While it might seem odd at first to include atheism, agnosticism, and skepticism in a series on religion, these three systems of thought should be addressed here. Religion is sometimes defined as whatever about which a man is deeply concerned,1 and it is to such concerns that we now turn. Everyone, even the nontheist, attempts to make sense of and explain the reality around him While those who believe in some form of God attribute this world's existence in some way to that God (or gods); the atheist, agnostic, and skeptic form an alternative naturalistic explanation for this world.
Since our space is limited, we usually will refer to the three views as one, recognizing the great overlap among them. Where their distinctions are important we will point them out. After defining the three terms we will review briefly the history of the nontheistic (apart from God) movement. Then we will discuss five kinds of objections which represent most of the arguments brought by nonbelievers against a belief in God. These five objections include problems in the areas of language, knowledge, moral concepts, scientific method, and logic. Since this is to be a survey of nontheistic religions, and not a presentation of Christianity, we will not present systematic proofs for the existence of God, but we will present short theistic resolutions to the five problems mentioned. We have included the names of the major philosophers whose writings would be helpful in understanding these areas of belief.
Definitions
Atheism
The word atheism comes from the Greek prefix a (no or non-) and the noun theos (god or God). An atheist is one who believes that there exists positive evidence that there is no God. To the atheist, all of existence can be explained naturally rather than supernaturally. An atheist is convinced that all religious belief, evidence, and faith are false.
Popular authors and philosophy professors William and Mabel Sahakian explain it as follows:
Unlike Agnostics, the Atheist takes a definite stand, arguing that proof regarding God's existence or nonexistence is available, but that the evidence favors the assumption of nonexistence (William and Mabel Sahakian, Ideas of the Great Philosophers, New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1966, p. 100).
Bishop Charles Gore summarizes atheistic belief as presupposing
that we see in the world of which we form a part no signs of anything corresponding to the mind or spirit or purposes which indisputably exist in man – no signs of a universal spirit or reason with which we can hold communion, nothing but blind and unconscious force (Charles Gore, The Reconstruction of Belief, London: John Murray, 1926, pp. 45,46).
Historically, atheism sometimes refers to a rejection of only particular gods or a particular God. Hans Schwarz informs us that :
When the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras, for instance, declared that the sun was an incandescent stone somewhat larger than the Peloponesus, he was accused of impiety or atheism and forced to leave his hometown Athens (Hans Schwarz, The Search for God, Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1975, p. 16).
Plato in his Laws X (c. 352-350 B C ) defined two basic kinds of atheists: those who are sincerely convinced God (or gods) does not exist; and those who assert that there is no place for God (or gods) in this world. The first kind of atheist is considered moral and upright while the second kind is seen as an anarchistic (without law) threat to society.2 Socrates may have been put to death for being this second kind of atheist. Again, Schwarz notes,
...when Socrates was indicted for "impiety" in 399 B.C. on grounds that he had corrupted the young and neglected the gods during worship ceremonies ordered by the city and had introduced religious novelties, he was sentenced to death and was condemned to drink the hemlock within twenty-four hours. But Socrates' position and that of other atheists was far from being atheistic in the modern sense (ibid., p. 17).
Agnosticism
Agnosticism comes from the Greek prefix a- (no or non-) and the noun gnosis (knowledge, usually by experience). An agnostic is one who believes there is insufficient evidence to prove or disprove the existence or nonexistence of God or gods. Agnostics criticize the theist and the atheist for their dogmatism and their presumption of such knowledge.
William and Mabel Sahakian say that agnosticism "refers to a neutralist view on the question of the existence of God; it is the view of the person who elects to remain in a state of suspended judgment" (Sahakian and Sahakian, Ideas, p. 100}.
The Runes Dictionary of Phi1osophy defines agnosticism as:
l. (epist.} that theory of knowledge which asserts that it is impossible for man to attain knowledge of a certain subject-matter. 2. (theol.) that theory of religious knowledge which asserts that it is impossible for man to attain knowledge of God (Dagobert D. Runes, ed, Dictionary of Philosophy, Totowa, NJ. Littlefield, Adams 8. Company, 1960, 1962, p.&).
This is complemented by Peter Angeles' Dictionary of Phi1osophy, which defines agnosticism as:
1. The belief (a) that we cannot have knowledge of God and (b) that it is impossible to prove that God exists or does not exist. 2. Sometimes used to refer to the suspension of judgment ..about some types of knowledge such as about the soul, immortality, spirits, heaven, hell, extraterrestrial life (Peter Angeles, Dictionary of Philosophy, New York: Harper S Row, Publishers, 1981, p. 20).
There are two types of agnostics. One type says there is insufficient evidence but leaves open the possibility of sometime obtaining enough evidence to know with certainty. The second type is convinced that it is objectively impossible for anyone to ever know with certainty the existence or non-existence of God or gods.
William and Mabel Sahakian add this distinction to their definition of agnosticism (see above):
One group of Agnostics assumes that it merely lacks the facts necessary to form a judgment and defers any conclusion pending the acquisition of such facts; another group assumes a more dogmatic position, contending that facts are not available because it is impossible now (and will continue to be impossible) to obtain these facts – a view exemplified in Immanuel Kant's attacks upon the traditional arguments for the existence of God (Sahakian and Sahakian, Ideas, p. 100)
Christian authors Norman Geisler and Paul Feinberg also point out the distinction between the two kinds of agnostics:
One form of agnosticism claims that we do not know if God exists; the other insists that we cannot know. The first we'll call "soft" and the second "hard" agnosticism We are not here concerned about "soft" agnosticism, since it does not eliminate in principle the possibility of knowing whether God exists. It says in effect, "I do not know whether God exists but it is not impossible to know. I simply do not have enough evidence to make a rational decision on the question." We turn, then, to the "hard" form which claims that it is impossible to know whether God exists (Norman Geisler and Paul Feinberg, Introduction to Philosophy: A Christian Perspective, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1980, p. 296)
Skepticism
Skepticism is derived from the Latin scepticus (inquiring, reflective, doubting). The Latin in turn comes from the Greek scepsis (inquiry, hesitation, doubt). The Greeks used the word to refer to a certain school of philosophical thought, the Skeptics3 (see History below), who taught that because real knowledge is unattainable, one should suspend judgment on matters of truth. This meaning is carried in Runes' Dictionary of Phi1osophy:
A proposition about a method of obtaining knowledge: that every hypothesis should be subjected to continual testing; that the only or the best or a reliable method of obtaining the knowledge of one or more of the above kinds is to doubt until something indubitable or as nearly indubitable as possible is found; that wherever evidence is indecisive, judgment should be suspended; that knowledge of all or certain kinds at some point rests on unproved postulates or assumptions (Runes, Philosophy, p. 278).
This is confirmed by B. A. G. Fuller's A History of Philosophy, where he reminds us that the "role of skepticism is to remind men that knowing with absolute certainty is impossible" (B. A G. Fuller, A History of Philosophy, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1955, vol. II, p. 581).
Peter Angeles shows in his definition of skepticism that there is a range of belief within the system He writes that skepticism is:
l. A state of doubting. 2. A state of suspension of judgment. 3. A state of unbelief or nonbelief. Skepticism ranges from complete, total disbelief in everything, to a tentative doubt in a process of reaching certainty [Angeles, Philosophy, p. 258).
While skepticism is sometimes synonymous with certain definitions of agnosticism, other writers distinguish between skepticism and agnosticism as does Warren Young, who writes:
Skepticism carries the negative attitude a step farther than agnosticism, denying the possibility of human knowledge. Truth in an objective sense is unattainable by any means within man's reach (Warren Young, A Christian Approach to Philosophy, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1954, p.61)
Keeping in mind Geisler and Feinberg's two kinds of agnosticism (see above under the definition of agnosticism), their comments on the differences between agnosticism and skepticism are important. They write,
The skeptic neither affirms nor denies God's existence. And in contrast to the (hard) agnostic, the skeptic does not say it is impossible to know. For (hard} agnosticism too is a form of dogmatism – negative dogmatism The skeptic claims to take a much more tentative attitude toward knowledge. He is not sure whether a man can or cannot know God. In fact, the complete skeptic is not sure of anything (Geisler and Fein-berg, Philosophy, p. 299).
