Maarten Maartensz

Meditations On First Philosophy
in which the Existence of God and the
Distinction Between Mind and Body are Demonstrated. ⁹

Meditation VI
Of the Existence of Material Things,
and of the real distinction between the
Soul and Body of Man

Remarks by Maarten Maartensz

Note 1: So let's inquire whether material things exist.

Now first the inference from the objects of pure mathematics to real objects, say of a certain form and number, should be dubitable to Descartes, by my lights, since he has convinced himself that the propositions of mathematics are certain in a way propositions about real objects are not. And that this should appear clear and evident to him is no ground for believing it is true, as I explained several times.

Next, the proposition about God only holds if He exists as Descartes conceived him - which Descartes should be the first to doubt, since he insisted formerly so much on the weakness of his intellect.

Further, it seems to me that it is not the faculty of imagination that convinces Descartes of the existence of objects apart from him, for it is well-known that we can imagine what is not so. Hence it seems to me it is, rather, the faculty of judgment (whatever that is precisely), by which we come to conclude that what the imagination presents us with does or does not (probably) exist.

Finally, the definition of the faculty of imagination as " nothing but a certain application of the faculty of knowledge to the body which is immediately present to it, and which therefore exists. " seems false or misleading in several ways: it seems not a clear definition; it seems the body does not need to be not given with the imagination (e.g. in the same way as wherever there is a mountain there is a valley); and the existence of the body likewise does not follow. Back

Note 2: The first point is excellent, and shows that there are indeed both - as I call them - concepts or imaginative renderings of our ideas, and ideas, which may either not be capable of such imaginative rendering or not be capable of rendering as we know we should see (or hear etc.) if it really existed. Back

Note 3: But the second point, that is based on this first point, seems to me much mistaken. Even if it is true that we require some perceptible effort to have mental images, and we need no perceptible effort to use mental speech, this difference need not at all be " the difference which exists between imagination and pure intellection. ".

For that difference seems to be that the imagination presents us with mental images, mental sounds, mental smells and so on, including compositions of these which we know not to exist, like griphons and mermaids, while what Descartes calls "pure intellection" is simply either the mental talk that accompanies most of our imaginations, and may also be the only thing that is in our consciousness apart from sensations, or what this mental talk is about (such as chiliagons), or both.

As I said, what our mental talk is about, and indeed what our mental imagery is about, I call ideas, irrespective of whether these ideas in turn represent something real or not, while I call those ideas that we can render in our imagination concepts. (The distinction between ideas and concepts is not completely hard and fast. One reason is that we can render many abstract ideas that we cannot imagine properly nevertheless by some sort of diagram. An example of this is the use of dots to indicate "and so on to infinity" as in "1, 2, 3, 4, .....".)

Note 2b: Descartes next stressed remark in fact involves the assumption that what Descartes is, for himself, is an idea represented by his mental talk rather than an idea represented by his mental imagery. That is consistent with his "Cogito ergo sum" argument, which I found good reasons for to reject, but seems otherwise rather arbitrary, especially since mental talk in fact seems to depend on the sort of imagination we call (etymologically somewhat confusingly) auditory.

Hence it seems to me that if one could separate Descartes imagination from the rest of his thinking, there would be, for him, no perceptible thinking at all, since all of that seems to involve the imagination.

Note 2c: We get Descartes' intent in the fourth stressed remark, where he assigns the imagination to the body, reserving mental talk and the ideas it represents to the mind. As I just explained, this seems based on an improper distinction within the faculty of imagination, rather than on a proper distinction of the faculty of imagination from the faculty of thinking.

Note 2d: The last remark is especially interesting in that Descartes explicitly frames a merely probable judgment, a possibility which he should have raised much earlier and discussed much more clearly. Otherwise, the remark is commonsensical, since every human being knows that what he imagines may not be so.

Note 7:

Note 3a: The first stressed point is quite correct in stressing that the main reason why people do infer an independently existing real world is that their beliefs regularly turn out to be mistaken, while their sensations are not subject to their will (except that they can avert their eyes, plug their ears etc.).

