M. Scott Welch Descartes Course Dr. Kinlaw March 5, 2006 Comments on Mersenne's First Objection In the original working of The Meditations, Descartes understood there would be certain objections to his philosophy. In anticipation of this he made a point of getting his work out to as many theologians and fellow philosophers as possible. Thus the series of Objections and Replies were created. Some of the most notable works in the Objections came from the scholars called upon by Mersenne. The originators of these works are not individually named and for this reason the objections presented will name Mersenne as the sole protester on Descartes works. The objective of this paper is to look in depth at the First of these objections, how Descartes replies to it, and it will conclude with a brief analysis of whether or not the objection holds any weight against the Meditations. By providing ideas from the Replies as well as looking upon his original works an attempt will be made to verify Descartes' original works as sound. In the First objection Mersenne, calls out in response to Descartes' First and Second Meditations. The first point Mersenne makes notable is "your vigorous rejection of the images of all bodies as delusive." He describes Descartes' conclusion in the first two Meditations as mistaken, because the only thing he is sure of is that he is a "thinking thing." This objection is not entirely original. In fact several of the authors presented in the Objections pick on this exact point. The general reason for this is that many of them fundamentally reject the notion of separating the mind and body. To these persons it
Welch seems ridiculous and they find it difficult to comprehend how Descartes could come to the conclusion he is a "thinking thing." Mersenne directly asks Descartes, "how do you know that you are not corporeal motion, or a body which is in motion?" This question elicits a response from Descartes which proceeds as follows.
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His reply to Mersenne's first objection begins with a lengthy and detailed analysis of what the meaning was behind the Meditation. In his reply he states, "I was not yet asking whether the mind is distinct from the body, but was merely examining those of its properties of which I can have certain and evident knowledge." This statement may have been enough to answer Mersenne's objection, yet Descartes continues on and further examines the point. He restates his objective on how it was necessary to separate the mind and body in a way that would allow him to further his thought on determining God's existence. He felt it was a necessary part to do this in a purely unmistakable way in order to avoid falling into the habits and footsteps of previous philosophers who did not, or could not separate what is known and what is undetermined. Any effort to prove God's existence without a pure and complete certainty of knowledge seems to be unsound by Descartes' standards. To further examine this point one may refer back to the First Meditation. The First Meditation begins with an introduction to the theory he is trying to prove. He says he wanted to initially, "demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything at all in the sciences that was stable and likely to last." Surely this means he wanted to start from a foundation, but what must this foundation be? It cannot as he remarks be from the senses, for Descartes notes, "from time to time I have found that the senses deceive, and it is prudent never to
Welch trust completely those who have deceived us even once." This point appears to beg the idea that the corporeal world, conceived by the senses, must be prone to deception.
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Descartes finds this as a fundamental element. He desires to find the existence of God, or of any existence period, in the truest form and without any discrepancies. Thus it is necessary from this premise that senses are taken away from him as a tool until he can validate them with a certainty. From this point Descartes moves on to the suspicion of awake thought. He determines that for him there is little to differentiate between awake states and those of dreaming. He says "I see plainly that there are never any sure signs by means of which a being awake can be distinguished from being asleep." He also notes when he sees corporeal images in his dreams they present themselves in a way which they resemble paintings. This moves him in the direction of discovering that things, "eyes, head, hands and the body as a whole," are real in the sense that one can imagine them. That is, they appear in wake and dream states, yet in both these things, "whether true or false," are things that occur in thought. This idea brings forth the concept that things of the corporeal nature, attained by the senses, must be subject to falsities and can be considered doubtful. This doubt follows directly from the idea that the images are only conjured up in thought, and their presence is solely granted via senses. Upon completion of these first two premises, Descartes begins to explore what he can know with certainty. Given the fact that he is finding so many falsities in his thoughts already, he determines that he must be willing to go as far as denying the traits one gives to God as a fiction. He further notes, "finally compelled to admit that there is not one of my former beliefs about which a doubt may not properly be raised; and this is not a
Welch flippant or ill-considered conclusion, but is based on powerful and well thought-out reasons." Descartes concludes the First Meditation with noting the possibility that "all external things are merely the delusions of dreams." It seems given the premises used in the First Meditation it would be necessary to view, at least in these initial steps, "all bodies as delusive." A conclusion Descartes seems very willing to uphold. Spawning from their misinterpretation of these first premises, Mersenne and his fellow scholars continue their First Objection referring primarily to the Second Meditation. In the Second Meditation, Descartes sets out to show that the intellect is better known than the corporeal world we live in. The scholars and Mersenne begged the
