.

C1: I, as a thinking thing, cannot be something physical.

C2:I, as a thinking thing, must be non-physical (a CM).

Question 14

What actually follows from Descartes’ argument for CMs in the Discourse on the Method?

Answer 14

I candoubtwhether I, as a thinking thing, am something physical.

Question 15

How does Descartes formulate his argument for CMs in “Meditation VI”?

Answer 15

P1: I can doubt whether anything physical exists.
P2: I cannot doubt whether I, as a thinking thing, exist (i.e. ifI exist, one of my properties must be that of thought).
Ca: So my entire essence consists solely in being a thinking thing:
a. My essential property isthinking.
b.. My body’s essential property isspatial extension.

Cb: So I can clearly and distinctly conceive myself existing without my body, and my body existing without thought.

[P3: If I can clearly and distinctly conceive of A and B–which exist together in the world–existing without each other, then God is able to create A and B as completely distinct entities.]

Cc: So I really am distinct from my body and can exist without it.

[C1: I, as a thinking thing, cannot be something physical.

C2: I, as a thinking thing, must be non-physical (a CM).]

Question 16

What is the problem with the argument for CMs in “Meditation VI”?

Answer 16

• It has the same problem as Swinburne’s argument does.
• All that follows, from reflections on what I can imagine about myself and conclusions about my ‘essence’, is that it is LP that I exist without my body but not LP that I exist without my capacity for thought.
• In other words, the claim “I can exist without my body” is a claim about what is conceivable for me as athinking thing, not a claim about what is possiblegiven my actual properties and capacities as aparticularthinking thing.

Question 17

What is the argument from our linguistic abilities?

Answer 17

P1:If something has the kinds of linguistic and intellectual abilities that humanspossess (L(h), I(h)), it must have a CM.

[ 1.a Some entities possess L(h) and I(h) and others do not.
1.b There is no relevantphysicaldifference between the entities that possess L(h), I(h), and those entities that do not possess L(h), I(h).
Ca: There must be anon-physicaldifference between these entities.
Cb: If something has L(h) and I(h), it must have anon-physicalcomponent, i.e. a CM.]

P2: We have L(h) and I(h).

C:We have CM’s.

Question 18

What characteristics of language does Descartes believe prove we have a CM?

Answer 18

• meremachineshaving the appearance of humans would not be able to:
  -use words or other signs in arelevantmanner (expression of thoughts- not merely to register the impact of current stimulation and emit appropriate words),

for purposes other than theexpression of passions (might be explained mechanically - as a sort of verbal “letting of steam”).

-perform passably well at completely novel tasks. A machine might execute various tasks it has been designed/programmed to execute.

Question 19

How does Descartes argue that what is required for these capacities must be something over and above such physical features?

Answer 19

a. Animal ‘language’ lacks the distinctive features of L(h).
b. Animals give no evidence of I(h), even though they may surpass us in particular tasks (e.g. finding their way home/migrating).
c. But animals resemble us in all relevant physical respects:Animals like parrots have speech organs, but lack L(h).
d. Conclude that they lackthoughts to expressin language, and that this is because theylack the relevantnon-physicalcomponent.

Question 20

How does Descartes respond to the idea that it is reasonable to assume that other animalsdohave thoughts like we do, but that, if they express those thoughts, we are unable to understand them?

Answer 20

P1:If animals think, they must have Immortal souls (CM’s).
P2:If any animals have CM’s, then surely all do.
P3: It is very implausible that some animals (e.g. oysters) have CM’s.
C1: So it is very implausible thatanyanimals have CM’s.
C2: So it is very implausible that any animals think.

Question 21

If the beliefs, desires, and reasoning processes to which we appeal in intentional explanation of humanbehaviourare states of a CM, how is the CM, qua non-physical entity, able to influence the behaviour of the human body, qua physical entity?

Answer 21

1. Descartes favours an interactionist solution to this problem via the ‘pineal gland.’
2. Alternative: denythat mental statescausephysical movement - rather, mental states aremerely caused byphysical processes (‘epiphenomenalism’), or are causally independent (‘two clocks’ theory).