Because of the overlap of definitions for atheism, agnosticism, and skepticism, it is at times difficult and even unnecessary to distinguish one's usage of the terms. What is most important to remember is that most nonreligious people, while they may label themselves with one of the three terms, usually have no clear understanding of how their own views fit one category but not the others. A person may be regarded as an atheist but, in actual practice, fall under the common definition of an agnostic. Another person may be regarded as a skeptic but admit to the possibility of change to accept some universal truths. If someone questions everything, the title "skeptic" can be applied. But since certainty might be found someday it would be appropriate to be seen as an agnostic. However, if at this time that person does not believe in God, is "atheist" the proper term'. While the three terms are useful to us (as in reading other philosophy works), the terms are relatively unimportant in most personal encounters. If we can establish what someone believes about knowledge, about obtaining knowledge, and about the ultimate meaning of existence, then we can deal with that person on the level at which he is comfortable. In such a situation, the label of atheist, agnostic, or skeptic is unimportant.
History
As we look at brief histories of atheism, agnosticism, and skepticism, we will reverse our order of discussion to reflect the chronological development of these three areas of philosophical thought. There have been skeptics, atheists, and agnostics throughout the history of mankind, and we will treat skepticism first, then atheism, and finally agnosticism
Skepticism
The Greek schools of Skepticism began around 365 B.C. The first skeptic philosopher of note was Pyrrho of Elis (365-275 B.C.). The Pyrrhonic School held that skepticism was so pervasive that even their theory of skepticism was not certain. Skepticism was adopted as a way to avoid mental and emotional distress caused by conflicting data.
... the central idea of the early Skeptics was to avoid mental insecurity or doubt by abstaining from judgment on issues; suspension of judgment (epoche) became the fundamental theory of Skepticism. The policy of withholding judgment applied not only to metaphysical and logical questions, but also to value judgments pertaining to right conduct, the good, and the desirable....
The Skeptics, who were called the doubters, suspenders of judgment, and inquirers, based their philosophy on the premise that since we can know nothing of ultimate reality, then such basic things are matters of indifference to us, and they must be treated as inconsequential (William Sahakian, History of Philosophy, New York: Harper 8. Row, Publishers, 1968, pp. 48,49).
A second school of Skepticism is called Academic Skepticism, or the Middle Academy. Its leaders were Arcesilaus of Pitane in Aeolia (315-241 B.C ), Carneades of Cyrene (214-129 B.C.), and Clitomachus (187-109 B.C.). The basic premise of Academic Skepticism is summarized well by Sahakian:
The Academic Skeptics set forth the fundamental premise that they could know only one thing, namely, that nothing is knowable (ibid., pp. 49,50).
The Academics spent most of their efforts attacking the teachings of the Stoics,4 and their presentation of Skepticism was often done in direct contrast to Stoicism. Arcesilaus stated that, while one could not know, even about ethics, one could judge probability and that, in fact, one should order his life by probability. He was followed by Carneades, who postulated three degrees of probability.
l. In the first place, we have mere probability, where we act with little or no observation of similar situations to help us, and where the chances therefore are about fifty-fifty, but seem worth taking in view of what we shall gain if we win.
2. Secondly, we have undisputed probability, where empirical observation shows us that other people have repeatedly taken the same chances successfully and to their advantage, and have never lost. Here the face-value of the probable truth and reliability of an impression is backed up by all the other impressions and notions related to it.
3. Finally, we may be able to act upon chances that not only look worth taking on a fifty-fifty basis and are uncontradicted and backed up by the experiences of other people, but have been thoroughly investigated and found to have solid reasons for taking them. In other words, we may be able to discover a "system" for life's gamble that mathematically, so to speak, ought to work. Then, says Carneades, we have a basis for action that is probable, undisputed, and tested (Fuller, Philosophy, pp. 277,278}.
Clitomachus (sometimes spelled Cleitomachus) was the third leader. He attacked the three degrees of probability, opting for a more uniform system of Skepticism
Sensationalistic Skepticism was the last of the classical schools of Skepticism. Its two most prominent leaders were Aenesidemus of Gnossus (first century B.C.) and Sextus Empiricus (200 A.D.). Aenesidemus exposed what he felt were fallacious tests for truth: sensation and confirmed opinion. He felt that these were subjective tests and could not be trusted. However, he had no objective tests for truth and instead was a confirmed skeptic, viewing life and existence as uncertain but livable on the basis of custom and probability. Sextus Empiricus was a doctor, from the empiricist school of doctors, and he put forth the maxim that life should be ordered by observation, or empiricism. Loyal to skepticism, Sextus promoted the study of Socrates' remark, "All that I know is that I know nothing." Sextus set forth his skepticism as follows:
The arche, or motive, for skepticism was the hope of reaching ataraxia, the state of "unperturbedness." .. Sextus Empiricus' skepticism had three stages: antithesis, epode (suspension of judgment), and ataraxia. The first stage involved a presentation of contradictory claims about the same subject. These claims were so constructed that they were in opposition to one another, and appeared equally probable or improbable.... The second state is epode, or the suspension of judgment. Instead of either asserting or denying any one claim about the subject at hand, one must embrace all mutually inconsistent claims and withhold judgment on each of them The final stage is ataraxia, a state of unperturbedness, happiness, and peace of mind. When that occurs one is freed from dogmatism. He can live peacefully and un-dogmatically in the world, following his natural inclinations and the laws or customs of society (Geisler and Feinberg, Philosophy, pp. 85, 86).
Skepticism died out for the most part during the ascendancy of Christianity. It did not become a noticeable philosophical movement again until the post-Reformation period of western European thought with Bishop John Wilkins (1614-1672) and Joseph Glanvill (1636-1680). They are sometimes called "mitigated skeptics." While clinging tenaciously to one area of skepticism, they compromised by not embracing skepticism as the answer to all knowledge problems in all fields. They distinguished between two types of knowledge. The first type, which they agreed was unreliable, was called "in-fallibly certain knowledge." Nothing, in other words, could be known infallibly and certainly. However, the second type of knowledge, by which one could order life, was called "indubitably certain knowledge." This was knowledge that one had no reason, experience, evidence, or report by which to doubt its veracity. Using this knowledge, Wilkins and Glanvill developed their own system of determining truth within the limits of "reasonable doubt."
Rene Descartes (1596-1650) wrote at the same time as Wilkins and Glanvill, although he is not considered to be a "mitigated skeptic." As a Christian theist, he used skepticism as a tool to prove the existence of God. Rather than seeing skepticism as an end in itself, he saw it as the way to begin to show the undeniability of the existence of God.
For Descartes, skepticism was not the conclusion of some argument, but the method whereby all doubt could be overcome. Descartes claimed that it is possible to arrive at indubitable knowledge through the rigorous and systematic application of doubt to one's beliefs (ibid., p. 91) .
From the time of Descartes, the majority of such thinkers have been atheists or agnostics. We will treat some of these skeptical thinkers more thoroughly in the historical sections on atheism and agnosticism. However, we will mention them briefly here.
David Hume (1711-1776) is known as a metaphysical5 skeptic. He believed that it was impossible to have any accurate knowledge about anything metaphysical. He pointed out that standards of probability for beliefs go beyond our immediate experience and must be accepted with some measure of faith.
Nicholas Horvath in his book, Philosophy, explains that: Hume claimed that only sense-knowledge based on experience is possible. Ideas are mere copies of sense impressions. Impressions and ideas constitute the human intellect. Ideas are not entirely unconnected; there is a bond of union between them and one calls up another. This phenomenon is called association of ideas.
Neither material nor spiritual substances exist in reality; their ideas are purely imaginative concepts, being nothing other than a constant association of impressions. Likewise there is nothing in man's experience that justifies a notion of necessary connection or causation; cause and effect designate merely a regular succession of ideas. Since the principle of causality is mere expectation due to custom, no facts outside consciousness are known to man.
Granted the negation of substance, the existence of God and the immortality of the human soul are only hypothetical. Freedom of will is an illusion; virtue is that which pleases, and vice is that which displeases (Nicholas A. Horvath, Phi1osophy, Woodbury, NY: Barron's Educational Series, Inc., 1974, pp. 88,89).
More recently, A. J. Ayer (1910-1970), a limited skeptic, taught that any talk about metaphysics is meaningless. In addition, Albert Camus (1913-1960), one of the most important of all the so-called "irrational" skeptics, asserted that there is no meaning, no knowledge that is objectively true, and no objective value. The entire history of skepticism has the same basic theme. It suspends judgment about truth. At various times skeptics have said that even their statement of skepticism is doubtful. At other times they have said that the one non-skeptical statement is the same statement, that skepticism is doubtful.
Atheism
Although the term atheism as a reference to the belief that God (or gods) does (do) not exist dates from the late sixteenth century, Niccolo Machiavelli (d 1527) had already promoted a social ethic which did not depend on belief in, or the existence of, a supreme God. In his satirical essay, The Prince, he taught that the ruler ought to rule wisely and justly in order to secure his position and to satisfy his ego, rather than to satisfy some divine mandate. Machiavelli was one of the first to champion the then novel idea that "the end justifies the means." He argued that a ruler should not burden his subjects too much, not because it would be morally wrong to do so, but because it would not be expedient, for his oppressed subjects would then be more likely to revolt, depose him, and perhaps even kill him for his cruelty. Although Machiavelli cannot be termed an actual atheist, his system for successful governorship does not depend on, or presuppose, any divine order to this world.
