Could God Deceive Us? Skeptical Hypotheses in Late Medieval Epistemology.

That Descartes’ God is not a deceiver is amongst the canonical claims of early modern philosophy. The significance of this (purported) fact to the coherence of Descartes’ system is likewise canonical, infused in how we teach and think about the _Meditations_. Though prevalent, both ends of this narrative are suspect. We argue that Descartes’ color eliminativism, when coupled with his analysis of the cognitive structure of our sensory systems, entails that God is a deceiver. It’s doubtful that Descartes (...) recognized this, given his insistence that God is not a deceiver, and the role this plays in his system. But this is a concession Descartes can grant if we are careful about the kind of deception at play—a kind Descartes _does_ recognize, albeit not without some ambiguity. On our story, Descartes’ metaphysics and epistemology are not driven by concerns about deception _per se_, but by concerns about God’s _benevolence_. (shrink)

Examines the work of Kierkegaard as an ironist, reevaluating the works he penned under pseudonyms to show both their ironic character and the serious purpose that informed the deception Kierkegaard carried out.

Descartes insists, “[...] there is a deceiver of supreme power and cunning who is deliberately and constantly deceiving me. In that case I too undoubtedly exist, if he is deceiving me [...]” (AT-VII, 25; CSM-II, 17). In what way can we draw evidence that our existence can be drawn from our being deceived? The interpretations that the earlier studies have shown is not a monolith. Then I will search for some inherent characteristics of deception, and analyse the construction of (...) the reasoning, “if a deceiver deceives me, I exist.” To be concrete, I show: 1) that it is not “I exist” but “I think” that is concluded from the supposition “a deceiver deceives me/I am deceived by a deceiver”; 2) that the attributions of the self as a thinking thing, i.e. understanding, affirming, and denying (AT-VII, 28; CSM-II, 19), are discovered in the very supposition of a deceiver. (shrink)

In his Meditations Descartes tells us that he initially thought error might be avoided if he withheld assent “no less carefully from what is not plainly certain and indubitable than from what is obviously false.” For example, he thinks it plainly certain and indubitable that he is “sitting by the fire, wearing a winter cloak, holding this paper in my hands, and so on.” And yet even what is “plainly certain and indubitable” can be doubted. “I will suppose, then, not (...) that there is a supremely good God, the source of truth; but that there is an evil spirit, who is supremely powerful and intelligent, and does his utmost to deceive me.” Such a deceiver can spin illusions that appear indubitably real and true—of hands, fire, cloak, paper—and not only when there are none present in any particular case but even where there are none at all in any case. “I will suppose that sky, air, earth, colors, shapes, sounds and all external objects are mere delusive dreams, by means of which he lays snares for my credulity.”2 The deceiver hypothesis is the most difficult skeptical doubt Descartes must surmount in the remaining Meditations. I say the deceiver hypothesis, and for Descartes the deceiver is a mere possibility, raised so as to motivate the reconstitution of knowledge that follows. That there might be a powerful deceiver is itself a threat to knowledge for Descartes. Indeed even the possibility of an evil deceiver is so powerful a threat that Descartes must do nothing less than prove God’s existence to reestablish certainty. It is only at the end of his Meditations that Descartes can say, as if looking back on a hysterical moment, that the evil deceiver idea was “exaggerated” and “ridiculous.”3.. (shrink)

“Follow the way by which they began; by acting as if they believed, taking the holy water, having masses said, etc.” The well-known lines from Pascal’s much-discussed fragment “infini rien” have been much commented on. In this context, the keyword self-deception comes up surprisingly often, partly as a criticism of Pascal’s presumed strategy, partly in an attempt to make these lines fruitful for the current discussion on self-deception. I remind the latter attempts to consider an important condition for the success (...) of the “regimen”, which becomes clear when one reflects on the internal characterisation of Pascal’s interlocutor. For if we take into account the kind of self-knowledge we must ascribe to her, we cannot regard her as someone whom acting-as-if naturally leads to faith, but as someone who has already been touched by the grace of God. (shrink)

Recent Cartesian scholarship postulates two Descartes, separating Descartes into a scientist and a metaphysician. The purpose varies, but one has been to show that the metaphysical Descartes, of the Meditations, is less genuine than the scientific Descartes. Accordingly, discussion of God and the soul, the evil demon, and the non-deceiving God were elements of rhetorical strategy to please theologians, not of serious philosophical argumentation. I agree in finding two Descartes, but the two I identify are not scientist and philosopher, but (...) practitioner and methodologist of the mathematical sciences on the one hand, and metaphysician of a new, general science of nature on the other. This chapter examines the transition to the second Descartes, and especially the metaphysical turn. It proposes that although Descartes' doubt was methodological and he felt no serious threat from skepticism and absolute certainty was not his primary goal. Rather, the doubt was used to reform the intellect, or to teach the use of the pure intellect (and to obtain certainty in that domain). Further, Descartes' metaphysics was primarily in the service of his natural philosophy (where in the main he did not claim absolute certainty). He did not talk about God and the soul in order to fool the theologians. His discussion of the relation between God and human reason was part of a metaphysical strategy in which, through his doctrine on the eternal truths, he separated knowledge of the first principles of natural philosophy (gained by the natural light) from theological cognition (through the light of grace), thereby seeking to render his metaphysics distinct from the proper domain of theology. (shrink)

Descartes’s meditator thinks that if she does not know the existence of God, she cannot be fully certain of anything. This statement seems to contradict the cogito, according to which the existence of I is indubitable and therefore certain. Cannot an atheist be certain that he exists? Atheistic knowledge has been discussed almost exclusively in relation to mathematics, and the more interesting question of the atheist’s certainty of his existence has not received the attention it deserves. By examining the question (...) of atheistic knowledge in relation to the cogito, I articulate the advantage Descartes sees in having knowledge of God. I challenge a long-held reading of the cogito where “I exist” is the first full certainty and argue that while atheistic cogito is more certain than atheistic knowledge in mathematics, it cannot be a starting point for lasting and stable science, because science requires knowing the existence of the non-deceiving God. (shrink)

