Philosopher and mathematician Ren Descartes is regarded as the father of modern philosophy

for defining a starting point for existence, I think; therefore I am.

I think; therefore I am." ("Cogito ergo sum.")

Ren Descartes

Synopsis

Ren Descartes was born on March 31, 1596, in La Haye en Touraine, France. He was
extensively educated, first at a Jesuit college at age 8, then earning a law degree at 22, but an
influential teacher set him on a course to apply mathematics and logic to understanding the
natural world. This approach incorporated the contemplation of the nature of existence and of
knowledge itself, hence his most famous observation, I think; therefore I am.

Early Life

Philosopher Ren Descartes was born on March 31, 1596, in La Haye en Touraine, a small town
in central France, which has since been renamed after him to honor its most famous son. He was
the youngest of three children, and his mother, Jeanne Brochard, died within his first year of life.
His father, Joachim, a council member in the provincial parliament, sent the children to live with
their maternal grandmother, where they remained even after he remarried a few years later. But
he was very concerned with good education and sent Ren, at age 8, to boarding school at the
Jesuit college of Henri IV in La Flche, several miles to the north, for seven years.

Descartes was a good student, although it is thought that he might have been sickly, since he
didnt have to abide by the schools rigorous schedule and was instead allowed to rest in bed
until midmorning. The subjects he studied, such as rhetoric and logic and the mathematical
arts, which included music and astronomy, as well as metaphysics, natural philosophy and
ethics, equipped him well for his future as a philosopher. So did spending the next four years
earning a baccalaureate in law at the University of Poitiers. Some scholars speculate that he may
have had a nervous breakdown during this time.

Descartes later added theology and medicine to his studies. But he eschewed all this, resolving
to seek no knowledge other than that of which could be found in myself or else in the great book
of the world, he wrote much later in Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the
Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences, published in 1637.
So he traveled, joined the army for a brief time, saw some battles and was introduced to Dutch
scientist and philosopher Isaac Beeckman, who would become for Descartes a very influential
teacher. A year after graduating from Poitiers, Descartes credited a series of three very powerful
dreams or visions with determining the course of his study for the rest of his life.

Becoming the Father of Modern Philosophy

Descartes is considered by many to be the father of modern philosophy, because his ideas
departed widely from current understanding in the early 17th century, which was more feeling-
based. While elements of his philosophy werent completely new, his approach to them was.
Descartes believed in basically clearing everything off the table, all preconceived and inherited
notions, and starting fresh, putting back one by one the things that were certain, which for him
began with the statement I exist. From this sprang his most famous quote: I think; therefore I
am.
Since Descartes believed that all truths were ultimately linked, he sought to uncover the meaning
of the natural world with a rational approach, through science and mathematicsin some ways
an extension of the approach Sir Francis Bacon had asserted in England a few decades prior. In
addition to Discourse on the Method, Descartes also published Meditations on First Philosophy
and Principles of Philosophy, among other treatises.

Although philosophy is largely where the 20th century deposited Descarteseach century has
focused on different aspects of his workhis investigations in theoretical physics led many
scholars to consider him a mathematician first. He introduced Cartesian geometry, which
incorporates algebra; through his laws of refraction, he developed an empirical understanding of
rainbows; and he proposed a naturalistic account of the formation of the solar system, although
he felt he had to suppress much of that due to Galileos fate at the hands of the Inquisition. His
concern wasnt misplacedPope Alexander VII later added Descartes works to the Index of
Prohibited Books.

Later Life, Death and Legacy

Descartes never married, but he did have a daughter, Francine, born in the Netherlands in 1635.
He had moved to that country in 1628 because life in France was too bustling for him to
concentrate on his work, and Francines mother was a maid in the home where he was staying.
He had planned to have the little girl educated in France, having arranged for her to live with
relatives, but she died of a fever at age 5.
Descartes lived in the Netherlands for more than 20 years but died in Stockholm, Sweden, on
February 11, 1650. He had moved there less than a year before, at the request of Queen
Christina, to be her philosophy tutor. The fragile health indicated in his early life persisted. He
habitually spent mornings in bed, where he continued to honor his dream life, incorporating it
into his waking methodologies in conscious meditation, but the queens insistence on 5 am
lessons led to a bout of pneumonia from which he could not recover. He was 53.
Sweden was a Protestant country, so Descartes, a Catholic, was buried in a graveyard primarily
for unbaptized babies. Later, his remains were taken to the abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prs, the
oldest church in Paris. They were moved during the French Revolution, and were put back later
although urban legend has it that only his heart is there and the rest is buried in the Panthon.

Descartes approach of combining mathematics and logic with philosophy to explain the physical
world turned metaphysical when confronted with questions of theology; it led him to a
contemplation of the nature of existence and the mind-body duality, identifying the point of
contact for the body with the soul at the pineal gland. It also led him to define the idea of
dualism: matter meeting non-matter. Because his previous philosophical system had given man
the tools to define knowledge of what is true, this concept led to controversy. Fortunately,
Descartes himself had also invented methodological skepticism, or Cartesian doubt, thus making
philosophers of us all.

Ren Descartes (15961650)

Ren Descartes is often credited with being the Father of

Modern Philosophy. This title is justified due both to his break with the traditional Scholastic-
Aristotelian philosophy prevalent at his time and to his development and promotion of the new,
mechanistic sciences. His fundamental break with Scholastic philosophy was twofold. First,
Descartes thought that the Scholastics method was prone to doubt given their reliance on
sensation as the source for all knowledge. Second, he wanted to replace their final causal model
of scientific explanation with the more modern, mechanistic model.
Descartes attempted to address the former issue via his method of doubt. His basic strategy was
to consider false any belief that falls prey to even the slightest doubt. This hyperbolic doubt
then serves to clear the way for what Descartes considers to be an unprejudiced search for
the truth. This clearing of his previously held beliefs then puts him at an epistemological ground-
zero. From here Descartes sets out to find something that lies beyond all doubt. He eventually
discovers that I exist is impossible to doubt and is, therefore, absolutely certain. It is from this
point that Descartes proceeds to demonstrate Gods existence and that God cannot be a deceiver.
This, in turn, serves to fix the certainty of everything that is clearly and distinctly understood and
provides the epistemological foundation Descartes set out to find.
Once this conclusion is reached, Descartes can proceed to rebuild his system of previously
dubious beliefs on this absolutely certain foundation. These beliefs, which are re-established with
absolute certainty, include the existence of a world of bodies external to the mind,
the dualistic distinction of the immaterial mind from the body, and his mechanistic model of
physics based on the clear and distinct ideas of geometry. This points toward his second, major
break with the Scholastic Aristotelian tradition in that Descartes intended to replace their system
based on final causal explanations with his system based on mechanistic principles. Descartes
also applied this mechanistic framework to the operation of plant, animal and human bodies,
sensation and the passions. All of this eventually culminating in a moral system based on the
notion of generosity.
The presentation below provides an overview of Descartes philosophical thought as it relates to
these various metaphysical, epistemological, religious, moral and scientific issues, covering the
wide range of his published works and correspondence.

Table of Contents
1. Life
2. The Modern Turn
a. Against Scholasticism
b. Descartes Project
2 Method
3 The Mind
a. Cogito, ergo sum
b. The Nature of the Mind and its Ideas
2 God
a. The Causal Arguments
b. The Ontological Argument
2 The Epistemological Foundation
a. Absolute Certainty and the Cartesian Circle
b. How to Avoid Error
2 Mind-Body Relation
a. The Real Distinction
b. The Mind-Body Problem
2 Body and the Physical Sciences
a. Existence of the External World
b. The Nature of Body
c. Physics
d. Animal and Human Bodies
2 Sensations and Passions
3 Morality
a. The Provisional Moral Code
b. Generosity
2 References and Further Reading
a. Primary Sources
b. Secondary Sources
1. Life
Ren Descartes was born to Joachim Descartes and Jeanne Brochard on March 31, 1596 in La
Haye, France near Tours. He was the youngest of the couples three surviving children. The
oldest child, Pierre, died soon after his birth on October 19, 1589. His sister, Jeanne, was
probably born sometime the following year, while his surviving older brother, also named Pierre,
was born on October 19, 1591. The Descartes clan was a bourgeois family composed of mostly
doctors and some lawyers. Joachim Descartes fell into this latter category and spent most of his
career as a member of the provincial parliament.

After the death of their mother, which occurred soon after Rens birth, the three Descartes
children were sent to their maternal grandmother, Jeanne Sain, to be raised in La Haye and
remained there even after their father remarried in 1600. Not much is known about his early
childhood, but Ren is thought to have been a sickly and fragile child, so much so that when he
was sent to board at the Jesuit college at La Fleche on Easter of 1607. There, Ren was not
obligated to rise at 5:00am with the other boys for morning prayers but was allowed to rest until
10:00am mass. At La Fleche, Descartes completed the usual courses of study in grammar and
rhetoric and the philosophical curriculum with courses in the verbal arts of grammar, rhetoric
and dialectic (or logic) and the mathematical arts comprised of arithmetic, music, geometry
and astronomy. The course of study was capped off with courses in metaphysics, natural
philosophy and ethics. Descartes is known to have disdained the impractical subjects despite
having an affinity for the mathematical curriculum. But, all things considered, he did receive a
very broad liberal arts education before leaving La Fleche in 1614.

Little is known of Descartes life from 1614-1618. But what is known is that during 1615-1616
he received a degree and a license in civil and canon law at the University of Poiters. However,
some speculate that from 1614-1615 Descartes suffered a nervous breakdown in a house outside
of Paris and that he lived in Paris from 1616-1618. The story picks up in the summer of 1618
when Descartes went to the Netherlands to become a volunteer for the army of Maurice of
Nassau. It was during this time that he met Isaac Beekman, who was, perhaps, the most
important influence on his early adulthood. It was Beekman who rekindled Descartes interest in
science and opened his eyes to the possibility of applying mathematical techniques to other
fields. As a New Years gift to Beekman, Descartes composed a treatise on music, which was
then considered a branch of mathematics, entitled Compendium Musicae. In 1619 Descartes
began serious work on mathematical and mechanical problems under Beekmans guidance and,
finally, left the service of Maurice of Nassau, planning to travel through Germany to join the
army of Maximilian of Bavaria.
It is during this year (1619) that Descartes was stationed at Ulm and had three dreams that
inspired him to seek a new method for scientific inquiry and to envisage a unified science. Soon
afterwards, in 1620, he began looking for this new method, starting but never completing several
works on method, including drafts of the first eleven rules of Rules for the Direction of the Mind.
Descartes worked on and off on it for years until it was finally abandoned for good in 1628.
During this time, he also worked on other, more scientifically oriented projects such as optics. In
the course of these inquiries, it is possible that he discovered the law of refraction as early as
1626. It is also during this time that Descartes had regular contact with Father Marin Mersenne,
who was to become his long time friend and contact with the intellectual community during his
20 years in the Netherlands.
Descartes moved to the Netherlands in late 1628 and, despite several changes of address and a
few trips back to France, he remained there until moving to Sweden at the invitation of Queen
Christina in late 1649. He moved to the Netherlands in order to achieve solitude and quiet that he
could not attain with all the distractions of Paris and the constant intrusion of visitors. It is here
in 1629 that Descartes began work on a little treatise, which took him approximately three
years to complete, entitled The World. This work was intended to show how mechanistic physics
could explain the vast array of phenomena in the world without reference to the Scholastic
principles of substantial forms and real qualities, while also asserting a heliocentric conception of
the solar system. But the condemnation of Galileo by the Inquisition for maintaining this latter
thesis led Descartes to suppress its publication. From 1634-1636, Descartes finished his scientific
essays Dioptique and Meteors, which apply his geometrical method to these fields. He also wrote
a preface to these essays in the winter of 1635/1636 to be attached to them in addition to another
one on geometry. This preface became The Discourse on Method and was published in French
along with the three essays in June 1637. And, on a personal note, during this time his daughter,
Francine, was born in 1635, her mother being a maid at the home where Descartes was staying.
But Francine, at the age of five, died of a fever in 1640 when he was making arrangements for
her to live with relatives in France so as to ensure her education.
Descartes began work on Meditations on First Philosophy in 1639. Through Mersenne,
Descartes solicited criticism of his Meditations from amongst the most learned people of his day,
including Antoine Arnauld, PeirreGassendi, and Thomas Hobbes. The first edition of
the Meditations was published in Latin in 1641 with six sets of objections and his replies. A
second edition published in 1642 also included a seventh set of objections and replies as well as
a letter to Father Dinet in which Descartes defended his system against charges of unorthodoxy.
These charges were raised at the Universities of Utrecht and Leiden and stemmed from various
misunderstandings about his method and the supposed opposition of his theses to Aristotle and
the Christian faith.
This controversy led Descartes to post two open letters against his enemies. The first is
entitled Notes on a Program posted in 1642 in which Descartes refutes the theses of his recently
estranged disciple, HenricusRegius, a professor of medicine at Utrecht. These Notes were
intended not only to refute what Descartes understood to be Regius false theses but also to
distance himself from his former disciple, who had started a ruckus at Utrecht by making
unorthodox claims about the nature of human beings. The second is a long attack directed at the
rector of Utrecht, GisbertusVoetius in the Open Letter to Voetiusposted in 1643. This was in
response to a pamphlet anonymously circulated by some of Voetius friends at the University of
Leiden further attacking Descartes philosophy. Descartes Open Letter led Voetius to have him
summoned before the council of Utrecht, who threatened him with expulsion and the public
burning of his books. Descartes, however, was able to flee to the Hague and convince the Prince
of Orange to intervene on his behalf.
In the following year (1643), Descartes began an affectionate and philosophically fruitful
correspondence with Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, who was known for her acute intellect and
had read the Discourse on Method. Yet, as this correspondence with Elizabeth was beginning,
Descartes was already in the midst of writing a textbook version of his philosophy
entitled Principles of Philosophy, which he ultimately dedicated to her. Although it was
originally supposed to have six parts, he published it in 1644 with only four completed: The
Principles of Human Knowledge, The Principles of Material Things, The Visible Universe, and
The Earth. The other two parts were to be on plant and animal life and on human beings, but he
decided it would be impossible for him to conduct all the experiments necessary for writing
them. Elizabeth probed Descartes about issues that he had not dealt with in much detail before,
including free will, the passions and morals. This eventually inspired Descartes to write a treatise
entitled The Passions of the Soul, which was published just before his departure to Sweden in
1649. Also, during these later years, the Meditations and Principles were translated from Latin
into French for a wider, more popular audience and were published in 1647.
In late 1646, Queen Christina of Sweden initiated a correspondence with Descartes through a
French diplomat and friend of Descartes named Chanut. Christina pressed Descartes on moral
issues and a discussion of the absolute good. This correspondence eventually led to an invitation
for Descartes to join the Queens court in Stockholm in February 1649. Although he had his
reservations about going, Descartes finally accepted Christinas invitation in July of that year. He
arrived in Sweden in September 1649 where he was asked to rise at 5:00am to meet the Queen to
discuss philosophy, contrary to his usual habit, developed at La Fleche, of sleeping in late,. His
decision to go to Sweden, however, was ill-fated, for Descartes caught pneumonia and died on
February 11, 1650.

