Abstract
In the Fifth Meditation Descartes considers the problem of knowledge preservation (PKP): the challenge of accounting for the diachronic certainty of perfect knowledge [scientia]. There are two general solutions to PKP in the literature: the regeneration solution and the infallible memory solution. While both readings pick up on features of Descartes’ considered view, I argue that they ultimately fall short. Salvaging pieces from both readings and drawing from Descartes’ virtue theory, I argue on textual and systematic grounds for a dispositionalist solution. On this view, the diachronic certainty of scientia is achieved through virtuous habits of belief.
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Notes
I employ the following abbreviations for editions of Descartes’ work: ‘AT’: Oeuvres de Descartes (cited by volume and page), Adam and Tannery (1996); ‘CSM’: The Philosophical Writings of Descartes (cited by volume and page), Cottingham et al. (1985); ‘CSMK’: The Philosophical Writings of Descartes (cited by page), Cottingham et al. (1991).
I follow the standard interpretation that scientia is an item of perfect knowledge. There are commentators who have argued that scientia refers only to a body of perfect knowledge (Jolley 2010, p. 86; Alanen 2008). I do not see, in principle, why both readings cannot be rendered consistent. Nonetheless, I am primarily concerned with items of scientia.
PKP has been raised in the literature, though not by this name (see, e.g., Bennett 1997; Della Rocca 2005; Loeb 1992, 1998). Some commentators, however, define scientia in a way that PKP may not arise at all, see, e.g., Carriero (2008, 2009), Alanen (2008), Jolley (2010), and Sorell (2010). On my reading of scientia—which is ultimately a clarification of the standard view—PKP is an issue.
The term ‘cognitive routes’ is not Descartes’, but has been aptly adopted by some commentators to describe various epistemic processes in the Meditations (see, e.g., Sowaal 2011).
On what I mean by ‘solution’: first, there is the question of what actually solves PKP. Second, there is the question of what is Descartes’ actual solution to PKP. I am first and foremost concerned with the second issue: that is, Descartes’ considered response to PKP. However, I will further argue that the dispositionalist solution can solve PKP, given Descartes’ epistemological commitments.
Paul clearly has scientia in mind given that he defines certain knowledge elsewhere in the paper as being true and absolutely certain, and somehow ultimately grounded in scientia of God (2018, pp. 1086, 1099, fn. 21).
The standard account of scientia and the account of scientia that I will develop in this paper both require that scientia depends (somehow) on scientia of God. Indeed, this is Descartes’ point in his discussion of the epistemic status of the so-called ‘atheist geometer’ (Second Replies, AT VII: 141/CSM II: 101). This matters brings in the distinct issue of the Cartesian Circle (separate from PKP), and I will not address it here. For recent responses to the Cartesian Circle see Clark (2019), Newman and Nelson (1999), and Rickless (2005).
See also Fourth Meditation, AT VII: 62/CSM II: 43; Second Replies, AT VII :145/CSM II: 103.
Diachronic certainty is a necessary condition for scientia. However, there is another sense of stability that is associated with scientia that must be discussed. According to Descartes, an item of scientia should also be stable in the sense that it is always epistemically available to S so that it can figure into further inferences and epistemic pursuits. This does not imply that S is conscious, at all times, of every item of scientia S possesses. Rather, S’s scientia needs to be, in some sense, ready at hand. Call this epistemic availability. Part of the concern about whether epistemic availability should be a considered a necessary or preferred condition on scientia is that there may be extenuating circumstances—e.g. brain damage or psychological issues—that prevents scientia from being epistemically available to S. Nonetheless, one might argue that S would still have scientia. My contention is that a satisfactory interpretation of scientia must, at a minimum, account for diachronic certainty. But ideally it should account for epistemic availability as well. Nonetheless, I will not discuss epistemic availability in this paper. It should be noted that all of the accounts we will consider—the regeneration solution, the infallible memory solution, and the dispositionalist solution—have something to say, at least implicitly, about epistemic availability. But I will not draw that out.
