Stages on a Cartesian Road to Immaterialism

Stages on a Cartesian Road to Immaterialism CHARLES J. McCRACKEN DESCARTES RAISED A DOUBT about the existence of the external world and proceeded to allay it by way of what Hume later called "a very unexpected circuit": God's veracity. But the doubt Descartes raised proved harder to dispel than he thought it would be. His earliest critics (those whose objections , along with Descartes' replies, were appended to the first edition of the Meditations) did not, it is true, much trouble themselves about his proof of a material world? Their attention was riveted elsewhere--on the ego existo, the proof of God's existence, the arguments for dualism, and so forth. Of the proof of a material world, they limited, themselves mainly to remarking that it is not evident that a perfect being might not on occasion deceive us, either to benefit us (as a parent may on occasion deceive a child for the child's own sake) or to punish us for our sins.' In time, however, a succession of thinkers who were deeply in Descartes' debt expressed mounting doubt about his proof of the external world. This doubt was at first of a moderate hue: Descartes, said several thinkers close to Cartesianism (Regius, Cordemoy, Malebranche), has indeed shown it probable that the material world exists, but only divine revelation makes it certain that it does. But gradually this doubt deepened: the Cartesian argument does little more than show the existence of matter possible, thought Lanion and Fardella; revelation is needed to assure us that it is actual. Pierre Bayle i While "external world" and "material world" were not alwaysused as precise synonymsby seventeenth-century writers ("external world" sometimes including both bodies and other minds), they were often used interchangeably, and I shall so use them in this paper. Philosophical Works of Descartes(hereafter cited as "Haldane-Ross'), trans. E. S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (New York, 1955), vol. 2, Objections II (27), Objections III (77-78) and Objections VI (~36). Regius, Leibniz, and Malebranche later made the same point. Cf. H. Regius,PhilosophiaNaturalis (Amsterdam, t654), 349; Leibniz,Animadversionesin ParteraGeneralem PrincipioruraCartesianorura,in PhilosophischeSchriften, edited by C. Gerhardt (Berlin, x88o), vol. 4:366-67 • For Malebranche, see note 33 below. [19] 20 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 24:1 JANUARY 198~ reproduced some of these thinkers' arguments in his Dictionary and addec others that he thought would force reason--did faith not stay its doubts---tq deny even the possibility of matter's existence. (In the sixth Meditation, Descarte had argued, first, that it is possible that matter exists; second, that it is probabl that it does; third, that it is certain that it does. In effect, Regius, Cordemoy, ant Malebranche accepted the first and second of these arguments but rejected thq third. Lanion and Fardella were confident only of the first and were sceptical o the second and third, and Bayle rejected all three.) Finally, Norris and Collierboth deeply influenced by Descartes and Malebranche--pushed this line o thought to the end it seemed to be tending to---Norris, by arguing that not evm divine revelation can make us completely certain that the material world exists and Collier, by actually denying that it doesexist. This paper traces these stage on the Cartesian road to immaterialism. Descartes had argued that--as God, on the one hand, "has given me n~ faculty" by which to discover that my sensations are not caused by extende¢ things, but on the other hand has given me "a very great inclination u believe that they are sent to me or that they are conveyed to me by corporea objects"wI must conclude that corporeal things exist, for otherwise Goc would deceive me.3 His argument here turned on two conditions neither o which was by itself sufficient to prove that matter exists, viz. (1) our stront natural inclination to believe that bodies cause our sensations, and (2) ou~ lack of a faculty that would reveal to us the falsity of that belief, were it false That Descartes supposed neither of these conditions sufficient by itself u prove that bodies exist is clear, for he granted that we are sometimes in dined by...