2. The Modern Turn

a. Against Scholasticism
Descartes is often called the Father of Modern Philosophy, implying that he provided the seed
for a new philosophy that broke away from the old in important ways. This old philosophy
is Aristotles as it was appropriated and interpreted throughout the later medieval period. In fact,
Aristotelianism was so entrenched in the intellectual institutions of Descartes time that
commentators argued that evidence for its the truth could be found in the Bible. Accordingly, if
someone were to try to refute some main Aristotelian tenet, then he could be accused of holding
a position contrary to the word of God and be punished. However, by Descartes time, many had
come out in some way against one Scholastic-Aristotelian thesis or other. So, when Descartes
argued for the implementation of his modern system of philosophy, breaks with the Scholastic
tradition were not unprecedented.

Descartes broke with this tradition in at least two fundamental ways. The first was his rejection
of substantial forms as explanatory principles in physics. A substantial form was thought to be an
immaterial principle of material organization that resulted in a particular thing of a certain kind.
The main principle of substantial forms was the final cause or purpose of being that kind of
thing. For example, the bird called the swallow. The substantial form of swallowness unites
with matter so as to organize it for the sake of being a swallow kind of thing. This also means
that any dispositions or faculties the swallow has by virtue of being that kind of thing is
ultimately explained by the goal or final cause of being a swallow. So, for instance, the goal of
being a swallow is the cause of the swallows ability to fly. Hence, on this account, a swallow
flies for the sake of being a swallow. Although this might be true, it does not say anything new or
useful about swallows, and so it seemed to Descartes that Scholastic philosophy and science was
incapable of discovering any new or useful knowledge.

Descartes rejected the use of substantial forms and their concomitant final causes in physics
precisely for this reason. Indeed, his essay Meteorology, that appeared alongside the Discourse
on Method, was intended to show that clearer and more fruitful explanations can be obtained
without reference to substantial forms but only by way of deductions from the configuration and
motion of parts. Hence, his point was to show that mechanistic principles are better suited for
making progress in the physical sciences. Another reason Descartes rejected substantial forms
and final causes in physics was his belief that these notions were the result of the confusion of
the idea of the body with that of the mind. In the Sixth Replies, Descartes uses the Scholastic
conception of gravity in a stone, to make his point. On this account, a characteristic goal of being
a stone was a tendency to move toward the center of the earth. This explanation implies that the
stone has knowledge of this goal, of the center of the earth and of how to get there. But how can
a stone know anything, since it does not think? So, it is a mistake to ascribe mental properties
like knowledge to entirely physical things. This mistake should be avoided by clearly
distinguishing the idea of the mind from the idea of the body. Descartes considered himself to be
the first to do this. His expulsion of the metaphysical principles of substantial forms and final
causes helped clear the way for Descartes new metaphysical principles on which his modern,
mechanistic physics was based.
The second fundamental point of difference Descartes had with the Scholastics was his denial of
the thesis that all knowledge must come from sensation. The Scholastics were devoted to the
Aristotelian tenet that everyone is born with a clean slate, and that all material for intellectual
understanding must be provided through sensation. Descartes, however, argued that since the
senses sometimes deceive, they cannot be a reliable source for knowledge. Furthermore, the truth
of propositions based on sensation is naturally probabilistic and the propositions, therefore, are
doubtful premises when used in arguments. Descartes was deeply dissatisfied with such
uncertain knowledge. He then replaced the uncertain premises derived from sensation with the
absolute certainty of the clear and distinct ideas perceived by the mind alone, as will be
explained below.

b. Descartes Project
In the preface to the French edition of the Principles of Philosophy, Descartes uses a tree as a
metaphor for his holistic view of philosophy. The roots are metaphysics, the trunk is physics,
and the branches emerging from the trunk are all the other sciences, which may be reduced to
three principal ones, namely medicine, mechanics and morals (AT IXB 14: CSM I 186).
Although Descartes does not expand much more on this image, a few other insights into his
overall project can be discerned. First, notice that metaphysics constitutes the roots securing the
rest of the tree. For it is in Descartes metaphysics where an absolutely certain and secure
epistemological foundation is discovered. This, in turn, grounds knowledge of the geometrical
properties of bodies, which is the basis for his physics. Second, physics constitutes the trunk of
the tree, which grows up directly from the roots and provides the basis for the rest of the
sciences. Third, the sciences of medicine, mechanics and morals grow out of the trunk of
physics, which implies that these other sciences are just applications of his mechanistic science
to particular subject areas. Finally, the fruits of the philosophy tree are mainly found on these
three branches, which are the sciences most useful and beneficial to humankind. However, an
endeavor this grand cannot be conducted haphazardly but should be carried out in an orderly and
systematic way. Hence, before even attempting to plant this tree, Descartes must first figure out a
method for doing so.
3. Method
Aristotle and subsequent medieval dialecticians set out a fairly large, though limited, set of
acceptable argument forms known as syllogisms composed of a general or major premise, a
particular or minor premise and a conclusion. Although Descartes recognized that these
syllogistic forms preserve truth from premises to conclusion such that if the premises are true,
then the conclusion must be true, he still found them faulty. First, these premises are supposed to
be known when, in fact, they are merely believed, since they express only probabilities based on
sensation. Accordingly, conclusions derived from merely probable premises can only be probable
themselves, and, therefore, these probable syllogisms serve more to increase doubt rather than
knowledge Moreover, the employment of this method by those steeped in the Scholastic tradition
had led to such subtle conjectures and plausible arguments that counter-arguments were easily
constructed, leading to profound confusion. As a result, the Scholastic tradition had become such
a confusing web of arguments, counter-arguments and subtle distinctions that the truth often got
lost in the cracks. (Rules for the Direction of the Mind, AT X 364, 405-406 & 430: CSM I 11-12,
36 & 51-52).
Descartes sought to avoid these difficulties through the clarity and absolute certainty of
geometrical-style demonstration. In geometry, theorems are deduced from a set of self-evident
axioms and universally agreed upon definitions. Accordingly, direct apprehension of clear,
simple and indubitable truths (or axioms) by intuition and deductions from those truths can lead
to new and indubitable knowledge. Descartes found this promising for several reasons. First, the
ideas of geometry are clear and distinct, and therefore they are easily understood unlike the
confused and obscure ideas of sensation. Second, the propositions constituting geometrical
demonstrations are not probabilistic conjectures but are absolutely certain so as to be immune
from doubt. This has the additional advantage that any proposition derived from some one or
combination of these absolutely certain truths will itself be absolutely certain. Hence, geometrys
rules of inference preserve absolutely certain truth from simple, indubitable and intuitively
grasped axioms to their deductive consequences unlike the probable syllogisms of the
Scholastics.

The choice of geometrical method was obvious for Descartes given his previous success in
applying this method to other disciplines like optics. Yet his application of this method to
philosophy was not unproblematic due to a revival of ancient arguments for global or radical
skepticism based on the doubtfulness of human reasoning. But Descartes wanted to show that
truths both intuitively grasped and deduced are beyond this possibility of doubt. His tactic was to
show that, despite the best skeptical arguments, there is at least one intuitive truth that is beyond
all doubt and from which the rest of human knowledge can be deduced. This is precisely the
project of Descartes seminal work, Meditations on First Philosophy.
In the First Meditation, Descartes lays out several arguments for doubting all of his previously
held beliefs. He first observes that the senses sometimes deceive, for example, objects at a
distance appear to be quite small, and surely it is not prudent to trust someone (or something)
that has deceived us even once. However, although this may apply to sensations derived under
certain circumstances, doesnt it seem certain that I am here, sitting by the fire, wearing a winter
dressing gown, holding this piece of paper in my hands, and so on? (AT VII 18: CSM II 13).
Descartes point is that even though the senses deceive us some of the time, what basis for doubt
exists for the immediate belief that, for example, you are reading this article? But maybe the
belief of reading this article or of sitting by the fireplace is not based on true sensations at all but
on the false sensations found in dreams. If such sensations are just dreams, then it is not really
the case that you are reading this article but in fact you are in bed asleep. Since there is no
principled way of distinguishing waking life from dreams, any belief based on sensation has
been shown to be doubtful. This includes not only the mundane beliefs about reading articles or
sitting by the fire but even the beliefs of experimental science are doubtful, because the
observations upon which they are based may not be true but mere dream images. Therefore, all
beliefs based on sensation have been called into doubt, because it might all be a dream.
This, however, does not pertain to mathematical beliefs, since they are not based on sensation but
on reason. For even though one is dreaming, for example, that, 2 + 3 = 5, the certainty of this
proposition is not called into doubt, because 2 + 3 = 5 whether the one believing it is awake or
dreaming. Descartes continues to wonder about whether or not God could make him believe
there is an earth, sky and other extended things when, in fact, these things do not exist at all. In
fact, people sometimes make mistakes about things they think are most certain such as
mathematical calculations. But maybe people are not mistaken just some of the time but all of
the time such that believing that 2 + 3 = 5 is some kind of persistent and collective mistake, and
so the sum of 2 + 3 is really something other than 5. However, such universal deception seems
inconsistent with Gods supreme goodness. Indeed, even the occasional deception of
mathematical miscalculation also seems inconsistent with Gods goodness, yet people do
sometimes make mistakes. Then, in line with the skeptics, Descartes supposes, for the sake of his
method, that God does not exist, but instead there is an evil demon with supreme power and
cunning that puts all his efforts into deceiving him so that he is always mistaken about
everything, including mathematics.

In this way, Descartes called all of his previous beliefs into doubt through some of the best
skeptical arguments of his day But he was still not satisfied and decided to go a step further by
considering false any belief that falls prey to even the slightest doubt. So, by the end of the First
Meditation, Descartes finds himself in a whirlpool of false beliefs. However, it is important to
realize that these doubts and the supposed falsehood of all his beliefs are for the sake of his
method: he does not really believe that he is dreaming or is being deceived by an evil demon; he
recognizes that his doubt is merely hyperbolic. But the point of this methodological or
hyperbolic doubt is to clear the mind of preconceived opinions that might obscure the truth.
The goal then is to find something that cannot be doubted even though an evil demon is
deceiving him and even though he is dreaming. This first indubitable truth will then serve as an
intuitively grasped metaphysical axiom from which absolutely certain knowledge can be
deduced. For more, see Cartesian skepticism.
4. The Mind
a. Cogito, ergo sum
In the Second Meditation, Descartes tries to establish absolute certainty in his famous
reasoning: Cogito, ergo sum or I think, therefore I am. These Meditations are conducted from
the first person perspective, from Descartes. However, he expects his reader to meditate along
with him to see how his conclusions were reached. This is especially important in the Second
Meditation where the intuitively grasped truth of I exist occurs. So the discussion here of this
truth will take place from the first person or I perspective. All sensory beliefs had been found
doubtful in the previous meditation, and therefore all such beliefs are now considered false. This
includes the belief that I have a body endowed with sense organs. But does the supposed
falsehood of this belief mean that I do not exist? No, for if I convinced myself that my beliefs are
false, then surely there must be an I that was convinced. Moreover, even if I am being deceived
by an evil demon, I must exist in order to be deceived at all. So I must finally conclude that the
proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in
my mind (AT VII 25: CSM II 16-17). This just means that the mere fact that I am thinking,
regardless of whether or not what I am thinking is true or false, implies that there must be
something engaged in that activity, namely an I. Hence, I exist is an indubitable and,
therefore, absolutely certain belief that serves as an axiom from which other, absolutely certain
truths can be deduced.
b. The Nature of the Mind and its Ideas
The Second Meditation continues with Descartes asking, What am I? After discarding the
traditional Scholastic-Aristotelian concept of a human being as a rational animal due to the
inherent difficulties of defining rational and animal, he finally concludes that he is a thinking
thing, a mind: A thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, is willing, is unwilling, and also
imagines and has sense perceptions (AT VII 28: CSM II 19). In the Principles, part I, sections
32 and 48, Descartes distinguishes intellectual perception and volition as what properly belongs
to the nature of the mind alone while imagination and sensation are, in some sense, faculties of
the mind insofar as it is united with a body. So imagination and sensation are faculties of the
mind in a weaker sense than intellect and will, since they require a body in order to perform their
functions. Finally, in the Sixth Meditation, Descartes claims that the mind or I is a non-
extended thing. Now, since extension is the nature of body, is a necessary feature of body, it
follows that the mind is by its nature not a body but an immaterial thing. Therefore, what I am is
an immaterial thinking thing with the faculties of intellect and will.
It is also important to notice that the mind is a substance and the modes of a thinking substance
are its ideas. For Descartes a substance is a thing requiring nothing else in order to exist. Strictly
speaking, this applies only to God whose existence is his essence, but the term substance can
be applied to creatures in a qualified sense. Minds are substances in that they require nothing
except Gods concurrence, in order to exist. But ideas are modes or ways of thinking, and,
therefore, modes are not substances, since they must be the ideas of some mind or other. So,
ideas require, in addition to Gods concurrence, some created thinking substance in order to exist
(see Principles of Philosophy, part I, sections 51 & 52). Hence the mind is an immaterial
thinking substance, while its ideas are its modes or ways of thinking.
Descartes continues on to distinguish three kinds of ideas at the beginning of the Third
Meditation, namely those that are fabricated, adventitious, or innate. Fabricated ideas are mere
inventions of the mind. Accordingly, the mind can control them so that they can be examined and
set aside at will and their internal content can be changed. Adventitious ideas are sensations
produced by some material thing existing externally to the mind. But, unlike fabrications,
adventitious ideas cannot be examined and set aside at will nor can their internal content be
manipulated by the mind. For example, no matter how hard one tries, if someone is standing next
to a fire, she cannot help but feel the heat as heat. She cannot set aside the sensory idea of heat
by merely willing it as we can do with our idea of Santa Claus, for example. She also cannot
change its internal content so as to feel something other than heat--say, cold. Finally, innate ideas
are placed in the mind by God at creation. These ideas can be examined and set aside at will but
their internal content cannot be manipulated. Geometrical ideas are paradigm examples of innate
ideas. For example, the idea of a triangle can be examined and set aside at will, but its internal
content cannot be manipulated so as to cease being the idea of a three-sided figure. Other
examples of innate ideas would be metaphysical principles like what is done cannot be
undone, the idea of the mind, and the idea of God.
Descartes idea of God will be discussed momentarily, but lets consider his claim that the mind
is better known than the body. This is the main point of the wax example found in the Second
Meditation. Here, Descartes pauses from his methodological doubt to examine a particular piece
of wax fresh from the honeycomb:
It has not yet quite lost the taste of the honey; it retains some of the scent of flowers from which
it was gathered; its color shape and size are plain to see; it is hard, cold and can be handled
without difficulty; if you rap it with your knuckle it makes a sound. (AT VII 30: CSM II 20)
The point is that the senses perceive certain qualities of the wax like its hardness, smell, and so
forth. But, as it is moved closer to the fire, all of these sensible qualities change. Look: the
residual taste is eliminated, the smell goes away, the color changes, the shape is lost, the size
increases, it becomes liquid and hot (AT VII 30: CSM II 20). However, despite these changes in
what the senses perceive of the wax, it is still judged to be the same wax now as before. To
warrant this judgment, something that does not change must have been perceived in the wax.
This reasoning establishes at least three important points. First, all sensation involves some sort
of judgment, which is a mental mode. Accordingly, every sensation is, in some sense, a mental
mode, and the more attributes [that is, modes] we discover in the same thing or substance, the
clearer is our knowledge of that substance (AT VIIIA 8: CSM I 196). Based on this principle,
the mind is better known than the body, because it has ideas about both extended and mental
things and not just of extended things, and so it has discovered more modes in itself than in
bodily substances. Second, this is also supposed to show that what is unchangeable in the wax is
its extension in length, breadth and depth, which is not perceivable by the senses but by the mind
alone. The shape and size of the wax are modes of this extension and can, therefore, change. But
the extension constituting this wax remains the same and permits the judgment that the body
with the modes existing in it after being moved by the fire is the same body as before even
though all of its sensible qualities have changed. One final lesson is that Descartes is attempting
to wean his reader from reliance on sense images as a source for, or an aid to, knowledge.
Instead, people should become accustomed to thinking without images in order to clearly
understand things not readily or accurately represented by them, for example, God and the mind.
So, according to Descartes, immaterial, mental things are better known and, therefore, are better
sources of knowledge than extended things.

