Descartes' Failure

Descartes' Failure

In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes strives first and foremost to provide an infallibly justified foundation for the empirical sciences, and second to prove the existence of God. I will focus on the first and second meditations in my attempt to show that, in his skepticism of the sources of knowledge, he fails to follow the rules he has set out in the Discourse on Method. First I claim that Descartes fails to draw the distinction between pure sensation and inference, which make up what he calls sensation, and then consider the consequences of this failure to follow his method. Second, I will show that in his treatment of thinking Descartes fails to distinguish between active and passive thinking.

Although he succeeds in showing that he is aware of thinking (and therefore at least a passive thinker), from which it follows that he exists, it is possible that Descartes[1] is no more than a passive thinker. I claim that Descartes successfully shows that he exists, that “there is thinking going on,” and that thereby “there exists a thinking thing,” but Descartes’ ‘thinking’ may only be a passive awareness of thinking; he may be separate from the active thinker required by the fact that there is thinking-going-on.[2] I will argue that if this is the case, then Descartes doesn’t have free will. Without free will, Descartes can no longer prove the existence of God. As the foundation upon which he re-establishes his knowledge of the world depends on free will then, if my claim is true, Descartes does not succeed in finding a solid foundation for empirical knowledge, nor does he succeed in his secondary goal of proving the existence of God.

I. Pure Sensation and Inference

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...ur being active thinkers can be doubted,

but only from a third person perspective, for doubting, itself presupposes active

thinking. I have chosen to be charitable to Descartes, and allow him those acts,

such as doubting, that could legitimately be performed from a third person

perspective, so as to avoid undermining his entire account.

[21] Descartes Selected Philosophical Writings Meditations on First Philosophy, p93

[22] ibid. p92

[23] Putnam, p7

[24] This sounds a lot like Berkeley’s suggestion that objects in the physical world

continue to exist although we are not perceiving them because they are being

perceived by God.

[25] I will not discuss this claim further here, due to the length of this paper.

[26] Descartes Selected Philosophical Writings Meditations on First Philosophy, p79

[27] ibid. p80