Alan Gewirth’s The Cartesian Circle Reconsidered

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Recommended: Rene descartes first meditation analysis

In Alan Gewirth’s The Cartesian Circle Reconsidered, he expands on an argument he made in a previous paper in regards to a possible logical fallacy in Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy. This fallacy is called the Cartesian Circle in reference to Descartes apparently circular reasoning that he can have clear and distinct ideas because of God’s existence, but that the proof of God’s existence and is itself based on clear and distinct ideas. Gewirth’s response to critics of Descartes is that Descartes use different types of certainty to prove the existence and veracity of God compared to accuracy of clear and distinct ideas. The latter of these types of certainty, metaphysical certainty, is what he focuses on in The Cartesian Circle Reconsidered. Gewirth details three interpretations of why simple propositions are susceptible to metaphysical doubt: operational, conceptual, and ontological. His argument is that Descartes only means ontological doubt in the Meditations. However, while his arguments for this and against the conceptual interpretation are strong, his claim that the operational interpretation is weak is not as reasonable.
The operational interpretation claims that the potential doubt of simple propositions stems partly from a deception in the operation of memory on previous intuitions rather solely the intuitions themselves. Descartes himself says something to this effect this in meditation three,
“When I consider the nature of the triangle, it appears very clearly to me… that its three angles equal two right angles, and I cannot help believing this to be true as long as I attend to the proof; but as soon as I turn my mental gaze elsewhere, even though I may remember that I perceived it clearly, I can easily dou...

... middle of paper ...

...legitimate.
While Gewirth makes clear arguments for and against other interpretations, his argument against the operational interpretation is neither clear nor supported as strongly in the text as the others. Descartes specifically describes doubt of both intuitions and the memories of them that follow, and these are not necessarily as mutually exclusive as Gewirth would have his reader believe.

Works Cited
DESCARTES, René. "Descartes' Meditations and Associated Texts." Modern Philosophy: An Anthology of Primary Sources. Second ed. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2009. 35-68. Kindle AZW File.
GEWIRTH, Alan. “The Cartesian Circle Reconsidered.” The Journal of Philosophy 67:19 (1970): 668-685. Philosopher’s Index, EBSCOhost (accessed January 27, 2014). http://flagship.luc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=phl&AN=PHL1030595&site=ehost-live

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