Descartes proseminar - second half breakdown

Skepticism and its Legacy (first 1 1/2 weeks)
i) Skepticism about the external world:
          Skepticism in some form or another is a 
philosophical perennial, but even so it is not unreasonable to 
suggest that with Descartes, skepticism of an entirely new 
form made its first appearance on stage. Descartes deployed a 
radical doubt about the external world, with methodical 
ambitions, and in doing so he might be taken to have raised 
the stakes for epistemology. What if the Cartesian response to 
Skepticism fails? Is our ordinary knowledge of the world 
impeached if we cannot refute the hypothesis that we are 
dreaming, or that we are the playthings of a malign demon? 
There is also a historical question: is Cartesian skepticism 
interestingly different from the Pyrrhonian and academic 
skepticism that was "in play" long before Descartes?

Contemporary: Barry Stroud - The Significance of Philosophical 
Skepticism ch. 1,2 
Ancient: Miles Burnyeat: "Idealism and Greek Philosophy: What 
Descartes Saw and Berkeley Missed "
Thompson Clarke "The Legacy of Skepticism"

Background and secondary reading:
G. Rodis-Lewis  "Doute Pratique et Doute Spéculatif chez 
Montaigne et Descartes"
David Lewis "Elusive Knowledge"
James Joyce "The Lasting Legacy of Skepticism"
O.K. Bowsma "Descartes' Evil Genius"

ii) Logical Skepticism and Circles: The Justification of 
Deduction
In the first half we addressed various scholarly issues 
surrounding the interpretation of the "Cartesian Circle". The 
problem Descartes faces in justifying the reliance on clear 
and distinct ideas may be taken to be a specific manifestation 
what Henry Scheffer is said to have called "the logocentric 
predicament".  On natural understandings of what 
"justification" consists in, it might seem to be impossible to 
give any noncircular justification of logical principles, 
since any justification at all seems to employ or presuppose 
the correctness of at least some of those principles. So what 
are justifications, and can we have justifications of logical 
principles? Does the Cartesian Circle point to a "Problem of 
Deduction" dual to Hume's "Problem of Induction"?
        This issue forms the background to a substantial body 
of work in recent scholarship on Frege, Russell, and the early 
Wittgenstein. Some attention will be devoted to charting this 
topic as it shows itself in this literature. Some 
contributions to this issue are:

Susan Haack - "The Justification of Deduction"
Lewis Carroll - "What the Tortoise said to Achilles"
Michael Dummett: "The Justification of Deduction" and The 
Logical 
Basis of Metaphysics ch. 8, ch. 11-13
[Plus revisit the Frankfurt material discussed earlier]

Secondary, and Background Readings:
 J. Tappenden: "Metatheory and Mathematical Practice in Frege" 
(plus another JT paper if it is ready)
T. Ricketts "Objectivity and Objecthood: Frege's Metaphysics 
of Judgement", "Frege's 1906 Foray into Metatheory",
"Logic and Truth in Frege"
Christopher Peacocke: "Sense and Justification"
Arthur Prior "Roundabout the Runabout Inference-Ticket" (known 
colloquially as "the Tonk paper")
J.S. Mill on the Syllogism, from his "Logic"

Paralogisms - personal identity, the mental (second 1 1/2 weeks)
i) Kant's diagnosis of the (?) flaws in the Cogito argument

There have been many attempts to defuse Descartes' conclusion 
that "I am, I exist" is certain. One of the most difficult and 
fascinating is Kant's analysis in the section of the 
first Critique entitled "Paralogisms of Pure Reason". In a 
nutshell, Kant's suggestion is that "I think" is in a certain 
sense ambiguous. One notion of "I think" expresses the 
existence of the self as a thinking thing that can be the 
object of inner experience - as a thing that exists in space 
and time, which is subject to the conditions on the 
possibility of experience. "I think" in this sense asserts the 
knowledge of the self as a thing with a property, but, Kant 
suggests, it is not certain and necessary. The other sense is 
more difficult to explain briefly, but it is approximately the 
following. "I think" does not predicate any property of a 
thing, but rather it corresponds to a unifying principle on 
possible experience. In order for us to have knowledge of the 
world, it must be that distinct experiences can be represented 
as parts of a single unified experience. Insofar as 
"I think" expresses this formal condition on possible 
experience, it is necessary, but it does not express knowledge
of the existence of any thing, so "I exist" in the desired sense 
doesn't follow. 
       P.F. Strawson has revived this analysis of the Cogito 
and has extended the basic insight to illuminate other
philosophical problems of personal identity and self-
knowledge.

Kant - Paralogisms of Pure Reason (B version) from the 
Critique of Pure Reason
P. F. Strawson The Bounds of Sense p. 162 - 174
John McDowell "Referring to Oneself" with Strawson's reply

Secondary and Background Readings:
L. Wittgenstein "The Blue and Brown Books" pp. 66-67
E. Anscombe: "The First Person" 
Strawson "Kant's Paralogisms: Self-Consciousness and the 
"Outside Observer"
David Lewis: "Attitudes De Dicto and De Se"
John Perry "The Essential Indexical"

ii) Content and Self-Knowledge
     One of the topics that arises in Meditation II, and shows 
itself again unexpectedly in Meditation III is the connection
between the content of our thoughts and the potential we 
have for ascertaining that content merely by introspective 
scrutiny. One legacy of the Meditations seems to be the idea
that our conscious thought has the property of Cartesian 
Transparency: At least some of the properties of thoughts - 
their content, perhaps, or their logical properties - must
be (at least in principle)accessible by reflection alone to 
the person thinking those thoughts.
    This assumption is in tension with the apparent 
conclusion of a cluster of arguments proposed by Burge,
Putnam and Kripke, among others. These arguments suggest
that the content of a belief, or of the sentences whose 
utterance can express a belief, could depend crucially
on facts in the world that are independent of our state
of mind. Similarly, it could be suggested that we might
need empirical information in addition to ascertain 
some of the logical consequences of our beliefs. 

