Common sense, direction
Reading Descartes’ ‘The Search for Truth by means of the Natural Light’ Part VI.
Last time, we were left at the point when Eudoxus had convinced Polyander that as much as he can doubt everything, he cannot doubt his doubt.
However, Polyander does not recognize the significance of this. And maybe you are the same. I can doubt everything, but I cannot doubt that I am doubting. So what? Is this supposed to be philosophy?
Polyander: “What do you want to infer from this? I do not see how this universal amazement can be of any use, nor do I see how this sort of doubt can be a principle which gets us very far. For you arranged this conversation with quite the opposite end in view - to free us from our doubts and make clear to us truths which we should know and which even Epistemon, for all his learning, might not know.”
Descartes’ claim —I can doubt everything, but am therefore certain of the fact that I am doubting— seems so self-evident, that it is totally insignificant. There is nothing special here, there is nothing to be learned from this. It seems like the most banal and insignificant statement of fact.
Now, Eudoxus will try to convince Polyander that it is indeed of value, and that much is to be learned from this simple doubt.
Eudoxus: “Just give me your attention and I shall conduct you further than you think. For from this universal doubt, as from a fixed and immovable point, I propose to derive the knowledge of God, of yourself, and of everything in the universe.”
Eudoxus continues by saying that because you cannot deny that you are doubting, it is also true that you who are doubting exist. Eudoxus is keeping his promise, and from the simple fact of doubt, he has inferred another certainty: that I exist.
Polyander: “I quite agree with you on that point, because if I did not exist, I would not be able to doubt.”
Eudoxus: “You exist, therefore, and you know that you exist, and you know this just because you are doubting.”
Polyander: “All of this is quite true.”
It is clear that Polyander is not impressed at all. I doubt, I exist. But so what? What sort of boring truths are this? I come to you to learn about God, the universe and the soul, and all you have to tell me is that I can doubt and that I exist?
This is the reaction of the layman Polyander upon hearing the essence of Descartes’ philosophy. But is it only the layman’s reaction? Or is it also yours? And is it maybe also the reaction of most philosophers when they are confronted with Descartes? In the history of interpretation of Descartes, our philosopher has often been seen as representative of the most horrible simplicity of thought, the most banal facts sold as the truths of the universe.
Descartes was well aware that his philosophy would be badly received, that philosophers would perceive it as banal, simplistic, and insignificant. And this is why he has Polyander talk in this way. It is as if Descartes is laughing at us; you think my philosophy is simple, stupid even? Well, thereby you only show yourself to be like the unlearned simpleton Polyander. Think harder, and it won’t appear as insignificant to you.
Eudoxus continues: “Let us proceed gradually, and as I said, you will find that you are making greater progress than you think. Let us go through the argument again. You exist, and you know that you exist, and you know this because you know that you are doubting. But what are you - you who have doubts about everything but cannot doubt that you yourself exist?”
Polyander answers: “I am a man.”
Wrong answer, says Eudoxus: “You are not paying attention to my question, and the reply you give me, however simple it may seem to you, would plunge you into very difficult and complicated problems, were I to press you even a little.”
Why? Eudoxus imagines asking Epistemon what a man is, whereby the latter would give “the stock reply of the scholastics, that a man is a ‘rational animal’”. Things would get difficult here, for in order to have this definition be certain, we would have to answer two new questions: ‘what is an animal?’, and ‘what is rational?’ And if for example to answer what an animal is, Epistemon would have to say: ’a living and sentient being’. But then here, we would again have to ask what a ‘living being is’, what being itself is, and what sentience means. “the questions, like the branches of a family tree, would rapidly increase and multiply”, says Eudoxus.
This answer, ‘I am a man’. It is not a clear and certain answer at all, but only an invitation to ask an infinite amount of other questions.
You see, Descartes wants to do away with all previous scholastic ways of answering the question after the essence of man. For all these definitions, that man is a ‘rational animal’, a ‘composite of soul and body’, and so on, they confuse more than they elucidate. None of these definitions give us the truth about man. Rather, they are words hiding an infinity of other questions.
Epistemon hops into the conversation, protesting, claiming that the scholastic way of thinking is indeed valid, and that Eudoxus should be ashamed for going against it.
Eudoxus replies in a familiar way: “I have never had any intention of condemning the method of explanation ordinarily employed in the Schools, nor shall I ever wish to. For it is to that method that I owe the little I know, and my use of it has helped me to recognize the uncertainty of all the things I have learned there. So, even if my teachers taught me nothing that was certain, I owe them my thanks none the less, since it was due to their instruction that I came to realize this. Indeed, the fact that everything they taught me was quite doubtful gives me greater reason now to be thankful than would have been the case had their teaching been in closer accord with reason.”
