Note: Remember that *'s before an item indicate greater, relative importance. Page numbers for Parts I & II refer to the Ariew and Watkins text; page numbers for Parts III-VI refer to the Supplementary Readings.
**1. The full title of the Discourse is, Discourse on the Method for Rightly Directing One's Reason and Searching for Truth in the Sciences. In addition to accomplishing the twofold aim set forth in its title, the Discourse contains a partial summary of Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy (his most famous philosophical work), records his intellectual development, and serves as an introduction to three scientific works―Of the Dioptric (Optics), Of Meteors (Meteorology), and Geometry.
*1. Note that Descartes (1596-1650) equates good sense with reason in the first paragraph. What do we mean by them, according to Descartes? How well distributed is good sense among human beings? How does Descartes support his claim? How does he explain the diversity of opinions held by human beings? How might the diversity of opinions be eliminated? Would you agree or disagree with Descartes' judgments about good sense? Explain.
*2. What advantage does Descartes claim for himself over other persons (p. 13, left column)?
*3. Descartes says, "So it is not my intention to present a method which everyone ought to follow in order to think well, but only to show how I have made the attempt myself" (p. 13, left column, bottom). In your reading, try to determine whether Descartes is as humble or subjective as this statement suggests.
**4. What general judgment does Descartes make concerning the books he read and his education (p. 13, right column, full paragraph)? What particular judgments does he make concerning fields of knowledge―history, poetry, mathematics, ethics theology, and philosophy (pp. 13-15)?
**5. Having turned away from his "studies"(education), Descartes decided that there were two other ways to search for knowledge (p. 15). What are they? Why does he reject one of these alternatives?
*1. Would you agree that Descartes is doing philosophy under ideal conditions: ". . . 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"? Explain.
**2. What conclusions does Descartes come to with respect to children's learning (p. 16, right column)? What clouds their judgment? This short passage has an important bearing upon criticisms of Descartes's doctrine of "innate ideas" (that will appear later).
**3. Descartes uses the example of destroying houses as a model for his own efforts (p. 16, right column). What is the analogy he sets up? Is it a fair one? Explain.
**4. Would Descartes be a political revolutionary? Why or why not? Do you agree with him? Explain.
*5. Descartes divides human beings up into three kinds―those suited for philosophy and two kinds of minds not so suited (p. 17). Where would you classify yourself? If you want to be more speculative, you can try to portion out the whole human race according to this threefold classification. Is what Descartes says here in any way inconsistent with what he said earlier about the distribution of good sense among human beings? Explain.
*6. Descartes' comment about Frenchmen, Germans, Chinese, and cannibals (p. 17, right column) shows that he is well aware of the problem presently called "cultural relativity." What does he say? In your reading, find out how Descartes thinks that this problem of cultural relativity should be handled.
7. What criticisms does Descartes make of the methods of logic, geometry, and algebra (p. 18)? Remember that he makes these criticisms solely with respect to his purpose here (namely, the reconsideration of all his opinions).
**8. What are Descartes's four rules of method (p. 18, right column)? Note that the first rule contains both a positive and a negative criterion of truth. In his Principles of Philosophy (Part I, Principle XLV), Descartes describes clearness and distinctness as follows: "I term that clear which is present and apparent to an attentive mind, in the same way as we assert that we see objects clearly when, being present to the regarding eye, they operate upon it with sufficient strength. But the distinct is that which is so precise and different from all other objects that it contains within itself nothing but what is clear."
9. Descartes associates his method with the work of mathematicians (pp. 18-19)―especially his development of analytical geometry. (He is talking about their work differently than he did earlier.)
10. Would you agree with Descartes that ". . . there is only one true solution to a given problem, and whoever finds it knows all that anyone can know about it"? Explain.
*11. What are the advantages of the method, according to Descartes?
*12. Why does Descartes think that he is too young (23 years old, at that time) to do philosophy (p. 19, right column)? Would Descartes think that this philosophy course is a waste of time? Would you agree with him (considering just his reasons, of course)?
**1. Note that Descartes distinguishes between "beliefs"[judgments] and "actions." How does he propose to treat them differently?
*2. What are the four maxims of Descartes' provisional moral code (pp. 1-3)? How does he justify each? How can Descartes set up a "provisional code of morality" when the first rule of his method requires that he accept as true only that which is beyond all possible doubt?
3. Why does Descartes prefer the "most moderate" opinions in his provisional moral code (p. 1, right column)?
*4. Explain Descartes' statement (p. 2, left column), "In the same way, since in action it frequently happens that no delay is permissible, . . . since the reason by which our choice has been determined is itself possessed of these qualities.: Would you agree with him? Why or why not?