Ideas from many philosophers, not all of whom were actually atheists, helped shape the atheistic philosophy of today.
During the enlightenment of the eighteenth century, Baron P H. T. d'Holbach referred to an atheist as
a man who destroys the dreams and chimerical beings that are dangerous to the human race so that men can be brought back to nature, to experience, and to reason (Enclyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago, et. al. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1978, Macropaedia, II, p. 2,59).
As a brief and circumscribed overview of the history of atheism, we will review some of the contributions to modern atheism made by Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, Comte, Nietzsche, Jaspers, and Sartre. Ideas from philosophers such as Bayle, Spinoza, Fichte, and Hume, although not mentioned here, also contributed to the development of modern atheistic thought.
Georg W. F. Hegel (1770-1831) was the man whose writings became an inspiration for the modern atheistic movement. He was one of the first prominent philosophers to advance the idea that God6 was dependent upon the world at least as much as the world was dependent upon God. He said that without the world God is not God. In some way, God needed His creation. This was the first step in saying that, since God was not sufficient in Himself, He was then unnecessary and ultimately imaginary.
Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) was an early prominent atheistic philosopher. He denied all supernaturalism and attributed all talk about God to talk about nature. Man, he said, is dependent not on God, but on nature. Feuerbach promoted what is sometimes referred to as the wish-fulfillment idea of God He postulated that the idea of God arose as a result of men desiring to have some sort of supernatural Being as an explanation for their own existence and the events they observed around them This wish, or desire, was the seed from which the God-myth grew. Feuerbach thought this hypothesis proved that God actually did not exist.
Hegel and Feuerbach strongly influenced Karl Marx (1818-1883) and his collaborator, Frederich Engels (1820-1895). Marx, an avowed atheist, preached that religion is the opiate of the people and the enemy of all progress. Part of the task of the great proletariat revolution is the destruction of all religion.
Auguste Comte (1798-1857) was an early contemporary of Marx and Engels. He believed that God was an irrelevant superstition. As a result, Comte divided human development into three main stages:
"the Theological, or fictitious," "the Metaphysical, or ab-stract" and the Scientific, or positive." In the first the human mind looks for first causes and "supposes all phenomena to be produced by the immediate action of supernatural beings." The second is a transitional stage where the mind searches for "abstract forces" behind phenomena. But in the third and ultimate stage man's mind applies itself to the scientific study of the laws according to which things work. God and the supernatural are left behind as irrelevant superstition (Colin Brown, Phi1osophy and the Christian Faith, Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1968, pp. 241, 142).
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) is often called the Father of the Death of God School. He laid the cornerstone for later nihilists by teaching that since God does not exist, man must devise his own way of life.
Karl Jaspers (1883-1969) and Martin Heidegger (1889-1971} were two prominent existentialist thinkers who discussed the ambiguous (and therefore meaningless) nature of religious transcendence. In addition, Heidegger stressed that one's salvation lay in his own independence as an individual separated from every other individual, including, of course, any sort of God.
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1981} was the most popular proponent of existentialism. He argued that man not only creates his own destiny, but that each man has only himself as the sole justification for his existence. There is no ultimate, objective, eternal meaning to life. An individual simply exists without reference to others.
A good example of atheistic perspective is contained in the Humanist Manifesto (1933). It was composed and signed by leading secular humanists who declared, in part, that "Humanism is faith in the supreme value and selfperfectability of human personality " Although there have been many other important thinkers in the history of atheism, these are representative of the most influential contributors shaping modern atheistic thought. Other modern atheistic thinkers are discussed in some of the references mentioned in the bibliography.
Agnosticism
Although agnosticism is a very broad field, we have chosen to limit our historical discussion of it to three of the most influential philosophers in its recent expressions. As we stated before, there is some overlap among atheism, agnosticism and skepticism, and many of the philosophers important in the development of one are also important to the others.
David Hume (1711-1776}, known for promoting metaphysical skepticism, showed the close marriage between skepticism and agnosticism. As a British Empiricist, he declared that the probabilistic standards for beliefs go beyond our immediate experience. We act on faith, then, not on knowledge. We do not know for sure: we are agnostic. However, we still act, having chosen to trust faith while at the same time being prepared for faith to let us down. Belief is not to be confused with ultimate truth, which is unknowable.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), although a theist, developed Hume's skepticism into metaphysical agnosticism. He believed it was impossible to know reality and consequently impossible to know metaphysical reality.
Colin Brown credits T. H. Huxley (1825-1895) with the term agnostic.
The word agnosticism is of much more recent coinage. It is generally ascribed to T. H. Huxley, the Victorian scientist and friend of Charles Darwin, who devised it to describe his own state of mind. He used it, not to deny God altogether, but to express doubt as to whether knowledge could be attained, and to protest ignorance on 'a great many things that the-ists and the-ites about me professed to be familiar with' (ibid., p. 132) .
Hume, Kant and Huxley represent a short history of contemporary agnosticism, which is distinguished by its assertion that one cannot know. Other prominent agnostics include Charles Darwin and Bertrand Russell.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Atheism, Agnosticism, and Skepticism
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Dreams and skepticism
Let us now explore what follows for philosophy from the view of dreaming as imagining. If that is the right model,then traditional formulations of radical skepticism, Descartes’ included, are not radical enough. The possibility that we dream now threatens not only our supposed perceptual knowledge but even our supposed introspective knowledge, our supposed takings of the given. It is now in doubt not only whether we see a fire, but even whether we think we see a fire, or experience as if we see it. How so? With my hand in view, I may ask: do I now think I see a hand? Well, might it not be just a dream? Might I not be only dreaming that I think I see a hand? If I am only dreaming, then I do not really think I see a hand, after all. If I do ask whether I think I see a hand, however, I cannot thereby be dreaming that I think I see a hand. If in my dream I ask myself a question, and answer it with a choice or an affirmation, the asking would seem to belong with the choice or the affirmation. If the latter belongs only in the dream, not in reality, the asking would also have its place in that same dream. So, again, if I really ask whether I think I see a hand, I cannot thereby be only dreaming that I think I see a hand. Is this not privileged access after all, protection from the possibility that it be just a dream?
Fair enough. But compare my question whether I see a hand. If I really ask whether I see a hand, I cannot thereby be dreaming about the hand and my seeing it. So, we seem to have similarly privileged access to the fact that we see a hand, at least similarly privileged in respect of protection from the dream argument. What might possibly make the cogito especially privileged? What could give it a status not shared by perception of the hand? One advantage at least it turns out not to enjoy: it enjoys no special protection from the possibility that one is only dreaming. The cogito has got to be different nonetheless from our knowledge of a hand we see. We might try to defend the cogito by retreating to a thinner, less committing, concept of thinking, where even dreaming and imagining are themselves forms of ‘‘thinking.’’ On the thicker notion of thinking, if I imagine that p, hypothesize that p, or dream that p, I do not thereby think that p; I may not even think that p at all. On the thinner notion of thinking, by contrast, in imagining that p one does thereby think that p.And the same is now true of dreaming.On the thinner notion, in dreaming that p, one does thereby think that p. More idiomatically, let’s say rather this: in dreaming or imagining that p, one has the thought that p. So, ‘‘thinking that p’’ in the thinner sense would amount to ‘‘having the thought that p,’’ a thought one can have even by just asking oneself whether p. compare (a) one’s affirming that one affirms something, with (b) one’s having (the thought) that one has a thought.The latter is also a self-verifying (thin) thought. But it has in addition something missing from the former: namely, being dream-proof. If one were now dreaming, one would affirm nothing. But one would still have the thought that one was having a thought.