Following Anselm of Canterbury I argue against Hugh McCann’s claim that a traditional, classical theist understanding of God’s relationship to creation entails that God is the cause of our choices, including our choice to sin. I explain Anselm’s thesis that God causes all that has ontological status, yet does not cause sin. Then I show that McCann’s God, if not a sinner, must nonetheless be an unloving deceiver, McCann’s theodicy fails on its own terms, his proposed requirements for moral (...) authenticity are insufficient, and his suggestion that his universe is “safer” than Anselm’s is misguided. (shrink)

This is a response to Cavin and Colombetti’s paper criticizing a claim of mine elsewhere, that God would not permit anyone to deceive the world by manufacturing evidence which made it probable that Jesus was God incarnate when that was not so. I analyze four different cases of A allowing B to hold a false belief, and I argue that only two of them constitute deception by A, one being “straightforward” deception and the other “tacit” deception. What I should have (...) claimed earlier is that God would not deceive us on this matter, including doing so by permitting someone else to manufacture deceptive evidence. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that God is either incapable of lying to humans or utterly unwilling to do so. However, there appear to be compelling reasons for God to intentionally deceive that are rooted in the traditional conception of God as an agent of salvation for humanity. A terroristic threat like eternal damnation ("hell") illustrates these reasons. God's love for human beings as wayward members of a divine family in concert with the obvious moral and cognitive limitations many humans suffer (...) provide sufficient reason for God to deploy (or allow uncorrected) the threat of eternal damnation. A proper understanding of justice supports the contention that eternal damnation is contrary to justice, and therefore divinely inspired threats of eternal damnation are deceitful. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS Unbaptized God. The Basic Flaw in Ecumenical Theology. By ROBERT W. JENSON. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992. Pp. v + 152. $16.95 (paper). The thesis of this potentially revolutionary book is nicely summarized in its title: the basic flaw in ecumenical theology is the unbaptized-that is, insufficiently trinitarian-God of Christians East and West, Protestant and Catholic. The book is revolutionary because it proposes a new way of reading (...) the logic of a myriad of ecumenical dialogues over the last quarter century; as a result, ecumenical theology and praotice for which God is among the " settled " issues ought be appropriately chastised by this book. But I think that Unbaptized God is only "potentially " revolutionary because I think Jenson leaves two crucial questions unanswered. Jenson's daring argument is made with rare clarity and compactness. Consider the argument in three stages. First, in an introduction, Jenson describes " the frustration of dialogue." He does not mean the frustration created by the meager knowledge or acceptance of the results of ecumenical dialogues on the popular level-or the reception without action of these results by Church officials (p. 2). He focuses on " a third mode of frustration ": a dialogue will proceed toward a " convergence," not without "tolerable divergence "; but the initially tolerable divergence eventually yields " a newly virulent division." The process is seemingly "circular" (p. 3). "No set of convergences ever seems to be enough, once the separations are there " (p. 4). Why? And what can be done about this? Second, Jenson illustrates the frustration and starts showing the way beyond it in several different ways. He describes the dialogues in the first two parts of the book. In Part One, Jenson takes up "The Early Ecumenical Convergences " on issues central to the sixteenth century reformations, Ca.tholic and Protestant: Justification (ch. 1), Real Presence (ch. 2), and Eucharistic Sacrifice (ch. 3). Part Two takes up Churchly Office (ch. 4), Episcopacy (ch. 5), Roman Primacy (ch. 6), and The Church's Mediation (ch. 7). The distinctions between the issues of Part One and Part Two seem to be both historical and logical. Historically, the issues of Part Two are what Walter Kasper called the surprising "displacement of the problematic" (p. 44) from issues 677 678 BOOK REVIEWS considered central by Trent and the Reformers (especially justification and the eucharist) to issues that emerged after the Reformation (especially ecclesiology). Logically, the distinction between Part One and Part Two is the distinction between the traditional matters of controversy (Part One) and what are claimed to be differences "hidden at some conceptual level deeper than that occupied by the traditional matters of controversy" (Part Two) (p. 7). I will not rehearse Jenson's splendid summaries of the many dialogues in English, French, and German (although the book ought be recommended on these grounds alone). The unofficial Groupe des Dombes is regularly regarded as the most ecumenically insightful, and the Dominican J. M. R. Tillard plays a particularly crucial role among Roman Catholic theologians. It is enough to say that Jenson successfully shows how each dialogue can be read as an instance of the frustration he initially mentioned: a " convergence " occurs on each topic which later turns into a " divergence " which later is converted into a " convergence " and so forth. By the end (ch. 7), everything seems to circle back to the doctrine of justification (ch. 1). But the appearances, Jenson argues, are deceiving. "The pattern of the dialogue's history proves to be more like a spiral than a circle on a plane" (p. 103). Thus, besides describing the dialogues, Jenson must also prove that the dialogues exhibit a non-circular movement. One of the fascinating features of Jenson's argument at this stage is that he does this in a slightly different way in each of the first seven chapters. For example, he sometimes clears away "illusory dissensus" (p. 22). He sometimes concludes that "the Catholic side is right." Indeed, the Catholic side seems right on most crucial issues-on convictions about the temporal constitution of persons that constitute the background for arguments over Real Presence (p. 32); on the "new" Catholic theology of eucharistic sacrifice (p. 41) ; on episcopal succession (p. 74... (shrink)

Based on views she draws from Anselm, Katherin Rogers mounts an extend­ed attack on my account of God’s relationship to human sin. Here I argue first that if Anselm’s view of the relationship in question is different from my own, then Rogers fails to locate any reason for thinking his account is correct. I argue further that Rogers fails to demonstrate her claim that my account of God’s relation to sin makes him a deceiver, that her criticisms of my (...) theodicy of sin are misguided, and that she is mistaken in claiming a world in which God has full sovereignty over human willing is less safe for the repentant than I hold it to be. (shrink)