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question in their objection, "you recognize you are thinking a thing, but you do not know what this thinking thing is. What if it turned out to be a body, which by its various motions and encounters, produces what we call thought?" Again it seems the attack is on Descartes' decision to separate the corporeal from the intellectual divisions of the human being. In the Replies, Descartes discuses his method of separating the mind and body, and how this is necessary given the deceptive nature of senses. He continues his reply to Mersenne by mentioning how one can know thoughts are not produced by the body. Descartes replies saying he has not yet given enough depth in his Meditations to allow such a question. He tells Mersenne this thought did not rise until the Sixth Meditation where he stated, "the fact that I can clearly and distinctly understand one thing apart from another is enough to make me certain that the two things are distinct." Due to the quick and obvious remarks by Descartes, this part of Mersenne's objection will not be looked
Welch at, instead the focus on the objection that the mind and body cannot be separated will be placed on how Descartes goes about showing they in fact must be. Referring back to the Second Meditation one may anticipate from the title what Descartes is attempting to prove. In the initial steps he continues on the same path as he was on the previous Meditation. He decides to consider anything that presents any doubt as false and dismisses it from what he knows. He acknowledges that he will follow this method until he reaches a foundation in which it can not be shown to hold any falsities. He travels along this path until the conclusion that practically nothing exists is reached. At this point he states, "Does it now follow that I too do not exist? No: if I convinced myself of something then I certainly existed." This statement is a very powerful piece to his argument, as he has already convinced himself that he a thing that thinks. He follows on by saying no matter how strong a deceiver may be, this deceiver can "never bring it about that I am nothing so long as I think that I am something." His conclusion at this point is that he must in fact exist, even though what this existence is he does not yet know. Attempting to discover what he actually exists as is a point Descartes struggles with over the remainder of the Second Meditation. He back tracks over what he has previously thought he was, a man. Yet what he describes is of a corporeal nature. Referring back to the previous Meditation, it seems necessary that he can not accept himself as a corporeal substance, because if the deceiver is still looming around then he can not use his senses as a foundation due to their vulnerability to deception. "Thinking.
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At last I have discovered it- thought; this alone is inseparable from me." This statement is what tends to lead the argument from Mersenne and others. It is at this point in which
Welch Descartes separates the mind and body by asserting the only thing he knows, the one thing incapable of deception, is that he is "a thinking thing." To further recognize the corporeal from the intellectual processes, Descartes uses the concept of inventing ideas in his imagination. Only too quickly does he take a step back and determine that his imagination roots itself in his sensory perception. He
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continues for a while about using his sensory perceptions and his imagination to decipher outside corporeal influences. From here stems the well known wax example, an attempt to show the characteristics of corporeal substance which can be proven as true. Yet, at the end of this experiment, Descartes concludes, "I am amazed at how weak and prone to error my mind is." He follows this path of thought to the conclusion of the Second Meditation. In this conclusion, Descartes discovers that even though he can not completely be sure of the nature of the wax, or any other corporeal substance, just imagining it exists allows him to affirm his place in the world. He decides that in the examination of a bodily object he in fact confirms his existence and further develops his understanding of himself. In his last paragraph he states, "I know plainly that I can achieve an easier and more evident perception of my own mind than that of anything else." This remark placed at the end of the Second Meditation proves with a heavy certainty that Descartes can only truly conceive of himself as a "thinking thing," thus the idea of having a body or any corporeal substance attributed to this "thinking thing" has not truly been covered by him. It appears to be evident in his first two Meditations that Descartes has given enough evidence for one to allow the human mind and body to be separated. This seems to follow even if one can only do so on a purely conceptual level. Mersenne, and the
Welch scholars he borrows from, seem to misunderstand the basis for the First and Second Meditations. They presume it is impossible for one to separate the mind and the body
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solely on what they have previously held as true. Yet, has even Descartes truly done this? Does he intend to fully separate the body and mind? Or is this reasoning to simply show that initially all one can know is the fact that they are a "thinking thing." Descartes does not produce these specific concepts in the Meditations for fluff. He attempts to take the reader from a position of knowing about the world around them, to a position of knowing almost nothing. Proceeding in this way requires patience to allow the reader to progress through each step and to understand the final outcome. Although I believe Mersenne offered a valid complaint directed at the Meditations in his First Objection, it does not prevail over the conclusions Descartes defined. In this sense, Mersenne and others have missed the boat on which Descartes laid his premises. Following closely to his premises and the examples he provides, it seems difficult not to understand how one can separate the mind and body in the manner Descartes prescribes. In conclusion, it seems that Descartes First and Second Meditation held up well against these objections. His replies only seemed to strengthen what was already said, Mersenne and other scholars who objected along these lines were simply over zealous in their attempt to prove Descartes' method wrong.