So, my present thought that I am having a thought is not only guaranteed to be right; in addition, I would not so much as seem to have it without having it, not even if I were dreaming. Compare my affirming that I am affirming something. This too is guaranteed to be right. But, unlike the thinner thought, it could be mere appearance. I might right now be dreaming that I was affirming something, while in fact affirming nothing. So, things might in a way seem subjectively just as they do now, although I would just be dreaming: thoughts would be crossing my mind, without my really affirming anything. However, the more defensible thinner thought falls short crucially in the dialectic against the skeptic. It is not the sort of thought that suffices to constitute knowledge. Knowledge requires something thicker than merely having a thought. Accordingly, the move from thick thought to thin thought is not a way to save the cogito, after all. Consciously and affirmatively thinking that I think does have a special status: one could not go wrong in so thinking. It can thus attain high reliability and epistemic status. It attains this status through its being a conscious state of thinking that one thinks. Moreover, this status is not removed, or even much diminished, by the threat of an impostor state, one subjectively very much like it. A vivid and realistic dream is, of course, subjectively very much like its corresponding reality. Perhaps it is only in my dream that I now affirmatively think that I think. Despite being subjectively much like the state of thinking that one thinks, in dreaming one does not think; one does not so much as think that one thinks. That is to say, even if in one’s dream one affirmatively thinks that one thinks, this does not entail that in reality one so thinks that one thinks, while dreaming. Two states can thus be hard to distinguish subjectively, though in only one is the subject justified in thinking such and such. Of course the two states are constitutively different. One is an apparent state of thinking one thinks, doing so (thinking one thinks) only in a dream, so that it is really only a state of dreaming that one thinks one thinks. By contrast, the other is a state of thinking one thinks, doing so (thinking one thinks) in actuality. Only the latter yields justification for one’s thought that one thinks. The former not only yields no such justification: in it there is no such thought—this despite the fact that, by hypothesis, the two states are indistinguishable, as indistinguishable as is reality from a realistic enough dream. Have we here found a way to defend our perceptual knowledge from the skeptic’s dream argument? Even if we might just as easily be dreaming that we see a hand, this does not entail that we might now be astray in our perceptual beliefs. For, even if we might be dreaming, it does not follow that we might be thinking we see a hand on this same experiential basis, without seeing any hand. After all, in dreaming there is no real thinking and perhaps not even any real experiencing. So, even if I had now been dreaming, which might easily enough have happened, I would not thereby have been thinking that I see a hand, based on a corresponding phenomenal experience. That disposes of the threat posed by dreams for the safety of our beliefs. Does it dispose of the problem of dream skepticism? It does so if dreams create such a problem only by threatening the safety of our perceptual beliefs. Is that the only threat posed by dreams? We next take up this question.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
The Radical Separation of the Mind from the World
By defining his essential self as mind, and as mind only, Descartes made a radical and fateful separation of the mind from the body (and from the physical world in general) a cornerstone of his entire philosophy. The mind, according to him, is complete in itself, it has no need for anything physical to be what it is. It knows itself directly and with absolute certainty, while knowledge of the external world is at least theoretically doubtful. The self as mind exists as a distinct substance, as “thinking matter,” and it enjoys a supreme independence from the world of “extended matter” that is subject to the laws of physics.
There are two cultural legacies of lasting importance that Descartes’ radical separation of the mind from the physical world has left—two philosophical conceptions of reality that found expression in how Europeans related to their environment, and how they perceived their over-all existence in the world. Interestingly, these two conceptions are ultimately not compatible with each other; they point, in fact, to an important contradiction in Descartes’ philosophical system. Nevertheless, they both grow out of the basic analyses of Descartes’ Meditations, and they both left their mark on the general culture of the West.
The one legacy fastens on the absolute sovereignty of the mind vis-à-vis everything that is not mind. While the external world, including the thinker's body, is subject to the laws of physics and other external contingencies, the mind is not. I, being pure mind, enjoy a supreme degree of independence from my body and everything physical. I may inhabit a body, and thus be a citizen of two worlds, as it were, the physical world and the world of the mind. But the body is external and secondary for my essential existence. I am located in it like a pilot in a complex machine. As its pilot I am not identical with the machine, but I have a good deal of control over it. From there my control extends over parts of the rest of the external world as well. The physical world and the body, according to this Cartesian conception, are mere matter--mere raw material at the disposal of the mind. They are the other of the mind--alien substances without inherent value. The mind can do with them as it pleases.
The radical separation of mind and body--and of the mental and the physical in general--is known as "Cartesian Dualism." And by attributing to the mind something like sovereignty over the external physical world, it has prepared the way for a distinctly modern conception and experience of reality, a conception which replaced older ways of seeing the world in drastic ways. In her seminal work The Death of Nature Carolyn Merchant has documented several ways in which people switched from thinking about the world and the things in it in terms of living beings to thinking about them in terms of inanimate objects that behave and can be manipulated according to the laws of mechanics. Until the emergence of the mechanistic world view, many people instinctively conceived of the earth as a mother, for example, or at least as a living and personal being. Mining in the Middle Ages, for example, was still done with a feeling that ores were dug from the bowels of a living creature, and that such violations had to be atoned for with special prayers and rituals.
The modern mechanistic view of the world did away with such feelings. People did not only find it easier to approach such things as trees and rocks as mere objects, but they extended such insensitivity to animals and human beings as well. Animals have no souls, according to Descartes, and so it gradually became all right to use them as so much dead matter, or to subject them routinely to painful scientific experiments. And thinking of human beings as mechanisms made it not only easier for absolute monarchs and their generals to think of their soldiers as mere fighting machines (it was at this time that mechanical drill and geometric marching formations were introduced into armies), but also facilitated the massive introduction of slaves into overseas territories as mere tools of production. A self that is as separated from the external world as that of Descartes can approach living beings and deal with them much more ruthlessly than someone who approaches them on the basis of the sympathy that one would have toward fellow-creatures.
Cartesian Dualism also prepared the way for modern scientists to think about the world in abstractions. The worldview of Newtonian physics, for example, was greatly facilitated by Descartes' philosophical system. Before Descartes and Newton such plainly observable phenomena as the falling of an apple from a tree, the rhythm of the tides in the oceans, or the movements of the planets around the sun were separate and distinct events. Through Newton's abstract conceptualization, however, apples, oceans, and heavenly bodies all became essentially the same: masses attracted by masses that move according to the same laws of gravitation. The colorful variety of sensuous objects disappeared, as it were, from the view of the learned. What all matter has in common, and the mathematically expressed laws that govern its motions, became the dominant focus of modern observers of nature. The shift away from variety and sensuous detail to abstract entities and structures did much to increase human control over the natural world, but it also alienated the observer from the things observed. It replaced the closeness of touching, smelling, or seeing with the distance of mathematical calculation. And it facilitated the conquest of reality by the mind in the way it was intuited by Descartes’ radical separation of the mind from the world.
Cartesian Dualism found many other expressions in the culture of his age as well. The French garden architecture of the 17th and 18th centuries is a striking demonstration of the spirit of Cartesian thinking. This type of landscaping, which was widely copied throughout Europe, is characterized by the demonstrative superimposition of geometric shapes and figures on nature. The natural terrain of a garden is not allowed to remain as it is found, but is carefully leveled, and then sectioned into regular parts until it resembles a mathematician's blueprint. Plants are placed in such a way that they form straight lines, circles, ellipses, or artfully designed mazes. Individual trees and bushes are clipped until they represent perfect spheres, cones, squares, or other geometrical figures. It was the most deep-seated passion of the age to press nature into designs that are not natural. Pure geometry is a human creation, a creation of the abstract mind. To superimpose geometry on what otherwise grows in irregular forms was the lustful demonstration of the detached sovereign mind's power over the external world.
The Cartesian separation of the mind from all physical matter facilitated not only a willful attitude of the human mind toward nature, but also toward the monuments and creations of history. That is made explicit in the way Descartes looks at older European towns, towns that are irregular in their layouts because of the slow and gradual accumulation of houses and streets in the course of centuries. As befits the inventor of the Cartesian Coordinates, Descartes preferred a regular geometrical grid to the crooked designs of medieval communities. In his Discourse on Method he writes:
Thus it is observable that the buildings which a single architect has planned and executed, are generally more elegant and commodious than those which several have attempted to improve, by making old walls serve for purposes for which they have not originally been built. Thus also, those ancient cities which, from being at first only villages, have become, in the course of time, large towns, are usually but ill laid out compared with the regularly constructed towns which a professional architect has freely planned on an open plain; so that although the several buildings of the former may often equal or surpass in beauty those of the latter, yet when one observes their indiscriminate juxtaposition, there a large one and here a small, and the consequent crookedness and irregularity of the streets, one is disposed to allege that chance rather than any human will guided by reason must have led to such an arrangement.
It is obvious from the representative architecture of the next hundred fifty years or so (from the castle and park of Versailles in particular), that builders that came out of the age of Descartes preferred to do away with all remnants of the past, and to start building everything from scratch. Beauty and comfort were primarily seen in the creations of the human mind, in the "human will guided by reason," while nature and the remnants of history were at best available raw material, and at worst an annoyance or a menace. The symmetries and regularities of geometric architecture were the bastions of order and stability, erected against the threats of uncertainty and anarchy, just as the philosophical reconstruction of reality on the basis of Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” was the philosopher’s bulwark against the unsettling skepticism and uncertainties which he had set out to conquer. Separating the self as pure mind from the contingencies of uncontrolled nature, and installing it as the sovereign ruler over everything external, was the basic vision that shaped people’s existence in the age of Descartes.
