Mathesis Universalis - No.4, Autumn 1997
When using any part of this text - by Witold Marciszewski - refer, please, to the above original URL.
Intellectual Clearness
according to Descartes
SELF-CONSCIOUS MIND is what Descartes put in the focus of his inquiries. In acknowledging the mind's strength he went so far that denied the role of any biological and cultural heritage for equipping the mind with its capabilities.
Moreover, he claimed that the mind and reality are commensurate in a way, namely the mind can arrive at true beliefs which are final. That is, they will never need complements or corrections to better approximate reality. Such a system of beliefs is what the ancients called knowledge (Gr. episteme, Lat. scientia). Since knowledge was by them conceived as the main achievement of reason (Lat. ratio) as opposed, eg, to senses, it proved identical with a system of rational beliefs. Furthermore, Descartes did not see any need of indirect evidence as, for instance, that obtained with refuting alternative conjectures. According to him, any truth should be directly grasped owing to the clarity of its apprehension. He was mistaken in all these points, but his mistakes turn advantageous as an illuminating thought experiment. When perceiving the flaws of his project of reaching certitude, we win a better understanding of how the project should be corrected. And when we consider his ghostly image of the solitary self, devoid of any biological and cultural assistance, we win a better understanding of why such an assistance is necessary.
Thus a coping with Descartes' programme guides our search for a theory of rational belief which would be grounded better than that of his. At the same time such a theory would preserve Descartes' inspiring insights - in particular an aspect of the notion of "invincible clearness", as mentioned below. CLEARNESS is the other notion found in Descartes' focus of attention. It may be called "invincible" to hint at the impact of such clarity upon one's mind. The mind, so to speak, cannot help seeing the object which appears in such a bright light.
This impossibility of failing to see is the reason to believe in the truth of what is being so seen. This statement may obtain either ontological motivation, as in Descartes himself, or methodological one. As for the methodological aspect of clarity, the present author's approach is inspired with the witty remark of Cardinal Henry Newman (in his "Grammar of Assent") that the notion of invincible ignorance (as removing moral responsibility) should be completed by that of invincible knowledge. Or, let mi add, by that of invincible belief as something forming the core of any system of beliefs. Such invincibility is due to a clarity, though the latter may be construed otherwise than it was claimed by Descartes.Here are Descartes' own statements concerning clearness, selected for the sake of the present discussion. Let us start from a definition of clearnes found in his "Principia Philosophiae" (Italics and numbering mine - WM.).
[1] To be clear is just to be present and manifest to the mind and to be distinct is (i) to be distinguishable from everything else, and (ii) to have components that are all clear. In ordinary cases of vision, one clearly sees a cow ten feet in front of one's eyes, but not a distant rabbit in a bush.This comparison to the seeing of physical objects is just to account for the meaning of the very term "manifest to" by using an analogy. In fact, Descartes did not regard sense perceptions as being clear in that basic epistemological sense in which clearness was meant as the mark of certainty. A model situation in which something is clear owing to its being manifest to the mind is - as stated in his Third Meditation - is that of recognizing mathematical truths: That 2 + 3 = 5 is very clear and very distinct to the attentive mind. Mathematical truths as exemplary instances of anything what is clear and distinct are mentioned frequently, for instance in Discourse (see quotation [3] below).The same notion of "being presented to one's mind" appears in his "Discours de la methode", this time not as a part of definiens but rather like an element of a meaning postulate concerning the whole phrase clearly and distinctly presented to one's mind.
[2] The first [rule] was never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgement than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt.Obviously, such statements should not be regarded as exact definitions, rather as deliberately created contexts to induce the author's views to the minds of his readers. Crucial contexts are those in which Descartes avails himself of his two paradigms of clearness, to wit Cogito and mathematical insights (as matter of fact, demonstration is by him reduced to a series of insights being like atoms of evidence concerned with successive entailments).[3] I have ever remained firm in my original resolution to suppose no other principle [ie. Cogito] than that of which I have recently availed myself in demonstrating the existence of God and of the soul and to accept as true nothing that did not appear to me more clear and certain than the demonstrations of the geometers.THE THOUGHT EXPERIMENT, which consists in identifying oneself as much as possible with Descartes himself, should make us fully aware of a set of presuppositions involved. At the start, a terminological discussion is in order. To wit, we should notice the lack of explanation of how clearnes and distinctness are related to each other.
Though in quotation [1] there is an attempt at discerning from one another, it proves hardly convincing. For it is not consistent with the use of the conjunction "clearly and distinctly'', as typically represented in [2]. In the definition of distinctness in [1], item (i) does not distinguish this trait from clearness, while item (ii) seems to make them exclusive; for whatever is perceived distinctly must be something complex, ie having components, while these components should be clear. Since no whole is any of its components, Descartes should have rather employed the disjunction "clearly or distinctly", the first member referring to simple ideas, the other to complex ones. However, no such use can be traced in his texts. (Descartes' flaws in defining both terms were already noticed by Leibniz who suggested certain improved definitions in his "Meditationes de Cognitione, Veritate et Ideis", but this is another story.) The above comments allow us to concentrate on the clearness of concepts without paying attention to what is called distinctness. For, if there is any difference between them at all, it consists in the fact the clearness is more fundamental, as suggested in [1].When following the Cartesian argument. we get involved in a thought experiment which can be seen as Descartes' fruitful contribution to the problem of attaining beliefs. This was not intended as an experiment by Descartes himself, who treated his argument very seriously. However, it becomes something like that when contrasted with certain further developments.
The first stage of these developments can be found already in Blaise Pascal, who lived in the same century and versed himself within the Cartesian conceptual framework but at the same time he was overcoming it with his own deeply original insights. A very seminal contribution, which belongs to a later period of philosophy, is due to Peirce's approach to clearness and belief (this is why a special article is devoted to his views in the same issue). Descartes' approach is due to the fact that he firmly sticked yet to the ancient ideal of rational belief (episteme). At the same time, he was aware of how insufficient were the methods applied so far (eg by the schoolmen) for attaining that high ideal. Then he proposed a new method to achieve the old purpose.
Like Plato, he felt that the only truths which are capable of being absolutely certain belong to the immaterial universe that contains both mathematical entities and the mind itself. Hence the knowledge of mathematical truths and the self-knowledge, as expressed in Cogito, were treated by him on the same footing.
Since the cognitive agent and the subject of cognition belong to the same domain of immaterial entities, the agent, ie the mind, cannot obtain any assistance from the body in the cognitive enterprise. At the same time he cannot profit from a cultural heritage, since that is transmitted through langauge and other physical means, and thus belongs to the material universe. This is why the clearnes of intellectual apprehension is the sole method of winning rational beliefs. The novelty of the Cartesian method consists in making a new great step beyond what can be found in Plato and Augustine. The latter added to Plato's teaching that point that ideas are perceived owing to divine illumination. While it was not clear with him whether illumination belongs to the order of nature or the order of grace, Descartes decidedly put it in the natural order; hence his characteristic expression lumen naturale. The paradigm of how this light operates is found both in mathematical insights and in Cogito.
In that conceptual framework, this is no accident that the term "clarity" is semantically connected with "light". The metaphysics of light (as characteristic of the Platonian trend) forms a basis for epistemology of clearness. The latter establishes clearness as the sole criterion of certainty, hence of rational belief. Thus the advantage of the Cartesian experiment amounts to making one aware of that whole conceptual armoury which is implied by Descartes' criterion of rational beliefs. Now it is up to each of us whether to accept that framework, going back to Plato and Augustine, or to try another way. If one chooses the latter, he may find a thought-provoking guide in Charles Sanders Peirce.