Two further minor clarifications about well-founded evidence. First, while there may be non-propositional evidence involved in diachronic certainty, when we turn to the extant solutions to PKP, as well as my dispositionalist solution, it should be assumed that the well-founded evidence is always propositional in nature. There may be disagreements about whether certain kinds of evidence—e.g. CDPs—are propositional or non-propositional in content, but I will bracket that debate in interest of brevity. Indeed, most commentators treat CDPs as propositional. For a recent account of non-propositional content see Grzankowski (forthcoming). Second, I take well-founded evidence to entail propositions and arguments that could successfully counter any potential defeaters, although such defeaters need not be explicitly considered for a judgment to be well-founded.
Accordingly, I will speak of a judgment being ‘well-founded’ and of certain propositions and faculties (e.g. memory) providing ‘well-founded evidence’. When I speak of faculties providing ‘well-founded evidence’, I mean two things: (1) the faculty in question is somehow reliable in the right circumstances given various factors (e.g. our use of that faculty and the nature of God), and (2) that faculty can, in the right circumstances, provide us with propositional content that serves as well-founded evidence for particular judgments. What those right circumstances are, especially when it comes to memory, will become clear as we proceed.
There is a Spinozistic reading of Descartes’ o-judgments, where o-judgments are identical to CDPs (Nelson 1997, pp. 172–175). I assume a distinction between a judgment that p and the corresponding CDP that p, but nothing in what follows hinges on this issue, for d-judgments are distinct from CDPs.
I am denying that a memory could be an instance of a clear and distinct perception. If that were the case, then Descartes ought not have raised PKP in the first place.
Again, under the assumption that CDPs of manifest axioms are divinely guaranteed. See fn. 9.
Notice that I take a wide reading of scientia, that is, scientia is not limited to the metaphysical truths of the Meditations (French Preface to the Principles, AT IXB: 14/CSM I: 186, Principles IV.206 AT VIIIA: 328–329/CSM I: 290–291).
On Sowaal’s reading, it is not clear whether cognitive routes include demonstrations (which involve a series of CDPs), or whether they are their own distinct kind of reasoning, where one starts from a point of confusion and ultimately ends up with a CDP. I take a wide reading of cognitive routes, according to which any pattern of reasoning that terminates in a CDP is a cognitive route. Perhaps some may disagree, but having a wider reading would just make the regeneration solution more plausible.
One implication of this view is that stability seems to come in degrees: as one acquires more cognitive routes, the corresponding CDPs of those cognitive routes become more stable. I do not think that this is necessarily problematic. An advocate of the regeneration solution could claim that there is a minimal degree of stability that one must reach, and that this is reached once n amount of cognitive routes are acquired, and the right amount is relative to the kind of CDP in question (stabilizing the Pythagorean theorem, say, might take less cognitive routes than God’s existence). Moreover, some cognitive routes to a CDP may be shorter than other cognitive routes to that CDP, depending on how many steps are involved. Thus, there may be preference for acquiring the ability of working through shorter cognitive routes to a given CDP.
One might think that there is a role for memory in the regeneration solution, because we must remember how to engage cognitive routes. As far as I know, no commentator in this camp makes such a claim. Nonetheless, such a use of memory could not have any real role in diachronic certainty, for this is exactly what the regeneration solution wants to resist—memory cannot, on this view, provide well-founded evidence. Diachronic certainty is accounted for by CDPs, not memory. Moreover, the regeneration solution would have to appeal to procedural memory, not declarative memory. Remembering cognitive routes is a case of remembering how, not remembering that.
Loeb offers a weaker reading of the regeneration solution. According to his reproducibility solution, one need not regenerate every CDP in order to secure stability, rather, one only needs the ability to regenerate the Truth Rule, which will ‘enable him to prevent recollected clear and distinct perceptions being dislodged’ (1992, p. 214). I will not consider this view in any detail, for my objections to the stronger reading of the regeneration solution will apply to the reproducibility solution as well. Moreover, I offer an argument in Sect. 4.2 that tells against this view.