For most of his career, Kant accepts Augustine's requirement that lying requires an intention to deceive. However, he eventually converts to Aquinas, following him in rejecting this requirement in favor of Aristotle's teleological conception of lying. This change of view amounts to an improvement, for it makes room for the possibility of lying to an omniscient being—and such lies, we argue, are indeed possible. We accompany these historical and philosophical theses with a biographical thesis taking the form of the following (...) story. Kant believed that in his youth he had lied to God, largely because of his religious training. He adopted policies designed to help him resist the habit of lying to God. However, this program conflicted with his desire to lead a well‐rounded life as a public intellectual. This worldly ambition led him to forego the Quaker solution to the problem of lying to God: refuse to swear any oath to God, avoid set prayers and hymns, decline offers of intercession by clergy. Kant's worldly compromise served him well, but as he entered his twilight years, he came to worry that his only surviving argument for theism—the moral argument—might constitute a relapse into the vice of lying to God. (shrink)

The demon is, in the thinker,s words, "supremely powerful and clever", and it is only the combination of these two traits with the demon's incessant deception that empowers Descartes to stage the radical doubt that will terminate in his attempted proofs of God and the material world. The reason the demon is necessary is that the thinker cannot prove that it would be wrong for God to allow us to be deceived occasionally. Thus, Descartes needed, methodologically and rhetorically, something more (...) than just an imperfect God or a lack of God altogether; he needed a being with exactly as much power as God but without God's goodness. In short, one should utilize philosophy for the everyday analogue to lucid dreaming. For those unfamiliar with the phenomenon, lucid dreaming involves training oneself, by a simple concentration exercise performed before falling asleep, to be able to become conscious of being in a dream while still in it and without thereby ending it. (shrink)

A brief study on the lies spread by the devil and the truth found in God's Word.

In regards to the problem of evil, van Inwagen thinks there are two arguments from evil which require different defenses. These are the global argument from evil—that there exists evil in general, and the local argument from evil—that there exists some particular atrocious evil X. However, van Inwagen fails to consider whether the problem of God’s hiddenness also has a “local” version: whether there is in fact a “local” argument from God’s hiddenness which would be undefeated by his general defense (...) of God’s hiddenness. This paper will argue that van Inwagen’s present account contains no implicit response to the “local” argument from God’s hiddenness, and, worse, the “local” argument brings to the fore crucial inconsistencies in van Inwagen’s account. These inconsistencies concern van Inwagen’s criterion for philosophical success—his methodological use of an “ideal audience” in an ideal debate—and a crucial premise in his argument: namely, that people who do not believe in God are culpably deceiving themselves regarding the manifest presence of God. These considerations will be a platform for my arguing that the failures of van Inwagen’s account amount to his ignoring the extra-rational, concrete aspect of grasping “spiritual propositions”—propositions which, in order to be affirmed, require the full self-understanding which precipitates out of the mind, body, and will of a particular existing individual. (shrink)

Berkeley, Malebranche, and Vision in God NICHOLAS JOLLEY IN THE SECOND of the Three Dialogues Hylas, the materialist, asks Philonous: "But what say you, are not you too of opinion that we see all things in God? If I mistake not, what you advance comes near it."' In the first edition of the Dialogues Philonous's response was a temperate one; he expressed his agree- ment with Malebranche's emphasis on the Scriptural text that in God we live, move, and have our (...) being, and confined his disagreement with Malebranche to pointing out that, for him, the things we perceive are our own ideas. In the third edition, by contrast, Berkeley inserted a lengthy and rather ill-tempered expression of his differences from Malebranche: Few men think, yet all will have opinions. Hence men's opinions are superficial and confused. It is nothing strange that tenets, which in themselves are ever so different, should nevertheless be confounded with each other by those who do not consider them attentively. I shall not therefore be surprised, if some men imagine that I run into the enthusiasm of Malebranche, though in truth I am very remote from it. He builds on the most abstract general ideas, which I entirely disclaim. He asserts an absolute exter- nal world, which I deny. He maintains that we are deceived by our senses, and know not the real natures or the true forms and figures of extended beings; of all which I hold the direct contrary. So that upon the whole there are no. (shrink)

When, in The Gay Science, Nietzsche poses the question of how the natural sciences are possible, he insists that they depend not on a principle that is natural but on the will to truth, the will not to deceive even oneself, with which, he holds, ?we stand on moral ground.? Yet, that the natural sciences stand on ground that is moral also means, for Nietzsche, that their origin is to be located in ?a faith that is thousands of years old,? (...) a faith that, in the Genealogy of Morals, he develops as presupposing what he calls the ascetic ideals of Judaism and Christianity. Further, in holding that the natural sciences have their origin in principles that are biblical, Nietzsche goes on to indicate that, like the natural sciences, his own critical position, unconditionally honest atheism, is, in forbidding itself ?the lie involved in belief in God,? not opposed to, but is rather an expression of, Judaism and Christianity's ascetic ideals. In addressing the interrelationships among the religious, the secular, and the natural sciences in light of Nietzsche, I argue that the natural sciences have their origin in principles that are not natural but that are no less religious than secular. (shrink)

Descartes' Meditations is one of the most thoroughly analyzed of all philosophical texts. Nevertheless, central issues in Descartes' thought remain unresolved, particularly the problem of the Cartesian Circle. Most attempts to deal with that problem have weakened the force of Descartes' own doubts or weakened the goals he was seeking. In this book, Stephen I. Wagner gives Descartes' doubts their strongest force and shows how he overcomes those doubts, establishing with metaphysical certainty the existence of a non-deceiving God and the (...) truth of his clear and distinct perceptions. Wagner's innovative and thorough reading of the text clarifies a wide range of other issues that have been left unclear by previous commentaries, including the nature of the cogito discovery and the relationship between Descartes' proofs of God's existence. His book will be of great interest to scholars and upper-level students of Descartes, early modern philosophy and theology. (shrink)

In Squaring the Circle in Descartes’ Meditations, Stephen Wagner aims to show that Descartes’ project in the Meditations is best understood as a ‘strong validation of reason’ i.e., as proving in a non-circular way that human reason is a reliable, truth-conducive faculty. For such an enterprise to qualify as a ‘strong’ validation, Wagner contends, skeptical doubt must be given its strongest force. The most stringent doubt available in the Meditations is the deceiving God. To rule out the possibility that an (...) omnipotent God created humans so that their best functioning cognitive faculties provide misleading information about what the world is like, Descartes must prove that a non-deceiving God exists. Furthermore, only a non-circular proof will count as a ‘validation.’ Wagner spells out the requirements of non-circularity as involving a proof for God’s existence that is not deductive, does not simply achieve a clear and distinct perception of God’s existence, and proceeds on the basis of perceptions that remain true even when the reasons underlying them are not attended to any longer by the meditator. (shrink)