This Scholastic way of thinking, where definitions are sought by referring to a conceptual tree of genera and species, Descartes is thankful for having learned about it. For it learned him that a different way of thinking should be sought.
Polyander now tries again in giving a reply to the question: ‘what are you - you who have doubts about everything but cannot doubt that you yourself exist?’ This time around, he agrees that his previous answer was vague, and that it invites a myriad of new questions. He says: “When, in reply to your question, I said that I was a man, I was not actually thinking of all the scholastic entities which I knew nothing about and had never heard of, and which, so far as I am concerned, subsist only in the imagination of those who have invented them. I was thinking, rather, about the things we see, touch, perceive with our senses, and experience within ourselves - in a word, about things which even the most simple-minded of men know just as well as the greatest philosopher in the world. Undoubtedly I am a certain whole made up of two arms, two legs, one head, and all the other parts which make up what we call the human body, and which besides is nourished, walks, perceives by the senses, and thinks.”
Again, Polyander makes the same mistake. The entire problem with the scholastic reply was that it went away from the certainty of doubt, and towards the doubtful new questions brought in by the ‘answer’. I doubt, of this I am certain. And I am also certain that I am, because I am doubting. For now, this is all that we know for certain. Everything else; the world, the senses, and so on, this is uncertain for now. If we were then to ask, what is this thing that I am? And we want the reply to be as certain as the certainty of our doubt, but I were to say ‘I am a rational animal.’ Well, this is wrong, for we would need to know what ‘rational’ is, and what ‘animal’ is, and so on. But, we only know for certain that we are doubting and that we exist, that is all we know. We know nothing about animals, bodies, rational faculties, and so on. This is the entire problem. It is a way of answering that carries us away from the certainty of doubt, and into the confusion of terms. Now, Polyander answers that he is certain that he is a “whole made up of two arms, two legs, one head, and all the other parts which make up what we call the human body, and which besides is nourished, walks, perceives by the senses, and thinks.”
And again, he has made the same mistake. For all these things he lists, aren’t these things that we have already marked as uncertain, when we first started with the method of doubt? I doubt, and I know that I exist because I know that I doubt. But that this ‘I’ has arms, legs, and so on, that it is nourished, how can I know this? I know nothing about this, for one because many of these things are known through the senses, the senses which we have already doubted. Remember Eudoxus’ words: “How can you be certain that your life is not a continuous dream, and that everything you think you learn through your senses is not false now, just as much as when you are asleep?”
We should always remind ourselves of the radical nature of Descartes’ doubt. The body, ‘the brain’, all of this is uncertain. All of this is doubted. For now, I know nothing, except for the fact that I doubt, and that I exist, because I am doubting.
Eudoxus tells Polyander that he saw immediately from his answer that he had not understood the question, “and that you answered more questions than I had asked.” The question is merely, given that you are certain of nothing, except for the fact that you are doubting and that you exist, what are you? And Polyander starts mentioning his arms, legs, the fact that he walks, his senses, and so on. While all of these things belong to the domain of that which has already been put into doubt. Eudoxus says: “Tell me, then, what you are, strictly speaking, in so far as you are doubting.”
Universal doubt, is truly universal.
Polyander now seems to understand, as he admits that insofar as he is doubting, he knows that he exits, but he does not (yet) know with any certainty if what “I call my body” exists.
Eudoxus now wants Polyander to complete the reasoning for himself:
“All I need do, I see, is to leave you to get on with the job on your own, after taking care to set you on your course. Provided we have proper direction, all we need for discovering the truth on the most difficult issues is, I think, common sense, to give it its ordinary name. Since, as I had hoped, you have a decent supply of that, I am simply going to point out to you the way you should take in the future. Just keep going and, relying on your own resources, draw the conclusions which follow from that first principle.”
In this passage, we learn a lot about Descartes. He believes that everyone, provided they have good sense, can discover those things most worth knowing. But only if they have proper direction. This is very important, and characteristic of Descartes’ view.
In the Discourse on the Method, we read:
“Good sense is the best distributed thing in the world: for everyone thinks himself so well endowed with it that even those who are the hardest to please in everything else do not usually desire more of it than they possess. In this it is unlikely that everyone is mistaken. It indicates rather that the power of judging well and of distinguishing the true from the false - which is what we properly call ‘good sense’ or ‘reason’ - is naturally equal in all men, and consequently that the diversity of our opinions does not arise because some of us are more reasonable than others but solely because we direct our thoughts along different paths and do not attend to the same things. For it is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to apply it well.”