Lording over nature has its price, however: It implies the alienation of the ruler from the ruled. The Cartesian who overpowers nature has to mortify part of himself or herself—feelings, passions, the body, and everything else that is part of the physical world. There is a certain coldness in geometrical forms and the life of the Cartesian mind, and therefore a subliminal longing for the nature that has become lost. However much satisfaction people gain by subjugating nature, there is something in them that does not want to dominate, but rather to become one with her. This underlying ambivalence toward nature, as will be seen, plays an important role in “Last Year at Marienbad.” It provides the inner parameters within which the story of the film unfolds.
The other important legacy that originates with Descartes’ radical separation of the mind from everything physical is the inherently solipsistic individualism that time and again emerged in the course of modern European philosophy. Solipsism is the extremist philosophical theory that I am the only being that exists. This theory is invariably perceived as either comical or crazy by anyone who discusses it, and most philosophers have assumed that there are convincing reasons for dismissing it without much ado. The way Descartes sets up and explains his procedure of radical doubt, however, makes it impossible to avoid the conclusion that the doubting self may indeed be the only being that exists. In spite of all efforts to refute it, Cartesianism remains haunted by the ghost of Solipsism. For if it is possible to doubt the existence of the external world, it is equally possible to doubt the existence of other human beings. If rivers and mountains or the desk at which I write may be figments of my imagination, then obviously the people that I perceive in this world may be imaginary as well. What my senses provide me with may be representations of beings that exist outside of me, but they may just as well be impressions that reside in my mind alone. The decisive point of Cartesian doubt is the contention that I cannot go outside of myself, as it were, to check whether what I see is real or not. I am always and irremediably inside my mind, and that always keeps alive the theoretical possibility of the truth of Solipsism.
In his Meditations Descartes had laid out his program of radical doubt, followed it through, and then found that there was something that he could not possibly doubt: his own doubting, and thus the existence of his own thinking self. From there he had proceeded to argue that the existence of the external world can be proven as well. But while Descartes may have convinced himself of the reality of what the senses convey, he did not convince many other philosophers that his reasoning to that effect was sound. His argument in support of the reality of the external world does not amount to more, indeed, than his assertion that God is good, and that therefore God would not permit anyone to be deceived to the extent that the "evil genie" might deceive people. Descartes has therefore gone down in history as a philosopher whose doubts were far more convincing and intriguing than his arguments that were to lay these doubts to rest. To this day Descartes’ Dream Argument from the beginning of the Meditations is seen as far more powerful and interesting than his attempted restitution of common sense. Once he had introduced his radical doubt, in other words, Descartes never quite found his way back to a robust perception of the outer world as real. Within the orbit of Cartesian thinking the unreality of what I perceive outside me is still a theoretical possibility, and thus the possible truth of Solipsism a haunting thought.
As mentioned earlier, Descartes was a philosopher who preferred to think in solitude. And by making his “I think, therefore I am” the inner center of his worldview, he created a model of self-reflection that influenced the entirety of modern European philosophy profoundly. Much of what later thinkers belabored revolves around the radical separation of the self from everything external, and the sometimes desperate attempts to reconnect the self with the rest of the world and other human beings. The dialectic of the self’s radical separation from the external world and its inevitable re-connection to it characterizes much of modern European thought. It is a dialectic that is also at the heart of “Last Year at Marienbad.” It is one possible summary of the film to say that it is the Cartesian mind’s attempt to find an exit from the labyrinth of its solipsistic solitude.
The Doubt to End All Doubt
It was the passion and declared goal of Descartes to put an end to the pervasive skepticism and uncertainty of the age. As he himself was troubled rather gravely by all sorts of doubts, he could embark on the removal of the general skepticism as a personal quest. He tackled the problem not by producing defenses for all the doubtful opinions that were under attack, but, on the contrary, by intensifying the general doubt to its ultimate extreme. Like a dentist who first cleans away every trace of decay from a diseased tooth before filling in new material, Descartes resolved to doubt absolutely everything that could possibly be doubted--in the hope of thereby finding something that was beyond doubt. Whatever he would find would be the basis for a new body of solid knowledge. His plan, in other words, was to doubt his way to a new certainty.
Descartes received a first-rate education at the famous Jesuit school of La Fleche in France, before leaving his native country to engage in extensive traveling and gentlemen-soldiering in Holland and Germany. After some years he returned to Paris for a short time, but thereafter moved to Holland to live the quiet life of a scholar. Taking advantage of the possibilities of the emerging Capitalist economy, he sold his inherited feudal rights and titles and invested the proceeds in stocks; this allowed him to live comfortably on dividends and interest. Over the years he made important scientific contributions to such fields as optometry, mechanics, and analytic geometry. (The "Cartesian coordinates," for example, are his invention.) He became most famous, however, for his philosophical writings. In them he laid the groundwork for all the analyses and theories that were to occupy European philosophers for the next two-hundred years and beyond.
In 1633 he was about to publish a scientific work called The World, in which he defended, among other things, the heliocentric theory of Copernicus. At the last minute he heard that Galileo was arrested by the Holy Inquisition for defending the same theory. As Descartes throughout his life tried to avoid such dangerous conflicts with the Catholic Church, he prevented the publication of his book. In 1637 he published his Discourse on Method, in which for the first time he presented his program of radical doubt. This program, too, raised the suspicion of church officials. In response Descartes published, in 1641, his Meditations on First Philosophy, in which he defended his program of doubt by showing that such an undertaking would not necessarily be in conflict with Catholic teachings. The Meditations, although a slim volume, became an all-time classic. In a sense it is the beginning of modern philosophy. And its center is the definition of the self as the one thing in the world that cannot be doubted in any way.
The book starts out with Descartes’ description of his intention, namely to rid his mind of all dubious and uncertain opinions—in order to have a sound foundation for his future scientific research:
I have not just now learned that, from my earliest years, I have received many false opinions as true, and that what I have since based on such unstable principles could not but be very doubtful and uncertain. And ever since I have realized that I would have to undertake seriously once in my life to be rid of all the opinions I have previously received into my credence, and start all over again from the foundations, if I wanted to establish something firm and constant in the sciences. ... So today, quite opportunely for this plan, I have freed my mind of all sorts of cares--fortunately feeling undisturbed by any passions, and having found a secure repose in peaceful solitude. I shall apply myself seriously and freely to the general destruction of all my old opinions.
As can be seen from these introductory remarks, Descartes establishes his program of radical doubt as a decidedly solitary enterprise. He is conducting his philosophical work in deliberate isolation--away from other people, and protected from the disturbances that usually come with practical concerns and emotional involvement. At the beginning of his Discourse On Method he had been similarly concerned with shielding himself from inner and outer disturbances: "... I was caught by the onset of winter.
There was no conversation to distract me, and being untroubled by any cares or passions, I remained all day alone in a warm room. There I had plenty of leisure to examine my ideas." Lack of company, lack of disquieting emotions, and the absence of physical discomfort are the conditions that he considered ideal for his philosophical undertaking--quite in contrast to the conditions under which a thinker like Socrates would do his work. Socrates pursued his philosophical investigations in dialogue with other people, surrounded by spectators and listeners, in often heated exchanges, and sometimes with much to worry about in terms of his well being and safety. Descartes’ deliberate retreat from passionate and full-fledged involvement in life into deep solitude is more than a personal whim. Even a detail like the quiet of winter is not an accidental feature of the scene of his work: it fits the calm and unemotional way in which this philosopher wished to do his thinking. The pronounced solitude of Descartes’ ivory tower corresponds, as will be seen, perfectly to the concept of self that he was to develop.
Descartes starts his program of radical doubt in a relatively ordinary way, in a way any critical scholar would go about doubting: He suspends his former belief in the teachings of his academic teachers. This in itself, however, would have been nothing new or particularly radical; a good deal of scholarly work at all times consists in doing just that. The philosophically radical part of his program went into effect when Descartes cast doubt on something that ordinarily has to be taken for granted: the testimony of the senses. In his words: "All that I have hitherto received as the most true and assured I have from the senses or by the senses. Now, I have sometimes found that these senses are deceptive; and it is wise never to rely entirely on those who have deceived us once."
This simple dismissal of the trustworthiness of the senses, however, is none too convincing, as Descartes himself realizes. For the very detection of a false testimony of the senses still requires the use of the senses: To see that a distant object is not a tree, for example, but a water pump, one has to get close to the object and take a look at it. It is my eyes that will tell me whether my earlier impression was true or false.