5. God
a. The Causal Arguments
At the beginning of the Third Meditation only I exist and I am a thinking thing are beyond
doubt and are, therefore, absolutely certain. From these intuitively grasped, absolutely certain
truths, Descartes now goes on to deduce the existence of something other than himself, namely
God. Descartes begins by considering what is necessary for something to be the adequate cause
of its effect. This will be called the Causal Adequacy Principle and is expressed as follows:
there must be at least as much reality in the efficient and total cause as in the effect of that
cause, which in turn implies that something cannot come from nothing (AT VII 40: CSM II 28).
Here Descartes is espousing a causal theory that implies whatever is possessed by an effect must
have been given to it by its cause. For example, when a pot of water is heated to a boil, it must
have received that heat from some cause that had at least that much heat. Moreover, something
that is not hot enough cannot cause water to boil, because it does not have the requisite reality to
bring about that effect. In other words, something cannot give what it does not have.
Descartes goes on to apply this principle to the cause of his ideas. This version of the Causal
Adequacy Principle states that whatever is contained objectively in an idea must be contained
either formally or eminently in the cause of that idea. Definitions of some key terms are now in
order. First, the objective reality contained in an idea is just its representational content; in other
words, it is the object of the idea or what that idea is about. The idea of the sun, for instance,
contains the reality of the sun in it objectively. Second, the formal reality contained in something
is a reality actually contained in that thing. For example, the sun itself has the formal reality of
extension since it is actually an extended thing or body. Finally, a reality is contained in
something eminently when that reality is contained in it in a higher form such that (1) the thing
does not possess that reality formally, but (2) it has the ability to cause that reality formally in
something else. For example, God is not formally an extended thing but solely a thinking thing;
however, he is eminently the extended universe in that it exists in him in a higher form, and
accordingly he has the ability to cause its existence. The main point is that the Causal Adequacy
Principle also pertains to the causes of ideas so that, for instance, the idea of the sun must be
caused by something that contains the reality of the sun either actually (formally) or in some
higher form (eminently).

Once this principle is established, Descartes looks for an idea of which he could not be the cause.
Based on this principle, he can be the cause of the objective reality of any idea that he has either
formally or eminently. He is formally a finite substance, and so he can be the cause of any idea
with the objective reality of a finite substance. Moreover, since finite substances require only
Gods concurrence to exist and modes require a finite substance and God, finite substances are
more real than modes. Accordingly, a finite substance is not formally but eminently a mode, and
so he can be the cause of all his ideas of modes. But the idea of God is the idea of an infinite
substance. Since a finite substance is less real than an infinite substance by virtue of the latters
absolute independence, it follows that Descartes, a finite substance, cannot be the cause of his
idea of an infinite substance. This is because a finite substance does not have enough reality to be
the cause of this idea, for if a finite substance were the cause of this idea, then where would it
have gotten the extra reality? But the idea must have come from something. So something that is
actually an infinite substance, namely God, must be the cause of the idea of an infinite substance.
Therefore, God exists as the only possible cause of this idea.

Notice that in this argument Descartes makes a direct inference from having the idea of an
infinite substance to the actual existence of God. He provides another argument that is
cosmological in nature in response to a possible objection to this first argument. This objection is
that the cause of a finite substance with the idea of God could also be a finite substance with the
idea of God. Yet what was the cause of that finite substance with the idea of God? Well, another
finite substance with the idea of God. But what was the cause of that finite substance with the
idea of God? Well, another finite substance . . . and so on to infinity. Eventually an ultimate
cause of the idea of God must be reached in order to provide an adequate explanation of its
existence in the first place and thereby stop the infinite regress. That ultimate cause must be God,
because only he has enough reality to cause it. So, in the end, Descartes claims to have deduced
Gods existence from the intuitions of his own existence as a finite substance with the idea of
God and the Causal Adequacy Principle, which is manifest by the natural light, thereby
indicating that it is supposed to be an absolutely certain intuition as well.

b. The Ontological Argument

The ontological argument is found in the Fifth Meditation and follows a more straightforwardly
geometrical line of reasoning. Here Descartes argues that Gods existence is deducible from the
idea of his nature just as the fact that the sum of the interior angles of a triangle are equal to two
right angles is deducible from the idea of the nature of a triangle. The point is that this property is
contained in the nature of a triangle, and so it is inseparable from that nature. Accordingly, the
nature of a triangle without this property is unintelligible. Similarly, it is apparent that the idea of
God is that of a supremely perfect being, that is, a being with all perfections to the highest
degree. Moreover, actual existence is a perfection, at least insofar as most would agree that it is
better to actually exist than not. Now, if the idea of God did not contain actual existence, then it
would lack a perfection. Accordingly, it would no longer be the idea of a supremely perfect being
but the idea of something with an imperfection, namely non-existence, and, therefore, it would
no longer be the idea of God. Hence, the idea of a supremely perfect being or God without
existence is unintelligible. This means that existence is contained in the essence of an infinite
substance, and therefore God must exist by his very nature. Indeed, any attempt to conceive of
God as not existing would be like trying to conceive of a mountain without a valley it just
cannot be done.
6. The Epistemological Foundation
a. Absolute Certainty and the Cartesian Circle
Recall that in the First Meditation Descartes supposed that an evil demon was deceiving him. So
as long as this supposition remains in place, there is no hope of gaining any absolutely certain
knowledge. But he was able to demonstrate Gods existence from intuitively grasped premises,
thereby providing, a glimmer of hope of extricating himself from the evil demon scenario. The
next step is to demonstrate that God cannot be a deceiver. At the beginning of the Fourth
Meditation, Descartes claims that the will to deceive is undoubtedly evidence of malice or
weakness so as to be an imperfection. But, since God has all perfections and no imperfections,
it follows that God cannot be a deceiver. For to conceive of God with the will to deceive would
be to conceive him to be both having no imperfections and having one imperfection, which is
impossible; it would be like trying to conceive of a mountain without a valley. This conclusion,
in addition to Gods existence, provides the absolutely certain foundation Descartes was seeking
from the outset of the Meditations. It is absolutely certain because both conclusions (namely that
God exists and that God cannot be a deceiver) have themselves been demonstrated from
immediately grasped and absolutely certain intuitive truths.
This means that God cannot be the cause of human error, since he did not create humans with a
faculty for generating them, nor could God create some being, like an evil demon, who is bent on
deception. Rather, humans are the cause of their own errors when they do not use their faculty of
judgment correctly. Second, Gods non-deceiving nature also serves to guarantee the truth of all
clear and distinct ideas. So God would be a deceiver, if there were a clear and distinct idea that
was false, since the mind cannot help but believe them to be true. Hence, clear and distinct ideas
must be true on pain of contradiction. This also implies that knowledge of Gods existence is
required for having any absolutely certain knowledge. Accordingly, atheists, who are ignorant of
Gods existence, cannot have absolutely certain knowledge of any kind, including scientific
knowledge.

But this veridical guarantee gives rise to a serious problem within the Meditations, stemming
from the claim that all clear and distinct ideas are ultimately guaranteed by Gods existence,
which is not established until the Third Meditation. This means that those truths reached in
the Second Meditation, such as I exist and I am a thinking thing, and those principles used in
the Third Meditation to conclude that God exists, are not clearly and distinctly understood, and
so they cannot be absolutely certain. Hence, since the premises of the argument for Gods
existence are not absolutely certain, the conclusion that God exists cannot be certain either. This
is what is known as the Cartesian Circle, because Descartes reasoning seems to go in a circle
in that he needs Gods existence for the absolute certainty of the earlier truths and yet he needs
the absolute certainty of these earlier truths to demonstrate Gods existence with absolute
certainty.
Descartes response to this concern is found in the Second Replies. There he argues that Gods
veridical guarantee only pertains to the recollection of arguments and not the immediate
awaRenss of an arguments clarity and distinctness currently under consideration. Hence, those
truths reached before the demonstration of Gods existence are clear and distinct when they are
being attended to but cannot be relied upon as absolutely certain when those arguments are
recalled later on. But once Gods existence has been demonstrated, the recollection of the clear
and distinct perception of the premises is sufficient for absolutely certain and, therefore, perfect
knowledge of its conclusion (see also the Fifth Meditation at AT VII 69-70: CSM II XXX).
b. How to Avoid Error
In the Third Meditation, Descartes argues that only those ideas called judgments can, strictly
speaking, be true or false, because it is only in making a judgment that the resemblance,
conformity or correspondence of the idea to things themselves is affirmed or denied. So if one
affirms that an idea corresponds to a thing itself when it really does not, then an error has
occurred. This faculty of judging is described in more detail in the Fourth Meditation. Here
judgment is described as a faculty of the mind resulting from the interaction of the faculties of
intellect and will. Here Descartes observes that the intellect is finite in that humans do not know
everything, and so their understanding of things is limited. But the will or faculty of choice is
seemingly infinite in that it can be applied to just about anything whatsoever. The finitude of the
intellect along with this seeming infinitude of the will is the source of human error. For errors
arise when the will exceeds the understanding such that something laying beyond the limits of
the understanding is voluntarily affirmed or denied. To put it more simply: people make mistakes
when they choose to pass judgment on things they do not fully understand. So the will should be
restrained within the bounds of what the mind understands in order to avoid error. Indeed,
Descartes maintains that judgments should only be made about things that are clearly and
distinctly understood, since their truth is guaranteed by Gods non-deceiving nature. If one only
makes judgments about what is clearly and distinctly understood and abstains from making
judgments about things that are not, then error would be avoided altogether. In fact, it would be
impossible to go wrong if this rule were unwaveringly followed.
7. Mind-Body Relation
a. The Real Distinction
One of Descartes main conclusions is that the mind is really distinct from the body. But what is
a real distinction? Descartes explains it best at Principles, part 1, section 60. Here he first
states that it is a distinction between two or more substances. Second, a real distinction is
perceived when one substance can be clearly and distinctly understood without the other and vice
versa. Third, this clear and distinct understanding shows that God can bring about anything
understood in this way. Hence, in arguing for the real distinction between mind and body,
Descartes is arguing that 1) the mind is a substance, 2) it can be clearly and distinctly understood
without any other substance, including bodies, and 3) that God could create a mental substance
all by itself without any other created substance. So Descartes is ultimately arguing for the
possibility of minds or souls existing without bodies.
Descartes argues that mind and body are really distinct in two places in the Sixth Meditation. The
first argument is that he has a clear and distinct understanding of the mind as a thinking, non-
extended thing and of the body as an extended, non-thinking thing. So these respective ideas are
clearly and distinctly understood to be opposite from one another and, therefore, each can be
understood all by itself without the other. Two points should be mentioned here. First, Descartes
claim that these perceptions are clear and distinct indicates that the mind cannot help but believe
them true, and so they must be true for otherwise God would be a deceiver, which is impossible.
So the premises of this argument are firmly rooted in his foundation for absolutely certain
knowledge. Second, this indicates further that he knows that God can create mind and body in
the way that they are being clearly and distinctly understood. Therefore, the mind can exist
without the body and vice versa.
The second version is found later in the Sixth Meditation where Descartes claims to understand
the nature of body or extension to be divisible into parts, while the nature of the mind is
understood to be something quite simple and complete so as not to be composed of parts and
is, therefore, indivisible. From this it follows that mind and body cannot have the same nature,
for if this were true, then the same thing would be both divisible and not divisible, which is
impossible. Hence, mind and body must have two completely different natures in order for each
to be able to be understood all by itself without the other. Although Descartes does not make the
further inference here to the conclusion that mind and body are two really distinct substances, it
nevertheless follows from their respective abilities to be clearly and distinctly understood
without each other that God could create one without the other.
b. The Mind-Body Problem
The famous mind-body problem has its origins in Descartes conclusion that mind and body are
really distinct. The crux of the difficulty lies in the claim that the respective natures of mind and
body are completely different and, in some way, opposite from one another. On this account, the
mind is an entirely immaterial thing without any extension in it whatsoever; and, conversely, the
body is an entirely material thing without any thinking in it at all. This also means that each
substance can have only its kind of modes. For instance, the mind can only have modes of
understanding, will and, in some sense, sensation, while the body can only have modes of size,
shape, motion, and quantity. But bodies cannot have modes of understanding or willing, since
these are not ways of being extended; and minds cannot have modes of shape or motion, since
these are not ways of thinking.
The difficulty arises when it is noticed that sometimes the will moves the body, for example, the
intention to ask a question in class causes the raising of your arm, and certain motions in the
body cause the mind to have sensations. But how can two substances with completely different
natures causally interact? Pierre Gassendi in the Fifth Objections and Princess Elizabeth in her
correspondence with Descartes both noted this problem and explained it in terms of contact and
motion. The main thrust of their concern is that the mind must be able to come into contact with
the body in order to cause it to move. Yet contact must occur between two or more surfaces, and,
since having a surface is a mode of extension, minds cannot have surfaces. Therefore, minds
cannot come into contact with bodies in order to cause some of their limbs to move.
Furthermore, although Gassendi and Elizabeth were concerned with how a mental substance can
cause motion in a bodily substance, a similar problem can be found going the other way: how
can the motion of particles in the eye, for example, traveling through the optic nerve to the brain
cause visual sensations in the mind, if no contact or transfer of motion is possible between the
two?
This could be a serious problem for Descartes, because the actual existence of modes of
sensation and voluntary bodily movement indicates that mind and body do causally interact. But
the completely different natures of mind and body seem to preclude the possibility of this
interaction. Hence, if this problem cannot be resolved, then it could be used to imply that mind
and body are not completely different but they must have something in common in order to
facilitate this interaction. Given Elizabeths and Gassendis concerns, it would suggest that the
mind is an extended thing capable of having a surface and motion. Therefore, Descartes could
not really come to a clear and distinct understanding of mind and body independently of one
another, because the nature of the mind would have to include extension or body in it.
Descartes, however, never seemed very concerned about this problem. The reason for this lack of
concern is his conviction expressed to both Gassendi and Elizabeth that the problem rests upon a
misunderstanding about the union between mind and body. Though he does not elaborate to
Gassendi, Descartes does provide some insight in a 21 May 1643 letter to Elizabeth. In that
letter, Descartes distinguishes between various primitive notions. The first is the notion of the
body, which entails the notions of shape and motion. The second is the notion of the mind or
soul, which includes the perceptions of the intellect and the inclinations of the will. The third is
the notion of the union of the soul with the body, on which depend the notion of the souls power
to move the body and the bodys power to cause sensations and passions in the soul.

