Maverick Philosopher

Let's consider what Decartes has to say about ideas in the Third Meditation. (I will also make use of Martial Gueroult's magisterial Descartes' Philosophy Interpreted According to the Order of Reasons, vol. I pp. 103 ff.)

1. If I understand him correctly, Descartes uses ‘thought’ in a very broad way to embrace every type of mental act. Thus perceiving, imagining, remembering, desiring, willing, etc. are all types of thinking. Seeing a coyote on a ridge is just as much an act of thinking as judging that coyotes are canines. Hence the famous Cogito ergo sum argument — assuming it is an enthymematic argument — could just as well be made in the guise of Video ergo sum or Amo ergo sum, but not in the guise of Ambulo ergo sum, or that perennial favorite of sophomores, Coito ergo sum.

2. Ideas are one type of thought. Every idea is a thought, but not every thought is an idea. (Judgments are thoughts that are not ideas; more on this later.) Descartes tells us that the term 'idea' is properly applied only to those thoughts that are "like images of objects . . . as when I picture to myself a man or a chimera or the sky or an angel or God." An idea is a representation of something distinct from itself. When I see a coyote, I have a coyote-idea before my mind. Think of this idea not as something abstract and general but as something quite specific, a coyote-percept. It is the cogitatum or intentional object of a particular cogitatio or mental act. We can study the cogitatum in its own nature under bracketing of the question whether there is anything in the external world that it refers to or represents. When we study it in this way we study it qua cogitatum.

3. Ego cogito cogitatum qua cogitatum. The evidence of the cogito extends to the cogitatum qua cogitatum. That I am thinking while I am thinking cannot be doubted. But if I am thinking, I am thinking of something. The indubitability of my thinking extends to the object of my thinking when I consider the object just as it is given to me in the act of thinking under bracketing of the question whether there is anything in the external world corresponding to the intentional object of my thinking.

I can doubt whether there is a coyote on yonder ridge. But I cannot doubt that I am enacting a certain mental act that is a putative seeing of a coyote, nor can I doubt that the intentional object of this act has the properties that it is seen to have — but only the properties it is seen to have. In this sense the indubitability of the ‘Ego cogito’ extends to the cogitatum qua cogitatum of this cogitatio. If I practice the epoche — to use a term that ponts back to Pyrrhonian skeptics and forward to Husserl’s phenomenology – then it seems I cannot go wrong. That is, I cannot go wrong if I suspend judgment about what exists in itself and confine my attention to what appears.

4. Realitas Objectiva/Realitas Formalis. An idea is a representation, a sort of image or picture of something in the external world that may or may not exist. Having a coyote-idea before my mind is of course no guarantee that there is a coyote in the external world. The existence of the idea is consistent both with the existence and the nonexistence of the thing in the external world. That is quite clear from Descartes’ Dream Argument. But the coyote-idea, and every idea, PURPORTS to be about something distinct from itself, something beyond itself, something transcendent of itself. The idea belongs to the sphere of immanence. It is ‘in’ the mind as a modification of the mind. Recall that for Descartes the mind is a substance. Its thoughts (cogitationes) are modes of this substance. So ideas are not free-floating entities. They exist ‘in’ the mind – but of course this ‘in’ is not to be taken spatially but as expressing inherence.

But although ideas are in the mind, they intend what exists in reality beyond the mind. They do this in virtue of their objective reality (realitas objectiva), what might be called their intentional content. The term 'objective reality' is confusing since it may suggest existence outside the mind. What it refers to, however, is the content of an idea whereby it intends something external to the mind. Formal reality, on the other hand, is the being of a thing that exists in itself external to the mind.

5. Let's pause here and ask whether the foregoing illuminates my discussion with Spur. I claimed that my notion of representation is 'traditional' and he said that his is, citing Descartes. I think we are both right. Spur has a sort of picture theory according to which representations resemble what they are of. Descartes says something similar in the Third Meditation. (Quotation above.) So Spur can invoke Descartes on this score. But Spur also thinks that resemblance by itself is sufficient for representation. I deny this and in denying it I believe I take the traditional view. In Descartes, for example, an idea is not a free-floating entity but a modification of a mind. Therefore, an idea's power to represent something is not a power it has just by itself but a power it has as a modification of a mind which is the primary source of the idea's intentionality.