**5. How does Descartes differentiate himself from skeptics (p. 3, right column)?
**1. Note that Descartes begins by systematically doubting everything, in keeping with the first rule of his method. Note also that he rejects as "absolutely false" all that is associated with the least bit of doubt. How should we understand the term "absolutely false"?
**2. What three types of doubt does Descartes mention (p. 4, right column)? Try to think of examples for each type. (In the Meditations, Descartes tries to reinforce his doubt further by suggesting that God might be a great deceiver who tricks him.)
**3. A number of philosophers have denied that Descartes can genuinely doubt all that he claims to doubt. For example, Gassendi (a contemporary of Descartes) says, ". . . you feign that you are dreaming in order to cast doubt on everything, and consider that everything that happens is done to make sport of us. But will that compel you to believe that you are not awake and to deem uncertain and false the events that occur before your eyes? Say what you will, no one will be convinced that you have convinced yourself that none of the things you have learned are true, and that your senses, or a dream, or God, or an evi1 spirit have imposed on you. Would it not have been better and more consonant with philosophic candour and the love of truth to state the actual facts in a straightforward and simple manner; rather than to incur the possible objection of having recourse to an artifice, of eagerness for verbal trickery and seeking evasions?" (Objection V) How might Descartes reply to this objection? Would you agree with Descartes or Gassendi? Why?
(Note: The objection of Gassendi is taken from a collection of objections by various philosophers which were published, with Descartes' replies, as an appendix to the Meditations on First Philosophy. Many of Descartes' replies clarify his philosophy; but, most frequently, he accuses his objectors of failing to read his works carefully and of failing to overcome their prejudices. The Study Guide is supposed to save you from the first accusation; you are supposed to save yourself from the second.)
**4. What turns out to be the "first principle" of Descartes' philosophy (p. 4, right column)? (Philosophers sometimes disagree concerning whether the statement of the principle represents an Section argument or an intuition. This disagreement is no real problem for Descartes, however, since he defuses any sharp distinction between deduction [argument] and intuition by taking them as two different points of view toward a series of propositions. Consider the discussion of Rule III, Rules for the Direction of the Mind., where Descartes says, "Hence we distinguish this mental intuition from deduction by the fact that into the conception of the latter there enters a certain movement or succession, into that of the former there does not. Further deduction does not require an immediately presented evidence such as intuition possesses; its certitude is rather conferred upon it in some way by memory. The upshot of the matter is that it is possible to say that those propositions indeed which are immediately deduced from first principles are known now by intuition, now by deduction, i.e. in a way that differs according to our point of view. But the first principles themselves are given by intuition alone, while, on, the contrary, the remote conclusions are furnished only by deduction.")
**5. What does Descartes conceive his essence to be (p. 4, right column, bottom)? Why? What rather extraordinary claim is he making here? Explain your agreement or disagreement.
**6. Descartes says, "Thus it follows that this ego, this soul, by which I am what I am, is entirely distinct from the body and is easier to know than the latter, and that even if the body were not, the soul would not cease to be all that it now is." Study his meaning carefully here and explain why you agree or disagree.
[Section B:]
**1. Explain in detail Descartes' first proof of the existence of God (p. 5). What is God's nature? (In this first proof, Descartes assumes that (1) Something cannot come from nothing and, consequently, (2) The less perfect cannot cause the more perfect. He would claim that these principles are clear and distinct ideas known through the "natural light," that is, through intuition.) Do you agree or disagree with this proof? Justify your answer.
**2. To the end of the long paragraph on p. 5, you may want to add the following clarifying statement from the Meditations (III), "For all the course of my life may be divided into an infinite number of parts, none of which is in any way dependent on the other; and thus from the fact that I was in existence a short time ago it does not follow that I must be in existence now, unless some cause at this instant, so to speak, produces me anew, that is to say, conserves me." This presents us with a second proof for God's existence. Explain the proof in your own words and then evaluate it, giving justification.
3. "following the rule previously established" refers to the rule that things conceived clearly and distinctly are all true.
**4. Descartes says, ". . . it is at least as certain that God, who is this perfect Being, exists, as any theorem of geometry could possibly be" (p. 6, end of opening paragraph). How did he arrive at this conclusion? This is his third proof for the existence of God in the Discourse. Do you agree with it? Why or why not?
**5. Descartes discusses a number of important ideas (full paragraph, left column, p. 6) ―the difficulty most people have in understanding some of his proofs, the nature of imagination, the origin of ideas, and the importance of the understanding. How does he deal with these ideas? Explain carefully his statement, "It seems to me that those who wish to use imagery to understand these matters [the ideas of God and of the soul] are doing precisely the same thing that they would be doing if they tried to use their eyes to hear sounds or smell odors." Do you think that he makes a good point here? Explain your answer.