Core Readings:
Tyler Burge "Individualism and the Mental"
Robert Stalnaker "Narrow Content"
Paul Boghossian "Content and Self-Knowledge"
Saul Kripke "A Puzzle about Belief" 

Week 4 
Cartesian Geometry and Cartesian Method
        Descartes contributions to geometry, and his attitudes 
to geometric practice, raise questions of method that are
interesting both in connection with his philosophical 
methods, and in their own right. In the three upcoming 
meetings, three of these topics will be examined. First
of all, one clear result of Cartesian innovations in
geometry is that they deliver a natural unification of
phenomena that might have otherwise seemed 
unconnected. This happens in several ways: entire theories
are consolidated, and on a smaller scale, new classifications
are devised which group together geometrical objects in 
a newly natural seeming way. What kind of advance in 
understanding does such an innovation represent? A second 
question pertains to what one might call the "fruitfulness"
of methods. It counts in favor of a method of investigation
that it is in some sense "easy to use". What is the metaphysical
significance of a fact like that? 

Monday: Unification and Explanation
Emily Grosholz "Descartes' Unification of Algebra and 
Geometry" 
Michael Friedman "Explanation and Scientific Understanding" 
Steven Gaukroger "The Nature of Abstract Reasoning: 
Philosophical Aspects of Descartes' Work in Algebra"
(in Cambridge Companion to Descartes)
[JT - Notes on Unification in mathematics]

Optional Background and Secondary Reading:
Humphries "Greater Unification Equals Greater Understanding?"
P. Kitcher a section of "------"

Wednesday: Analysis and Synthesis  I) "context of discovery"/ 
"context of justification"
Core Readings:
Reread: Ed Curley "Analysis in the Meditations: The Quest for 
Clear and Distinct Ideas", 
plus "Spinoza as an Expositor of Descartes" and the Garber and 
Cohen riposte 
[these will have been read in the first half]
Jaakko Hintikka and Uwe Remes: selections from The Method of 
Analysis
"J. Tappenden "Extending Knowledge and 'Fruitful Concepts': 
Fregean Themes in the Philosophy of Mathematics"
S. Gaukroger "Discovery and Proof" (Chapter 3 of Cartesian 
Logic)
Arnauld and Nicole Logic or the Art of Thinking (The "Port-
Royal Logic") Fourth Part 
"On Method" ch. 1 - ch. 11

Optional Background and Secondary Reading:
G. Gigerenzer: "Where do New Ideas Come From?"

Week 5 
Monday: Analysis and Synthesis II: "Styles of Reasoning"
       The distinction of analysis and synthesis prompts us to
ask what attitude we should take to situations where patterns of
reasoning about a subject-matter are importantly different
in key ways. 
Core Reading:
Ian Hacking - "'Style' for Historians and Philosophers"

Optional Background and Secondary Reading:
J. Tappenden: "Proof Style and Axiom Choice in Mathematics"



The Ontological Argument
     The Meditation V argument puts me in mind of Twain's 
remarks about Wagner's music: "It's better than it sounds." It 
seems evidently wrong, yet a diagnosis of just how it fails,
or even a secure verdict that it fails, is hard to pin down.
Many of the customary objections don't seem to hold water. (For
example, JT and EC are in agreement that the old standby 
"Existence is not a property/predicate/perfection/ what have
you)is a red herring. But it appears we are not completely of
one mind as to why. That sort of thing happens a lot
when this argument is taken seriously.) Some recent discussions
of the argument show it to be bound up with quite delicate
modal principles. Plantinga even maintains (reservedly) that
the argument is sound.

Wednesday - The argument revisited; the necessary elementary 
modal logic
Notes from JT: all (or most, or at least some...) of the modal 
logic you need to know to 
puzzle out the ontological argument.
Anselm: Prosologium selection and Gaunilon appendix
David Lewis: "Anselm and Actuality"
Plantinga: The Nature of Necessity Chapter 9 and 10 (though 
chapter 9 will only be 
relevant to Wednesday's meeting) 
J. Mackie Miracle of Theism ch. 3 

Week 6  - Free Will and Responsibility
       In Meditation IV, Descartes has a brief, but striking 
characterization of free will. Its role in the overall 
meditations is to insulate the thesis that God is no deceiver 
from the undeniable fact that Descartes has erred on some 
occasions in the past. If Descartes' mistaken judgements were 
Free choices on his part, then Descartes, not God, should bear 
the responsibility for them. This reflects a broader, venerable
debate about the extent to which a Creator would be untainted by 
responsibility for the evil freely done by the beings He created. 
Descartes' characterization of free will also prompts questions
of a more basic sort like: "*That's* free will???" Which of
course leads to the further question: "Well, if not that, what??"
Wednesday's meeting will be devoted to some of the more penetrating
recent ruminations on what Free will is and what difference having
it could make.

Monday - The Free Will Defense
J. Mackie Miracle of Theism ch. 9
A. Plantinga Ch. 9

Background and secondary:
J.L. Mackie "Evil and Omnipotence" Mind 1955

Wednesday  - "Could have done otherwise?" - Determination and 
Freedom
Harry Frankfurt  "Alternate Possibilities and Moral 
Responsibility"   
P.F. Strawson - "Freedom And Resentment" 
Susan Wolf - "The Importance of Free Will"

Background and secondary:
B. Williams: "Deciding to Believe"
E. Curley: "Descartes, Spinoza and the Ethics of Belief" 
(reread)