At the beginning of Meditation Three, Descartes puts forward the proposition that whatever he clearly and distinctly perceives is true. He observes, however, that so long as he does not know whether there is a deceiving God, he has reason to doubt the proposition. Later in Meditation Three, he purports to prove that there is no deceiving God. The difficulty, as Arnauld pointed out, is to see how Descartes avoids reasoning in a circle or begging the question here, for if (...) he can be certain that there is no deceiving God only because he clearly and distinctly perceives this, then he must already be certain that what he clearly and distinctly perceives is true. (shrink)

In a recent article, Erik Wielenberg has argued that positive skeptical theism fails to circumvent his new argument from apparent gratuitous evil. Wielenberg’s new argument focuses on apparently gratuitous suffering and abandonment, and he argues that negative skeptical theistic responses fail to respond to the challenge posed by these apparent gratuitous evils due to the parent–child analogy often invoked by theists. The greatest challenge to his view, he admits, is positive skeptical theism. To stave off this potential problem with his (...) argument, he maintains that positive skeptical theism entails divine deception, which creates insuperable problems for traditional theism. This essay shows that Wielenberg is mistaken. Although positive skeptical theism claims that we should expect the appearance of gratuitous evil given Christian theism, this does not entail divine deception. I maintain that God is not a deceiver on positive skeptical theism because God does not meet two requirements to be a deceiver: God does not intend to cause people to believe any false propositions and God does not provide evidence for someone to justifiably believe a false proposition. Consequently, Wielenberg’s new argument from evil fails and positive skeptical theism remains a viable response to the evidential argument from evil. (shrink)

This paper has two sections. In the first one I examine Pascal's appropriation in La 131 of the Cartesian argument of the deceiver God. Pascal develops a skeptical reading of the argument in order to use it as a premise for his apologetic argument of true religion. In the second section I examine Huet's appropriation of this same Cartesian argument in his Philosophical Treatise on the Weakness of Human Understanding. Based on this work of Huet's and on his margin (...) notes on Pascal's Thoughts, I show that his skeptical reading of the argument is derived from Pascal's, although Huet's and Pascal's goals are distinct: while the latter intends to provide an argument for the Fall of Man, the former intends to show the weakness of reason unassisted by supernatural faith. (shrink)

Descartes afirma que el cogito se "experimenta en uno" (apud se experiatur)o se "siente en uno mismo" ("il sent in lui-même"), pero también ha señalado que uno no siente sino a través del cuerpo. El problema es que, en las Meditaciones, el cogito fue caracterizado cuando todavía no se había demostrado la existencia del cuerpo. Pese a esto, Descartes parece haberse dejado influir por ciertas sensaciones internas de duda y certeza. En el trabajo se sostiene que esto fue posible porque (...) esas sensaciones internas son efecto de una ratio implícita: la existencia de un Dios no engañador. Descartes states that the cogito is "experienced in oneself" (apud se experiatur) or "felt in oneself" ("il sent en lui-même"), but it has also been pointed out that one only feels through the body. The problem is that, in the Meditations, the cogito was characterized before the existence of the body had been demonstrated. Despite this fact, Descartes seems to have been influenced by certain internal sensations of doubt and certainty. The paper argues that his was possible because those internal sensations are the effect of an implicit ratio: the existence of a non-deceiving God. Descartes afirma que o cogito se "experimenta em si" (apud se experiatur) ou se "sente em si mesmo" ("il sent in lui-même"), mas também sinalizou que um não sente se não por meio do corpo. O problema se deve, nas Meditaciones, a que o cogito tenha sido caracterizado quando ainda não se tinha demonstrado a existência do corpo. Pese a isso, Descartes parece ter se deixado influenciar por certas sensações internas de dúvida e certeza. Neste trabalho, sustém-se que isso foi possível porque essas sensações internas são efeitos de uma ratio implícita: a existência de um Deus não enganador. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Descartes’ Natural Light ReconsideredDeborah Boyle1. INTRODUCTIONThe “natural light” occupies an important position in Descartes’ Third Meditation, where the meditator invokes it to provide the premises needed for his proof for the existence of a non-deceiving God. Descartes also refers to the natural light throughout his Replies to the Objections to the Meditations and in the Principles of Philosophy. Yet he says almost nothing about what the natural light is (...) supposed to be, apparently assuming that his readers already know what he means. English-speaking commentators on Descartes have said little about the natural light,1 and although French commentators have paid slightly more attention to this topic, they have nonetheless provided no detailed analysis of the concept of the natural light and the role it plays in Descartes’ Meditations.2In 1973, however, John Morris published an article entitled “Descartes’ Natural Light” in the Journal of the History of Philosophy, later reprinted in Eternal Truths and the Cartesian Circle.3 Morris argues that “the understanding can be regarded in an active and a passive sense, ”4 and that the natural light should [End Page 601] be equated with the passive function of the intellect. The natural light, he asserts, isa power of cognition, which contrasts with the “active” power of conceiving. Unlike this power, it does not form ideas, or bring them to consciousness. Instead, it simply gives a click of recognition when a true idea is brought before it.5However, the textual evidence for Morris’ interpretation of the natural light is slender, and in fact the texts support a quite different reading. I shall point out some problems with Morris’ reading, and offer the beginnings of an alternative account.2. ACTIVITY, PASSIVITY, AND THE MINDIn the Fourth Meditation, Descartes draws a distinction between two faculties of mind: intellect and will. Intellect, he says, allows him “to perceive the ideas which are subjects for possible judgements” (CSM II 39/AT VII 5),6 while the will “simply consists in our ability to do or not do something (that is, to affirm or deny, to pursue or avoid)” (CSM II 40/AT VII 57). Although he does not say so in the Fourth Meditation, Descartes suggests in two 1641 letters to Regius that the intellect is passive and the will is active; strictly speaking, he says, “understanding [intellectio] is the passivity of the mind and willing [volitio] is its activity” (CSMK III 182/AT III 372). A few months later, he writes that “we should use the term ‘action’ for what plays the role of a moving force, like volition in the mind, while we apply the term ‘passion’ to what plays the role of something moved, like intellection [intellectio] and vision in the same mind” (CSMK III 199/AT III 454–5). And in the Passions of the Soul Descartes states that while volitions are actions, “the various perceptions or modes of knowledge present in us may be called its passions, in a general sense” (CSM I 335/AT XI 342).In his early work, the Rules for the Direction of the Mind, Descartes does refer to “actions of the intellect.”7 If we do not allow for changes in Descartes’ thinking, we might assume that at the time of the Meditations, too, he would be willing to speak of “actions of the intellect.” But Descartes provides no account of the [End Page 602] will in the Rules; thus any activity he might have attributed to the mind would have to be included in the role of the intellect. In the Meditations, Descartes’ philosophy of mind has expanded to provide a place for the will, which can take over the active functions previously assigned to the intellect.John Morris’ reading of the role of the natural light in the Meditations takes as its starting point a passage in the Rules where Descartes claims that the intellect itself, the cognitive power or vis cognoscens, has both active and passive functions; it is, he says, sometimes like a seal, sometimes like wax.8 After describing the various functions of the cognitive power, Descartes concludes that “according to its different functions, then, the same power is... (shrink)