*6. Descartes says, ". . . that all those things which we conceived very clearly and distinctly are true, is known to be true only because God exists, and because he is a perfect Being, and because everything in us comes from him" (p. 6, right column, middle). This statement (and others like it in Descartes' works) has been attacked by a number of philosophers. They argue that Descartes is guilty of circular reasoning: he establishes the truth of God's existence by trying to show that this idea is clear and distinct, and then he says that only God's existence makes a clear and distinct idea true. In other words, he is accused of begging the question at issue. How could Descartes reply?
(Hint: You may want to distinguish between the process of acquiring knowledge of a series of truths and our understanding of the state of affairs after we possess knowledge of those truths.)
7. Note that, in the first half of the long paragraph on p. 6, Descartes says that we have a "moral assurance" of the existence of our bodies and of external physical objects such as stars and the earth. By a moral assurance, he means that God, being perfect and thus all good, would not deceive us into thinking that these physical objects exist when they do not. Except for this moral assurance, we can doubt whether the external physical world really exists. What do you think?
8. If "everything in us comes from him," does it follow that God is responsible for all the good, or evil, that we do?
*9. How does Descartes resolve the difficulty raised at the beginning of Part Four concerning dreams (final paragraph of Part IV) ? (Hint: Follow through his distinction between reasoning―or understanding―on the one hand, and imagining or sensing, on the other.)
*9. Explain what Descartes means when he says, "For reason does not insist that all we see or visualize in this way is true, but it does insist that all our ideas or notions must have some foundation in truth."
[Section A:]
**1. Descartes says that he has "also discovered certain laws which God has so established in nature, and the notion of which he has so fixed in our minds, . . ." (p. 7, upper right column). On p. 5 (lower left column), in proving the existence of God, he says that the idea of God "was put in my mind by a nature that was really more perfect than I was, . . ." On p. 6 (full paragraph, left column), he says that the ideas of God and of the soul have never been "in the senses." And he says, ". . . our ideas or notions, being real things which come from God in so far as they are clear and distinct, cannot to that extent fail to be true" (p. 6, right column, middle). Taken collectively, these statements constitute Descartes' doctrine of innate ideas―namely, that all clear and distinct ideas are implanted in human beings' nature by God.
One attempted refutation of this doctrine was offered by the English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704): "He that attentively considers the state of a child at his first coming into the world, will have little reason to think him stored with plenty of ideas that are to be the matter of his future knowledge. . . but yet I think it will be granted easily, that if a child were kept in a place where he never saw any other but black and white till he were a man, he would have no more ideas of scarlet or green than he that from his childhood never tasted an oyster or a pineapple has of those particular relishes" (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. 1, Ch. I). How might Descartes reply?
(Hint: Recall what Descartes said about children in Part Two and about the ideas of God and of the soul not being in the senses.)
What do you think of the doctrine of innate ideas? Why?
*2. Note that the laws of nature are established by God (p. 7, upper right column). In the Principles of Philosophy (Part II), Descartes lists the following as laws of nature related to motion:
"XXXVII. The first law of nature: that each thing as far as in it lies, continues always in the same state; and that which is once moved always continues to move."
"XXXIX. The second law of nature: that all motion is of itself in a straight line; and thus things which move in a circle always tend to recede from the centre of the circle that they describe."
"XL. The third law: that a body that comes in contact
with another stronger than itself, loses nothing of its movement; if it meets
one less strong, it loses as much as it passes over to that body."
(Remember that not all of Descartes' statements about the natural world are
laws of nature.)
3. What advantage does Descartes gain by deriving laws that hold "even if God had created several worlds" (p. 8, left column)?
*4. If, in the beginning of the world, there was only chaos, how would the laws of nature function, according to Descartes (p. 8, left column)? Could he encompass the theory of evolution within this interpretation?
5. Unless you are a masochist, omit Descartes' treatment of the movement of the heart and arteries. He wants to stress the mechanical nature of the cardio-vascular system.
[Section B:]
**1. Note that Descartes associates the body with a machine (p. 12). What differentiates a human being from a machine?
**2. Suppose that IBM built an advanced, computer-directed robot that had the physical appearance of a normal human being. How could we determine that it was a robot, and not human, according to Descartes? Would you agree with Descartes? Explain.
**3. How does Descartes justify his claim that men are fundamentally different from brutes (beasts, animals)? What might a 20th century behavioristic psychologist say? What would you say?
**4. In the last paragraph of Part V, Descartes says that the reasonable [rational] soul "could not possibly be derived from the powers of matter" and, further below, that the soul (mind) is "intimately joined and united with the body." If the soul is so different from the body, how can it act upon the body―and vice versa? This is the origin of what philosophers refer to as the mind-body problem.