The notions entailed by or included in the primitive notions of body and soul just are the notions
of their respective modes. This suggests that the notions depending on the primitive notion of the
union of soul and body are the modes of the entity resulting from this union. This would also
mean that a human being is one thing instead of two things that causally interact through contact
and motion as Elizabeth and Gassendi supposed. Instead, a human being, that is, a soul united
with a body, would be a whole that is more than the sum of its parts. Accordingly, the mind or
soul is a part with its own capacity for modes of intellect and will; the body is a part with its own
capacity for modes of size, shape, motion and quantity; and the union of mind and body or
human being, has a capacity for its own set of modes over and above the capacities possessed by
the parts alone. On this account, modes of voluntary bodily movement would not be modes of
the body alone resulting from its mechanistic causal interaction with a mental substance, but
rather they would be modes of the whole human being. The explanation of, for example, raising
the arm would be found in a principle of choice internal to human nature and similarly sensations
would be modes of the whole human being. Hence, the human being would be causing itself to
move and would have sensations and, therefore, the problem of causal interaction between mind
and body is avoided altogether. Finally, on the account sketched here, Descartes human being is
actually one, whole thing, while mind and body are its parts that God could make exist
independently of one another.
However, a final point should be made before closing this section. The position sketched in the
previous couple of paragraphs is not the prevalent view among scholars and requires more
justification than can be provided here. Most scholars understand Descartes doctrine of the real
distinction between mind and body in much the same way as Elizabeth and Gassendi did such
that Descartes human being is believed to be not one, whole thing but two substances that
somehow mechanistically interact. This also means that they find the mind-body problem to be a
serious, if not fatal, flaw of Descartes entire philosophy. But the benefit of the brief account
provided here is that it helps explain Descartes lack of concern for this issue and his persistent
claims that an understanding of the union of mind and body would put to rest peoples concerns
about causal interaction via contact and motion.

8. Body and the Physical Sciences

a. Existence of the External World
In the Sixth Meditation, Descartes recognizes that sensation is a passive faculty that receives
sensory ideas from something else. But what is this something else? According to the Causal
Adequacy Principle of the Third Meditation, this cause must have at least as much reality either
formally or eminently as is contained objectively in the produced sensory idea. It, therefore, must
be either Descartes himself, a body or extended thing that actually has what is contained
objectively in the sensory idea, or God or some creature more noble than a body, who would
possess that reality eminently. It cannot be Descartes, since he has no control over these ideas. It
cannot be God or some other creature more noble than a body, for if this were so, then God
would be a deceiver, because the very strong inclination to believe that bodies are the cause of
sensory ideas would then be wrong; and if it is wrong, there is no faculty that could discover the
error. Accordingly, God would be the source of the mistake and not human beings, which means
that he would be a deceiver. So bodies must be the cause of the ideas of them, and therefore
bodies exist externally to the mind.
b. The Nature of Body
In part II of the Principles, Descartes argues that the entire physical universe is corporeal
substance indefinitely extended in length, breadth, and depth. This means that the extension
constituting bodies and the extension constituting the space in which those bodies are said to be
located are the same. Here Descartes is rejecting the claim held by some that bodies have
something over and above extension as part of their nature, namely impenetrability, while space
is just penetrable extension in which impenetrable bodies are located. Therefore, body and space
have the same extension in that body is not impenetrable extension and space penetrable
extension, but rather there is only one kind of extension. Descartes maintains further that
extension entails impenetrability, and hence there is only impenetrable extension. He goes on to
state that: The terms place and space, then, do not signify anything different from the body
which is said to be in a place . . . (AT VIIIA 47: CSM I 228). Hence, it is not that bodies are in
space but that the extended universe is composed of a plurality or plenum of impenetrable
bodies. On this account, there is no place in which a particular body is located, but rather what is
called a place is just a particular bodys relation to other bodies. However, when a body is said
to change its place, it merely has changed its relation to these other bodies, but it does not leave
an empty space behind to be filled by another body. Rather, another body takes the place of the
first such that a new part of extension now constitutes that place or space.
Here an example should prove helpful. Consider the example of a full wine bottle. The wine is
said to occupy that place within the bottle. Once the wine is finished, this place is now
constituted by the quantity of air now occupying it. Notice that the extension of the wine and that
of the air are two different sets of bodies, and so the place inside the wine bottle was constituted
by two different pieces of extension. But, since these two pieces of extension have the same size,
shape and relation to the body surrounding it, that is, the bottle, it is called one and the same
place even though, strictly speaking, it is made up of two different pieces of extension.
Therefore, so long as bodies of the same shape, size and position continue to replace each other,
it is considered one and the same place.

This assimilation of a place or space with the body constituting it gives rise to an interesting
philosophical problem. Since a place is identical with the body constituting it, how does a place
retain its identity and, therefore, remain the same place when it is replaced by another body
that now constitutes it? A return to the wine bottle example will help to illustrate this point.
Recall that first the extension of the wine constituted the place inside the bottle and then, after
the wine was finished, that place inside the body was constituted by the extension of the air now
occupying it. So, since the wines extension is different from the airs extension, it seems to
follow that the place inside the wine bottle is not the exactly same place but two different places
at two different times. It is difficult to see how Descartes would address this issue.
Another important consequence of Descartes assimilation of bodies and space is that a vacuum
or an empty space is unintelligible. This is because an empty space, according to Descartes,
would just be a non-extended space, which is impossible. A return to the wine bottle will further
illustrate this point. Notice that the place inside the wine bottle was first constituted by the wine
and then by air. These are two different kinds of extended things, but they are extended things
nonetheless. Accordingly, the place inside the bottle is constituted first by one body (the wine)
and then by another (air). But suppose that all extension is removed from the bottle so that there
is an empty space. Now, distance is a mode requiring extension to exist, for it makes no sense
to speak of spatial distance without space or extension. So, under these circumstances, no mode
of distance could exist inside the bottle. That is, no distance would exist between the bottles
sides, and therefore the sides would touch. Therefore, an empty space cannot exist between two
or more bodies.

Descartes close assimilation of body and space, his rejection of the vacuum, and some textual
issues have lead many to infer an asymmetry in his metaphysics of thinking and extended things.
This asymmetry is found in the claim that particular minds are substances for Descartes but not
particular bodies. Rather, these considerations indicate to some that only the whole, physical
universe is a substance, while particular bodies, for example, the wine bottle, are modes of that
substance. Though the textual issues are many, the main philosophical problem stems from the
rejection of the vacuum. The argument goes like this: particular bodies are not really distinct
substances, because two or more particular bodies cannot be clearly and distinctly understood
with an empty space between them; that is, they are not separable from each other, even by the
power of God. Hence, particular bodies are not substances, and therefore they must be modes.
However, this line of reasoning is a result of misunderstanding the criterion for a real distinction.
Instead of trying to understand two bodies with an empty space between them, one body should
be understood all by itself so that God could have created a world with that body, for example,
the wine bottle, as its only existent. Hence, since it requires only Gods concurrence to exist, it is
a substance that is really distinct from all other thinking and extended substances. Although
difficulties also arise for this argument from Descartes account of bodily surfaces as a mode
shared between bodies, these are too complex to address here. But, suffice it to say that the
textual evidence is also in favor of the claim that Descartes, despite the unforeseen problem
about surfaces, maintained that particular bodies are substances. The most telling piece of textual
evidence is found in a 1642 letter to Gibeuf:

From the simple fact that I consider two halves of a part of matter, however small it may be, as
two complete substances . . . I conclude with certainty that they are really divisible. (AT III 477:
CSMK 202-203
These considerations in general, and this quotation in particular, lead to another distinct feature
of Cartesian body, namely that extension is infinitely divisible. The point is that no matter how
small a piece of matter, it can always be divided in half, and then each half can itself be divided
in half, and so on to infinity. These considerations about the vacuum and the infinite divisibility
of extension amount to a rejection of atomism. Atomism is a school of thought going back to the
ancients, which received a revival in the 17th century most notably in the philosophy and science
of Pierre Gassendi. On this account, all change in the universe could be explained by the
movements of very small, indivisible particles called atoms in a void or empty space. But, if
Descartes arguments for rejecting the vacuum and the infinite divisibility of matter are sound,
then atomism must be false, since the existence of indivisible atoms and an empty space would
both be unintelligible.

c. Physics
Descartes devised a non-atomistic, mechanistic physics in which all physical phenomena were to
be explain by the configuration and motion of a bodys miniscule parts. This mechanistic physics
is also a point of fundamental difference between the Cartesian and Scholastic-Aristotelian
schools of thought. For the latter (as Descartes understood them), the regular behavior of
inanimate bodies was explained by certain ends towards which those bodies strive. Descartes, on
the other hand, thought human effort is better directed toward the discovery of the mechanistic
causes of things given the uselessness of final causal explanations and how it is vain to seek
Gods purposes. Furthermore, Descartes maintained that the geometric method should also be
applied to physics so that results are deduced from the clear and distinct perceptions of the
geometrical or quantifiable properties found in bodies, that is, size, shape, motion, determination
(or direction), quantity, and so forth.

Perhaps the most concise summary of Descartes general view of the physical universe is found
in part III, section 46 of the Principles:
From what has already been said we have established that all the bodies in the universe are
composed of one and the same matter, which is divisible into indefinitely many parts, and is in
fact divided into a large number of parts which move in different directions and have a sort of
circular motion; moreover, the same quantity of motion is always preserved in the universe. (AT
VIIIA 100: CSM I 256)
Since the matter constituting the physical universe and its divisibility were previously discussed,
a brief explanation of the circular motion of bodies and the preservation of motion is in order.
The first thesis is derived from Gods immutability and implies that no quantity of motion is ever
added to or subtracted from the universe, but rather quantities of motion are merely passed from
one body to another. Gods immutability is also used to support the first law of motion, which is
that each and everything, in so far as it can, always continues in the same state; and thus what is
once in motion always continues in motion (AT VIIIA 62-63: CSM I 241). This principle
indicates that something will remain in a given state as long as it is not being affected by some
external cause. So a body moving at a certain speed will continue to move at that speed
indefinitely unless something comes along to change it. The second thesis about the circular
motion of bodies is discussed at Principles, part II, section 33. This claim is based on the earlier
thesis that the physical universe is a plenum of contiguous bodies. On this account, one moving
body must collide with and replace another body, which, in turn, is set in motion and collides
with another body, replacing it and so on. But, at the end of this series of collisions and
replacements, the last body moved must then collide with and replace the first body in the
sequence. To illustrate: suppose that body A collides with and replaces body B, B replaces C, C
replaces D, and then D replaces A. This is known as a Cartesian vortex.
Descartes second law of motion is that all motion is in itself rectilinear; and hence any body
moving in a circle always tends to move away from the center of the circle which it describes
(AT VIIIA 63-64: CSM I 241-242). This is justified by Gods immutability and simplicity in that
he will preserve a quantity of motion in the exact form in which it is occurring until some created
things comes along to change it. The principle expressed here is that any body considered all by
itself tends to move in a straight line unless it collides with another body, which deflects it.
Notice that this is a thesis about any body left all by itself, and so only lone bodies will continue
to move in a straight line. However, since the physical world is a plenum, bodies are not all by
themselves but constantly colliding with one another, which gives rise to Cartesian vortices as
explained above.

The third general law of motion, in turn, governs the collision and deflection of bodies in motion.
This third law is that if a body collides with another body that is stronger than itself, it loses
none of its motion; but if it collides with a weaker body, it loses a quantity of motion (AT VIIIA
65: CSM I 242). This law expresses the principle that if a bodys movement in a straight line is
less resistant than a stronger body with which it collides, then it wont lose any of its motion but
its direction will be changed. But if the body collides with a weaker body, then the first body
loses a quantity of motion equal to that given in the second. Notice that all three of these
principles doe not employ the goals or purposes (that is, final causes) utilized in Scholastic-
Aristotelian physics as Descartes understood it but only the most general laws of the mechanisms
of bodies by means of their contact and motion.

d. Animal and Human Bodies

In part five of the Discourse on Method, Descartes examines the nature of animals and how they
are to be distinguished from human beings. Here Descartes argues that if a machine were made
with the outward appearance of some animal lacking reason, like a monkey, it would be
indistinguishable from a real specimen of that animal found in nature. But if such a machine of a
human being were made, it would be readily distinguishable from a real human being due to its
inability to use language. Descartes point is that the use of language is a sign of rationality and
only things endowed with minds or souls are rational. Hence, it follows that no animal has an
immaterial mind or soul. For Descartes this also means that animals do not, strictly speaking,
have sensations like hunger, thirst and pain. Rather, squeals of pain, for instance, are mere
mechanical reactions to external stimuli without any sensation of pain. In other words, hitting a
dog with a stick, for example, is a kind of input and the squeal that follows would be merely
output, but the dog did not feel anything at all and could not feel pain unless it was endowed with
a mind. Humans, however, are endowed with minds or rational souls, and therefore they can use
language and feel sensations like hunger, thirst, and pain. Indeed, this Cartesian fact is at the
heart of Descartes argument for the union of the mind with the body summarized near the end of
part five of the Discourseand laid out in full in the Sixth Meditation.
Yet Descartes still admits that both animal and human bodies can be best understood to be
machine[s] made of earth, which God forms. (AT XI 120: CSM I 99). The point is that just as
the workings of a clock can be best understood by means of the configuration and motion of its
parts so also with animal and human bodies. Indeed, the heart of an animal and that of a human
being are so much alike that he advises the reader unversed in anatomy to have the heart of
some large animal with lungs dissected before him (for such a heart is in all respects sufficiently
like that of a man), and be shown the two chambers or cavities which are present in it (AT VI
47: CSM I 134). He then goes on to describe in some detail the motion of the blood through the
heart in order to explain that when the heart hardens it is not contracting but really swelling in
such a way as to allow more blood into a given cavity. Although this account goes contrary to the
(more correct) observation made by William Harvey, an Englishman who published a book on
the circulation of the blood in 1628, Descartes argues that his explanation has the force of
geometrical demonstration. Accordingly, the physiology and biology of human bodies,
considered without regard for those functions requiring the soul to operate, should be conducted
in the same way as the physiology and biology of animal bodies, namely via the application of
the geometrical method to the configuration and motion of parts.