To effectively cast doubt on the truth of all sense perception, Descartes has to come up with a better argument. For this purpose he designs his famous dream argument:
How often it has happened that I dreamed at night that I was by the fire, though I was quite naked in my bed! ... I am reminded of having been deceived by similar illusions while sleeping; and, lingering on this thought, I see so clearly that there is no certain index at all by which wakefulness can be clearly distinguished from sleep, that I am quite amazed and my amazement is such that it is almost capable of persuading me that I am dreaming right now.
While dreaming, in other words, one is usually under the impression that what one is dreaming is real. When I dream that I am sitting in front of the fire place then I take it for granted that I am sitting in front of the fire place, even though I am lying in bed. I usually will not discover my mistake until I wake up. But if I can be so mistaken in dreams that I have had in the past, how can I be sure that I am not dreaming right now? I obviously think that I am sitting here, writing down these words; but how can I prove that I will not wake up in a while and see that this, too, has been but a dream? How can I possibly distinguish waking experiences from dreaming experiences?
The crux of Descartes' Dream Argument is the fact that there is no "index" that indicates whether any given experience is real or a dream. My sitting here and writing this can be a real event, but it can also be a dream. Dreams, after all, can be very clear and vivid--so vivid that they make me sweat or be afraid in the same way real events do. Without an "index" (perhaps something like "C-SPAN" in the lower right corner of my visual field) I simply cannot know for sure whether what I see or feel or hear is real or not. All I can be sure of is that I have an experience--an experience involving the senses of sight, touch, or whatever else may be involved. Consequently I do not know whether these sense impressions are impressions of something that exists out there in the world (a real writing desk, a real pen, etc.), or whether they are figments of my imagination. The world that I perceive around me right now may be real, but it may also be mere appearance, a deception. And even if it seems extremely probable that what I see and touch right now is real, and not a dream, I cannot be entirely certain about it. And absolute certainty is what is at issue here.
Since Descartes' program of radical doubt requires that he doubt not only those things that are obviously dubious, but everything that can be doubted at all, Descartes has to suspend his belief in the reality of the external world--everything which we perceive with our senses. This includes the reality of his own body. Thus, for the time of his philosophical reflections he will assume that the seemingly material world around him is not real, but something like a collection of impressions that an "evil genie" has put in his mind:
I shall assume that the sky, the air, the earth, colors, shapes sounds and all other external things are just illusions and dreams which he [the evil genie] has used to lay traps for my credulity. I shall consider myself to have no hands, no eyes, no flesh, no blood, as not having any senses, yet falsely believing that I have all these things.
Although this assumption can be seen as just a device that Descartes uses in his search for something absolutely certain, the feeling of the unreality of the external world was a very powerful one at the time. Poets and playwrights frequently invoked the images of the world as a mere stage, where people don masks and play out roles, and life as nothing but a fleeting dream. Descartes himself once wrote in a letter to a friend: "So far, I have been a spectator in this theater which is the world, but I am now about to mount the stage, and I come forward masked." The general insecurity with regard to the reality of everything was so pervasive that Descartes' philosophical supposition of the illusory nature of the external world was by no means crazily fantastic or exotic for his readers.
Assuming then that the entire external world, including one's body, is a dreamlike illusion, is there anything at all left that cannot be doubted? The fact that "I am, I exist" is Descartes' answer. And this, in a nutshell, is how he arrived at that conclusion: I can doubt the existence of the external world, and I can doubt the existence of what appears to be my body. But when I try to also doubt the existence of my inner self, my thinking, then I find that I am still there--as a doubting mind. And if I try to doubt the existence of this doubting mind, then I still find the activity of my doubting. And no matter how hard I try to doubt this doubting, I cannot help but find the process of doubting. My doubting is the thing that in the end I cannot doubt. Doubting, however, is thinking, and the existence of thinking implies the existence of a thinker. Hence Descartes' famous conclusion: "I think, therefore I am"("Cogito, ergo sum" in the Latin in which he wrote).
After establishing that the exists, Descartes lays out the answer to the question as to what he is:
I find here that thought is an attribute that belongs to me; it alone cannot be separated from me. I am, I exist--that is certain; but for how long? As long as I think. For it may happen that, if I stopped thinking altogether, I would at the same time altogether cease being. I am now admitting nothing that would not be necessarily true. Thus I am, speaking precisely, only a thinking thing; that is to say, a mind, an understanding, or a reason, which are terms whose meaning was previously unknown to me. In other words: I am a real thing and really existent; but what thing? I have already said it: a thing that thinks.
The Solitary Self
Individualism is one of the hallmarks of Western philosophy and civilization. No other intellectual tradition has been as intensively (some would say: excessively) preoccupied with singling out and defining the individual self than Western philosophy, and no other polity has made the presumed rights and prerogatives of the individual as central a concern as Western societies. Individualism is as defining a characteristic of our present civilization as capitalism, materialism, technology, and global expansion.
Socrates’ work and example were an important beginning of this individualistic legacy. Socrates’ inner independence from the community in which he lived set an important precedent for the way in which a person could conceive of himself or herself as a separate and distinct being. However radical Socrates’ individualism was, however, he never ceased to think of himself as a member of a community. His very individualism was defined as a social role (as his self-conception as Athens’ “gadfly” clearly shows). And no Greek philosopher in Antiquity ever thought of the individual as anything else than a social being, a zoon politicon.
This became different at the beginning of the Modern Age. Modern philosophy developed a concept of the individual that was far more solitary than that created by Socrates and Antiquity. The modern definition of the self disregards any reference to society or social context and fastens exclusively on what the self is in itself. Because of this approach to understanding and defining the self, modern philosophy ended up with a conception of an individual that was besieged by the problem of solipsism and the question of how a person could possibly relate to the outside world.
The philosopher who first formulated the idea of this solitary self was Rene Descartes (1596-1650). It is because of his groundbreaking work in this respect that he has become known as “the father of modern philosophy.” To understand why Descartes felt compelled to develop his radical individualism, it will be helpful to take a look at the general situation of his time.
The Modern Age came into being around 1500 CE--give or take a hundred years. The thousand years or so before that time are called the Middle Ages, and they are sometimes characterized as the "Dark Age." The transitional years that followed the Middle Ages brought about enormous changes in all areas of life. Four major events and developments stand out: The Renaissance, the Reformation, the change from agrarian Feudalism to urban Capitalism, and the discovery and conquest of overseas territories and peoples.
The word "Renaissance" means "re-birth," and the term refers to the rediscovery and re-activation of much of the sophisticated pagan culture of Antiquity that had been suppressed by the Catholicism of the Middle Ages. It was characterized foremost by a new worldliness of life. The earth was not seen as a vale of tears anymore, but as a place where it was “a pleasure to live.” Renaissance men and women did not think of the physical world as merely transitory and insignificant in comparison with life after death, but as a cosmos that deserved their full attention and admiration. The naked human body became a prominent subject of Renaissance painting and sculpture. Painters and art patrons did not think of it as sinful and in need of being covered up, but as something to be respected and cherished. Science, too, turned to the physical world with renewed energy and curiosity. The trailblazing discoveries, theories, and inventions of Galileo Galilei, together with the physicist’s opposition to traditional church teachings, can be seen as typical and representative of the growing secularization of the European mind.
The new worldliness became prevalent in other areas of life as well. Political power throughout the Middle Ages was sanctioned by the Catholic church, and in theory at least was tempered by carefully delineated moral obligations toward God and citizens. During the Renaissance power tended to become a purely worldly affair, and a desirable goal in itself. In his notorious book The Prince, written in 1513, Machiavelli advocated openly that in the art of ruling efficiency has to be more important than ethics, and that rulers often have to lie, cheat, and take all sorts of measures that are cruel and ruthless.
Machiavelli's theory reflected the practice of the time. Furious struggles for power were the order of the day. The papacy itself became the object of pure power politics. Kings and warlords from all European countries conquered and lost cities and territories at a rate that would have been perceived as lawless and chaotic in earlier times. Dramatists like Shakespeare explored the psychology of Renaissance princes in such characters as Macbeth, Richard III, or Hamlet's uncle Claudius. Hamlet expressed some of the dismay of the contemporaries of such violent Renaissance men when he exclaimed: "The time is out of joint! O cursed spite/ That ever I was born to set it right."