Here is how John Searle deploys the canard in a recent book:

. . . dualism in any form makes the status and existence of consciousness utterly mysterious. How, for example, are we to think of any sort of causal interaction between consciousness and the physical world? Having postulated a separate mental realm, the dualist cannot explain how it relates to the material world we all live in. (Mind, Language and Society, p. 47.)

But if "dualism in any form" makes consciousness mysterious, then Searle's own form of dualism does so! Searlean dualism is a modes-of-existence dualism. There are entities that have a subjective mode of existence and those that have an objective mode of existence. Searle's preferred way of putting it is that entities of the former sort have a "first person ontology" while those of the second enjoy a "third person ontology." The being of a pain, for example, is just its being-felt: no (real) distinction between the appearance and the reality of a felt pain can be made. But such a distinction must be made with respect to an objective phenomenon like a flash of lightning.

Searle would appear to be hoist by his own petard.

Note also that Searle's implied claim that there cannot be any causal interaction between irreducibly mental and irreducibly physical substances rests on assumptions about the nature of causation that he does not spell out. But there are theories of causation on which there is no difficulty in principle about mental-physical interaction. Why should a regularity theorist, or a counterfactual theorist, see a difficulty here? I discussed this briefly in a previous post.

Note finally the tendentious and question-begging phrase, "the material world we all live in." If substance-dualism is true, then what we are essentially are mental substances -- in which case we are not so much living in the material world as visiting it.

"Nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there."

The Mystery of Consciousness (1997) ends on this note: "We can, in short, accept irreducibility without accepting dualism." (214) Consciousness is irreducible, but still "a part of the ordinary physical world." How exactly?

Searle sees with crystal clarity that it makes just no bloody sense at all to think that conscious phenomena are reducible to an underlying physical reality in the way that perceived lightning, say, is reducible to an atmospheric electrical discharge. With respect to objective phenomena such as lightning it makes sense to distinguish appearance and reality and to attempt a description of the underlying reality in observer-independent terms. But "where consciousness is concerned, the reality is the appearance." (213)

The esse of a pain, for example, just is its percipi: no sort of logical wedge can be driven between the two. Searle likes to say that mental data have a "first-person ontology." That amounts to saying that pains and the like have a mode of existence radically different from the mode of existence of nonconscious items. Digestion and photosynthesis occur whether or not they are experienced; "but consciousness only exists when it is experienced as such." (213)

But this smacks of dualism, does it not? You have two radically different modes of existence just as in Descartes there is the radical difference between thought and extension. If you know your Descartes, you know that for him 'thought' covers all manner of conscious data, not just thinking in contrast to sensing, imagining, wishing, willing, etc. A res cogitans, a thinking thing, is a conscious (and indeed self-conscious) thing. So we could just as well name the Cartesian modes consciousness and extension. This seems to be close (though of course not identical) to what Searle is getting at: there is first-person (subjective) being and third-person (objective) being: "consciousness has a first-person or subjective ontology and so cannot be reduced to anything that has a third-person or objective ontology" (212) Searle (mis)uses the inflated term 'ontology' where it would be better to use 'being' or 'existence.'

The last quotation explains why Searle is not a materialist: he is not trying to reductively identify something essentially first-personal with something essentially third-personal. So far so good. But then why does he fight shy of being called a dualist? Even if he is not a substance dualist like Descartes, why does he not own up to being a property dualist?

The answer, I am afraid, is that he is in the grip of the ideology of scientific naturalism. In contemporary philosophy of mind, nothing is worse than to get yourself called a dualist. For then you are an unscientific superstitious fellow who believes in spook stuff, ghosts in machines, and worse. Next stop: the Twilight Zone.

Searle is in a tough bind. He appreciates the irreducibility of mind and sees clearly the hopelessness of behaviorism, identity-materialism, and functionalism. But at all costs he must contain his insight into irreducibility and not allow it any spiritual or dualistic significance. Consider this sentence: "Consciousness is a real part of the real world and it cannot be eliminated in favor of, or reduced to, something else." (210)

But what is the real world? Why, the natural world. So what Searle is saying is that consciousness is in the natural world as a "real and intrinsic feature of certain biological systems" but it has a first-person ontology that makes it radically different from everything else in the natural world.

This appears to be a contradiction since the natural world is just the world of the (objective, third-personal) natural sciences. Natural entities have a third-person ontology. So if consciousness is natural, then it too must have a third-person ontology. It is a contradiction to say that consciousness is both natural and has a first-personal ontology.