**5. Why does Descartes think that the soul is immortal (last paragraph of Part V)? Evaluate his reasoning, giving justification.
*1. What two practical advantages regarding "the arts" and "health" follow from a knowledge of physics? (p. 14)
**2. How important are experiments to the acquiring of knowledge (paragraph beginning in the middle of the right column on p. 14)? Can we possess any knowledge without experiments, according to Descartes?
**3. What happens when we turn from consideration of general principles to more particular effects (p. 15, left column)? Note that this explains why we cannot know everything through innate ideas.
4. Much of Part VI tell us more about Descartes' character than his philosophy. How would you describe his character?
5. Why does he prefer employment of paid workers to volunteers acting out of curiosity, for his experiments (p. 17, right column)? Would you agree with him?
**1. Make up a list of ideas that are clear and distinct, according to Descartes Would you deny the truth of any of them? If so, why? Suppose that you convinced Descartes that one idea he had considered clear and distinct was really false (Which one would it be?). Would his philosophy be affected much? Explain.
**2. Many philosophers remained unimpressed with Descartes' truth-criterion. For example, Gassendi says, " . . . the difficulty appears not to affect the question whether, in order to avoid error, we ought to understand a thing clearly and distinctly, but concerns the art or method by which it is possible to discern that our knowledge is so clear and distinct that it must be true and cannot possibly mislead us. Nay, at the outset I made the objection that not infrequently we are deceived even though we seem to have a knowledge of the matter which nothing can excel in respect of clearness and distinctness" (Objection V). And the American pragmatist C. S. Peirce (1839-1914) said: "The distinction between an idea seeming clear and really being so, never occurred to him [Descartes]" ("How to Make Our Ideas Clear"). Could Descartes dispel these objections? Why or why not?
*3. In the Meditations (II), Descartes associates the following processes with mind, or soul: understanding, doubting, affirming, denying, willing, rejecting, imagining, and perceiving. (Of course, the latter two processes to the extent that they involve the senses are not essential to the mind. Knowing clearly and distinctly is associated with understanding.) And when he considers the essential nature of the mind, he argues that we conceive clearly and distinctly the difference between the mind and the body. The philosopher Arnauld (like Gassendi, a contemporary of Descartes) raised the following objection: "The problem is: how it follows, from the fact that one is unaware that anything else [(except the fact of being a thinking thing)] belongs to one's essence, that nothing else really belongs to one's essence" (Objection IV). Arnauld means to suggest that the body may also be part of our essence. Could Descartes reply adequately? Explain.
*4. What would Descartes say about the following argument: Since all clear and distinct ideas are innate and the only true ideas are clear and distinct ones, one can know all there is to know by sitting in an armchair and reasoning carefully.
**5. In the Meditations (III), Descartes claims that we understand (material) bodies clearly and distinctly only when we conceive them through extension (with which we can associate the following properties: length, breadth, width, shape, location, movement, duration, and number). (Note that these properties are dealt with by physicists.) Properties like color, hardness, sound, and taste do not really belong to bodies themselves (since they depend upon our sensory processes and since obscurity and confusion are always associated with them in our thought). This leads to a famous distinction between primary and secondary properties (which proved instrumental in the development of modern science). Descartes would not claim that secondary properties are unreal (since we have sensations, obviously); rather he would maintain that they do not properly characterize the nature of (material) bodies. Thus the most proper account of the nature of the material world belongs to the area of mathematical physics. Those who object to Descartes' treatment usually argue that primary properties are known only through secondary ones and therefore the primary properties cannot be said to characterize the nature of (material) bodies more properly. Discuss the issue raised here in some detail.
**6. Would you describe Descartes as a religious person? Explain. (He certainly worried about theologians who might disagree with him. Galileo had recently been brought before the Inquisition and had been forced to retract some of his positions―and Descartes did not aspire to the state of martyrdom. Do you think that theologians had reason to worry about Descartes' philosophy?)
*7. On free will vs. determinism: In the Meditations (IV), Descartes claims that we are introspectively aware, clearly and distinctly, that we possess free will which is infinite in power. Note, however, that Descartes does not mean that we can do anything we will―for example, he would say that one cannot actually jump up to the moon but one can freely will to jump up to the moon. There are other cases however where our wills do direct what our bodies do, successfully. How does Descartes's interpretation apply to the problem of determining moral responsibility?
**8. Write an essay (about 400 words) which explains Descartes' treatment of the following problems: What is the nature of knowledge? Does God exist and, if so, what is God's nature? How is the mind related to the body? Do human beings have free will or are they determined?
*9. Is the Discourse on Method a fine example of the use of Descartes' method?
**10. What parts of Descartes' philosophy, if any, are still adequate in the 21st century? Explain.
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