Descartes’ First Meditation
Descartes meditations embody human struggles in the understanding of the epistemology of knowledge. They are quests to perceive objective nature of reality through the limiting lenses of human subjectivity, skeptic navigations to establish certitude, for, to know something means not to be mistaken about it and to entertain no doubts about it, or to perform “an unshakable conviction analysis,” (Newman, 1997), He begins with his criticism about human tendency to accept unquestionably the constructs of reality, then states : “I should withhold my assent no less carefully from opinions that are not completely certain and indubitable than I would from those that are patently false,” (Descartes, In Ariew & Watkins, 1998, p. 27) thereby doubting and/or “demolish[ing] everything completely and start[ing] again right from the foundations” (AT 7:17), discounting everything unless proven. He uses the strategy of justification of ideas (Newman, 1997) to demonstrate that true knowledge should have the enduring ability to survive all doubt and deconstruction.
Though philosophical skepticism is commonly understood to be a position that avoids the postulation of final truths (Wikipeda, 2007), Descartes’ skepticism attempts to create a bipolarity of contradiction in relation to which human mind can locate its understanding of its reality, using “justification-defeating doubt”/skepticism (Newman, 1997) against the certitude of belief in the service of knowledge of reality. This is echoed by Newman (1997) who claims that: “Descartes understands doubt as the contrast of certainty”. Descartes’ skepticism is used not to disprove and/or deconstruct but to construct/establish a rational, credible proof to his beliefs outlined in, among others, his thesis called Passions of the Soul. He attempts the use of skeptic arguments to outline the inherent weakness of skeptic philosophy.
Descartes arguments can be debated using the contemporary theories of constructivism. Given the limitations of our cognitive, sensory and biological apparatus, constructivists posit the simultaneous existence of a real and a perceived world. Stimuli is translated into units of information which creates a model that approximates the physical features of the real world, but the construction goes beyond the information provided (Bruner,1973, In Engler, 1986). Since human perception is inherently concerned about the world as perceived by the perceiver and has no interest in discovery of the objective world, we have no way of knowing what is changed in translation. In other words, there exists no real baseline from which we can initiate our constructs, our foundations being based on arbitrary assumptions. For this reason, even though constructs are awarded an ontological status that enables symbolic interaction for meaningful organization of individual experience, all constructs are essentially transient. Further, constructs are not verbal and are split into a bipolarity that provides a frame of reference. The bipolarity is then assigned labeled wherever possible, and the constructs then become cognitively acceptable. Preverbal constructs represent a relatively low level of cognitive awareness, are closer to reality but must pass through filters of cognition and be processed. All apperception is through the lens of past perception and cognition.
This paper discusses Descartes first meditation in the backdrop of constructivism. To maintain the originality of thought, known arguments by Putnam et al are not reproduced here.
Argument 1 : Deceptiveness of Senses
I have noticed that the senses are sometimes deceptive; and it is a mark of prudence never to place our complete trust in those who have deceived us even once” (Descartes).
Descartes’ meditations begin with the assumption of no truth. His usage of the term “senses” is extended to include mental states, and his meditative journey begins with the above quote which may be expanded to construct the following argument:
1. The senses are sometimes deceptive.
2. Those that have deceived us even once should never be trusted.
3. Senses should never be trusted.
The first premise may be true or false. If it is false, then senses are always deceptive or senses are never deceptive. If senses are always deceptive, then anything we know, is false. If senses are never deceptive, then we must know everything there is to know about everything. Either of these premises is unacceptable, so we must presume the first premise to be true.
However, a thinking entity is a prerequisite to the thoughts that follow. Without a thinker, there can be no thoughts. Descartes’ establishes that since he can think this argument through, therefore he must be a thinking entity. This truth is independent of the outcome of the argument. But, the statement is generic in that it does not presuppose the existence of senses. The truth of the premise may be established without the necessity that the senses, and consequentially, the existence of the body. This led to the notion of duality, the mind body split that has been debated by, and since Descartes.