9. Sensations and Passions

In his last published work, Passions of the Soul, Descartes provides accounts of how various
motions in the body cause sensations and passions to arise in the soul. He begins by making
several observations about the mind-body relation. The whole mind is in the whole body and the
whole in each of its parts but yet its primary seat is in a little gland at the center of the brain now
known as the pineal gland. Descartes is not explicit about what he means by the whole mind
in the whole body and the whole in each of its parts. But this was not an uncommon way of
characterizing how the soul is united to the body at Descartes time. The main point was that the
soul makes a human body truly human; that is, makes it a living human body and not merely a
corpse. Given Descartes unexplained use of this phrase, it is reasonable to suppose that he used
it in the way his contemporaries would have understood it. So the mind is united to the whole
body and the whole in each of its parts insofar as it is a soul or principle of life. Accordingly, the
bodys union with the soul makes it a living human body or a human body, strictly speaking (see
letter to Mersenne dated 9 February 1645). But, the primary seat, that is, the place where the
soul performs its primary functions, is the point where the mind is, in some sense, affected by the
body, namely the pineal gland.
Descartes maintains further that all sensations depend on the nerves, which extend from the brain
to the bodys extremities in the form of tiny fibers encased by tube-like membranes. These fibers
float in a very fine matter known as the animal spirits. This allows these fibers to float freely
so that anything causing the slightest motion anywhere in the body will cause movement in that
part of the brain where the fiber is attached. The variety of different movements of the animals
spirits cause a variety of different sensations not in the part of the body originally affected but
only in the brain and ultimately in the pineal gland. So, strictly speaking, pain does not occur in
the foot when a toe is stubbed but only in the brain. This, in turn, may cause the widening or
narrowing of pores in the brain so as to direct the animals spirits to various muscles and make
them move. For example, the sensation of heat is produced by the imperceptible particles in the
pot of boiling water, which caused the movement of the animal spirits in the nerves terminating
at the end of the hand. These animal spirits then move the fibers extending to the brain through
the tube of nerves causing the sensation of pain. This then causes various pores to widen or
narrow in the brain so as to direct the animals spirits to the muscles of the arm and cause it to
quickly move the hand away from the heat in order to remove it from harm. This is the model for
how all sensations occur.

These sensations may also cause certain emotions or passions in the mind. However, different
sensations do not give rise to different passions because of the difference in objects but only in
regards to the various ways these things are beneficial, harmful or important for us. Accordingly,
the function of the passions is to dispose the soul to want things that are useful and to persist in
this desire Moreover, the same animal spirits causing these passions also dispose the body to
move in order to attain them. For example, the sight of an ice cream parlor, caused by the
movement of the animal spirits in the eye and through the nerves to the brain and pineal gland,
might also cause the passion of desire to arise. These same animal spirits would then dispose the
body to move (for example, toward the ice cream parlor) in order to attain the goal of eating ice
cream thereby satisfying this desire. Descartes goes on to argue that there are only six primitive
passions, namely wonder, love, hatred, desire, joy and sadness. All other passions are either
composed of some combination of these primitives or are species of one of these six genera.
Much of the rest of parts 2 and 3 of the Passions of the Soul is devoted to detailed explications of
these six primitive passions and their respective species.
10. Morality
a. The Provisional Moral Code
In Part 3 of the Discourse on Method, Descartes lays out a provisional moral code by which he
plans to live while engaged in his methodological doubt in search of absolute certainty. This code
of three or four rules or maxims is established so that he is not frozen by uncertainty in the
practical affairs of life. These maxims can be paraphrased as follows:
1. To obey the laws and customs of my country, holding constantly to the Catholic religion,
and governing myself in all other matters according to the most moderate opinions
accepted in practice by the most sensible people.
2. To be as firm and decisive in action as possible and to follow even the most doubtful
opinions once they have been adopted.
3. Try to master myself rather than fortune, and change my desires rather than the order of
the world.
4. Review the various professions and chose the best (AT VI 23-28: CSM I 122-125).
The main thrust of the first maxim is to live a moderate and sensible life while his previously
held beliefs have been discarded due to their uncertainty. Accordingly, it makes sense to defer
judgment about such matters until certainty is found. Presumably Descartes defers to the laws
and customs of the country in which he lives because of the improbability of them leading him
onto the wrong path while his own moral beliefs have been suspended. Also, the actions of
sensible people, who avoid the extremes and take the middle road, can provide a temporary
guide to action until his moral beliefs have been established with absolute certainty. Moreover,
although Descartes does seems to bring his religious beliefs into doubt in the Meditations, he
does not do so in the Discourse. Since religious beliefs can be accepted on faith without
absolutely certain rational justification, they are not subject to methodological doubt as
employed in the Discourse. Accordingly, his religious beliefs can also serve as guides for moral
conduct during this period of doubt. Therefore, the first maxim is intended to provide Descartes
with guides or touchstones that will most likely lead to the performance of morally good actions.
The second maxim expresses a firmness of action so as to avoid the inaction produced by
hesitation and uncertainty. Descartes uses the example of a traveler lost in a forest. This traveler
should not wander about or even stand still for then he will never find his way. Instead, he should
keep walking in a straight line and should never change his direction for slight reasons. Hence,
although the traveler may not end up where he wants, at least he will be better off than in the
middle of a forest. Similarly, since practical action must usually be performed without delay,
there usually is not time to discover the truest or most certain course of action, but one must
follow the most probable route. Moreover, even if no route seems most probable, some route
must be chosen and resolutely acted upon and treated as the most true and certain. By following
this maxim, Descartes hopes to avoid the regrets experienced by those who set out on a
supposedly good course that they later judge to be bad.
The third maxim enjoins Descartes to master himself and not fortune. This is based on the
realization that all that is in his control are his own thoughts and nothing else. Hence, most things
are out of his control. This has several implications. First, if he has done his best but fails to
achieve something, then it follows that it was not within his power to achieve it. This is because
his own best efforts were not sufficient to achieve that end, and so whatever effort would be
sufficient is beyond his abilities. The second implication is that he should desire only those
things that are within his power to obtain, and so he should control his desires rather than try to
master things beyond his control. In this way, Descartes hopes to avoid the regret experienced by
those who have desires that cannot be satisfied, because this satisfaction lies beyond their grasp
so that one should not desire health when ill nor freedom when imprisoned.

It is difficult to see why the fourth maxim is included. Indeed, Descartes himself seems hesitant
about including it when he states at the outset that his provisional moral code consists of three
or four maxims. Although he does not examine other occupations, Descartes is content with his
current work because of the pleasure he receives from discovering new and not widely known
truths. This seems to imply the correct choice of occupation can ensure a degree of contentedness
that could not be otherwise achieved if one is engaged in an occupation for which one is not
suited. Descartes also claims that his current occupation is the basis of the other three maxims,
because it is his current plan to continue his instruction that gave rise to them. He concludes with
a brief discussion of how his occupational path leads to the acquisition of knowledge, which, in
turn, will lead to all the true goods within his grasp. His final point is that learning how best to
judge what is good and bad makes it possible to act well and achieve all attainable virtues and
goods. Happiness is assured when this point is reached with certainty.

b. Generosity
After the Discourse of 1637, Descartes did not take up the issue of morality in any significant
way again until his correspondence with Princess Elizabeth in 1643, which culminated in his
remarks about generosity in part 3 of the Passions of the Soul. Given the temporal distance
between his main reflections on morality, it is easy to attribute to Descartes two moral systems
the provisional moral code and the ethics of generosity. But Descartes later moral thinking
retains versions of the second and third maxim without much mention of the first and fourth.
This indicates that Descartes later moral theory is really an extension of his earlier thought with
the second and third maxims at its core. At Passions, part 3, section 153, Descartes claims that
the virtue of generosity causes a persons self-esteem to be as great as it may legitimately be
and has two components. First is knowing that only the freedom to dispose volitions is in
anyones power. Accordingly, people should only be praised or blamed for using ones freedom
either well or poorly. The second component is the feeling of a firm and constant resolution to
use ones freedom well such that one can never lack the will to carry out whatever has been
judged to be best.
Notice that both components of generosity relate to the second and third maxim of the earlier
provisional moral code. The first component is reminiscent of the third maxim in its
acknowledgment of peoples freedom of choice and the control they have over the disposition of
their will or desire, and therefore they should be praised and blamed only for those things that are
within their grasp. The second component relates to the second maxim in that both pertain to
firm and resolute action. Generosity requires a resolute conviction to use free will correctly,
while the second maxim is a resolution to stick to the judgment most likely to lead to a good
 action absent a significant reason for changing course. However, a difference between these two
moral codes is that the provisional moral code of the Discourse focuses on the correct use and
resolute enactment of probable judgments, while the later ethics of generosity emphasizes a firm
resolution to use free will correctly. Hence, in both moral systems, the correct use of mental
faculties, namely judgment and free will, and the resolute pursuit of what is judged to be good is
to be enacted. This, in turn, should lead us to a true state of generosity so as to legitimately
esteem ourselves as having correctly used those faculties through which humans are most in the
likeness of God.
11. References and Further Reading
a. Primary Sources
Descartes, Ren, Oeuvres de Descartes, eds. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, Paris: Vrin,
originally published 1987-1913.
This is still the standard edition of all of Descartes works and correspondence in
their original languages. Cited in the text as AT volume, page.
Descartes, Ren, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. John Cottingham,
Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch and Anthony Kenny, Cambridge: Cambridge Universiety
Press, 3 vols.1984-1991.
This is the standard English translation of Descartes philosophical works and
correspondence. Cited in the text as CSM or CSMK volume, page.
b. Secondary Sources
Ariew, Roger, Marjorie GRen, eds., Descartes and His Contemporaries: Meditations,
Objections, and Replies, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
This is a collection of essays by prominent scholars about various issues raised in
the Meditations, objections to them and the adequacy or inadequacy of Descartes replies.
Broughton, Janet, Descartess Method of Doubt, Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2003.
A study of Descartes method and its results.
Dicker, Georges, Descartes: An Analytical and Historical Introduction, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1993.
A clear and concise introduction to Descartes philosophy.
Frankfurt, Harry, Demons, Dreamers and Madmen: the Defense of Reason in Descartes
Meditations, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970.
A classic examination of Descartes Meditations.
Garber, Daniel, Descartes Metaphysical Physics, Chicago and London: University of
Chicago Press, 1992.
Provides a detailed account of Cartesian science and its metaphysical foundations.
Gaukroger, Stephen, Descartes: An Intellectual Biography, Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1995.
Though somewhat technical, this is a very good biography of Descartes
intellectual development emphasizing his early years and his interests in mathematics and
science.
Kenny, Anthony, Descartes: A Study of His Philosophy, New York: Random House,
1968.
A classic study of Descartes philosophy through the Meditations.
 Marshall, John, Descartess Moral Theory, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press,
1998.
One of the few book length explications of Descartes moral theory.
Rodis-Lewis, Genevieve, Descartes: His Life and Thought, trans. Jane Marie Todd,
Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1998
This is a very readable and enjoyable biography.
Rozemond, Marleen, Descartess Dualism, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998.
Provides an interpretation of the real distinction between mind and body, their
causal interaction and theory of sensation within the context of late Scholastic theories of soul-
body union and sensation.
Secada, Jorge, Cartesian Metaphysics: The Late Scholastic Origins of Modern
Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
An at times technical, though readable, account of the whole of Descartes
metaphysics from within the context of late Scholasticism.
Skirry, Justin, Descartes and the Metaphysics of Human Nature, London: Thoemmes-
Continuum Press, 2005.
Provides an account of Descartes theory of mind-body union and how it helps
him to avoid the mind-body problem.
Verbeek, Theo, Descartes and the Dutch: Early Reactions to Cartesian Philosophy 1637-
1650,Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1994.
Provides a history and account of the controversies at Utrecht and Leiden.
Williston, Byron and Andre Gomby, eds., Passion and Virtue in Descartes, New York:
Humanity Books, 2003.
An anthology of essays by many noted scholars on Descartes theory of the
passions and aspects of his later moral theory.
Williams, Bernard, Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry, Sussex: Harvester Press,
1978.
Classic account of Descartes philosophy in general.
Wilson, Margaret, Descartes, London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978.
A classic in Descartes scholarship covering the whole of his philosophy as
expressed in the Meditations.

Author Information
Justin Skirry
Email: jskirry@yahoo.com
Nebraska-Wesleyan University
U. S. A.

ntroduction

Ren Descartes (1596 - 1650) was a French philosopher, mathematician, scientist and writer of
the Age of Reason. He has been called the "Father of Modern Philosophy", and much of
subsequent Western philosophy can be seen as a response to his writings. He is responsible for
one of the best-known quotations in philosophy: "Cogito, ergo sum" ("I think, therefore I
am").

He was a pioneer and major figure in 17th Century Continental Rationalism (often known
as Cartesianism) later advocated by Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz, and opposed by
the British Empiricist school of thought of Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley and Hume. He represents
a major break with the Aristotelianism and Scholasticism of the Medieval period.

His contribution to mathematics was also of the first order, as the inventor of the Cartesian
coordinate system and the founder of analytic geometry, crucial to the invention
of calculus and mathematical analysis. He was also one of the key figures in the scientific
revolution of the 16th and 17th Centuries.

Life

Descartes (pronounced day-CART) was born in the town of La Haye en Touraine (since
renamed Descartes) in the Loire Valley in central France on 31 March 1596. His
father, Joachim Descartes, was a busy lawyer and magistrate in the High Court of Justice, and
his mother, Jeanne (ne Brochard), died of tuberculosis when Ren was just one year old. Ren
and his brother and sister, Pierre and Jeanne, were therefore mainly raised by
their grandmother.

From 1604 until 1612, he attended the Jesuit Collge Royal Henry-Le-Grand at La Flche,
Anjou, studying classics, logic and traditional Aristotelianism philosophy. His health was poor
and he was granted permission to remain in bed until 11 o'clock in the morning, a custom he
maintained for the rest of his life. He then spent some time in Paris studying mathematics,
before studing law at the University of Poitiers, in accordance with his father's wishes that he
should become a lawyer, obtaining his law degree in 1616.

However, he then abandoned his education and spent several years travelling and experiencing
the world (he later claimed that his formal education provided little of substance). It was during
this time (in 1618) that he met the Dutch philosopher and scientist Isaac Beeckman (1588 -
1637) while walking through Breda in Holland, who sparked his interest in mathematics and
the new physics.

In 1622, he returned to France, and soon afterwards sold all his property at La
Haye, investing the proceeds in bonds which provided him with a comfortable income for the
rest of his life. He returned to settle in Holland in 1628. The next year, he joined the University
of Franeker; the year after that, Leiden University; and, in 1635, he is recorded as
attending Utrecht University. He had a daughter, Francine, after a relationship in Amsterdam
with a servant girl, HelneJans, although Francine died at the age of fve. In fact, in the years
between 1828 and 1649, he lived at 14 separate addresses in 10 different Dutch cities.

It was during this 20 year period of frequent moves that he wrote almost all of his major
works on philosophy, mathematics and science. He shrewdly held off publication of his first
work, "Le Monde" ("The World"), written between 1629 and 1633, due to
the condemnation of the works of Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642) and Nicolaus
Copernicus (1473 - 1543) by the Roman Catholic Church in 1633. The most famous of his
works include: the "Discours de la mthode pour bienconduiresa Raison et chercher la
Vritdans les Sciences" ("Discourse on the Method") of 1637, his first rationalist vision of the
progress of human knowledge; the "Meditationes de Prima Philosophia" ("Meditations on
First Philosophy") of 1641, a more formal exposition of his central tenets, in Latin; and
the "Principia Philosophiae" ("Principles of Philosophy") of 1644, an even more systematic
and comprehensive exposition of his views. For a time, in 1643, Cartesian
philosophy was condemned by the University of Utrecht.

Descartes died of pneumonia on 11 February 1650 in Stockholm, Sweden, where he had been
invited as a teacher for Queen Christina of Sweden. Later, his remains were taken
to France and buried in the church of Sainte-Genevive-du-Mont in Paris, and then, during
the French Revolution, disinterred for burial in the Panthon among the other great thinkers of
France. Currently, his tomb is in the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prs in Paris, and his brain is
in the Muse de l'Homme.