Suppose that in the Meditations Descartes thinks he needs to prove that his clear and distinct perceptions are true. There can be little doubt that if he does think he needs to do this, he thinks that the way to do it is to prove that ‘a non-deceiving God exists’ is true. Now suppose that Descartes does come up with such a proof. Presumably he clearly and distinctly perceives both the premisses and that ‘a non-deceiving God exists’ follows from them. (...) But that will not suffice to prove that ‘a non-deceiving God exists’ is true. For, if there is a problem about whether clear and distinct perceptions are true, then in advance of settling it, there is a problem about whether what is proved merely on the basis of clear and distinct perceptions is true. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Descartes and Method: A Search for a Method in MeditationsPatrick FriersonDaniel E. Flage and Clarence A. Bonnen. Descartes and Method: A Search for a Method in Meditations. New York: Routledge, 1999. Pp. 332. Cloth, $90.00.The book has two parts. The first (Chapters 1-3 and an appendix) outlines Descartes's method of analysis, a method for discovering laws and clarifying ideas. The second (Chapters 4-10) offers a running commentary of (...) the Meditations that can be read on its own and is valuable not only for specialists as a challenging comprehensive account but also for anyone looking for a concise and coherent secondary source.The method is taken from the Discourse and illustrated using the Optics. According to the authors, analysis in the search for laws "is a type of argument to the best explanation" (23) that involves "two different issues, discovery and confirmation" (21). In discovery, one isolates a phenomenon and posits one or more explanations (or causes) for it. In confirmation, one tests this explanation for "material truth" (whether it is recognized as true by the natural light). Then one shows how the phenomenon is "caused" by the explanation, and that it is the best explanation, and that it can be included in a systematic science.The discussion of analysis in the clarification of ideas argues against " 'the epistemic thesis,' that is, the thesis that all innate ideas are (materially) true and known to be true as soon as they are considered"(45). Most of the arguments here address the claim that innate ideas are known to betrue. These arguments are followed by an account of how analysis clarifies ideas through successive refinement, and an illustration of this method from Descartes's clarification of the idea of light in the Optics. The final chapter of the section on method defends the claim that Descartes uses "cause" to refer to formal rather than efficient causation.The authors then turn to the Meditations, offering a virtually line by line treatment of major themes, with attention to showing how the method outlined in part one structures the arguments of the Meditations. Meditations 1-3 "ascend" through discovery and preliminary confirmation, ending with a perfect, non-deceiving God as the best explanation of our idea of God. The final meditations "descend" from that best explanation to its implications. This descent confirms the explanation by showing its place in a system.The second part of the book also includes explanations of the part that conceptual clarifications play in the Meditations. Flage and Bonnen discuss the cogito argument, the account of the wax, the arguments for the existence of God, and the distinction of mind and body, all as examples of conceptual clarification through the method of analysis. In the case of God, for instance, Descartes begins with Hobbes's crude conception of God and clarifies it into the simple, clear, and distinct notion of a "most perfect being."The last chapter addresses the circle ascribed to Descartes by Arnauld: that the argument for the existence of God depends on the truth of clear and distinct ideas, which is only established on the basis of the existence of God. The authors argue that this is not a true circle, since Descartes assumes the material truth of clear and distinct ideas (which is indubitable) in his early argument and draws on their formal truth (in the mind of God) only after he proves the existence of God. They suggest their own circle, however: in his response to other concerns of Arnauld, Descartes suggests that God [End Page 436] stops a causal regress and thus commits himself to the formal truth of the idea of God, which he cannot independently justify.As one would expect in a book that offers a concise and unified interpretation of the Meditations, readers will find unnecessary asides and wish for attention to issues that are passed over. Moreover, though the authors support some views with extensive quotations, they leave others without textual support. The most unfortunate example is the identification of formal truth with actuality. The authors have several accounts of the distinction between formal and material truth and end their book with... (shrink)