(Discourse on the Method, I, 2)
Everyone is gifted with good sense, the power of judging well and of distinguishing the true from the false, yet most people hold the most stupid of opinions. How can this be? Descartes’ answer: method, direction. We are all gifted with the natural light of reason, the problem is that we fail to apply it well. We seek out the most insignificant facts, we apply our reason to the most non-sensical areas of study, and we let ourselves become infected by the most obscure literature. We are educated in the wrong way, and we fail to train ourselves in the correct way. The environment we grew up in hasn’t given us any direction, and we have failed to give proper direction to ourselves.
This will determine the entirety of Descartes’ problematic, this idea of method or direction. The problem is not that we ‘know’ too little, that we have not yet gathered all the facts. The problem is that we are directing our mind in the wrong way, we are not following the right method. In other words, how we think will determine what we think. And this is perhaps one of the most important contributions of Descartes to philosophy. This intense focus on this problem of method. A ‘turn’ happens here with Descartes, where philosophy becomes obsessed with method and direction. And you can easily see how today’s obsession with ‘scientific method’, flows out of these Cartesian concerns. Method precedes knowledge. How we think, is of much more importance than what we think. For how we think, determines what we will think.
It is senseless to seek out the truth without a method, without rules to follow, without first setting out the right direction to take. You can spend all your life reading all the books, gathering knowledge about all the facts that this world has to offer, and you can still end up in ignorance concerning those things most worth knowing. It is not enough to just think, you have to think clearly, with the right method, with the right direction.
And now here, in The Search for Truth, after having given Polyander the method of universal doubt, the method of following only that which is certain by grace of the natural light of reason, Eudoxus lets Polyander go his own way. For once Polyander has been set on the right path, given the right direction, his common sense will be able to find out all that he needs to know.
Polyander speaks:
“This single piece of advice [the advice to follow only universal doubt] has flooded my mind with light and all at once scattered the darkness; so much so that by the light of this torch I see more sharply within myself that which is hidden within me, and I am more convinced that I possess something non-tangible than I ever was that I possessed a body.”
Epistemon now speaks again. He mentions that he interprets Polyander’s enthusiasm as nothing more than the vain burst of joy of those who first discover philosophy, who first become acquainted with philosophical questioning, and think they have discovered the secrets of the universe. But, in the end, all that Polyander has done is doubted a few things. And he doesn’t see how Polyander will be able to turn this doubt into truth. And perhaps, Epistemon says, he is just like the ancient Sceptics: “unable to free themselves from the doubts which they themselves introduced into philosophy, they have put their efforts exclusively into learning to doubt. So, with all due respect to Polyander, I doubt whether he himself can derive anything better from it.”
Now, Polyander’s search for truth resumes, as Eudoxus reminds him once again of his task: “All you need do is to separate from yourself and reject everything which you clearly see does not belong to you, and admit only what necessarily belongs to you - so necessarily that you are as certain and convinced of it as you are of your existing and doubting.”
We are searching for ‘what we are’, and this, must be so certain as the certainty that we have of our doubting and existing.
Polyander starts to think.
He said before that he was a whole put together with arms, legs, a head, that he perceives by the senses, and so on. But, none of these things can be said with certainty. For now, we are in the realm of universal doubt, which encompassed the putting into doubt of everything that pertains to the body. I can doubt my body, and I am only certain of this doubt, not of the body. Because I am certain of my doubt, I am also certain of the fact that I exist. Because for me to doubt, it is necessary that I exist. Now, this thing that is doubting, this ‘existence’, this can not be what I call my body. And therefore, it also true that I can’t say with any certainty whether I can perceive by way of the senses. Because eyes are needed for seeing, ears for hearing, and so on. The body is required for me to sense. But I am not certain if I have a body. And thus, it is even more doubtful whether or not I perceive by way of the senses. Polyander ads: “Furthermore, in the past I have thought while dreaming that I perceived by the senses many things which I did not really perceive.” And thus, for all these reasons, I cannot say that I am a body, and I cannot say that I am a sentient being. “For it is possible in the way just described that I believe I am perceiving by the senses, even though I have no senses.”
Eudoxus interrupts, not to correct Polyander, but to encourage him and make him consider “what good sense can achieve if given proper direction.” One need only think honestly with the natural light that one is given, and provided one has direction, the truth will follow. Eudoxus now says something quite interesting:
“All these points have been stated and worked out not by means of logic, or a rule or pattern of argument, but simply by the light of reason and good sense.”
All these deductions, from universal doubt to the certainty of our existence, these are not logical deductions. They are merely the products of the natural light of reason, combined with good sense. Descartes does not have the ambition to make a logical deduction of our existence, out of the method of doubt. This is quite interesting. What Descartes seeks is not a deduction of the truth on the basis of logical rules, rather he seeks a direct intuition of the truth. This is the point. The certainty of doubt, and of our existence, these things are not logically deduced from rules outside of ourselves, but intuitively grasped by the intellect itself. Eudoxus continues:
“When this light operates on its own, it is less liable to go wrong than when it anxiously strives to follow the numerous different rules, the inventions of human ingenuity and idleness, which serve more to corrupt it than render it more perfect.”