Note 3b: The second stressed point is interesting in that Descartes explicitly says he was at one time convinced that " that I had no idea in my mind which had not formerly come to me through the senses ", which is an assumption empiricists put at the basis of their philosophy.

But the second point is also rather puzzling, because Descartes seems to mix up several senses of "I", and I see no logical reason why, if Descartes exists for himself only as an idea indicated by his mental talk, he should have any sort of proprietary feelings about emotions and sensations that cross his consciousness, since these seem to be, in that case, no more "his" than are the bodies and apparent feelings he infers from his sensations of others.

That is: On Descartes' principles it is difficult to explain how his mind and his body are related. To claim that they are somehow intimately related is of course easy, and Descartes does so - but a claim is not an explanation. Indeed, I see no reason on what logical grounds he could deny that, say, in actual metaphysical fact, God may have placed his soul on the moon and his body on earth.

The third stressed point indeed bears this out, as does what follows.

Note 4:

The first remark does not give good reasons to doubt the senses: That what is farther away seems smaller seems to be what one should expect, even from merely mathematical grounds (namely the rules of perspective), while the fact that there may be phantom pains in amputated limbs, rather than provide a ground for doubt that one's pains are about one's body, should support it, since the example shows clearly that when the body is damaged its signalling about its states may be also damaged.

The grounds for doubt indicated in the second remark we have met before. But let's consider them again.

First, dreams. Personally I almost never dream (or, as other people tell me, who are much more dogmatic about my own internal states than I am: I almost never wake up with a memory of what I have dreamt, if indeed I dreamt). Apart from that fact (which makes me less inclined to feel certain about dreams than Descartes), it seems to me that while everyone or nearly everyone knows what it is to wake up from a dream, hardly anyone has the experience of waking up from life. (And so it seems most people do know and admit that dreams do differ from waking experiences, in that, at least when recalled, dreams may be quite unlogical, implausible, impossible, or be an obvious patchwork composed from different memories.)

Also, the reason why one attributes an independent existence to certain things is not that one has experiences of them, but (1) because certain things persist in characteristics whatever one does, not only by one's own lights, but also, and controllably to a considerable extent, to other humans, animals, plants, and chemical reagents, for example and (2) because the hypothesis that things in one's experience continue in their actions when one turns away or closes one's eyes etc. makes it much easier to explain them than the hypothesis that things exist only in one's experience, and cease to exist when one ceases to experience them.

Second, (self-)deception. Descartes' solution is an invalid proof that God exists, on which he bases his argument that, furthermore, since his God is omnipotent and benevolent, He is no deceiver.

My solution is that:

(1) one has to make assumptions to infer anything
(2) one's assumptions may be mistaken and
(3) one's assumptions may be supported or undermined by evidence, in the way indicated by Bayes' Theorem in the calculus of probabilities.

Descartes' last remark courts dangers quite a few men have fallen prey to, who decided that their teachers or teachings were bound to be more right or more powerful than natural forces. Also, his last remark is fallacious or at least close to a fallacy, since one cannot conclude that something is or is not so, merely on the ground that one can suppose that there may be hitherto unknown grounds that make them (not) so. If that were correct argumentation, one could conclude anything one pleases, merely because it pleases one to imagine that there are hitherto unknown but perfectly valid reasons why one must be right.

Note 5:

About the first point it should be remarked that, even though Descartes framed his argument in terms of thinking, his argument goes through with any propositional attitude - and thus one may say with Augustine "if I am mistaken, at least I am", or, as I remarked earlier "if I dream I am, I am (perhaps a dream)". Hence there seems to be no good reason to grant Descartes has established he is a thinking being - he might have concluded instead from a similar argument that he is mistaken, hallucinating, or dreaming.

The second point depends on Descartes distinction between unextended and thinking on the one hand, and extended and unthinking on the other. Apart from other things that may be objected here, which I have objected already, it should be said that Descartes has not clarified the relation between his mental talk and the ideas represented by that talk - and it seems he cannot conclude "Cogito ergo sum" without some mental talk, and this is extended in time, at least.

last update: Jun 19 2003