Work Back to Top

Descartes lived during a very skeptical period, at a time before science as we know it existed,
and after a long period of relative stagnation in philosophical thought during the Church-
dominated and Aristotle-influenced late Middle Ages. He had been impressed, in both his
academic work and in his experience of the world at large, by the realization that there appeared
to be no certain way of acquiring knowledge, and he saw his main task as
the epistemological one of establishing what might be certain knowledge as a stepping stone
towards the ultimate pursuit of truth. His more immediate aim in this was to put scientific
enquiry in a position where it was no longer subject to attack by Skeptics, and he tried to do this
by a kind of pre-emptiveSkepticism, essentially by being more skeptical than the Skeptics.

At the heart of Descartes' philosophical method was his refusal to accept the authority
of previous philosophers, and even of the evidence of his own senses, and to trust only that
which was clearly and distinctly seen to be beyond any doubt (a process often referred to
as methodological skepticism or Cartesian doubt or hyperbolic doubt). Only then did he
allow himself to reconstruct knowledge (piece by piece, such that at no stage was
the possibility of doubt allowed to creep back in) in order to acquire a firm foundation
for genuine knowledge and to dispel any Skepticism.

He outlined four main rules for himself in his thinking:

Never accept anything except clear and distinct ideas.

Divide each problem into as many parts are needed to solve it.

Order your thoughts from the simple to the complex.

 Always check thoroughly for oversights.

Using this process, which he detailed in his epochal "Discourse on the Method" of 1637 and
expanded in the "Meditations on First Philosophy" of 1641, Descartes attempted to narrow
down, by what is sometimes called the method of doubt, what was certain and what contained
even a shadow of a doubt. For example, he realized that he could doubt even something as
apparently fundamental as whether he had a body (it could be that he was just dreaming of it or
that it was an illusion created by an evil demon), but he could not, under any circumstances,
doubt whether he had a mind or that he could think. He followed this up with a pure,
abstract thought experiment. He imagined an evil spirit (or "deceiving demon") whose sole
intention was to mislead him, and asked whether there was anything about which the demon
would not be able to mislead him. His conclusion was the act of thinking, that the demon could
never make him believe that he was thinking when he was not (because, after all, even a false
thought is still a thought).

Having identified this single indubitable principle, that thought exists, he then argued that, if
someone was wondering whether or not he existed, then the very act of thinking was, in and of
itself, proof that he did in fact exist: the famous "Je pense, donc je suis" ("I think, therefore I
am") - the similar statement in Latin, "Cogito ergo sum" is found in his later "Principles of
Philosophy". It is worth mentioning here that, by "thinking", Descartes did not just
mean conceptual thought, but all forms of consciousness, experience, feelings, etc.

Having dispelled all doubt by this process, Descartes then worked to build up, or reconstitute,
the world again. But he was careful not to do this willy-nilly, but only according to his own
very strict rules, so that the "reconstituted world" was not the same as the original one which he
had dismantled piece by piece due to doubts. The way he achieved this (which, it must be said,
appears from a modern viewpoint like something of a conjuring trick) was to argue that among
the contents of our (certain) consciousness was the idea of God, which in itself he saw as proof
of the existence of God. He then argued that, if we have the overwhelming impression of the
existence of a concrete world around us, as we do, then an omnipotent, omniscient and
omnibenevolent God would ensure that such a world does in fact exist for us. Furthermore, he
asserted that the essence of this physical world was extension (that it takes up space), contrary to
the extensionless world of the mind.

Paradoxically, this was an essential step forward in 17th Century science as it established a
physical world which was of a mathematical character and permitted mathematical physics to
be used to explain it. Also important is that, as we have seen, although God was indispensible to
Descartes' method of arriving at a physical world, once such a world was accepted, it was no
longer necessary to involve God in the description and measurement and explanation of how
things work. Thus, the process of science was freed from theological contraints and
interference.

Descartes dismissed the senses and perception as unreliable, and to demonstrate this he used
the so-called Wax Argument. This revolves around the idea that a wax object, which has
certain properties of size, colour, smell, temperature, etc, appears to change almost all of these
properties when it is melted, to the extent that it appears to our senses to be a completely
different thing. However, we know that it is in fact still the same piece of wax. Descartes
concluded from this that the senses can be misleading and that reason and deduction is the
only reliable method of attaining knowledge, which is the essence of Rationalism.

Descartes further argued that sensory perceptions come to him involuntarily (not willed by
him), and are therefore external to his senses and therefore evidence of the existence of an
external world outside of his mind. He argued that the things in the external world
are material because God would not deceive him as to the ideas that are being transmitted, and
has given him the propensity to believe that such ideas are caused by material things. Because
of this belief that God is benevolent and does not desire to deceive him, he can therefore have
some faith in the account of reality his senses provide him.

Descartes believed that the human body works like a machine, that it has the material properties
of extension and motion, and that it follows the laws of physics. The pieces of the human
machine, he argued, are like clockwork mechanisms, and that the machine could be understood
by taking its pieces apart, studying them, and then putting them back together to see the
larger picture (an idea referred to as Reductionism). The mind or soul, on the other hand, is
a non-material entity that lacks extension and motion, and does not follow the laws of physics.

Descartes was the first to formulate the mind-body problem in the form in which it exists today
(see the section on Philosophy of Mind), and the first to clearly identify
the mind with consciousness and self-awareness, and to distinguish this from the brain, which
was the physical seat of intelligence (Dualism). In his epistemological work in the "Discourse
on the Method", he had realized that, although he could doubt that he possessed a body, he could
not under any circumstances doubt that he possessed a mind, which led him to conclude that the
mind and the body were two very different and separate things. His particular form
of Dualism (known as Cartesian Dualism) proposed that the mind controls the body, but that
the body also influences the otherwise rational mind (such as when people act out of passion) in
a kind of two-way interaction, which he claimed, without much evidence, occurred in
the pineal gland. Gilbert Ryle later described this kind of Dualism (where mental activity carries
on in parallel to physical action, but where their means of interaction are unknown or, at best,
speculative) as the "ghost in the machine". Although his own solution was far from convincing,
this kind of Cartesian Dualism set the agenda for philosophical discussion of the mind-body
problem for many years after Descartes' death.

It should be noted, however, that for all Descartes' innovation and boldness, he does not abandon
the traditional idea of God. He defined "substance" (essentially meaning what the world really
consists of) as "that which requires nothing other than itself in order to exist", but he concluded
that the only true substance was God himself, because everything else (from souls to material
objects like the human body) was dependent on God for its existence. He used his own
variations of the causal argument, the ontological argument and the cosmological
argument for the existence of God in his "Meditations" (see the section on Philosophy of
Religion), and the existence of God played a major role in his validation of reason and in other
parts of Descartes system. Given the important rle God plays in his work, suggestions that
Descartes was really a closet atheist, and that he includes the arguments for the existence of God
as window dressing, appear extremely unlikley.
In mathematics, Descartes realized that a graph could be drawn to show a geometrical
interpretation of a mathematical function using points known as Cartesian coordinates, and
thereby founded analytic geometry or Cartesian geometry (using algebra to describe
geometry), which was crucial to the subsequent development of calculus by Sir Isaac
Newton (1643 - 1727) and Gottfried Leibniz. He also invented the notation which
uses superscripts to indicate powers or exponents, and his rule of signs is also a commonly
used method to determine the number of positive and negative zeros of a polynomial. It can be
argued that his reflections on mind and mechanism, impelled by the invention of the electronic
computer and by the possibility of machine intelligence, blossomed into the Turing test of a
machine's capability to demonstrate intelligence.

In optics, he showed by using geometric construction and the law of refraction (also known
as Descartes' law) that the angular radius of a rainbow is 42 degrees. He also independently
discovered the law of reflection (that the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection).

In physics, Descartes introduced (before Newton) the concept of momentum of a moving body
(what he termed the "amount of motion"), which he defined as the product of the mass of the
body and its velocity or speed. His three "laws of nature" became the basis of Newton's
later laws of motion and the modern theory of dynamics: that each thing tries to remain in
the same state and, once moved, continues to move; that all movement is along straight lines;
and that when a body comes into contact with another body the combined "quantity of motion"
remain the same (his conservation of motion principle).

In an attempt to explain the orbits of planets, Descartes also constructed his vortex
theory which would become the most popular theory of planetary motion of the late 17th
Century (although subsequently discredited). However, he continued to cling to the
traditional mechanical philosophy of the 17th Century, which held that everything physical in
the universe to be made of tiny "corpuscles" of matter (although, unlike Atomism, the theory
maintained that there could be no vacuum, just a mass of swirling matter).

http://www.philosophybasics.com/philosophers_descartes.html

Descartes: A New Approach

 Descartes
Life and Works
. . Method
. . Animals
. . Doubt
. . Cogito
. . God
. . Error
. . Extension
. . Dualism
. . Cartesianism
Bibliography
Internet Sources

The first great philosopher of the modern era was Ren Descartes, whose new approach won
him recognition as the progenitor of modern philosophy. Descartes's pursuit of mathematical and
scientific truth soon led to a profound rejection of the scholastic tradition in which he had been
educated. Much of his work was concerned with the provision of a secure foundation for the
advancement of human knowledge through the natural sciences. Fearing the condemnation of the
church, however, Descartes was rightly cautious about publicly expressing the full measure of
his radical views. The philosophical writings for which he is remembered are therefore extremely
circumspect in their treatment of controversial issues.

After years of work in private, Descartes finally published a preliminary statement of his
views in the Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason (1637). Since
mathematics has genuinely achieved the certainty for which human thinkers yearn, he argued, we
rightly turn to mathematical reasoning as a model for progress in human knowledge more
generally. Expressing perfect confidence in the capacity of human reason to achieve knowledge,
Descartes proposed an intellectual process no less unsettling than the architectural destruction
and rebuilding of an entire town. In order to be absolutely sure that we accept only what is
genuinely certain, we must first deliberately renounce all of the firmly held but questionable
beliefs we have previously acquired by experience and education.

The progress and certainty of mathematical knowledge, Descartes supposed, provide an

emulable model for a similarly productive philosophical method, characterized by four simple
rules:

1. Accept as true only what is indubitable.

2. Divide every question into manageable parts.

 3. Begin with the simplest issues and ascend to the more complex.

4. Review frequently enough to retain the whole argument at once.

This quasi-mathematical procedure for the achievement of knowledge is typical of a rationalistic

approach to epistemology.
While engaged in such a comprehensive revision of our beliefs, Descartes supposed it prudent
to adhere to a modest, conventional way of life that provides a secure and comfortable
environment in which to pursue serious study. The stoic underpinnings of this "provisional
morality" are evident in the emphasis on changing oneself to fit the world. Its general importance
as an avenue to the contemplative life, however, is more general. Great intellectual upheavals can
best be undertaken during relatively calm and stable periods of life.

Anticipated Results
In this context, Descartes offered a brief description of his own experience with the proper
approach to knowledge. Begin by renouncing any belief that can be doubted, including
especially the testimony of the senses; then use the perfect certainty of one's own existence,
which survives this doubt, as the foundation for a demonstration of the providential reliability of
one's faculties generally. Significant knowledge of the world, Descartes supposed, can be
achieved only by following this epistemological method, the rationalism of relying on a
mathematical model and eliminating the distraction of sensory information in order to pursue the
demonstrations of pure reason.

Later sections of the Discourse (along with the supplementary scientific essays with which it
was published) trace some of the more significant consequences of following the Cartesian
method in philosophy. His mechanistic inclinations emerge clearly in these sections, with
frequent reminders of the success of physical explanations of complex phenomena. Non-
human animals, on Descartes's view, are complex organic machines, all of whose actions can be
fully explained without any reference to the operation of mind in thinking.

In fact, Descartes declared, most of human behavior, like that of animals, is susceptible to
simple mechanistic explanation. Cleverly designed automata could successfully mimic nearly all
of what we do. Thus, Descartes argued, it is only the general ability to adapt to widely varying
circumstancesand, in particular, the capacity to respond creatively in the use of languagethat
provides a sure test for the presence of an immaterial soul associated with the normal human
body.

But Descartes supposed that no matter how human-like an animal or machine could be made
to appear in its form or operations, it would always be possible to distinguish it from a real
human being by two functional criteria. Although an animal or machine may be capable of
performing any one activity as well as (or even better than) we can, he argued, each human being
is capable of a greater variety of different activities than could be performed by anything lacking
a soul. In a special instance of this general point, Descartes held that although an animal or
machine might be made to utter sounds resembling human speech in response to specific stimuli,
only an immaterial thinking substance could engage in the creative use of language required for
responding appropriately to any unexpected circumstances. My puppy is a loyal companion, and
my computer is a powerful instrument, but neither of them can engage in a decent conversation.
(This criterion anticipated the more formal requirements of the Turing test.)

Descartes: Starting with Doubt

For a more complete formal presentation of this foundational experience, we must turn to
theMeditationes de prima Philosophia (Meditations on First Philosophy) (1641), in
which Descartes offered to contemporary theologians his proofs of the existence of god and the
immortality of the human soul. This explicit concern for religious matters does not reflect any
loss of interest in pursuing the goals of science. By sharply distinguishing mind from body,
Descartes hoped to preserve a distinct arena for the church while securing the freedom of
scientists to developmechanistic accounts of physical phenomena. In this way, he supposed it
possible to satisfy the requirements of Christian doctrine, but discourage the interference of the
church in scientific matters and promote further observational exploration of the material world.

The arrangement of the Meditations, Descartes emphasized, is not the order of reasons; that
is, it makes no effort to proceed from the metaphysical foundations of reality to the dependent
existence of lesser beings, as Spinoza would later try to do. Instead, this book follows the order
of thoughts; that is, it traces the epistemological progress an individual thinker might follow in
establishing knowledge at a level of perfect certainty. Thus, these are truly Meditations: we are
meant to put ourselves in the place of the first-person narrator, experiencing for ourselves the
benefits of the philosophical method.

The Method of Doubt

The basic strategy of Descartes's method of doubt is to defeat skepticism on its own ground.
Begin by doubting the truth of everythingnot only the evidence of the senses and the more
extravagant cultural presuppositions, but even the fundamental process of reasoning itself. If any
particular truth about the world can survive this extreme skeptical challenge, then it must be truly
indubitable and therefore a perfectly certain foundation for knowledge. The First Meditation,
then, is an extended exercise in learning to doubt everything that I believe, considered at three
distinct levels:

1. Perceptual Illusion
First, Descartes noted that the testimony of the senses with respect to any particular
judgment about the external world may turn out to be mistaken. (Med. I) Things are not
always just as they seem at first glance (or at first hearing, etc.) to be. But then, Descartes
argues, it is prudent never wholly to trust in the truth of what we perceive. In ordinary
life, of course, we adjust for mistaken perceptions by reference to correct perceptions.
But since we cannot be sure at first which cases are veridical and which are not, it is
possible (if not always feasible) to doubt any particular bit of apparent sensory
knowledge.
 2. The Dream Problem
Second, Descartes raised a more systematic method for doubting the legitimacy of all
sensory perception. Since my most vivid dreams are internally indistinguishible from
waking experience, he argued, it is possible that everything I now "perceive" to be part of
the physical world outside me is in fact nothing more than a fanciful fabrication of my
own imagination. On this supposition, it is possible to doubt that any physical thing really
exists, that there is an external world at all. (Med. I)

Severe as it is, this level of doubt is not utterly comprehensive, since the truths of
mathematics and the content of simple natures remain unaffected. Even if there is no
material world (and thus, even in my dreams) two plus three makes five and red looks red
to me. In order to doubt the veracity of such fundamental beliefs, I must extend the
method of doubting even more hyperbolically.