For Descartes, nature must be interpreted through a limited number of simple laws used to describe the multiplicity of the real, focusing on the rule and normality rather than on the exception and monstrosity. Nevertheless, monstrosity has a vital function in Descartes' philosophy. By offering a new reading of the evil genius and the deceiver God in terms of absolute monstrosity, I intend to demonstrate the novel role played by the will in this philosophical ‘teratomachy’. Examining the peculiar status (...) Admiration occupies in the economy of the passions, I also analyze a passage from the Cogitationes circa generatione animalium , the only text in which Descartes explicitly discusses physical monstrosities. I argue that these pages, in which Descartes subscribes to a rigidly mechanistic, epigenetic view of embryology, are in tension with his doctrine of final causes and the idea of continuous creation. My theory is that the entire philosophy of Descartes can be read as a veritable war against a certain idea of monstrosity. (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;An explanation of the possibility of empirical knowledge must establish how there could be an adequately non-accidental connection between our beliefs and the truth about the independent external world, and how this could be a connection in which we have good reason to believe. ;Foundationalist theories of justification offer the most promise of establishing this connection. But the best recent foundationalist theories fail. Even the allegedly basic judgements of (...) the content of one's sensory experience are not utterly secure. And neither are these judgements shown to provide adequate support for our perceptual judgements. Critical cognitivism manages only to describe, and not to establish the entitlement, of procedures we ordinarily take to be justificatory. Arguments for the thesis that judgements of the sensory content of our experiences provide criteria for our perceptual judgements turn out to be unsound, as do Michael Dummett's arguments for the thesis that we could not understand the sentences in which our perceptual judgements are couched unless we were able to recognize truth-conditions of these sentences whenever those conditions obtain. And arguments for the view that perceptual judgements provide the best explanation of our experiences fail even to establish the probability of our empirical judgements. ;Nor does epistemological naturalism disclose any reason to regard ourselves as entitled to dispense with the requirement that we establish a justificatory explanation of our beliefs. ;However, belief in a non-deceiving God does offer a good, and indeed a uniquely good, explanation of the non-accidental connection between our empirical judgements and the truth. Even if it cannot be demonstrated, the theistic explanation must be postulated if we are to possess the required foundational grounds for our natural faith in the reliability of those presuppositions by which we guide ourselves in forming the beliefs we are most inclined to call knowledge. (shrink)

¿Podría un dios hacer aparecer como verdaderas cosas que son falsas? Esta pregunta que Cicerón formula en las Cuestiones académicas y en el contexto de su objeción al concepto estoico de sabiduría, adquiere una fuerza impensada en el seno de la civilización cristiana, civilización gobernada por la idea de un Dios omnipotente. Así, es objeto de discusión en la Edad Media y llega a Filosofía Moderna a través de René Descartes. En este trabajo, comenzamos por presentar la objeción de Cicerón (...) y, en un segundo momento, mostramos la renovación que la misma experimenta en ciertas disputas medievales. Llegamos finalmente a Descartes, en quien analizamos la hipótesis de un Dios engañador así como algunas de las objeciones que se le hacen y las respuestas que el autor ofrece ante ellas. Nuestra conclusión es que esta hipótesis súper escéptica, consecuencia de la idea de un Dios omnipotente, se encuentra en la médula del cartesianismo, algo que Pierre Bayle hará notar con claridad medio siglo más tarde. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to interpret and criticize the theory of theistic natural signs, formulated by Charles S. Evans. TNS are characteristic experiences or features of the world which cause the person who encounters them to form certain basic beliefs about the existence and nature of God. I propose two interpretations of how TNS work, using the categories of perception and indirect perceptual recognition. I also present two arguments against the theory of TNS. First, I point out that (...) the theory does not explain adequately why TNS are ambiguous, i.e., can be read in different ways. Second, I observe that certain experiences may be taken to be „atheistic natural signs”. Their existence gives one a reason to suspect that God is a deceiver. (shrink)

The philosophical allegation of imposture levelled by the Radical Enlightenment at Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad – the three founders of the monotheistic religions – has a complex theological history. Strange as it may sound, it is an idea closely connected to some of the “dangerous” debates conducted by scholastic theologians. Some of these theologians described divine omnipotence in a manner that prompted the vexed question of whether God can deceive us. Of course, no theologian doubted that God could and yet (...) would not deceive us. However, for some scholastics, God permitted the Devil to deceive men. After the Reformation, the Devil assumed a central role in debates between the Christian denominations. Depending on one’s confessional allegiance, the Devil could be the Pope or Luther or Calvin. In this way, the churches of post-Reformation Europe contributed to a process by which the Devil was transformed into the human figure of the “impostor,” preparing the ground, as this article shows, for later, more radical criticisms of religion per se. (shrink)

In 1 John, the author refers several times explicitly to himself (also once in the plural, 1:4) for writing (γράφειν) certain things with the following purposes in mind, (that, ἵνα): ‘our joy may be complete’ (1:4); ‘you may not sin’ (2:1); and ‘you may know that you have eternal life’ (5:13). In 2:26, he implicitly states that he has also written ‘these things’ (ταῦτα) that (ἵνα) they might be victorious over the deceivers. This is the only book in the New (...) Testament where such a high frequency of an author’s reference to his own writing occurs. In 1 John it is used as part of a fixed phrase (ταῦτα γράφω/ἔγραψα ὑµῖν ἵνα) in the author’s rhetoric. This essay focusses on the primary and secondary objectives for writing 1 John per se, and on conceivable lived experiences fostered by the fixed phrase ‘ταῦτα γράφω ὑµῖν ἵνα’ [I am writing these things to you so that …], as well as the mechanisms the author used to unleash these lived experiences linked with these fixed phrases. The following aspects determine the structure of this essay: the author’s objectives, the expectancy of his writing, the credibility of his writing and the mechanisms the author used through which lived experiences could have been fostered to influence and convince his readers that Jesus is the Son of God. (shrink)

Fraudulent behavior was not unfamiliar to any of Israel’s patriarchs. Despite this, the Bible’s historiography nonetheless gives voice to two contradicting tendencies. The first aims to teach that, for every transgression that is committed, God will punish the transgressor; the other, in tension with the first, tries to lessen a figure’s guilt by finding extenuating circumstances. This paper focuses on Israel’s patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who serve as national archetypes. From among the patriarchs’ sins, we will examine only the (...) most prominent, acts of lies, deception, and fraudulence, and we will consider whether the deceivers were commensurately punished and whether any effort was made to justify them. (shrink)

