How Descartes Avoids the Hidden Faculties Trap

NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS 371 There is no evidence that we have this faculty, except that we seem to ]eel that we have it. But the weight of that testimony depends entirely on our being supposed to have the power of distinguishing in this feeling whether the feeling be the result of education, old associations, etc., or whether it is an intuitive cognition; or, in other words, it depends on presupposing the very matter testified to. Is this feeling infallible? And is this judgment concerning it infallible, and so on, ad infinitum?2a Now by some argument we might be able to prove that "la lumi6re naturelle" is completely self-sufficient and that, in consequence, this infinite regress is not generated. Any such argument would, I believe, also tell against the possibility of "la lumi~re natureIle" being a mere delusion produced by an unknown faculty, if, for instance, contra Peirce, it were proved that logically there must be a first cognition if there are to be any cognitions at all, then obviously there would be no infinite regress. Just as obviously, this first cognition could not be caused by the unknown faculty; for if it were, it would not be a first cognition. What this shows is that since the same arguments might refute both the impossibility of a first cognition and the possibility of an unknown faculty, the latter adds nothing to Peirce's objection to "la lumi6re naturelle." Furthermore, to appeal to the possibility of an unknown faculty is to appeal to something more puzzling than "la lumi~re naturelle" itself. This does not appear to be true of Peirce's objection. We have established two points: I. The unknown faculty does not invalidate premise (2) of the causal argument for the existence of God. Norton, therefore, has not shown that there is an inconsistency--essential or inessential in Descartes' Meditations. II. The unknown faculty might possibly be used to reveal such an inconsistency if it were directed against premise (3). But in this form it appears to be but a weaker form of an objection, already raised by Peirce, against intuitive revelations of truth. LEONARDE. BREWSTER Pennsylvania State University How DESCARTES AVOIDS THE HIDDEN FACULTIES TRAP Professor David Fate Norton appears to have caught Descartes where every skeptic attempts to trap dogmatists: between the letter and spirit of what they say or write? He contends that in the course of the same argument, the argument(s) for God's existence in Meditation III, Descartes, in order to explain the occurrence of (some of) his ideas, first sets out the possibility that he possesses a hidden faculty and then dismisses, without offering substantiating reasons, a similar possibility that there might be an unknown power or aspect of himself whereby he is a self-caused, self-sustaining being. Because 2~ C. S. Peirce, Values in a Universe of Chance (New York: Doubleday, 1958),p. 19. a David Fate Norton, "Descartes on Unknown Faculties: An Essential Inconsistency," Journal of the History of Philosophy, VI, 3 (July, 1968), 245-256. Subsequent references to this paper will be placed in parentheses, with the letter "N" followed by the page number. 372 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY both claims are about possible unknown aspects of his being and because in the intervening argumentation Descartes provides no new information about either his nature or the possibility of adequate self-knowledge, the claims appear contradictory, and Descartes ' total argument for God's existence invalid, involving a petitio principii. I believe that Professor Norton is incorrect in accusing Descartes of this petitio, but his paper is tightly argued and its errors not obvious. Making my case will involve exnmining first the contexts and natures of the two conjectures concerning possible unknown aspects of his being and second, the meaning Descartes attaches to facultd (puissance and virtu). Having done this, we will see that Descartes has a criterion to invoke when trying to make decisions about possible aspects of himself. I. The original hypothesis of a hidden faculty, the one serving as grounds for Norton 's claim A (N, 246), arises in Descartes' discussion of the origin of adventitious ideas, "ceUes qui me semblent venir de quelques objets qui...