3. A Deceiving God
Finally, then, Descartes raises even more comprehensive doubts by inviting us to consider
a radical hypothesis derived from one of our most treasured traditional beliefs. What if
(as religion teaches) there is an omnipotent god, but that deity devotes its full attention to
deceiving me? (Med. I) The problem here is not merely that I might be forced by god to
believe what something which is in fact false. Descartes means to raise the far more
devastating possibility that whenever I believe anything, even if it has always been true
up until now, a truly omnipotent deceiver could at that very moment choose to change the
world so as to render my belief false. On this supposition, it seems possible to doubt the
truth of absolutely anything I might come to believe.

Although the hypothesis of a deceiving god best serves the logical structure of
the Meditations as a whole, Descartes offered two alternative versions of the hypothetical
doubt for the benefit of those who might take offense at even a counter-factual suggestion
of impiety. It may seem more palatable to the devout to consider the possibility that I
systematically deceive myself or that there is some evil demon who perpetually tortures
me with my own error. The point in each case is that it is possible for every belief I
entertain to be false.

Remember that the point of the entire exercise is to out-do the skeptics at their own game, to
raise the broadest possible grounds for doubt, so that whatever we come to believe in the face of
such challenges will indeed be that which cannot be doubted. It is worthwhile to pause here,
wallowing in the depths of Cartesian doubt at the end of the First Meditation, the better to
appreciate the escape he offers at the outset of Meditation Two.

I Am, I Exist
The Second Meditation begins with a review of the First. Remember that I am committed to
suspending judgment with respect to anything about which I can conceive any doubt, and my
doubts are extensive. I mistrust every report of my senses, I regard the material world as nothing
more than a dream, and I suppose that an omnipotent god renders false each proposition that I am
even inclined to believe. Since everything therefore seems to be dubitable, does it follow that I
can be certain of nothing at all?

It does not. Descartes claimed that one thing emerges as true even under the strict conditions
imposed by the otherwise universal doubt: "I am, I exist" is necessarily true whenever the
thought occurs to me. (Med. II) This truth neither derives from sensory information nor depends
upon the reality of an external world, and I would have to exist even if I were systematically
deceived. For even an omnipotent god could not cause it to be true, at one and the same
time, both that I am deceived and that I do not exist. If I am deceived, then at least I am.

Although Descartes's reasoning here is best known in the Latin translation of its expression in
the Discourse, "cogito, ergo sum" ("I think, therefore I am"), it is not merely an inference from
the activity of thinking to the existence of an agent which performs that activity. It is intended
rather as an intuition of one's own reality, an expression of the indubitability of first-person
experience, the logical self-certification of self-conscious awareness in any form.

Skepticism is thereby defeated, according to Descartes. No matter how many skeptical

challenges are raisedindeed, even if things are much worse than the most extravagant skeptic
ever claimedthere is at least one fragment of genuine human knowledge: my perfect certainty
of my own existence. From this starting-point, Descartes supposed, it is possible to achieve
indubitable knowledge of many other propositions as well.

I Am a Thinking Thing
An initial consequence may be drawn directly from the intuitive certainty of the cogito itself.
If I know that I am, Descartes argued, I must also know what I am; an understanding of my true
nature must be contained implicitly in the content of my awareness.

What then, is this "I" that doubts, that may be deceived, that thinks? Since I became certain of
my existence while entertaining serious doubts about sensory information and the existence of a
material world, none of the apparent features of my human body can have been crucial for my
understanding of myself. But all that is left is my thought itself, so Descartes concluded that
"sum res cogitans" ("I am a thing that thinks"). (Med. II) In Descartes's terms, I am
a substance whose inseparable attribute (or entire essence) is thought, with all its modes:
doubting, willing, conceiving, believing, etc. What I really am is a mind [Lat. mens]
or soul [Lat. anima]. So completely am I identified with my conscious awareness, Descartes
claimed, that if I were to stop thinking altogether, it would follow that I no longer existed at all.
At this point, nothing else about human nature can be determined with such perfect certainty.

In ordinary life, my experience of bodies may appear to be more vivid than self-
consciousness, but Descartes argued that sensory appearances actually provide no reliable
knowledge of the external world. If I hold a piece of beeswax while approaching the fire, all of
the qualities it presents to my senses change dramatically while the wax itself remains. (Med. II)
It follows that the impressions of sense are unreliable guides even to the nature of bodies.
(Notice here that the identity of the piece of wax depends solely upon its spatial location; that's a
significant hint about Descartes's view of the true nature of material things, which we'll see in
more detail in Meditation Five.)

Descartes: God and Human Nature

Clear and Distinct Ideas

At the outset of the Third Meditation, Descartes tried to use this first truth as the paradigm for
his general account of the possibilities for achieving human knowledge. In the cogito, awareness
of myself, of thinking, and of existence are somehow combined in such a way as to result in an
intuitive grasp of a truth that cannot be doubted. Perhaps we can find in other cases the same
grounds for indubitable truth. But what is it?

The answer lies in Descartes's theory of ideas. Considered formally, as the content of my
thinking activity, the ideas involved in the cogito are unusually clear and distinct. (Med. III) But
ideas may also be considered objectively, as the mental representatives of things that really exist.
According to a representative realist like Descartes, then, the connections among our ideas yield
truth only when they correspond to the way the world really is. But it is not obvious that our
clear and distinct ideas do correspond to the reality of things, since we suppose that there may be
an omnipotent deceiver.

In some measure, the reliability of our ideas may depend on the source from which they are
derived. Descartes held that there are only three possibilities: all of our ideas are
either adventitious (entering the mind from the outside world) or factitious (manufactured by
the mind itself) or innate (inscribed on the mind by god). (Med. III) But I don't yet know that
there is an outside world, and I can imagine almost anything, so everything depends on whether
god exists and deceives me.

God Exists
The next step in the pursuit of knowledge, then, is to prove that god does indeed
exist.Descartes's starting point for such a proof is the principle that the cause of any idea must
have at least as much reality as the content of the idea itself. But since my idea of god has an
absolutely unlimited content, the cause of this idea must itself be infinite, and only the truly
existing god is that. In other words, my idea of god cannot be either adventitious or factitious
(since I could neither experience god directly nor discover the concept of perfection in myself),
so it must be innately provided by god. Therefore, god exists. (Med. III)

As a backup to this argument, Descartes offered a traditional version of the cosmological

argument for god's existence. From the cogito I know that I exist, and since I am not perfect in
every way, I cannot have caused myself. So something else must have caused my existence, and
no matter what that something is (my parents?), we could ask what caused it to exist. The chain
of causes must end eventually, and that will be with the ultimate, perfect, self-caused being, or
god.
 As Antoine Arnauld pointed out in an Objection published along with
the Meditationsthemselves, there is a problem with this reasoning. Since Descartes will use the
existence (and veracity) of god to prove the reliability of clear and distinct ideas in Meditation
Four, his use of clear and distinct ideas to prove the existence of god in Meditation Three is an
example of circular reasoning. Descartes replied that his argument is not circular because
intuitive reasoningin the proof of god as in the cogitorequires no further support in the
moment of its conception. We must rely on a non-deceiving god only as the guarantor of
veridical memory, when a demonstrative argument involves too many steps to be held in the
mind at once. But this response is not entirely convincing.

The problem is a significant one, since the proof of god's existence is not only the first
attempt to establish the reality of something outside the self but also the foundation for every
further attempt to do so. If this proof fails, then Descartes's hopes for human knowledge are
severely curtailed, and I am stuck in solipsism, unable to be perfectly certain of anything more
than my own existence as a thinking thing. With this reservation in mind, we'll continue through
the Meditations, seeing how Descartes tried to dismantle his own reasons for doubt.

Deception and Error

The proof of god's existence actually makes the hypothetical doubt of the First Meditation a
little worse: I now know that there really is a being powerful enough to deceive me at every turn.
But Descartes argued that since all perfections naturally go together, and since deception is
invariably the product of imperfection, it follows that the truly omnipotent being has no reason or
motive for deception. God does not deceive, and doubt of the deepest sort may be abandoned
forever. (Med. IV) It follows that the simple natures and the truths of mathematics are now
secure. In fact, Descartes maintained, I can now live in perfect confidence that my intellectual
faculties, bestowed on me by a veracious god, are properly designed for the apprehension of
truth.

But this seems to imply too much: if I have a divinely-endowed capacity for discovering the
truth, then why don't I always achieve it? The problem is not that I lack knowledge of some
things; that only means that I am limited. Rather, the question is why I so often make mistakes,
believing what is false despite my possession of god-given mental abilities. Descartes's answer
derives from an analysis of the nature of human cognition generally.

Every mental act of judgment, Descartes held, is the product of two distinct faculties:
theunderstanding, which merely observes or perceives, and the will, which assents to the belief
in question. Considered separately, the understanding (although limited in scope) is adequate for
human needs, since it comprehends completely everything for which it has clear and distinct
ideas. Similarly, the will as an independent faculty is perfect, since it (like the will of god) is
perfectly free in every respect. Thus, god has benevolently provided me with two faculties,
neither of which is designed to produce error instead of true belief. Yet I do make mistakes, by
misusing my free will to assent on occasions for which my understanding does not have clear
and distinct ideas. (Med. IV) For Descartes, error is virtually a moral failing, the willful exercise
of my powers of believing in excess of my ability to perceive the truth.
 The Essence of Matter
Since the truths of reason have been restored by the demonstration of god's
veracity, Descartesemployed mathematical reasoning to discover the essence of bodies in the
Fifth Meditation. We do not yet know whether there are any material objects, because the dream
problem remains in force, but Descartes supposed that we can determine what they would be like
if there were any by relying upon reason alone, since mathematics achieves certainty without
supposing the reality of its objects.

According to Descartes, the essence of material substance is simply extension, the property of
filling up space. (Med. V) So solid geometry, which describes the possibility of dividing an
otherwise uniform space into distinct parts, is a complete guide to the essence of body. It follows
that there can be in reality only one extended substance, comprising all matter in a single spatial
whole. From this, Descartes concluded that individual bodies are merely modes of the one
extended being, that there can be no space void of extension, and that all motion must proceed by
circular vortex. Thus, again, the true nature of bodies is understood by pure thought, without any
information from the senses.

By the way, this explanation of essences suggested to Descartes another proof of god's
existence, a modern variation on the Ontological Argument. Just as the essence of a triangle
includes its having interior angles that add up to a straight line, Descartes argued, so the essence
of god, understood as a being in whom all perfections are united, includes necessary existence in
reality. (Med. V) As Descartes himself noted, this argument is no more certain than the truths of
mathematics, so it also rests on the reliability of clear and distinct ideas, secured in turn by the
proofs of god's existence and veracity in the Third and Fourth Meditations.

The Existence of Bodies

In the Sixth Meditation, Descartes finally tried to eliminate the dream problem by proving
that there is a material world and that bodies do really exist. His argument derives from the
supposition that divinely-bestowed human faculties of cognition must always be regarded as
adequately designed for some specific purpose. Since three of our faculties involve
representation of physical things, the argument proceeds in three distinct stages. (Med. VI)

First, since the understanding conceives of extended things through its comprehension of
geometrical form, it must at least be possible for things of this sort to exist. Second, since the
imagination is directed exclusively toward the ideas of bodies and of the ways in which they
might be purposefully altered, it is probable that there really are such things. Finally, since the
faculty of sense perception is an entirely passive ability to receive ideas of physical objects
produced in me by some external source outside my control, it is certain that such objects must
truly exist.

The only alternative explanation for perception, Descartes noted, is that god directly puts the
ideas of bodies into my mind without thereacutally being anything real that corresponds to them.
(This is precisely the possibility that Malebranche would later accept as the correct account of
the material world.) But Descartes supposed that a non-deceiving god would never maliciously
give me so complete a set of ideas without also causing their natural objects to exist in fact.
Hence, the bodies I perceive do really exist.

Mind-Body Dualism
Among the physical objects I perceive are the organic bodies of animals, other human beings,
and myself. So it is finally appropriate to consider human nature as a whole: how am I,
considered as a thinking thing, concerned with the organism I see in the mirror? What is the true
relation between the mind and the body of any human being? According to Descartes, the two
are utterly distinct.

The Sixth Meditation contains two arguments in defence of Cartesian dualism: First, since the
mind and the body can each be conceived clearly and distinctly apart from each other, it follows
that god could cause either to exist independently of the other, and this satisfies the traditional
criteria for a metaphysical real distinction. (Med. VI) Second, the essence of body as a
geometrically defined region of space includes the possibility of its infinite divisibility, but the
mind, despite the variety of its many faculties and operations, must be conceived as a single,
unitary, indivisible being; since incompatible properties cannot inhere in any one substance, the
mind and body are perfectly distinct. (Med. VI)

This radical separation of mind and body makes it difficult to account for the apparent
interaction of the two in my own case. In ordinary experience, it surely seems that the volitions
of my mind can cause physical movements in my body and that the physical states of my body
can produce effects on my mental operations. But on Descartes's view, there can be no
substantial connection between the two, nor did he believe it appropriate to think of the mind as
residing in the body as a pilot resides within a ship. Although he offered several tenatative
suggestions in his correspondence with Princess Elizabeth, Descartes largely left for future
generations the task of developing some reasonable account of volition and sensation, either by
securing the possibility of mind-body interaction or by proposing some alternative explanation of
the appearances.

On the other hand, Cartesian dualism offers some clear advantages: For one thing, it provides
an easy proof of the natural immortality of the human mind or soul, which cannot be
substantially affected by death, understood as an alteration of the states of the physical organism.
In addition, the distinction of mind from body establishes the absolute independence of the
material realm from the spiritual, securing the freedom of scientists to rely exclusively on
observation for their development of mechanistic explanations of physical events.

Cartesian Philosophy

Consequences of Dualism
Descartes worked out his own detailed theories about the physical operation of the material
world in Le Monde (The World), but uncertainty about ecclesiastical reactions prevented him
from publishing it. The final sections of the Discourse, however, include several significant hints
about the positions he was prepared to defend. Their explanations of the activities of living
organisms make the mechanistic implications of the Cartesian view more evident.

Since, as everyone acknowledges, non-human animals do not have souls, Descartes

concluded that animals must be merely complex machines. Since they lack any immaterial
thinking substance, animals cannot think, and all of the movements of their bodies can, in
principle, be explained in purely mechanical terms. (Descartes himself incorrectly supposed that
the nervous system functions as a complex hydraulic machine.) But since the structure of the
human body and the behavior of human beings are similar to the structure and behavior of some
animals, it is obvious that many human actions can also be given a mechanistic explanation. La
Mettrie later followed this line of reasoning to its ultimate conclusion, supposing human beings
to be nothing more than Cartesian machines.

Cartesianism
The philosophy of Descartes won ready acceptance in the second half of the seventeenth
century, expecially in France and Holland. Although few of his followers, known collectively
as Cartesians, employed his methods, they showed great diligence and ingenuity in their efforts
to explain, defend, and advance his central doctrines.

In the physical sciences, for example, Cavendish, Rohault, and Rgis were happy to abandon
all efforts to employ final causes in their pursuit of mechanistic accounts of physical phenomena
and animal behavior. On this basis, however, such philosophers were able to progress beyond a
simple affirmation of the mysterious reality of mind-body interaction.

