Copyright © 2009 Bruce W. Hauptli
1. Problems with Descartes' Argument for Skepticism:
(A) Universal Deception:
The senses sometimes mislead us---->perhaps they always do; some paintings are forgeries--->perhaps they all are.1
-Gilbert Ryle: "I must say a little about the quite general argument from the notorious limitations and fallibility of our senses to the impossibility of our getting to know anything at all by looking, listening and touching.
A country which had no coinage would offer no scope to counterfeiters. There would be nothing for them to manufacture or pass counterfeits of. They could, if they wished, manufacture and give away decorated disks of brass or lead, which the public might be pleased to get. But these would not be false coins. There can be false coins only where there are coins made of the proper materials by the proper authorities.
In a country where there is a coinage, false coins can be manufactured and passed; and the counterfeiting might be so efficient that an ordinary citizen, unable to tell which were false and which were genuine coins, might become suspicious of the genuineness of any particular coin that he received. But however general his suspicions might be, there remains one proposition which he cannot entertain, the proposition, namely, that it is possible that all coins are counterfeits. For there must be an answer to the question `Counterfeits of what?' 2-J.L. Austin "...it is important to remember that talk of deception only makes sense against a background of general non-deception. (You can't fool all of the people all of the time.) It must be possible to recognize a case of deception by checking the odd cases against the more normal ones."3
(B) Dreaming:
G.E. Moore: "...can he [Descartes] consistently combine this proposition that he knows that dreams have occurred, with his conclusion that he does not know that he is not dreaming? Can anybody possibly know that dreams have occurred, if, at the time, he does not himself know that he is not dreaming? If he is dreaming, it may be that he is only dreaming that dreams have occurred; and if he does not know that he is not dreaming, can he possibly know that he is not only dreaming that dreams have occurred? Can he possibly know therefore that dreams have occurred? I do not think that he can; and therefore I think that anyone who uses this premise and also asserts the conclusion that nobody ever knows that he is not dreaming, is guilty of an inconsistency."4
2. Comments on the Second Meditation:
(A). Does Descartes prove that the mind and the body are different?
(B). Multiple personalities and the cogito.
(C). In his Tragic Sense of Life, Miguel de Unamuno offers the following critique of Descartes:
the defect of Descartes'...[argument] lies in his resolution to empty himself of himself, of Descartes, of the real man, the man of flesh and bone, the man who does not want to die, in order that he might be a mere thinker--that is, an abstraction. But the real man returned and thrust himself into his philosophy....
The truth is sum, ergo cogito--I am, therefore I think, although not everything that is thinks. Is not conscious thinking above all consciousness of being? Is pure thought possible, without consciousness of self, without personality? 5
(D). What of his right to talk about a continuing substance--the problem of multiple selves.
(E). What of the other propositions he accepts as certain in the argument for the cogito?
3. Comments on the Third Meditation:
(A). Is it always an imperfection to deceive? Doctor/patient cases, Plato's noble lie, Kant's problem regarding the innocent individual who is being hunted.
(B). The causal Principle itself--is it legitimate for him to appeal to it? Moreover, what legitimates his appeal to the "natural light?"
Notes:
1Cf., Jay Rosenberg, The Practice of Philosophy (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1984), pp. 15-17. Back
2 Gilbert Ryle, Dilemmas (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1960), pp. 94-95. Back
3 J.L. Austin, Sense and Sensibilia (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 1962), p. 11. Cf., also Anthony Kenny, Descartes: A Study of His Philosophy (New York: Random House, 1968), p. 25. Back
4 G.E. Moore, "Certainty," in his Philosophical Papers (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1959), pp. 227-251, p. 249. Cf., "Can I Know That I Am Not Dreaming?," by D. Blumenfeld and J.B. Blumenfeld, in Descartes: Critical and Interpretive Essays, ed. Michael Hooker (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U.P., 1978), pp. 234-235. Back
5 Miguel de Unamuno, Tragic Sense of Life, trans. C.J. Flitch (N.Y.: Macmillan, 1921), p. 34. Back
File revised on 07/13/2009.