Returning to the existing argument, it is true that all sensory perception is filtered through the history of our experiences, which in turn may cause senses to seem deceptive. The senses appear deceptive because perceptions are mediated by, among others, the limitations due to construction of our sensory apparatus, our individual as well as our collective experiences and our outcome expectancies. We may be deluded into accepting the visible spectrum for light, the twinkling of the stars as the property of the stars and not as a phenomenon due to the distance of the star from earth, the nature of the universe and the laws that govern the transmission of light. Though light is simply a form of energy, when intercepted by human senses, it assumes the attributes that we normally associate with light. It may be experienced differently by other life forms that have a different corresponding sensory apparatus. These life forms then have a different perceptions of the same reality. Spectrum inversion produces behavioral deviances in some people whereas other population does not exhibit any behavioral effects. In any case, even our individual experiences of an object impacts judgment that causes us to discount the phenomenology of the object. Our outcome expectancies also impact our senses and how these senses experience naturally occurring phenomenon. What we find is impacted by what we hope to find, in other words our hopes and expectations shape our findings. Thus the first premise seems to be true.
The second premise must be true or false. The falsity of the premise is discussed later in the paper. If it is true, and it seems to be true, it can be argued for by using the analogy of a measuring instrument. Any known error in such an instrument raises concerns about the reliability, predictive validity and generalizability of the instrument, the results are deemed unreliable and non generalizable unless the error is known, quantified and compensated for.
These two premises lead us to the conclusion that senses should never be trusted. This argument may seem valid, but the conclusion does not correspond to human experiences. Although we know that sometimes the senses mislead us, we also know that they do not always mislead us. We trust them and depend on them for our safety and progression through life. Besides, since the meditation argues for skepticism, the wording of the premises seem extremely dogmatic. Senses are not sometimes deceptive, they may sometimes appear to be deceptive, other times they may appear accurate. This highlights the ambiguity and the dogmatism of the statement which may be better reworded as “senses may sometimes appear deceptive.” This rewording appears less dogmatic. Dogmatism suppresses investigation, doubt and skepticism nurtures the possibility and the expectancy of an alternate explanation, or failure of such alternatives. Such failure then serves to prove the validity of the hypothesis under attack. Human knowledge progresses because of such bipolarity afforded through contradiction. The rewording also leaves room to explore the contingency the conditions under which one should trust those that have deceived us once.
If we take the second premise to be false, the statement may be restated as “those that have deceived us once may sometimes be trusted,” or “those that have deceived us once may always be trusted.” The former holds some value, the latter sounds preposterous. The argument may be reconstructed as follows:
1. Senses may sometimes be deceptive.
2. Those that have deceived us once may sometimes be trusted
3. Senses may sometimes be trusted
This conclusion appears to more experientially truthful than Descartes’, and can be considered valid. In the example of an instrument, we look for compensatory and complementary methods to enhance the reliability of the instrument. We don’t completely trust the instrument on its own, but we do trust it when we can determine the degree, extent of error and find ways to compensate for that error. In essence, we may use other instruments to corroborate the report of the unreliable instrument. Thus our visual inputs may be validated by our intellect and our thought processes. So it may be wrong to be definitive, we should not always discount the results of our sensory investigations. We may extend this argument to state that collection of data from various senses, and corroborating for pattern recognition may lead to a better investigative outcome. Descartes’ statement would benefit by inclusion of the word “complete” as in “those that have deceived us even once may not be completely trusted”
Together the two premises may be reconstructed as :
1. Senses may sometimes be deceptive.
2. Those that have deceived us once may not be completely trusted
3. Senses may sometimes be trusted
These two reconstructed arguments choose to reserve judgment for each occurrence of reality ie to certify that a certain truth represents knowledge, we only have to ascertain we are not being deceived by our senses at the time. This corroborates with our experiences in that even though we know that the senses, or perceptions, may be sometimes deceptive, we nevertheless do tend to trust them for negotiating our daily lives. They two reconstructions also depend on less dogmatic premises, being more skeptic in establishing justification of reason and logic. To defeat skepticism, Descartes needed to deconstruct a skeptical argument. A dogmatic argument provides the case for dogma, it does not necessarily invalidate skepticism. To invalidate the skepticism, Descartes needed to provide a skeptic argument and using that argument, establish the futility of skepticism. In this he failed.
