Lost Souls: The Philosophic Origins of a Cultural Dilemma

Chapter Three Consequences

Chapter Three Consequences What are the effects of incorporating the divided line within the cogito? Here are five considerations explicit or implied in Descartes, and still dominant in our time. Each consolidates mind’s role as ground, final cause, or measure of the ideas and impressions qualifying it. 1. Foundationalism A. Epistemic and Ontological Foundationalism Recall the tentative conclusion to which Descartes has brought us at the end of the third paragraph of the second Meditation.1 Everything but mind’s existence is dubitable: mind would exist if nothing else did. He asks, “[W]hat am I?,” and answers, “A being that thinks,” one that discerns clear and distinct ideas within itself. Foundationalism has one or the other of two emphases: ideas, or the thinker that entertains them. It is epistemic or ontological. Epistemic foundationalism is two things. Better known in our time is the program for replacing obscure ideas with complexes that are constructed or derived from clarified simples. This directive is plainly expressed in Rule Five of Descartes’ Rules for the Direction of the Mind: The whole method consists entirely in the ordering and arrangement of the objects on which we must concentrate our mind’s eye, if we are to discover some truth. We shall be following this method exactly if we first reduce complicated and obscure propositions step by step to simpler 27 28 LOST SOULS ones, and then, starting with the intuition of the simplest ones of all try to ascend through the same steps to a knowledge of all the rest.2 “This one rule,” Descartes continues, “covers the most essential points in the whole of human endeavour.”3 Reconstructed ideas are presented and seen. They show their content and form (like the simple sentences of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus4) nothing hidden or disguised.5 We understand circularity, for example, because of inspecting the clarified idea of it, or because it is defined discursively but essentially as a closed line every point on which is equidistant from a point not on the line. The abstracted image is superior to the definition, because one grasps the idea—the essence—without the mediating words. This is the second and more fundamental aspect of epistemic foundationalism, the point made above when Descartes emphasizes that we seek intuition of the simplest natures. They are presented and seen. Plato’s divided line anticipates this claim by distinguishing intuitive from discursive knowledge, placing one above the other. Why this priority? Because intuition precludes error: We can best learn how mental intuition is to be employed by comparing it with ordinary vision. If one tries to look at many objects at one glance, one sees none of them distinctly. Likewise, if one is inclined to attend to many things at the same time in a single act of thought, one does so with a confused mind. Yet craftsmen who engage in delicate operations, and are used to fixing their eyes on a single point, acquire through practice the ability to make perfect distinctions between things, however minute and delicate. The same is true of those who never let their thinking be distracted by many different objects at the same time, but always devote their whole attention to the simplest and easiest of matters: they become perspicacious.6 Rational intuition—the presentation and grasp of ideas—is thought’s aim and the condition for knowledge. This is plainest when I perceive myself, clearly and distinctly, without mediation. Compare discursive knowledge: it is less reliable than intuition because the words used to formulate our ideas separate us from the things signified.7 Intuition is more secure, because things known are presented without distorting mediation and seen. There is also this corollary: epistemic foundationalism of the first kind dissolves confusion by replacing obscure ideas with complexes whose elements satisfy foundationalist demands of the second kind—simple ideas and the complexes formed of them are inspected and seen. Descartes’ intuitionism is, nevertheless, weaker than Plato’s in the respect that nous perceiving the Forms is said to grasp both that and CONSEQUENCES 29 what they are. Descartes distinguished meaning and truth, because innate ideas are a source of meanings, though truth is problematic: how can we ascertain the truth of thoughts or sentences within the mind if their referents obtain, inaccessibly, beyond it? Descartes solved the problem by proposing a truth test that mind can apply without having to go beyond itself—as it...