The second movement that put an end to the Middle Ages was the Reformation. Its beginning is usually identified with Martin Luther's publication of his 95 theses against indulgences on a church door in Wittenberg in 1517. It unleashed a storm of Protestant rebellions all over northern Europe, and eventually lead to the break-up of Western Christianity into several independent churches. Europe became divided into Catholic and Protestant regions. More than a hundred years of fierce and brutal "Wars of Religion" ensued in which Catholic and Protestant monarchs tried to gain as much territory as possible, and to install their own faith as the official religion of their domains. The massacre of the Huguenots in France and the Thirty Years War in Germany are among the low points of these Wars of Religion.
The single most important doctrinal difference between Protestantism and Catholicism was Luther's insistence that every individual had an immediate relation to God, and that this relation could not be mediated through the offices of a priest or a church hierarchy. By reading scriptures himself or herself, every Christian had direct access to the truth; the authority of the Pope and his councils became irrelevant for how the Word of God was to be interpreted by the believer. Luther and other Protestant leaders initiated the translation of the Bible from the traditional Latin into native languages, languages that ordinary people could understand. Intensive study of scriptures, unsupervised by priests, became a widespread practice. The Catholic church found this individualistic circumvention of clerical authorities so threatening at the time, that it targeted Bible translators for special persecution. Tyndal, the first translator of the New Testament into English, was captured by the Inquisition while studying on the Continent, and eventually executed by garroting.
Catholicism was a culture of community and hierarchy. The individual had its predetermined place in both; individual freedom was limited by social status and spiritual directives. Catholicism was thus a culture that provided certainty and security to individuals who might otherwise feel abandoned and lost. Protestantism furthered a culture of individualistic self-reliance. By setting the individual free in his or her conscience, by defying the spiritual authority of the church and its worldly extensions, Protestantism became one of the origins of modern individualism in general.
Renaissance and Reformation as cultural movements did not come out of nowhere, but unfolded in the context of the decaying social and economic order of the Middle Ages. The most tangible development that marked the end of the medieval period was the accelerating change from agrarian Feudalism to urban Capitalism. Feudalism had been a relatively stable system for hundreds of years because agricultural production was very primitive--producing few surpluses, and thus keeping trade and urban developments at a low level. Serfs were forbidden by law to leave the land on which they were born, and the few individuals who left anyway had few places to go to. Most of the towns and cities of the former Roman Empire had severely decayed or vanished altogether; in some places cattle grazed among the sometimes still visible ruins of Antiquity. The once extensive road system had fallen into complete disrepair. With the exception of a few thriving cities like Paris or Cologne, an urban civilization no longer existed in the Middle Ages.
Toward the end of this “Dark Age,” however, growing numbers of serfs escaped to the few towns and cities that did exist, and these urban centers began to grow and attract more migrants. New trades developed in these places, and production intensified. Beginning with the Renaissance, small and primitive shops were increasingly replaced by bigger and efficiently structured manufacturing establishments. Ever larger amounts of money were invested in such enterprises; banking houses were established to facilitate investment and trade.
The new interest in the sciences produced many technological innovations. Gutenberg's invention of printing from movable type, for example, was the beginning of a communication technology that profoundly changed the character of European culture, and the systematic introduction of gunpowder lead to a whole new line of weapons manufacturing--not to mention a whole new type of warfare. The cities as a whole became very productive and grew rich through their trade and other commercial activities. In time their accumulated money translated into political power. The landed aristocracy began to lose influence and prestige; a new social class began to make its weight felt: the wealthy burghers, the bourgeoisie. Capitalism emerged as the dominant economic system of the future.
Capitalism is an economic system in which individual initiative and personal wealth can play a significant role. Enormous personal fortunes were made around 1500 through money lending and investments. Bankers often could dictate terms to eminent aristocrats and rulers. Besides Protestantism, Capitalism became thus an important breeding ground for the kind of individualism that was to characterize the culture of the West.
The fourth development that marks the end of the European Middle Ages was the discovery and conquest of overseas territories. Columbus' accidental discovery of the Americas in 1492 is often cited as the seminal event, but one gets a more accurate picture of the situation if one remembers that within a short period of time dozens of explorers and adventurers set out to seek their fortunes across the oceans. New technologies, such as compasses, improved ways of rigging sails, telescopes, and more reliable calculations in astronomy, made it possible for European seafarers to cross much larger bodies of water than before. The introduction of firearms and other weapons made it possible for small numbers of Europeans to defeat and subjugate large numbers of natives who might not welcome the foreign adventurers on their lands.
The ambitious and ruthless power seekers that Shakespeare portrayed so well in his tragedies found their real-life counterparts in such adventurous conquerors as Cortez, Alvarado, or Pizarro. Settlement of conquered overseas territories followed quickly. Wherever possible, old native cultures were destroyed, Christianity introduced by force or persuasion, available treasures plundered, plantations organized, slaves imported, and the regular transfer of the new wealth to Europe established on a regular basis. While Europeans became fully aware for the first time of how small their old world had been in comparison to the whole globe, they aggressively exported their own culture and thereby ensured that in time their ways would become the ways of the world.
The result of all these social and cultural changes was a widespread feeling of uncertainty among many Europeans. The old stable world of the Middle Ages was gone, and a new permanent order had not yet been established. Old truths had become increasingly doubtful, but new ones had not yet firmly taken hold of people's minds. The new interest in scientific research produced the basis of what was to become the sound knowledge of the future, but confidence in that knowledge was as yet far from general. Philosophical skeptics like Michel de Montaigne, whose influential Essays were published in 1580, emphasized how uncertain all the old truths had turned out to be. His conclusion for the present, however, was not that the emergence of the new sciences was a new dawn of real knowledge. Instead he kept alive in people's minds the fundamental skeptical question: How long will it take until the new truths will have to be discarded as well?
In Montaigne's case the rebirth of the culture of Antiquity meant primarily the rediscovery of certain skeptical philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome. From the Pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus Montaigne took the notion that everything is in constant flux. From such post-classical skeptic philosophers as Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus he accepted the notion that things that are in flux cannot really be known, and that the human senses, constantly changing themselves, could not possibly reveal to us the true nature of things. As so many other scholars of the time, Montaigne lacked any kind of optimism with regard to science and reason. For him a profound uncertainty was the basic human condition.
Shakespeare's Prince Hamlet (the play of this name was first produced in 1601) can be seen as a prototypical character of this transitional period of early Modernity. Hamlet is a student in Wittenberg, the center of rebellious Lutheran Protestantism. He has to return to Denmark to attend his father's funeral. To his disgust he finds not only that his uncle has taken possession of the throne, but also that his mother has married the usurper in undue haste. The ghost of his father tells Hamlet that he was murdered by his uncle, and he urges the prince to avenge his death. In the old days Hamlet would not have had much reason to delay the revenge. Laertes, for example, the brother of his sweetheart Ophelia (and a student at the very traditionalist University of Paris) has no compunction to attack Hamlet when he is told that Hamlet killed his father Polonius. And Fortinbras, the Prince of Norway, an impetuous and unthinking warrior of the traditional kind, does not hesitate to wage a bloody war of conquest for a piece of territory that is too small to bury all the dead that that war would produce--because that is what princes are traditionally expected to do.
Both Laertes and Fortinbras are young men who feel no hesitation with regard to their duties, as they identify with their traditional social role and the conventional moral order of their world. But Hamlet is not a traditional prince; he is a modern man, an individual full of doubt as to what is true, and what would be the right way to act. For him the old role models are not beyond question anymore, and what is real in the world, and what merely an illusion, cannot be known with certainty. Hamlet finds himself to be the Prince of Denmark, to be sure, but that is not so much a sound identity anymore, as a mere role. He knows what people expect from him, and from his upbringing he knows what attitude he ought to take, but in his own eyes that attitude is just a mask, a guise, not something he could really be. Thus he lets time go by--partly loathing himself for his vacillation between presumed duties and doubts, but without coming to any satisfactory resolution. Action is finally forced upon him, but too late--and too arbitrarily to do anyone any good. Hamlet dies senselessly--along with his uncle, his mother, Ophelia, and Ophelia's brother. Politics as usual will continue for a while after his death, but for him there is not much promise or meaning in that. "The rest is silence," are his famous last words, and they express that for him, the modern individual, the old world with its certainties and meanings has forever gone.
Descartes'Meditations
Descartes's fifth Meditation argument for God's existence relies on an untenable notion that existence is a perfection and that it can be predicated of God. I shall first explain what Descartes's argument for God's existence is, and then present his argument in propositional form. I will then attempt to support the argument that existence is neither a perfection nor a predicate of God.