The mere possibility that senses may be trustworthy provides hope that true knowledge may be achievable. Descartes’ original argument sought to established the unreliability of the senses with absolute conviction. Any inference drawn from such unreliable source, including the inference about our perception of the reality as well as the inference about deceptiveness of the senses, may be flawed. Because the argument questioned its own validity, it was circular.
Yet another problem posed by earlier argument is Descartes’ assumption that reason and logic is substantive when reason is simply another construct, a set of rules that enable manipulation of input to the desired output. It is prone to errors similar to those of any human construct. Even under an assumption of perfect reasoning, a faulty input can only produce a faulty output, and an argument based on faulty premises does not necessarily prove or disprove the truth of the conclusion, nor the validity of pure reason.
Descartes argument is important because it questions the foundations of our knowledge. All we know and perceive through our cognition, reason, analysis may be false. All our reasons and our reasoning may be faulty. This creates a sense of meaningless of our methods and pursuits of knowledge and consequential despair. Since social structures are based on our cognitive and perceptual constructs, his argument also impacts the fabric of our society and our institutions – if all we perceive is false/wrong, and we have no way of validating the process or the contents, then our thinking, feeling and intuiting may be meaningless/false/wrong. In the absence of a foundation that provides one end of the bipolar continuum in which humans can locate our constructs, this argument creates pervasive groundlessness. The last argument helps circumvent the problem of groundlessness and meaninglessness of human life by providing hope for our reasoning and knowledge.
Argument 2: Dreams Hypothesis
"How often, asleep at night, am I convinced of just such familiar events — that I am here in my dressing gown, sitting by the fire —when in fact I am lying undressed in bed! Yet at the moment my eyes are certainly wide awake when I look at this piece of paper; I shake my head and it is not asleep; as I stretch out and feel my hand I do so deliberately, and I know what I am doing. All this would not happen with such distinctness to someone asleep. Indeed! As if I did not remember other occasions when I have been tricked by exactly similar thoughts while asleep! As I think about this more carefully, I see plainly that there are never any sure signs by means of which being awake can be distinguished from being asleep. The result is that I begin to feel dazed, and this very feeling only reinforces the notion that I may be asleep." (Meditation 1)
In his dream hypothesis, Descartes extends his skepticism to his experiences of the external world. Through the statement “there is no definitive signs by which to distinguish being awake from being sleep,” Descartes questions his ability to distinguish between the wakeful and sleeping states and is concerned that he may currently be sleeping. He even doubts that the contents of the dreams are representations of the real world but later deduces that since dreams do not affect mathematical clarity, his perceptions may not be completely arbitrary even if he were to be dreaming. These arguments were later expanded to now-dream and always dreaming arguments. Descartes argument may be constructed as follows :
1. I cannot distinguish being awake from being sleep
2. My dreams are false representations of the wakeful world
3. I may be dreaming now
The first premise may be true or false. If the premise is true, we are faced with the possibility of being in an always-dreaming state or being brains-in-the-vat. If the premise is false, we must prove that we can distinguish between the sleep and the wakefulness.
Once again, since a thinking entity is a prerequisite to a dreaming entity, whether Descartes is dreaming or not dreaming, he must be a thinking entity. This truth is fundamental, and escapes the argument.
The always-dreaming presupposes that our entire life is a dream, and we are actors in our own dream. The brains-in-a-vat scenario presupposes that all our experiences are experienced in our minds. If we are always-dreaming, then what forms the basis of the dreams? Where do our dreams find their substantive data from? The problems of qualia provide arguments against the always dreaming hypothesis. This is explored further in the discussion about the second premise.
In addition, each person experiences world in their unique way. If we are brains in the vat, it is difficult to envisage a reasons or purpose for individuality of personal experience. Such brains would most likely have objective and universal knowledge and experience downloaded from the celestial equivalent of a supercomputer.