The idea is not so much that the natural light of the mind needs rules outside of itself to function properly. Rather, the idea is that the mind needs to be left alone. All these rules, patterns of argument and so on, they are more likely to corrupt the intellect than to strengthen it. The intellect does not have to be chained by rules, it has to be set free.
The intellect has to be disciplined, of course, as Descartes’ endorsement of method shows. But this disciplining of the intellect, it is a self-discipline —the intellect has to stay with itself, and not get distracted by what is foreign to itself, by what is created by it, such as the rules of logic. The intellect has to be disciplined to learn how to think by itself.
Now, Polyander breaks through to an answer. What are you —you who have doubts about everything but cannot doubt that you yourself exist?
Polyander: “Of all the attributes I once claimed as my own there is only one left worth examining, and that is thought. I find that it alone is such that I cannot detach it from myself. For if it is true that I am doubting (I cannot doubt that), it is equally true that I am thinking, for what is doubting if not thinking in a certain kind of way? Indeed, if I did not think at all, I could not know whether I doubted or even existed. But I exist, and I know what I am, and I know these facts because I am doubting, i.e. because I am thinking. It could even happen that, if I were to cease thinking for a moment, I would also completely cease to exist. So the one thing which I cannot separate from myself, and which I know for certain that I am, and which I can now assert with certainty without fear of being mistaken, that one thing, I say, is that I am a thinking thing.”
We have arrived:
I doubt, I exist. And because it is doubt that proves to me that I exist, I exist as a thinking thing, because doubt is a certain kind of thinking.
For Descartes, doubt is only a mode of thought. But what is thought? In his Principles of Philosophy, he tells us very clearly. He says that with the term ‘thought’, he signifies “everything which we are aware of as happening within us, in so far as we have awareness of it.”(Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, §9) Thought, for Descartes, is something like awareness, or ‘consciousness’, in contemporary parlance. Somewhere else, he says about thought: “I use this term to include everything that is within us in such a way that we are immediately aware of it. Thus all the operations of the will, the intellect, the imagination and the senses are thoughts.”(Descartes, Replies to the Objections to the Meditations, 160)
In so far as we have immediate awareness of something, we are thinking it. But, thought does not so much refer to the objects outside of us of which we might be aware. I can will a certain action. In this case, my will pertains to the action. But my thought, my awareness, pertains to my will. I can doubt whether my body really exists. In this case, my doubt pertains to my body. But my thought pertains to my doubt. I can understand a certain logical proof. Here, my understanding pertains to the proof, but my thought pertains to my understanding. And the mark of certainty lies not with willing, doubting, understanding, and so on, it lies in our immediate awareness of these things —in thought. Interestingly, in his list of modes of thought, Descartes mentions ‘the senses.’ But had we not seen that these can be doubted? Yes, but it depends on what we mean. I can sense a tree through my touch, and I can doubt whether there really is a tree, and whether I really have fingers that are touching the tree. But the mere fact that I am sensing at this very moment in which I believe I am sensing, this I cannot doubt. Again, the sensing pertains to the object we sense, but thought pertains to the sensing itself. And thought itself is absolutely certain. Descartes explains:
“If I say ‘I am seeing, or I am walking, therefore I exist’, and take this as applying to vision or walking as bodily activities, then the conclusion is not absolutely certain. This is because, as often happens during sleep, it is possible for me to think I am seeing or walking, thought my eyes are closed and I am not moving about; such thoughts might even be possible if I had no body at all. But if I take ‘seeing’ or ‘walking’ to apply to the actual sense or awareness of seeing or walking, then the conclusion is quite certain, since it relates to the mind, which alone has the sensation or thought that it is seeing or walking.” (Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, §9)
I can doubt whether or not I am walking or seeing, but I cannot doubt that I have awareness of the fact that I am walking or seeing.
Feeling, understanding, willing, imagination, doubting, etc., all of these are different modes of thought, different modes of awareness. Different ways of thinking, or, different ways of being aware. And what these things inform us about —the things we understand, feel, will, imagine, doubt, and so on— the reality of these things is not certain. But that I am aware of understanding, feeling, willing, imagining, doubting, and so on, this is absolutely certain. For I can doubt everything, but I cannot doubt that I am doubting, and therefore I exist. And because it is doubt that proves to me that I exist, I exist as a thinking thing, because doubt is a certain kind of thinking.
I think, I am. I am a thinking thing.