To avoid contradiction, Searle ought to admit that there is more to reality than nature. But he cannot do this, of course, without abandoning his ideological and scientistic commitment to scientific naturalism.

This comes out very clearly on pp. 118-124 of The Rediscovery of the Mind(1992). There he is concerned to deny that the irreducibility of consciousness has any "deep consequences." Searle writes:

. . . the irreducibility of consciousness is a trivial consequence of the pragmatics of our definitional practices. A trivial result such as this has only trivial consequences. It has no deep metaphysical consequences for the unity of our overall scientific world view. It does not show that consciousness is not part of the ultimate furniture of reality or cannot be a subject of scientific investigation or cannot be brought into our overall physical conception of the universe . . . .

One can see from this that for Searle, the unity of the scientific world view must be preserved at all costs. One can also see that Searle identifies ultimate reality with the physical world which is the subject of scientific investigation. But how can consciousness be irreducible and not threaten the unity of the scientific world view?

Searle's answer is that the irreducibility of consciousness is merely an artifact of a pragmatic decision to carry out reductions in a certain way. "Consciousness fails to be reducible, not because of some mysterious feature, but simply because by definition it falls outside the pattern of reduction that we have chosen to use for pragmatic reasons." (122-123)

This suggests that we might have chosen a different "pattern of reduction," and that, had we done so, consciousness would not have been irreducible. But what could that mean?

It doesn't mean anything! Obviously, consciousness provides the epistemic access to every objective phenomenon which we can then attempt to reduce to a more fundamental reality. Because I am conscious I feel heat which I can then explain in terms of mean molecular kinetic energy. Because I am conscious, I see the lightning before I hear the thunder and can go on to explain why in terms of light waves whose propagation needs no medium unlike sound waves that move throught the air, etc. Because I am conscious, I am aware of a certain freshness in the air after a thunderstorm, a freshness that I then reduce to the presence of ozone, etc.

Searle is right that consciousness is irreducible, but this irreducibility is grounded in the nature of consciousness, in its "first person ontology." This nature is not a trivial consequence of a mere decision on our part as to how we shall conduct reductions.

Once one sees that the fancy footwork on pp. 122-123 of RM is a sham motivated by an ideological commitment to scientific naturalism, one sees that Searle has not avoided dualism. He has failed to provide a satisfying naturalistic solution to the mind-body problem.

There are other problems as well, which I will leave for later.

Socrates' point is that self-examination is a necessary condition of a life well-lived. Coffin's point is that commitment is a necessary condition of a life well-lived. These two points are obviously consistent: they can both be true. (And I should think they are both true.) But by saying that Socrates had it wrong, Coffin implies that his view entails the negation of Socrates' view -- which is silly. Suppose A says that G. W. Bush was once governor of Texas, and B says, 'No you've got it wrong, he was once in the National Guard.' It is the same kind of silliness.

It should also be pointed out that even if commitment is a necessary condition of a life well-lived, it doesn't follow that it is a sufficient condition thereof. The committed but unexamined lives of a Nazi, Communist, or Islamo-totalitarian are not examples of lives well-lived.

As for Descartes, Coffin doesn't understand him at all. Else he would have realized that loving is a species of thinking in the broad Cartesian sense of the term. Thinking in this sense covers all mental acts, including remembering, anticipating, perceiving, imagining, wishing, willing, loving, hoping, and thinking in the narrow sense of conceiving. All mental states having the property Brentano called intentionality (object directedness) fall under the cogito, the 'I think.' Thus Coffin commits an obvious ignoratio elenchi when he takes Descartes to be using cogito in the narrow sense that excludes amo.

I believe it was Alexander Pope who penned the following lines which I quote from memory. You can check my memory here.

A little learning is a dangerous thing
Drink deep or taste ye not of the Pierian spring
Where shallow draughts do intoxicate the brain
But drinking largely doth sober us again

I learned these lines in high school, and they have stood me in good stead ever since. 'Pierian' from Pieria, a region of ancient Macedonia where the Muses lived. Not to be confused with Peoria.