In our thoughts we apprehend ideas of things. These ideas may reside entirely within our thoughts or they may exist independent of our considerations of them (Descartes 143). Descartes argues that the idea of God is that He is infinite substance "[eternal, immutable], independent, all-knowing, all-powerful" to which nothing more perfect can be imagined (Descartes 149; 151). Descartes defines the more perfect as "that which contains in itself more reality" (Descartes 146), so that there are gradations of perfection beginning with the subjective phantasms, such as a chimera, and culminating with the most perfect being in God Himself. Thus, because our idea of God is one of absolute perfection, and existence contains more reality than nonexistent thoughts alone, God exists. Descartes's argument can be represented logically as:
(1) In our thoughts we experience an idea of the most perfect being.
(2) Existence in reality is more perfect than existence in our thoughts alone.
Therefore, (3) the most perfect being exists in reality.
Descartes wishes to argue that existence is a perfection and hence it belongs to those characteristics of the divine nature. However, a thing cannot possess a characteristic unless it first exists. In his reply to Descartes's argument, Gassendi complains that "that which does not exist has neither perfection nor imperfection, and that which exists has various perfections" (Plantinga 46). Existence, therefore, should more properly be thought of as a prerequisite for perfection and not a perfection in and of itself. Descartes disagrees however, and in his reply to Gassendi he argues that existence is necessarily predicated of God because existence is a part of the true essence of any perfect being (Plantinga 49). For Descartes, it is not possible for us to possess the idea of a most perfect being if this being lacks the most important characteristic of existence. If God did not exist then He would not be the most perfect being, but we clearly have the idea of the most perfect being so therefore He must exist. The problem with this notion, however, is that Descartes begs the question by building into premise (2) the concept of a perfect being which has yet to be demonstrated. In order to demonstrate God's existence, Descartes should not assume, or presuppose, that which he is attempting to conclude. But by predicating the existence of God in (2) he has already concluded that which is later restated in the conclusion. In effect, the follower of Descartes's argument is tricked, for if he or she agrees with the foundational premises for the sake of the argument (that existence is predicated of a most perfect being), then there is no choice left but to conclude that God exists.
Further, predicating the existence of a most-perfect being based upon the attributes that this being is believed to possess fails to provide existence to that being. We could add many more characteristics to Descartes's list of divine attributes (Good or Just for instance), but these attributes do not predicate actual existence, rather, they describe what such a being should be like. Kant argues that existence cannot be predicated of a thing at all, and that no matter how many "predicates we may think a thing [has]. we do not make the least addition to the thing when we further declare that this thing is" (Kant 504-5). Descartes's suggestion that "God is x" relies on the grammatical construction of the copula is while remaining unclear about the logical use of the is of existence. It is true that the object of the is of predication must necessarily exist in order to form a coherent sentence. Sentences such as "God is eternal" predicate eternity of God; grammatically the subject of the verb must necessarily exist. But it is not at all clear that the is of existence can be understood the same way. When we say "God is," logically we are really saying "for all x, if x is a God, then x exists" (Barnes 51). In this understanding of exists, the divine attributes that are predicated of God (including the attribute of existence that Descartes wishes to predicate of God) can only describe what God should be like provided He actually exists. Therefore, when Descartes predicates existence of God he is uttering a grammatically coherent sentence, but a very confusing logical proposition. To say "God exists" is to say "for all x, if x is a God, then x is existent" which is another way of saying "if God exists then He exists." Rather than predicate actual existence to God, this logical proposition merely restates the problem.
I have argued that existence should not properly be seen as a perfection, rather, existence is a prerequisite of any being who is then capable of being either perfect or imperfect. Further, Descartes's argument builds into his premises the conclusion that he is trying to demonstrate, namely that a most-perfect being must exist in order to be a most-perfect being. Last, predicating the existence of God as a divine attribute seems to be unhelpful in addressing His actual existence. Descartes needs to arrive at God's existence through empirical means that do not rely on a restatement of the problem in the form "if x then x" as a solution to God's actual existence.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Biography
René Descartes, often called the father of modern philosophy, attempted to break with the philosophical traditions of his day and start philosophy anew. Rejecting the Aristotelian philosophy of the schools, the authority of tradition and the authority of the senses, he built a philosophical system that included a method of inquiry, a metaphysics, a mechanistic physics and biology, and an account of human psychology intended to ground an ethics. Descartes was also important as one of the founders of the new analytic geometry, which combines geometry and algebra, and whose certainty provided a kind of model for the rest of his philosophy. After an education in the scholastic and humanistic traditions, Descartes’ earliest work was mostly in mathematics and mathematical physics, in which his most important achievements were his analy>tical geometry and his discovery of the law of refraction in optics. In this early period he also wrote his unfinished treatise on method, the Rules for the Direction of the Mind , which set out a procedure for investigating nature, based on the reduction of complex problems to simpler ones solvable by direct intuition. From these intuitively established foundations, Descartes tried to show how one could then attain the solution of the problems originally posed. Descartes abandoned these methodological studies by 1628 or 1629, turning first to metaphysics, and soon afterwards to an orderly exposition of his physics and biology in The World. But this work was overtly Copernican in its cosmology, and when Galileo was condemned in 1633, Descartes withdrew The World from publication; it appeared only after his death. Descartes’ mature philosophy began to appear in 1637 with the publication of a single volume containing theGeometry, Dioptrics and Meteors, three essays in which he presented some of his most notable scientific results, preceded by the Discourse on the Method, a semi-autobiographical introduction that outlined his approach to philosophy and the full system into which the specific results fit. In the years following, he published a series of writings in which he set out his system in a more orderly way, beginning with its metaphysical foundations in theMeditations (1641), adding his physics in the Principles of Philosophy (1644), and offering a sketch of the psychology and moral philosophy in the Passions of the Soul (1649). In our youth, Descartes held, we acquire many prejudices which interfere with the proper use of our reason. Consequently, later we must reject everything we believe and start anew. Hence the Meditations begins with a series of arguments intended to cast doubt upon everything formerly believed, and culminating in the hypothesis of an all-deceiving evil genius, a device to keep former beliefs from returning. The rebuilding of the world begins with the discovery of the self through the ‘Cogito Argument’ (‘I am thinking, therefore I exist’) – a self known only as a thinking thing, and known independently of the senses. Within this thinking self, Descartes discovers an idea of God, an idea of something so perfect that it could not have been caused in us by anything with less perfection than God Himself. From this he concluded that God must exist which, in turn, guarantees that reason can be trusted. Since we are made in such a way that we cannot help holding certain beliefs (the so-called ‘clear and distinct’ perceptions), God would be a deceiver, and thus imperfect, if such beliefs were wrong; any mistakes must be due to our own misuse of reason. This is Descartes’ famous epistemological principle of clear and distinct perception. This central argument in Descartes’ philosophy, however, is threatened with circularity – the Cartesian Circle – since the arguments that establish the trustworthiness of reason (the Cogito Argument and the argument for the existence of God) themselves seem to depend on the trustworthiness of reason. Also central to Descartes’ metaphysics was the distinction between mind and body. Since the clear and distinct ideas of mind and body are entirely separate, God can create them apart from one another. Therefore, they are distinct substances. The mind is a substance whose essence is thought alone, and hence exists entirely outside geometric categories, including place. Body is a substance whose essence is extension alone, a geometric object without even sensory qualities like colour or taste, which exist only in the perceiving mind. We know that such bodies exist as the causes of sensation: God has given us a great propensity to believe that our sensations come to us from external bodies, and no means to correct that propensity; hence, he would be a deceiver if we were mistaken. But Descartes also held that the mind and body are closely united with one another; sensation and other feelings, such as hunger and pain, arise from this union. Sensations cannot inform us about the real nature of things, but they can be reliable as sources of knowledge useful to maintaining the mind and body unity. While many of Descartes’ contemporaries found it difficult to understand how mind and body can relate to one another, Descartes took it as a simple fact of experience that they do. His account of the passions is an account of how this connection leads us to feelings like wonder, love, hatred, desire, joy and sadness, from which all other passions derive. Understanding these passions helps us to control them, which was a central aim of morality for Descartes. Descartes’ account of body as extended substance led to a physics as well. Because to be extended is to be a body, there can be no empty space. Furthermore, since all body is of the same nature, all differences between bodies are to be explained in terms of the size, shape and motion of their component parts, and in terms of the laws of motion that they obey. Descartes attempted to derive these laws from the way in which God, in his constancy, conserves the world at every moment. In these mechanistic terms, Descartes attempted to explain a wide variety of features of the world, from the formation of planetary systems out of an initial chaos, to magnetism, to the vital functions of animals, which he considered to be mere machines. Descartes never finished working out his ambitious programme in full detail. Though he published the metaphysics and the general portion of his physics, the physical explanation of specific phenomena, especially biological, remained unfinished, as did his moral theory. Despite this, however, Descartes’ programme had an enormous influence on the philosophy that followed, both within the substantial group that identified themselves as his followers, and outside.
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