See also Letter to Princess Elizabeth 28 June 1643, AT III: 692/CSMK: 227, and Letter to Princess Elizabeth 6 October 1645, AT IV: 307/CSMK: 268–269.
Louis Loeb, who offers the variant reproducibility solution (see fn. 22), rejects this view as well (1992, p. 208). According to Loeb, one must only be able to reproduce the Truth Rule to secure diachronic certainty. However, I think that Descartes here is indicating clearly that memory, somehow, is supposed to secure diachronic certainty. Thus, I do not think that Loeb’s position fully captures Descartes’ considered view.
This raises the important question of what happens when a false proposition p is fed into the memory process (infallible or not). This will be discussed in Sect. 5 via the view that memory is factive.
See also Second Replies, AT VII: 140/CSM II: 100; AT VII: 146/CSM II: 104-105.
One might wonder why repeated tokens of the judgment that p generates just one corresponding habit of judging that p—as Descartes seems to claim, and I assume—as opposed to multiple habits of judging that p. I do not think there are any texts that will allow us to settle this issue. Presumably, it has to do with organization of content in storage, whereby the token judgment that p always corresponds to a single content p in storage. The theoretical framework on mental files may be helpful here (see, e.g., Perry (1980), Prosser (forthcoming), and Schroeter (2007).
One might try to level an objection I raised against the regeneration solution to the dispositionalist solution. Recall, I claimed that in the 1643 letter to Princess Elizabeth, Descartes claims that we ought not have excessive preoccupations with the intellect, thus the regeneration solution should be rejected. However, the dispositionalist solution, as we will see, involves much intellectual work as well. My response to this objection is two-fold. First, how much intellectual work is required to establish virtuous habits of belief is contingent upon the background of the subject. As I will argue below, the Meditations is designed to replace vicious habits of belief—grounded in sensory prejudices—with virtuous habits of belief. A subject, S, who relies heavily on the senses as a guide to knowledge, requires more intellectual work to break vicious habits of belief and replace them with virtuous habits of belief. But another subject, S*, who is already inclined toward intellectual inquiry, may require less intellectual work to break vicious habits of belief and replace them with virtuous ones. Second, while it is true that inculcating virtuous habits of belief requires intellectual work for every subject, my response is that once these virtuous habits of belief are in place, subjects can then engage in sensation and imagination, to expand their knowledge. The problem with the regeneration solution is that it seems unlikely that one could meaningfully engage those faculties given that one must rely on the intellect so heavily in order to re-ground d-judgments back into CDPs whenever the occasion demands. The regeneration solution automatically places the subject in a constant cycle of meditation. A cycle that Descartes thinks is problematic.
Cunning also claims that the meditator is establishing a habit of belief through memory here (2010, p. 102); however, he does not link this to diachronic certainty.
There are stronger grounds for this claim given Descartes’ analysis of the relationship between freedom of the will and CDPs. Arguably, when S has a CDP that p, S’s will is compelled to affirm (i.e. judge) that p. It seems that it is in some sense impossible—given Descartes’ analysis of judgment and the will—for S’s will to simultaneously be compelled in two different directions, i.e. to affirm both CDP1 and CDP2. If S’s will is attending to CDP1, the only way for S to generate and then attend to CDP2 would be through deliberately not considering the CDP, which could obtain by generating a perceptual distraction (e.g. a bodily disturbance that generates a sensation or passion). For an analysis of the relationship between freedom of the will and CDPs that arguably substantiates my view here, see Ragland (2013).
A big interpretive issue, of course, concerns the initial stage in the Mediations where the meditator begins to achieve scientia. Supposing that scientia must be grounded in scientia of God, it seems that there can be no scientia before the Third Meditation. And if one takes priority of the ontological argument over the cosmological argument, then there cannot be scientia until the Fifth Meditation. I cannot resolve this issue here. My argument does not hinge on this debate, moreover it is plausible that the Truth Rule in the Fourth Meditation is an instance of scientia.
There is another possible explanation of the translation. If one supposes that there are grades of knowledge in Descartes, and thus denies that scientia is the only case of genuine knowledge, then the translation is understandable. Perhaps in these two cases the meditator has knowledge of some variety. e.g. scire, just not perfecte scire. But that too would be consistent with my reading. However, one might argue that Descartes is loose with his use of these epistemic terms, and that he might actually intend scientia in his use of ‘cognitio’ here. I am not convinced that Descartes would be that careless in such crucial moments in the Meditations. For analysis of different terms for knowledge in Descartes see Clark (2019, p. 665).
Two other cases: first, in the Fifth Objections where Descartes articulates the necessity of cultivating the virtuous habits of belief in the Truth Rule (AT IXA: 204/CSM II: 270) and second, Descartes’ contemplation of God at the end of the Third Meditation (AT VII: 52/CSM II: 35–36; cf. Cunning 2010, p. 119).
Whether this substantiates Sosa’s (2012) claim that Descartes is virtue epistemologist is a separate issue.
One might wonder whether the dispositionalist solution is closer to the regeneration solution than advertised. One might re-interpret the regeneration solution as claiming that we need to form the virtuous habits of engaging cognitive routes. However, there is a difference in the virtuous habits here. A virtuous habit of working through a cognitive route concerns an ability, whereas a habit of belief is habit of affirming particular content. Moreover, it is ultimately not the virtuous habit of engaging cognitive routes that accounts for diachronic certainty, rather it is the stabilized CDPs that such habits generate. On the dispositionalist solution, it is the virtuous habit of belief that accounts for diachronic certainty.
The claim that memory is factive does not imply that memory processes are infallible. See Bernecker (2010, p. 214) for a discussion of how memory can get things wrong, even on a factive account.
My views on these texts are more complicated, for I am arguing in a different project that Descartes recognizes different kinds of deception, some of which may not necessarily impugn God’s benevolence. However, for present purposes the standard view will suffice, for God’s designing S with a deceptive memory would conflict with His benevolence.
For detailed discussion of Cartesian proofs see Gaukroger (1989, pp. 48–60).
I use ‘right’ here loosely, for whether a given faculty gets things right will depend on its functional role withing the broader cognitive architecture of the Cartesian mind and mind-body composite. Sensations, for example, are not designed to give us accurate representations of res extensa. This is one of the main lessons of the Sixth Meditation. But once we understand their biological function of preserving our health (Sixth Meditation, AT VII: 83/CSM II: 57), it is clear that they do get things right, that is, their content does guide us to navigate our environment successfully (Gottlieb and Parvizian 2018). But the function of semantic memory is to preserve content, and thus memory must, on balance, provide accurate memories given God’s benevolence and non-deceptive nature.
A recent exception to this trend is Homan’s argument that memory can help in the regeneration of a proof (2018).
This might seem implausible, given that Descartes’ mature ethical views developed toward the end of his career (1644-1649), after the publication of the Meditations (1641). However, we must not forget that the seeds of Descartes’ virtue theory were present in the provisional morality of the Discourse on Method (1637). Indeed, some commentators have argued that Descartes’ final moral system is present in the Discourse (see, e.g., Cimakasky and Polansky 2012).
Various drafts of this paper have benefited, over the years, from the feedback of many philosophers. I hope I do not leave anyone out. I would first like to thank John Whipple, my dissertation advisor, for encouraging me to pursue this project, and for providing constant feedback and encouragement since I wrote the first draft of this paper for his Descartes seminar. I’d also like to thank the rest of my dissertation committee for their excellent feedback over the years: Sam Fleischacker, Daniel Sutherland, David Hilbert, and Alan Nelson. I’d also like to thank Joseph Gottlieb, Rico Vitz, Aidan Gray, John Sutton, Deborah Boyle and audiences at the Finnish-Hungarian Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy, the Atlantic-Canada Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy, Coastal Carolina University, and New College of Florida. Finally, I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to two excellent referees of Synthese, who provided me with crucial feedback that significantly improved the paper.
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Parvizian, S. Scientia, diachronic certainty, and virtue. Synthese 198, 9165–9192 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02626-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02626-y