Anthony Kenny and the Cartesian Circle

Notes and Discussions ANTHONY KENNY AND THE CARTESIAN CIRCLE In his recent book, Descartes, 1 Anthony Kenny takes a new look at the old question whether Descartes was guilty of arguing in a circle "in resolving his skeptical doubts by appeal to the veracity of God" (188). Prior to the appearance of Kenny's book, perhaps the best-known recent study of this question was Harry Frankfurt's "Descartes' Validation of Reason." 2 While Kenny seems to concede the validity of Frankfurt's thesis "that we can acquit Descartes if we regard his procedure as designed to show not that what is intuited is true, but that there can be no reasonable grounds for doubting it," Kenny thinks that "Frankfurt underestimates the extent of Descartes' concern with truth..." (190, 191). According to Kenny, "Descartes cannot . . . have meant to leave open the possibility that our intuitions are, absolutely speaking, false. The veracity of God suffices to ensure that they are absolutely true. It is not only sufficient, it is also necessary" (196). Nevertheless, Kenny thinks that "Descartes' epistemology . . . can be defended from circularity" (196-197). The purpose of this paper is to examine the validity of Kenny's arguments for this interesting conclusion. Kenny admits, of course, that Descartes did use a procedure that might easily be mistaken for one that is viciously circular: Since Descartes offers a proof that whatever is clearly and distinctly perceived is true, it looks as if he is trying to establish a major premise for the following pattern of argument. Whatever I clearly and distinctly perceive is true. I clearly and distinctly perceive that p. Therefore, it is true that p. Obviously, there would be circularity in using that pattern of argument to prove the truth of any proposition (e.g., that God is veracious) that is necessary in order to establish the major premise. (193-194) Kenny denies, however, that Descartes relied on such a pattern of argument when he passed "from the clear and distinct perception of something to the affirmation of its truth." The affirmation of the truth of a proposition p which is clearly and distinctly perceived, Kenny says, "is based directly on the intuition," and not on any process of reasoning. 1 Anthony Kenny, Descartes: ,4 Study o/ his Philosophy (New York: Random House. 1968). Page references in parentheses are to this book. 2 See Harry G. Frankfurt, "Descartes' Validation of Reason," American Philosophical Quarterly, 2 (April, 1965), 149-156. [491] 492 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 9 . . when . . . [Descartes] wonders to himself whether it is really the case that all his intuitions are true, he is not belatedly discovering an unproved assumption in an earlier piece of reasoning, because there was no earlier piece of reasoning9 (194) Moreover, Kenny contends: 9 Descartes does not offer the veracity of God as a ground for accepting the truth of an intuition . . . the simple intuition by itself provides both psychologically and logically the best grounds for accepting its truth. Thus there is no circle.... The truthl of particular intuitions is never called in question, only the universal trustworthiness of intuition, and in vindicating this universal trustworthiness only individual intuitions are utilized9 There is no single faculty, or single exercise of a faculty, that is vindicated by its own use. (194-195) Apparently in order to support his claim that Descartes never called in question the truth of particular intuitions, Kenny reminds us of an implicit distinction in Descartes' Meditations between two kinds of doubt. There is "first-order" doubt on the one hand, and "second-order," "metaphysical" or "hyperbolic" doubt on the other. To doubt a proposition in the first-order way is to doubt it while it is before your mind's eye, i.e., while you are explicitly thinking of that proposition. Thus if I am explicitly entertaining the proposition that the sky is blue, and I am supposing that this proposition might be false, i.e., that it might not be the case that the sky is blue, then I am doubting the proposition in the first-order way. Descartes maintained that some propositions are immune to this first kind of doubt. Whenever we think of them, we are compelled to...