According to many accounts of faith—where faith is thought of as something psychological, e.g., an attitude, state, or trait—one cannot have faith without belief of the relevant propositions. According to other accounts of faith, one can have faith without belief of the relevant propositions. Call the first sort of account doxasticism since it insists that faith requires belief; call the second nondoxasticism since it allows faith without belief. The New Testament may seem to favor doxasticism over nondoxasticism. For it may (...) seem that, according to the NT authors, one can have faith in God, as providential, or faith that Jesus is the Messiah, or be a person of Christian faith, and the like only if one believes the relevant propositions. In this essay, I propose to assess this tension, as it pertains to the Gospel of Mark. The upshot of my assessment is that, while it may well appear that, according to Mark, one can have faith only if one believes the relevant propositions, appearances are deceiving. Mark said no such thing. Rather, what Mark said—by way of story—about faith fits nondoxasticism at least as well as doxasticism, arguably better. More importantly, the account of faith that emerges from Mark is that faith consists in resilience in the face of challenges to living in light of the overall positive stance to the object of faith, where that stance consists in certain conative, cognitive, and behavioral-dispositional elements. (shrink)

Critics of skeptical theism often claim that if it (skeptical theism) is true, then we are in the dark about whether (or for all we know) there is a morally justifying for God to radically deceive us. From here, it is argued that radical skepticism follows: if we are truly in the dark about whether there is a morally justifying reason for God to radically deceive us, then we cannot know anything. In this article, I show that skeptical theism does (...) not entail that we are in the dark about whether (or for all we know) there is a morally justifying reason for God to deceive us. And hence arguments against skeptical theism that make use of this assumption fail. (shrink)

IntroductionEthical intuitionists have never known quite what to make of the emotions. Generally speaking, these philosophers fall into two camps: rational intuitionists and moral sense theorists. And by my lights, neither camp has been able to tell a convincing story about the exact role and significance of emotion in moral judgment. Rational intuitionists are for the most part too dismissive of the emotions, either regarding emotions as little more than distractions to moral judgment,Samuel Clarke, for instance, after naming our “faculties (...) of reason and will, whereby [we] are enabled to distinguish good from evil,” laments that these faculties are sometimes “imposed upon and deceived in matters of good and evil, right and wrong… by absurd passions and corrupt or partial affections” (A Discourse Concerning the Being and Attributes of God, the Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation (Glasgow: Richard Griffin and Co., 1823), pp. 166-167). (shrink)

In Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason, J. L. Schellenberg argues that the phenomenon of “reasonable nonbelief” constitutes sufficient reason to doubtthe existence of God. In this essay I assert the reasonableness of entertaining doubts about the kind of reasonable nonbelief that Schellenberg needs for a cogent argument. Treating his latest set of arguments in this journal, I dispute his claims about the scope and status of “unreflective nonbelief,” his assertion that God would prevent reasonable nonbelief “of any kind and duration,” (...) and his confidence that we can know that some doubters are not self-deceived. (shrink)

We aim to further develop and evaluate the prospects of a uniquely Islamic extension of the Standard Aquinas/Calvin model. One obstacle is that certain Qur’an passages such as Surah 8:43–44 apparently suggest that Muslims have reason to think that Allah might be deceiving them. Consistent with perfect/maximally good being theology, Allah would allow such deceptions only if doing so leads to a greater good, so such passages do not necessarily give Muslims reason to doubt Allah’s goodness. Yet the possibility of (...) deception of the faithful threatens to provide a subjective defeater for the (epistemic) reliability of their cognitive faculties. (‘Even if Allah can be morally good while deceiving, how do you know you aren’t being deceived for a greater good on a more macro level, such as about the nature of the Qur’an?’) Similar in structure to Alvin Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN), this defeater threatens to undermine all of a Muslims warrant claims. We consider and evaluate the reply that there are other Qur’anic passages and/or additional conceptual resources in the Islamic tradition that provide grounds for thinking that God’s faithfulness or truthfulness is more centrally and securely embedded in a Muslim’s noetic structure than such doubts. Specifically, we will argue that under certain conditions, there exists a subjective defeater for some Muslims that, unlike McNabb’s approach, isn’t based off of the proper function condition but Plantinga’s truth aimed condition. (shrink)

In Knowing the Score, philosopher David Papineau explores what philosophy can teach us about sports, and what sports can teach us about philosophy. Beginning with various sporting questions and challenges, Papineau digs into modern philosophy's most perplexing questions. For instance, he discusses drafting techniques in cycling to shed new light on questions of altruism, and examines cricket family "dynasties" to help broaden the debate over nature v. nurture. When Papineau began writing this book, he thought he could illuminate sports by (...) viewing it through a philosophical lens. But the more he wrote, the more he realized that it was the other way around - the study of sports clarifies, challenges, and sometimes confuses crucial issues in philosophy. Why do sports competitors choke? How can Roger Federer select which shot to play in 400 milliseconds? Why do fans think God will favor their team over their rivals? Why does motor racing, but not football, run in families? How can it be moral to deceive the umpire by framing a pitch? From all of these questions, and many more, philosophy has a great deal to learn. An entertaining and and erudite book that ranges far and wide through the sporting world, Knowing the Score is perfect reading for armchair philosophers and Monday morning quarterbacks alike. (shrink)

Both in ethics and in epistemology one source of scepticism in its contemporary version is the realization, often belated, of the full consequences of atheism. Modern non-moral philosophy looks back to Descartes as its father figure, but disowns the Third Meditation. But if God does not underwrite one's cognitive powers, what does? The largely unknown evolution of them, which is just a version of Descartes’ unreliable demon? “Let us … grant that all that is here said of God is a (...) fable, nevertheless in whatever way they suppose that I have arived at the state of being that I have reached, whether they attribute it to fate or to accident, or make out that it is by a continual succession of antecedents, or by some other method — since to err and deceive oneself is a defect, it is clear that the greater will be the probability of my being so imperfect as to deceive myself ever, as is the Author to whom they assign my being the less powerful”. (shrink)