In both cases outlined above, the question of our awareness and the validity of our argument is moot if we are always-dreaming or brains in the vat, or if the evil genius always confuses our perceptions. We will never know and it is irrational and pointless to argue about something that has no verifiable resolution as all arguments may be equally valid. So we must find this position unacceptable in the pursuit of knowledge.
Also, from above, dreaming is either a process of the mind, or the body. If it is the mind that dreams, then it is possible for us to be dreaming now, or sometimes, or always. Since thinking is not contingent on the existence of the body, therefore this assumes that dreaming is a process of the mind.
To discuss the argument further, Thomas Nigel (1974) of the “What is it like to be a Bat” fame, would argue against the acceptability of the first premise by stating that there is something about the wakeful experience that differentiates it from the experience of a dream. He may extend his argument to say that there is something about wakeful thoughts that distinguish them from thoughts in a dream. In other words, the phenomenology of dream state is different from the phenomenology of wakeful state. One could also argue that lucid dreaming may compromise our thoughts for a little while, but the illusion is different and transient. Our senses ultimately make us aware of our lucid state.
The premise is also deemed unacceptable by many who argue not about the cogency but against the intelligibility of the premises. If sleep and wakeful experiences were indistinguishable, we would not be able to experience the discontinuity between them – sleep and wakefulness would belong to the same category. There would be no polarity and therefore no experience to distinguish. This view is also supported by theories of constructivism that establish bipolarity as a necessary condition through which minds locate their constructs. This discussion, it is argued, imposes upon the philosopher, the burden of responsibility of context and language.
The above establishes the reasons why the first premise is unacceptable. Hence the argument is invalid. The second premise becomes idle but is explored for purpose of discussion.
If the second premise is true, then dreams are not representative of the real world. If it is false, then we must prove that they are representative of reality.
Descartes and successive philosophers argue that even though aspects of our dream appear to be abstract, our dreams have attributes that correspond to our external reality. Dreams are drawn from experiences of real world, even if they manifest those representations in an abstract way. Also, the representation of the real world may also be alien to the person’s experience eg a person who has never been exposed to an airplane or television may experience and express reality in ways that are different from ours. Colors, genders, forms, locations, people – all these are always reconstructions and representations of our real environment. If universal knowledge available to us represents a close cybernetic system, then the total knowledge that we can possibly know, is limited by the boundaries of this system. What we do not know or have not experienced in some form – as thoughts, feelings, emotions - we cannot envisage or dream about. In some cases, dreams are known to be prophetic. They represent messages from the unconscious. People find solutions to their problems in their dreams.
Despite the above, dreams do not normally provide factual knowledge that can be trusted, even if they were approximate representations of the real world. The contents of the dreams approximate the contents of the real world, but the processes and outcomes of dreams are not governed by the same laws. Dreams may thus be regarded as constructs of our constructs. They are a world within the world that appears to us which is within the real world. Thus the second premise is true. However, since the first premise is false, the argument is false.
The dream argument has implications on the purpose that drive individual and collective motivations because if we are constituents of a dream, our actions, thoughts, beliefs are of lesser significance than they would be if we were real. There is no purpose in being motivated to achieve anything because everything ma be unreal. In addition, the knowledge of being mere actors in a dream creates anxiety that is similar to the anxiety created if the deceptiveness of senses becomes an acceptable dogmatic truth (see Argument 1). On the other hand, whereas our construct of the word ‘dream’ implies temporariness and futility, the mechanism, rules etc of always-dreaming may be fundamentally different from the mechanism and rules of now-dreaming and the meaninglessness that we associate with now-dreaming phenomenon may not apply to the always-dreaming scenario. Eg in the movie Matrix, Morpheus death within the matrix makes for his death in the real world !
Argument 3: The Evil Genius
“Let me imagine, therefore, not that there does not exist a true God, who would act as the sovereign source of truth, but rather an evil demon, who is cunning, deceptive and powerful, and who employs every means he can to lie to me. Let me consider the possibility that all external things, the heavens, the air, the earth, colors, shapes and sounds, are only illusions and deceptions used by this demon to fool me.…………It is at least possible that there is an all-powerful evil demon who is deceiving me, such that he causes me to have false beliefs, including the belief that there is a table in front of me and the belief that two plus three equals five.” (Descartes, Meditation 1)
This represents the heavyweight demolition artillery (Newman, 1997) of Descartes’, a sweeping skeptical argument where Descartes again attempts to locate his construct of self within the bipolar constructs of a “good” God and a “bad” God, or for the pious readers, an Evil genius. He expresses doubts that every belief of his may be an incorrect representation of reality. The argument may be constructed as follows:
1. An evil genius may be changing all my perceptions
2. Everything I perceive may be wrong
The premise, and hence the conclusion, may be true or false. The truth of the argument imposes many implications. If it is true and the evil genius is changing all our perceptions, firstly, we may never know, ie pursuit of knowledge may be vain. Secondly, God may be a deceitful entity. Third, we are helpless and vulnerable. All these represent very pessimistic views and precursors to despair. If the argument is proved false, there is hope for reward in our pursuits of knowledge, there is hope for a perfect God that brings order to the world, and there is hope for self-efficacy of human race.
Also, irrespective of the argument, Descartes provides infallible proof for his thinking processes and establishes his himself as a thinking entity that exists independent of the existence and the nature of God. Again, the existence of God, or evil genius, or neither, is not contingent and is independent of human thought, or senses or dreams. This establishes the nature of God as separate and unknowable. The truth about the first consciousness may be contingent upon the existence of God, (or it may not) but the existence of God is not contingent upon human thought. The truth of God’s independence exits the deconstruction argument. Further, the argument also establishes the futility of using reason to validate the existence of God.
If we accept the premise, if all external things are illusions then, like the always-dreaming argument, the discussion is moot, for we will never know for certain if God really exists, or is an evil demon. And if God is an evil demon that confuses our thinking, then our confused thinking may be causing us to call him an evil demon and he may not actually be an evil demon. At best, and in any case, we can say we will never know what God really is.
It is possible that an evil genius may be changing all our perceptions, and so all we perceive may not be true, and we may not have true knowledge of reality. The conclusion creates valid doubts about all our constructs.
As outlined earlier, if evil genius is capable of confusing us in every way, then any pursuit of knowledge is irrelevant, for we will never know. All our thoughts and experiences are invalidated as is the reasoning that we apply to our perception of these. This has the potential of creating absolute hopelessness and despair of futility that prevents further exploration. But since humans do persist in pursuit of knowledge, and find inner motivation, therefore our experiences are contrary to the outcome predicted by the hypothesis. Hence the evil genius hypothesis is unacceptable.
The second outcome of the evil genius posits the possibility that either God himself is an evil genius or, since God is unable to stop him, the evil genius is more powerful than God. In either case, there seems to be no purpose behind such elaborate deception from God. And if God can be deceptive in some ways, then the concept of all-deceptive God is possible and we may be deceived in many ways. However, our experiences with the concept of behavior and consequences and other laws of nature are not complicated to unfold, but not deceptive, nor unfair. Hence the hypothesis is unacceptable.
The third outcome posits the possibility that we may be utterly vulnerable and helpless in the face of such a God. This may be true, but the concept of free will and our experience of human ability to craft our own destiny, belies such proposition to some extent. Hence the evil genius hypothesis becomes unacceptable.
The technical implications of the evil genius arguments, from the constructivist viewpoint, are that our inability to locate ourselves within the constructs, and associate ourselves with them annihilates our ability to function. It is impossible for humans to exist [as we know existence] apart from their basic constructs. Such existence may be an absolute, conducive to elimination of all human thought, movement and experience. Constructs are analogous to resistance in that, like resistance, they are ‘not entirely good’ but are necessary to enable human functioning.
Even if we disregard this argument, and were somehow able to function, the inability to decipher right from wrong has implications that affect the fabric of society, for individuals may lose their collective moral and ethical compass and such a beliefs and consequential actions may lead to chaos in the world. Religion, society and relationships collectively provide humans with an enabling structure that mitigates anxiety. The absence of such a foundation creates a feeling of groundlessness that leads to pervasive, overwhelming anxiety. Also, if everything we know and do can be wrong, there is no incentive to know or do anything.
To avoid the trap of this anxiety and chaos inherent in the validity of the evil genius argument Descartes needed a mechanism to counter it. Positioning God as a perfect entity eroded all the anxiety and uncertainty associated with the evil genius argument because the concept of God validated the truth of human perceptions. This validity of perceptions in turn enabled structure, for now humans could believe and be sure of the basic foundations, morality, ethics which in turn facilitated certitude and purpose. Descartes’ construct of God emerges from the necessity for reconciliation of his evil genius argument with the reality of the then-existing world, an intentionality (Searle, 1983) that posits a world-to-mind fit, where the construct of the world is being accommodated to fit with Descartes’ mental state.
Conclusions
Descartes states that he would attempt to set aside all “preconceived opinions” to “lay the first foundations of philosophy” (1643 letter, AT 8b:37). To achieve this purpose he attempts to doubt the basic foundations of philosophy. Of the few truths that escape this skeptic deconstruction, the infallible proof of his existence as a thinking agent is primary.
Descartes failures enable the supremacy of reason to escape from the deconstruction. The meditations establish the futility of endeavors that depend on intellect and reason when such intellect and reason is subjected to skeptic investigation. They establishes reason as the only base on which human knowledge can be built. On the question of ongoing, pervasive doubt, Newman (1997) states: “No matter how firm one's ground, it would be dislodged in the face of a yet bigger bulldozer. This raises the worry that there might not be unshakable ground, but only yet unshaken ground. Descartes' goal of utterly indubitable epistemic ground may simply be elusive.” Although this justification-defeating doubt was pertinent to scientific curiosity and posited possibilities that an otherwise dogmatic belief system would endanger, nevertheless, Descartes’ use of skepticism not to question and dislodge his beliefs but to enable certitude about the invalidity of skepticism, enabled later philosophers to establish supremacy of reason. This makes Descartes’ failure a heroic milestone in the history of philosophy. (Chunghyoung Lee, 2007).
The meditations pose questions for which no satisfactory answers have been found since. They are proof that though self reflection may help us peel off layers of our subjective bias, yet, subjectivity of human existence precludes our inclusion into the world of absolutes. Our thinking and reasoning and the knowledge that it begets, will always be subject to doubt. We may be able to prove the subjectivity of our constructs, including reason, in slow repetitive iterations, for reason remains but a set of rules that guide input data through the process of perception to help understand and create meaning of all stimuli.
I may never have seen an object A, but I may be able to observe the Object A vividly in my mind’s eye. This construct is formed through logical deductions that are interpreted through the filters of my prior experiences. The subjective nature of this interpretation makes it a false representation of the truth. Even though coincidence may enable correspondence with reality, memory may not always be representative of true knowledge. However, the mind may be deceived into accepting the Object A as a base on which all future associations and constructs pertaining to Objection A are build. If the Object A is imaginary, all subsequent constructs based and contingent on it, may represent false knowledge.
In the same way as above, all our constructs are thoughts build on the presumption of a base, and since there is no way to justify the truth of that base, therefore there is no way to justify the absolute legitimacy of our acquired knowledge. All knowledge is relative.
Further, if we assume reason to be a set of rules applied to input data to create an understandable, deductive output, then it must be an innate human faculty comparable to other human faculties like visual and auditory faculties. Further, these set of rules are finite, changeable, and need to be stored in a physical location from where they are periodically accessed. This implicates a memory like storage location. And we have established that memory, or any storage, may be prone to failures. Thus there is no reason to believe in the perfection of human reasoning. There may be reasons to believe, however, in the supremacy of human reasoning. It may be subject to similar errors of construction apparatus that dog human senses, and the output of the reason may be as subjective.
But even if we consider human reasoning to be perfect, accurate, flawless and never erring, it remains, nevertheless, a process that manipulates the contents of the mind. The contents may be flawed due to the inability of our senses to capture the entire truth, or due to the subjectivity of our perception, or due to limitation of storage (memory). These cumulative flaws in the content makes it impossible for reason to produce an outcome that can be considered as true knowledge. At best, our knowledge may be a close approximation. |