1. Every sophomore knows how to parody the Cartesian dictum with 'I drink/link/stink, therefore I am' thereby demonstrating ignorance of the point Descartes was trying to make, not to mention the sort of jocose insouciance for which the sophomoric of all ages are famous. The Cartesian point is not that existence is a necessary condition of my engaging in an action or having a property, although that is certainly true. Pace Meinong, a thing cannot have a property, stand in a relation, or engage in an action unless it exists. If that were the point, drinking would do as well as thinking by way of proving my existence. For if it is true that I am drinking, then (given that existence is a necessary condition of property-possession) it follows that it is true that I exist.

Decartes' point is not the above straightforwardly ontological anti-Meinongian one, but a combined ontological-epistemological one. Given that I am conscious of a (putatively external) object (in whatever modality: perception, imagination, recollection, etc.), it is possible to doubt whether the object of consciousness exists apart from my being conscious of it. Presently gazing at Superstition Mountain, I can doubt the existence of the mountain, but I cannot doubt that a mental act of visual perception is now occurring, or that this act is of a mountain of such-and-such a description. Both act and object qua object are indubitable as to their existence; dubitable alone is the existence of the object in reality.

Suppose now that I am walking. I cannot doubt that I seem to be walking, but I can doubt that I am walking. This is the difference between Cogito ergo sum and Ambulo ergo sum. While cogitating (in the broad Cartesian sense that covers perception, imagination, etc.) I cannot doubt that I am cogitating; but while walking I can doubt that I am walking despite all my visual, aural and kinaesthetic sensations as of walking. (The 'as' serves notice that the walking may not be really occurrent for all that I can tell from within the experience.)

A cognate point is that the Cogito is not an enthymeme. It is not a truncated argument which, when spelled out, would amount to something like this:

Everything that thinks, exists
I think
Therefore
I exist.

This is a sound argument, but the most it shows is that 'I exist' is contingently true. Decartes' point, however, is that 'I exist' cannot be false as long as one is thinking. When I enact the Cogito, I do not argue, but achieve a direct insight, an intuition, of my being as a conscious and self-conscious subject.

2. The relevant schema exhibits a triadic structure: ego-cogito-cogitatum qua cogitatum. There are three distinguishable items but they appear to form an inseparable unity. There cannot be a cogitatio without a cogitatum qua cogitatum, and vice versa. Or, in Husserlian jargon, no noesis without a noema, and no noema without a noesis. It is also exceedingly plausible to maintain that there must be an I-pole (Husserl's Ichpol)corresponding to the object-pole, the cogitatum as such. Directedness to an object qua object demands directedness from a subject qua subject.

But what is not so clear is why the I-pole must be construed as a substance, a thinking substance or thinking thing (res cogitans). Here I believe Reppert goes wrong. He thinks that Descartes has proven the existence of a substantial thinker. Reppert writes:

. . . just because we can say "there are thoughts" and not actually say that someone is thinking those thoughts doesn't make the suggestion coherent. As Russell should have known, you can say "Floyd the barber shaves everyone who doesn't shave himself in Mayberry," but only when we ask whether Floyd shaves himself do we discover that the suggestion is not coherent. Does the term "pain" really mean anything if there is no one experiencing the pain? We can redescribe the pain in such a way that it no longer refers to an individual having the pain, (the firing of C-fibers in the brain) but if we do it seems we lose what is meant by pain. (This would be a good way to solve the problem of pain, if it were legitimate. "You think these people are suffering terrible pain, and that God shouldn't allow it. But really all that is going on is that people's C-fibers are firing.)

In short, I think that Descartes argument that there must be a thinking subject is a successful argument.

A Cartesian thinking subject is a substance, a continuant, i.e., an entity that is wholly present at each time it exists and is 'behind' each passing cogitatio. From the fact that there must be an I-pole, it does not follow that this I-pole must be a substance. It might be a momentary entity. Granting that a pain sensation must have an owner, that owner might be a momentary entitiy, a temporal slice of a person.

Instead of thinking of minds as substances, they could be thought of as diachronic bundles of temporal parts with each temporal part being a synchronic bundle of mental data. One such datum might be the hearing of a bird singing. In this hearing one can find the ego-cogito-cogitatum qua cogitatum structure. But it would be an inferential leap to say that the ego of that momentary mental act is a substance, a res cogitans in the Cartesian sense.

Notice: I am not saying that Reppert is wrong in his view that there is a substantial self. I share that view. What I am saying is that Reppert is wrong to think that the Cartesian Cogito proves the existence of a substantial self.