This article offers an interpretation of Descartes’s method of doubt. It wields an examination of Descartes’s pedagogy—as exemplified by The Search for Truth as well as the Meditations—to make the case for the sincerity (as opposed to artificiality) of the doubts engendered by the First Meditation. Descartes was vigilant about balancing the need to use his method of doubt to achieve absolute certainty with the need to compensate for the various foibles of his scholastic and unschooled readers. Nevertheless, Descartes endeavored (...) to instill willful, context-independent, universal doubt across his readership. If all goes well, readers of the Meditations are like method actors; the Meditator is the character they are meant to bring to life, via the method of meditating on reasons for doubt. The article concludes with the suggestion that Descartes was the same kind of skeptic as the early Academic skeptics Arcesilaus and Carneades. (shrink)

In the Fifth Meditation Descartes considers the problem of knowledge preservation : the challenge of accounting for the diachronic certainty of perfect knowledge [scientia]. There are two general solutions to PKP in the literature: the regeneration solution and the infallible memory solution. While both readings pick up on features of Descartes’ considered view, I argue that they ultimately fall short. Salvaging pieces from both readings and drawing from Descartes’ virtue theory, I argue on textual and systematic grounds for a dispositionalist (...) solution. On this view, the diachronic certainty of scientia is achieved through virtuous habits of belief. (shrink)

In the First Meditation, the Cartesian meditator temporarily concludes that he cannot know anything, because he cannot discriminate dreaming from waking while he is dreaming. To resist the meditator’s conclusion, one could deploy an asymmetry argument. Following Bernard Williams, one could argue that even if the meditator cannot discriminate dreaming from waking while dreaming, it does not follow that he cannot do it while awake. In general, asymmetry arguments seek to identify an asymmetry between a bad case that is entertained (...) as a ground for doubt and a good case in which one takes oneself to know something. My aim in this paper is to consider how effective asymmetry arguments are as an anti-skeptical strategy. I conclude that although asymmetry arguments provide an effective response to dreaming skepticism, they fail as a response to brains-in-a-vat skepticism. (shrink)

Znaczenie epistemiczne aktualnie jasnych i wyraźnych ujęć w epistemologii Kartezjusza W niniejszym artykule omawiam kwestię dotyczącą roli, jaką Kartezjusz wyznaczył w budowie gmachu wiedzy pewnej temu, co można określić mianem aktualnie jasnych i wyraźnych ujęć. Powyższa kwestia jest od dawna przedmiotem ożywionej dyskusji wśród komentatorów epistemologii Kartezjusza. W współczesnej literaturze historyczno-filozoficznej spotkać można dwie zasadnicze interpretacje na temat funkcji jaką pełnią w systemie Kartezjusza aktualnie jasne i wyraźne ujęcia. Pierwszą można nazwać interpretacją psychologiczną, drugą zaś normatywną. Ta ostatnia głosi, że (...) aktualnie jasne i wyraźne ujęcia są całkowicie odporne na wątpienie zanim jeszcze dowiedzie się istnienia Boga i ustali ogólną regułę prawdy. Z tego względu ich pewność nie ogranicza się u Kartezjusza jedynie do pewności psychologicznej, lecz ma charakter normatywny. Opowiadam się za interpretacją normatywną. Przemawiają za nią – moim zdaniem – liczne racje. Ale rodzi ona także pewne trudności. Dlatego po przedstawieniu argumentów przemawiających na jej rzecz i niewątpliwych zalet wynikających z jej przyjęcia, omawiam szczegółowo pewne trudności zarówno tekstowe, jak i merytoryczne, którym musi sprostać ta interpretacja, jeśli mamy ją utrzymać. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to address a specific issue underpinning Cartesian metaphysics since its first public appearance in the Discourse right up until the Meditations, but which definitely came to the surface in the Second and Fifth Replies. It involves the possibility that to be thinking and to be extended do not actually contrast as two entirely different properties; hence, these two essences cannot serve as the basis for a disjunctive, real distinction between two corresponding substances, the mind and (...) the body. I dub this problem the ‘thinking matter issue.’ I suggest that Descartes’s concerns about the ‘thinking matter issue’ characterizes and structures the entirety of Meditation Two and its connection with Meditation Six, especially in the attempt to covertly implement what I refer to as Descartes’s ‘prejudice strategy.’ The core of the ‘prejudice strategy’ lies in the idea that the ‘thinking matter issue’ is just a false problem, one raised by the inadequate notions of the mind and the body that we apply to this problem. In section 1, I set out the way in which the ‘thinking matter issue’ emerged in Descartes’s philosophy after the first exposition of his metaphysics in the Discourse. Section 2 deals with the new argumentative path Descartes draws for the Meditations and with the new role that he assigns to the inference about the mind’s non-physical nature after the cogito. In section 3, I contend that the ‘prejudice strategy’ structures Meditation Two and, partially, Six. Section 4 shows that Descartes himself reveals this in his Replies to the Second and the Fifth Set of Objections. In section 5, I delve into Descartes’s foundational theory of the ‘prejudice strategy,’ i.e. his theory of infancy as set out especially in the Replies to the Sixth Set of Objections. -/- . (shrink)

This version has been superseded by the one published in Spring, 2014.

Descartes is not widely recognized for his ethics; indeed, most readers are unaware that he had an ethics. However, Descartes placed great importance on his ethics, claiming that ethics is the highest branch of his philosophical system. I aim to understand the systematic relationship Descartes envisions between his ethics and the rest of his philosophy, particularly his metaphysics and epistemology. I defend three main theses. First, I argue against the recent trend in the literature that claims that the chief virtue (...) in Descartes’ ethics—generosity—is acquired in the Meditations. On this view, the presence of moral virtue in the Meditations shows that ethical practice is intertwined with metaphysics and epistemology. I argue that generosity cannot be acquired in the Meditations because acquiring generosity presupposes several metaphysical and physical truths that the meditator cannot access given her epistemic position. Thus, I maintain that metaphysics and epistemology is foundational to ethics. Second, I resolve the tension between Descartes’ description of distinct virtues, and his insistence that there is only a single virtue—the disposition to judge well. Drawing from his theory of conceptual distinction in his metaphysics, I argue that Descartes offers a unique account of the unity of the virtues. Although Descartes describes different virtues, he thinks that all of them are identical to each other because they are reducible to the disposition to judge well. Nonetheless, we can conceptually distinguish between the virtues because we can regard the disposition to judge well in different ways given the various applications it has in different types of moral situations. Third, I show that some of Descartes’ ethical concepts inform his epistemology. I draw from Descartes’ theory of virtue to address “the problem of knowledge preservation,” that is, how to render perfect knowledge— scientia—stable in light of the instability of clear and distinct perceptions. I argue that Descartes intends to preserve scientia by grounding items of scientia in virtuous habits of belief. These habits of belief are established through repeated engagement with cognitive routes to clear and distinct perceptions, and are ultimately grounded in memory. This reading has the advantage of explaining Descartes’ notoriously confusing remarks about memory in response to the Cartesian circle. (shrink)

Arnold Cusmariu ABSTRACT: The Cogito formulation in Discourse on Method attributes properties to one conceptual category that belong to another. Correcting the error ends up defeating Descartes’ response to skepticism. His own creation, the Evil Genius, is to blame. Download PDF.