According to many accounts of faith—where faith is thought of as something psychological, e.g., an attitude, state, or trait—one cannot have faith without belief of the relevant propositions. According to other accounts of faith, one can have faith without belief of the relevant propositions. Call the first sort of account doxasticism since it insists that faith requires belief; call the second nondoxasticism since it allows faith without belief. The New Testament may seem to favor doxasticism over nondoxasticism. For it may (...) seem that, according to the NT authors, one can have faith in God, as providential, or faith that Jesus is the Messiah, or be a person of Christian faith, and the like only if one believes the relevant propositions. In this essay, I propose to assess this tension, as it pertains to the Gospel of Mark. The upshot of my assessment is that, while it may well appear that, according to Mark, one can have faith only if one believes the relevant propositions, appearances are deceiving. Mark said no such thing. Rather, what Mark said—by way of story—about faith fits nondoxasticism at least as well as doxasticism, arguably better. More importantly, the account of faith that emerges from Mark is that faith consists in resilience in the face of challenges to living in light of the overall positive stance to the object of faith, where that stance consists in certain conative, cognitive, and behavioral-dispositional elements. (shrink)

Descartes first invokes the errors of the senses in the Meditations to generate doubt; he suggests that because the senses sometimes deceive, we have reason not to trust them. This use of sensory error to fuel a sceptical argument fits a traditional interpretation of the Meditations as a work concerned with finding a form of certainty that is proof against any sceptical doubt. If we focus instead on Descartes's aim of using the Meditations to lay foundations for his new science, (...) his appeals to sensory error take on a different aspect. Descartes's new science is based on ideas innate in the intellect, ideas that are validated by the benevolence of our creator. Appeals to sensory error are useful to him in undermining our naïve faith in the senses and guiding us to an appreciation of innate ideas. However, the errors of the senses pose problems in the context of Descartes's appeals to God's goodness to validate innate ideas and natural propensities to belief. A natural tendency to sensory error is hard to reconcile with the benevolence of our creator. This paper explores Descartes's responses to the problems of theodicy posed by various forms of sensory error. It argues that natural judgements involved in our visual perception of distance, size and shape pose a problem of error that resists his usual solutions. (shrink)

Smith is generally regarded as an individualist without qualification. This paper argues that his predominantly individualist policy prescription is rooted in a more complex philosophy. He sees nature, including human nature, as a vast machine supervised by God and designed to maximise human happiness. Human weaknesses, as well as strengths, display the wisdom of God and play their part in this scheme. While Smith pays lip service to justice, it is really social order that pre-occupies him, and within that, the (...) defence of property. Individuals are valued as bearers of property. As persons, individuals are deceived by nature into acting in a socially beneficial way. In different ways Smith systematically denies the autonomy of the individual with respect to the whole of which he is part. For Smith, individual liberty is, not the end, but the means, of sustaining social order and property. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy by Susan JamesRichard A. WatsonSusan James. Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp. vii + 318. Cloth, $35.00.Susan James shows how during the seventeenth century philosophers moved from the three souls of Aristotle and the tripartite soul of Thomas Aquinas in which passions and reasons compete for the attention of the will, (...) to a Cartesian view of man as a single soul in union with the body who wills under the influence of both passions and reasons, to a Hobbesian view that the soul is the body and that the bodily motions we call reasons and passions are desires; acts of will are merely the deciding desires in deterministic causal sequences of the material motions of the body that constitute desires. This sets up the contemporary view that, motions are caused by desires and beliefs, leaving behind the difficulties of integrating with one another Aristotelian souls, Thomistic faculties, and Cartesian mind and body. James conceives of this evolution as one of unification of mental and bodily powers, and of integration of the active and passive powers of the mind. This concourse also represents a development from theories meant to explain to theories calculated for control and finally to theories facilitating therapy. Aristotle and Thomas adapted their ontologies to perceived differences in powers and faculties, while Descartes and Hobbes worked toward an ideal of unity of science and nature. The Christian Descartes brought together all the substances and powers of nature under a single extended matter divided into parts by the single force of motion, but he excepted the human soul with its power of will to alter the course of nature. The atheist Hobbes simply dispensed with supernatural [End Page 168] mental substance and occult power of will in order to integrate the whole of nature (including sensing and reasoning) under a cause and effect sequence of moving material bodies in which the last desire in a sequence of human bodily motions is designated as an act of will.James intends her book “as a contribution to the reinstatement of the emotions within philosophy, to the… opinion that we need to take account of our emotional life if we are to understand… moral motivation and growth, the springs of action (rational and otherwise), and the nature of reasoning” (22). She agrees that the sharp division between ideas and passions or emotions is properly abolished to be replaced by the view that all ideas have an emotional component, and all passions an ideational component. This fits with the parallel development of the notion that all sensible perceptions are propositional, and the somewhat less widespread notion that all concepts have a sensible component.But did this development result in a view of passions and ideas, learning and knowing, thinking and action, that is more true to nature than Aristotelian ontology? It is very hard to answer this question, and despite her sympathies with the notion that all human thought is both conceptual and emotional, James does not try. The reason we don’t know lies under the surface of the movement from Aristotle to Hobbes (i.e., to Daniel Dennett) like a monster in the deep. The monster is the monotheistic God, the perfection and unity of which underlies the Western drive to a unitary view of nature including man. The possibility that this God could be a deceiver, and so all our sensations and ideas might not represent the real world, set up Cartesianism and modern hypothetico-deductive science. But lurking throughout James’ book is a more palpable dreadnought, a demoness, the woman Eve. The female is responsible for the Fall of Man, and thus the fear and suspicion of women that suffuses patriarchic Christianity, and is expressed openly by such philosophers as Malebranche. Bodily passions and emotions (particularly the concupiscent ones) are nasty, evil, irrational, overpowering; to wit, they are feminine. They are not to be trusted, and must be subdued. So while still driven by ideals of monotheism, Descartes and Hobbes do move beyond the dogmatic Christian association of the emotions with female treachery. Even so... (shrink)

he most worrisome skeptical doubt Descartes raises in the first of his Meditations is the hypothesis of an evil deceiver. While it might seem plainly certain and indubitable that he is “sitting by the fire, wearing a winter cloak, holding this paper” in his hands, and so on, it is possible that all these—fire, cloak, paper, even hands—are illusions. “I will suppose, then, not that there is a supremely good God, the source of truth; but that there is an (...) evil spirit, who is supremely powerful and intelligent, and does his utmost to deceive me. I will suppose that sky, air, earth, colors, shapes, sounds and all external objects are mere delusive dreams, by means of which he lays snares for my credulity.”. (shrink)