Metaphysicians like Cordemoy and Geulincx fared little better in their efforts to deal with this
crucial problem with dualism. If there is no genuine causal interaction between independent
substances, we seem driven to suppose that the actions of mind and body are merely parallel or
divinely synchronized.

Not everyone was entirely satisfied by the epistemological foundations of the Cartesian
scheme, either. Critics like Arnauld, Nicole, and Foucher drew attention to the inherent difficulty
of explaining in representationalist terms how our ideas of things can be known to resemble the
things themselves and the implausibility of reliance upon innate ideas. Conway went even
further, rejecting the dualistic foundations of Descartes's substance-ontology along with his
approach to human knowledge.

Pascal: The Religious Mathematician

One seventeenth-century thinker of greater independent significance was Blaise Pascal, with
his unusual blend of religious piety, scientific curiosity, and mathematical genius. Led by his
deep religious feelings to participate fully in the pietistic Jansenism of the Port-
Royal community, Pascal maintained that formal reasoning about god can never provide an
adequate substitute for genuine personal concern for the faith: "The heart has its reasons that
reason cannot know."
 Pascal's mathematical acumen was no less remarkable than that of Descartes; his work
anticipated the development of game theory and the modern methods of calculating probability.
In fact, his famous "Wager" applies these mathematical techniques to the prudence of religious
conviction in the absence of adequate evidence: since the consequences of believing are
infinitely beneficial if there is a god and only slightly inconvenient if there is not, while the
outcome of atheism is only somewhat more pleasant if there is no god and eternally costly if
there is, theexpected value of theism is much greater than that of atheism, and it is reasonable to
stake one's life on the possibility that god does exist.

Malebranche: Seeing All Things in God

The most original and influential philosopher of the Cartesian tradition was Nicolas
Malebranche. Noting the steady progress of efforts to provide mechanistic accounts of the
behavior of the human body, Malebranche concluded that the mind and body are not only
substantially distinct but causally independent of each other. The appearance of genuine
interaction arises from what is in fact merely the perfect parallelism of events in the mental and
physical realms.

According to Malebranche, then, our ideas of bodies do not result from any causal influence
that physical objects have on our senses; rather, they are produced in our minds directly by god.
Thus, he supposed, in sense perception what literally happens is that we "see all things in god."
Similarly, our wills have no causal influence on the material world, but god provides for the
coordination of our volitions with the movement of bodies. In general, since there is no causal
interaction, it is the power of god alone that secures a perpetual, happy coincidence of the states
and operations of minds and bodies.

Since only god's activity is efficacious in either mental or physical things, apparent causes in
either realm are merely the occasions for the appearance of their supposed effects in the other.
Thus, the views of Malebranche are often referred to collectively as occasionalism. Although the
entire theory found few enthusiastic adherents, Malebranche's analysis of the regularities
exhibited in nature by causally independent beings and events was greatly influential on later
philosophers, including Berkeley and Hume.

http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/4b.htm

Rene Descartes

Philosophy: Famous Philosophers: Rene Descartes

Discussion of Philosophy & Metaphysics of Rene Descartes
'I Think Therefore I Exist'

Pictures / Quotes / Quotations Rene Descartes

'A Discourse on Method Meditations and Principles'
I think, hence I am, was so certain and of such evidence, that no ground of doubt, however
extravagant, could be alleged by the sceptics capable of shaking it, I concluded that I might,
without scruple, accept it as the first principle of the philosophy of which I was in search.
(Rene Descartes)

Several years have now elapsed since I first became aware that I had accepted, even from my
youth, many false opinions for true, and that consequently what I afterwards based on such
principles was highly doubtful: and from that time I was convinced of the necessity of
undertaking once in my life to rid myself of all the opinions I had adopted, and of commencing
anew the work of building from the foundation, if I desired to establish a firm and abiding
superstructure in the sciences.
(Rene Descartes).

Introduction Descartes - I Think Therefore I Exist - Rene Descartes 'Ghost in the Machine'
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Introduction - Rene Descartes

Rene Descartes is one of the most elegant writers of philosophy. He is also one of the most
important of the western philosophers due to his determination to find a certain foundation for
philosophy / truth that could not be assaulted by the skeptics!

His solution? That it is impossible to doubt that you are thinking (you must think to doubt) thus
we can be certain that a thinking mind exists. From this certain foundation he then concludes that
God exists as the necessary creator of our material world and minds, and matter exists because
our mind senses corporeal matter (particles), and God would not deceive us;

By the name God I understand a substance that is infinite, independent, all-knowing, all-
powerful, and by which I myself and everything else, if anything else does exist, has been
created. (Med. 3)

But, since God is no deceiver, ... and He has given me no faculty to recognize that this is the
case, but on the other hand a very great inclination to believe that my sense are conveyed to me
by corporeal objects, I do not see how he could be defended against the accusation of deceit if
these ideas were produced by causes other than corporeal objects. Hence we must allow that
corporeal things exist. (173)

Each substance has a principal attribute, and . . . the attribute of the mind is thought, while that
of body is extension. (175)

He then distinguishes the properties of mind, matter and God.

Body is by nature always divisible, and the mind is entirely indivisible. (Med. 6)

Thus extension in length, breadth and depth, constitutes the nature of corporeal substance; and
thought constitutes the nature of thinking substance. For all else that may be attributed to body
presupposes extension, and is but a mode of this extended thing; as everything that we find in
mind is but so many diverse forms of thinking. (175)

God is the primary cause of motion; and he always preserves the same quantity of motion in the
universe.
After this consideration of the nature of motion, we must look at its cause. This is in fact twofold:
first, there is the universal and primary cause - the general cause of all the motions of the world;
and second there is the particular cause which produces in an individual piece of matter some
motion which it previously lacked. Now as far as the general cause is concerned, it seems clear
to me that this is no other than God himself. In the beginning, ,<in his omnipotence>, he created
matter, along with its motion and rest; and now, merely by his regular concurrence, he preserves
the same amount of motion and rest in the material universe as he put there in the beginning.
Admittedly motion is simply a mode of the matter which is moved. But nevertheless it has a
certain determinate quantity; and this, we easily understand, may be constant in the universe as
a whole while varying in any given part. (Principles Part II, article. 36)

It is interesting to read Pascal's criticism of this foundation for God as the

first cause of matter's motion.

I cannot forgive Descartes. In all his philosophy he would have been quite
willing to dispense with God. But he had to make Him give a fillip to set
the world in motion; beyond this, he has no further need of God. (Blaise
Pascal)

There are numerous criticisms of Descartes conception of mind, matter

and god - most relating to how these three different things are interconnected in the world that
we all commonly experience.

I am convinced there is a solution to this problem - but it requires describing reality in terms of
only one substance existing - space and its wave motions that form matter. Thus we change the
metaphysical foundations of physical reality from Newton's motion of matter 'particles' in 'Space
and Time' (which then required forces to connect the discrete particles) to the Wave Motion of
Space that causes (and unites) matter, energy and time.

Basically the problem was to apply motion to discrete matter particles rather than realising that
matter is motion, the wave motion of space. This is explained in the following pages;

Truth Statements on Physical Reality - These truth statements show people how to deduce
physical reality for themselves and confirm it is true. It also provides a very concise summary of
the central things the Wave Structure of Matter (WSM) explains. See if you can show any
statement is not true.

Wave Equation in an Elastic Wave Medium - Deducing the famous energy equations, Einstein's
E=mc2, Planck's E=hf and Newton's F=ma from simple wave equations in an elastic medium
(space). This confirms that the equivalence of matter and energy is because matter is made of
waves, and waves propagate energy. All forces are due to changes in wave velocity.

Metaphysics - Solving the central problem of metaphysics - what is the one active substance that
causes and connects the many changing material things we experience. The solution is simple,
space is a wave medium and contains wave motions. i.e. From the motion of matter particles in
space and time, to the wave motion of space that causes matter and time.

Cosmology - Explaining how our observable universe exists as a finite spherical region of
infinite eternal space.

Theology God Religion - Defining god in terms of the one infinite eternal substance that exists.

Free Will Vs. Determinism - How we can have limited freedom and limited determinism in a
necessarily interconnected reality of waves in space.

Geoff Haselhurst
(February, 2010)

Introduction Descartes - I Think Therefore I Exist - Rene Descartes 'Ghost in the Machine'
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Rene Descartes: I Think Therefore I Exist

I think, hence I am, was so certain and of such evidence, that no ground of doubt,
however extravagant, could be alleged by the sceptics capable of shaking it, I concluded that I
might, without scruple, accept it as the first principle of the philosophy of which I was in search.
(Rene Descartes)

It is strange that Descartes did not further pursue this line of reasoning, as he would then likely
have solved the problems of philosophy / knowledge.

The reasoning is simple.

1. 'Cogito Ergo Sum' - I think therefore I exist (a thinking thing exists).

2. I think I exist as a material body in space and that I can see and interact with other material
things in the space around me, including other thinking things (other humans).

3. Thus three things seem to exist in an interconnected way;

i) Many thinking minds (of which I am certain of my own).

ii) Many material things (people, cars, trees, houses, earth, sun, stars, ...).
iii) One common Space (that these many minds and material things exist in).

From this there is only one way to describe reality if we abide by the rules of simplicity
(Occam's Razor) and metaphysics (necessary connection). i.e. There are many minds and
material things - but they all seem to exist in one common space. This leads to a simple
deduction of the wave structure of matter in Space which then deduces the fundamentals
of physics (without any opinions), i.e. Quantum Theory, Albert Einstein's
Relativity and Cosmology.

The complete argument is on the Truth Statements on Physical Reality page.

I do find it strange though that many people now seem to reject Descartes argument that we
cannot doubt our thinking minds exist. As I see things, postmodernism has become
so skeptical that people even doubt that they exist as thinking things - they take the idea that
language is metaphor to illogical extremes. This is discussed more on the Friedrich
Nietzsche page.

Let us assume that we do not know reality- the solution to metaphysics (substance and its
properties). Thus any statement you make about the external world is uncertain. For example we
can say;

"I experience seeing a tree." But of course this does not mean the tree necessarily exist. The
certain truth is the personal / subjective truth (what we experience with our minds) not the
objective truth (that the tree actually exists).

Thus all we can say with certainty is "I experience seeing a tree so this experience of the tree
exists."
However, there is one and only one exception to this.

I experience thinking thus thinking things exist.

This cannot be doubted - as we must first think to doubt.

Thus we can be certain that we exist as thinking things.

What is most interesting is how we solve this, by solving metaphysics - by correctly imagining
what exists - space - the one thing that we all commonly experience existing in as one
thing. David Hume explains this problem of causation and necessary connection very well.

This problem of the 'external world' and causation disappear when you realise that we are
universal structures - there is no external world, just one world, matter-energy and space-time are
a unity - the wave motions of space. As Schrodinger wrote;

What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the
structure of space. Particles are just schaumkommen (appearances). ...
The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are
only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent
experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist. (Erwin Schrodinger)

Introduction Descartes - I Think Therefore I Exist - Rene Descartes 'Ghost in the Machine'
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Rene Descartes 'Ghost in the Machine'

The 'ghost in the machine' was made famous by British philosopher Gilbert Ryle in his book 'The
Concept of Mind' (1949). It relates to the problems of Ren Descartes' mind-body dualism.
Descartes describes this as follows;

Nature also teaches me by the sensations of pain, hunger, thirst, etc. that I am not only lodged in
my body as a pilot in a vessel, but that I am very closely united to it, and so to speak so
intermingled with it that I seem to compose with it one whole. ... I consider the body of a man as
being a sort of machine so built up and composed of nerves, muscles, veins, blood and skin, that
though there were no mind at all, it would not cease to have the same motions as at present,
exception being made of those movements which are due to the direction of the will and in
consequence depend on the mind (as opposed to those which operate by the disposition of the
organs). (Rene Descartes, Meditations 6)

Descartes is correct that the body is a machine, but the mind is also a machine, and so is
the universe. So really we should say there is a machine (mind) in a machine (body) which are
both part of one machine (the universe). To understand this it is necessary to realise that matter is
a wave structure of the universe, so is mind (this is why we can see and interact with the rest of
the universe - it is a part of us). From this we can deduce that we have neither complete freedom,
nor complete determinism.

Introduction Descartes - I Think Therefore I Exist - Rene Descartes 'Ghost in the Machine'
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Rene Descartes: Three Laws of Motion

Descartes Laws of Motion are quite similar to Newton's Laws of Motion. He states;

Law 1. Each thing, in so far as it is simple and undivided, always remains in the same state, as
far as it can, and never changes except as a result of external causes. ... Hence we must conclude
that what is in motion always, so far as it can, continues to move. (Principles Part II, article. 37)

Law 2. Every piece of matter, considered in itself, always tends to continue moving, not in any
oblique path but only in a straight line. (Principles Part II, article. 39)

These first two laws are correct, and are equivalent to Newton's Law of Inertia, F=ma.
i.e. A body does not change its motion (acceleration) unless a force acts on it. This corrects
Aristotle's physics (which was dominant at the time) that thought a body would stop moving
unless a force continued to move it.

Law 3. When a moving body collides with another, if its power of continuing in a straight line is
less than the resistance of the other body, it is deflected so that, while the quantity of motion is
retained, the direction is altered; but if its power of continuing is greater than the resistance of
the other body, it carries that body along with it, and loses a quantity of motion equal to that
which it imparts to the other body. (Principles Part II, article. 40)

This is nearly correct. He was just missing the concept of mass and the resultant conservation of
momentum (mass by velocity).

In The World, he states: "the virtue or power in a body to move itself can well pass wholly or
partially to another body and thus no longer be in the first; but it cannot no longer exist in the
world" (AT XI 15)

This is one of the first formulations of the conservation principle and the concept of 'force'. It
basically states that motion is conserved in the universe. This is correct, but it is the wave motion
of space that is conserved!
Introduction Descartes - I Think Therefore I Exist - Rene Descartes 'Ghost in the Machine'
Descartes Three Laws of Motion - Descartes Vortex Theory - Descartes Biography - Top of Page

Rene Descartes: Vortex Theory of Gravity

Descartes explains the orbit of the earth about the sun due to the earth being carried along by
space which is moving around the sun in a large vortex. Thus he assumes space is like a liquid or
a gas, made of tiny particles that can move. It is not correct - but historically interesting.

The wave structure of matter tells us that space is a nearly rigid (slightly elastic) wave medium.
We have a page on Vortex Theory which explains the reasons why it cannot be correct.

Introduction Descartes - I Think Therefore I Exist - Rene Descartes 'Ghost in the Machine'
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Rene Descartes Biography

Ren Descartes, also known as Cartesius, was a French philosopher, mathematician and part-
time mercenary. He is equally notable for both his groundbreaking work in philosophy and
mathematics. As the inventor of the Cartesian coordinate system, he formulated the basis of
modern geometry (analytic geometry), which in turn influenced the development of modern
calculus.

Descartes, sometimes called the Founder of Modern Philosophy and the Father of Modern
Mathematics, ranks as one of the most important and influential thinkers in modern western
history. He inspired both his contemporaries and later generations of philosophers, leading them
to form what we know today as continental rationalism, a philosophical position in 17th and
18th century Europe.
In Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), