Descartes On “Scire” in the Conversation with Burman

The same kind of stronger truth aspirations appear in Descartes’ conversation with Bur-man. Here, Descartes said that “he knows [scit] that he is not deceived with regard to them [the premises of the proof of God’s existence], because he is actually paying attention to them” (CSMK III 334 / AT V 148). Later in the same conversation, he adds: “If we did not know that all truth has its origin in God, then however clear our ideas were, we would not know [sciremus] that they were true, or that we were not mistaken – I mean, of course, when we were not paying attention to them” (CSMK III 353 / AT V 178). What renders these passages striking is Descartes’ repeated use of the verb scire. In the first passage, he mentions it directly with regard to how we know that we are not deceived through present and clear perceptions. In the second passage, we may also conclude – through a reasoning e contrario – that we can know the truth of ideas which are present on our minds at a given moment. One might feel inclined to think of this passage as almost a slip of the tongue, be-cause scit and sciremus do not fit when Descartes actually talks about cogitationes, for it was Descartes himself who distinguished cogitatio from scientia. However, it still seems that the conversation with Burman confirms what the passages on the natural light together with the letter to Mersenne stated. Descartes is concerned with truth to a considerable extent, and these truth aspirations apply at the level of cogitationes. To use scire is therefore not to confuse terminology but rather perhaps to (over-)stress the fact that one can recognise the truth of some present, clear and distinct perceptions, even if this “recognition” or

“ knowledge” does not ultimately qualify as part of scientia in the strict sense.

What these passages then show is that Descartes is not only interested in a correspond-ent notion of truth, but that he also attempts to employ truth at the level of cogitationes.

Descartes assumes that the employment of the natural light can yield certain clear and distinct perceptions which are known as true beyond a state of indubitability. Therefore, these passages oppose the claims of the psychological reading and suggest that being

justifi-9 AT VII 15 (CSM II 11): Descartes talks about “luminis naturalis ope cognitas veritates” (Emphasis added). In AT VII 38 (CSM II 26), he connects the natural light to the “cogito, existo”. In: AT VII 44 (CSM II 30). Descartes uses the term “notum”. In: AT VII 40 (CSM II 27–28) he employs the natural light to the claim that a cause has to have at least as much reality as its effect.

ably assured of the truth of some perceptions, and to the extent one follows Descartes’ use of scire in the conversation with Burman, also knowing the truth, becomes possible even before the demonstration of God’s existence, namely, at the level of cogitationes. Hence, when Descartes is assured of truth at this level, assurance of truth can only mean (psychological) indubitability, as well as other potential reductionist accounts, like Frankfurt, which deny a “correspondence” account of truth.

Conclusion

I aimed to make two claims in this essay. I wanted to argue, firstly, that there are limitations in understanding Descartes’ notion of indubitability in psychological terms and, secondly, that Descartes’ notion of truth cannot be reduced to indubitability in any way proposed by the interpretations I have discussed. Although an interpretation of the notion of truth and indubitability in Descartes may be interesting in its own right, it gives us a particularly good grasp on the discussion of the Cartesian Circle. If my interpretation is correct, Des-cartes claims that even before the demonstration of God’s existence, one is in a position to recognise and so know the truth of present, clear and distinct perceptions. As a result, any interpretation which limits Descartes’ aim to anything weaker than this must fail on the basis of the arguments and text passages I have presented. The real challenge then is to further explain how such a recognition or knowledge of truth is possible when Descartes himself did not give anything close to a comprehensive account of it. Hence, one must either present an explanation which does not contradict Descartes’ writing, or deny that Descartes has the means to pursue successfully this kind of internalist project. The real challenge for Descartes in this debate is not circularity, but over-ambition. These results are also particularly interesting with regard to affectivity. There is an epistemic kind of affectivity in Descartes, consisting of a compulsion to believe something created by the

“transparency of belief”, but still being compatible with the aspect of a particular kind of epistemic choice [eligo]. This kind of affectivity is genuinely epistemic to the extent that it does not go beyond “transparency of belief” in spelling out the particular impact it exerts on the person being subject to it. No additional emotional strings are attached. This form of affectivity is also special in terms of how Descartes connects the compulsion to believe something with freedom in believing. Although he may not be able to resist believing something, or be able so simply to choose to believe something, the capacity of appreciat-ing the validity of what is to be believed grounds what in contemporary terminology may be called doxastic freedom. Descartes’ account is very close to what D. Owen today calls an appreciation-based account of doxastic freedom (Owens 2000). Descartes here offers a way of thinking about doxastic freedom, compulsion and affectivity that goes contrary to the majority in the debate on doxastic freedom which followed B. Williams’ influential work (Williams 1973, 136–151) and almost exclusively focuses on a will-based account of dox-astic freedom. Nevertheless, Descartes’ influence can be found in the contemporary debate

at places where the idea that our doxastic freedom may be grounded in our ability to ap-preciate evidence has received interest. Hieronymi (2006, 2008), Steup (1982, 2000), Ryan (2003), Owens (2000), Shah (2002, 2003), and McHugh (2014) all point to our ability to appreciate evidence as the reason for some kind of doxastic freedom. Hence, investigating Descartes not only contributes to the breadth of the debate on affectivity in early modern philosophy, but may also facilitate a deeper understanding of accounts in contemporary epistemological debates.

References

Broughton, Janet. 1984. Skepticism and the Cartesian Circle. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 14:

593–615.

Cottingham, John. 1998. Descartes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Della Rocca, Michael. 2005. Descartes, the Cartesian Circle, and Epistemology Without God.

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 70 (1): 1–33.

Descartes, René. 1970. Descartes. Philosophical Letters. Translated and edited by Anthony Kenny.

Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Descartes, René. 1984. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Volume II. Translated by John Cot-tingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Descartes, René. 1985. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Volume I. Translated by John Cot-tingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Descartes, René. 1991. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Volume III. Translated by John Cot-tingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, Anthony Kenny. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Doney, Willis. 1955. The Cartesian Circle. Journal of the History of Ideas 16 (3): 324–338.

Edgley, Roy. 1969. Reason in Theory and Practice. London: Hutchinson.

Evans, Gareth. 1982. The Varieties of Reference. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Frankfurt, Harry. 1970. Demons, Dreamers, and Madmen: The Defense of Reason in Descartes’s Medi-tations. New York – London: Garland.

Gewirtz, Alan. 1941. The Cartesian Circle. The Philosophical Review 50 (4): 368–395.

Hieronymi, Pamela. 2006. Controlling Attitudes. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 87: 45–74.

Hieronymi, Pamela. 2008. Responsibility for Believing. Synthes 161 (3): 357–373.

Kenny, Anthony. 1970. The Cartesian Circle and the Eternal Truths. The Journal of Philosophy 67 (19): 685–700.

Larmore, Charles. 1984. Descartes’ Psychologistic Theory of Assent. History of Philosophy Quarterly 1 (1): 61–74.

Loeb, Louis. 1992. The Cartesian Circle. In: Cottingham, J. (ed.): The Cambridge Companion to Descartes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 200–235.

McHugh, Conor. 2014. Exercising Doxastic Freedom. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 88 (1): 1–37.

Moran, Richard. 2012. Authority and Estrangement. An Essay on Self-Knowledge. Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press.

Nelson, John. 1964. In Defence of Descartes: Squaring a Reputed Circle. Dialogue 3: 262–272.

Owens, David. 2000. Reason Without Freedom. The Problem of Epistemic Normativity. London:

Routledge.

Rubin, Ronald. 1977. Descartes’ Validation of Clear and Distinct Apprehension. The Philosophical Review 86 (2): 197–208.

Ryan, Sharon. 2003. Doxastic Compatibilism and the Ethics of Belief. Philosophical Studies 114 (1/2): 47–79.

Shah, Nishi. 2002. Clearing Space for Doxastic Voluntarism. The Monist 85 (3): 436–445.

Shah, Nishi. 2003. How Truth Governs Belief. The Philosophical Review 112 (4): 447–482.

Steup, Matthias. 1988. The Deontic Conception of Epistemic Justification. Philosophical Studies 53 (1): 65–84.

Steup, Matthias. 2000. Doxastic Voluntarism and Epistemic Deontology. Acta Analytica 15 (1):

25–56.

Van Cleve, James. 1979. Foundationalism, Epistemic Principles, and the Cartesian Circle. The Philosophical Review 88 (1): 55–91.

Williams, Bernard. 1973. Deciding to believe. In: Williams, B.: Problems of the Self. Philosophical Papers 1956–1972. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 136–151.

III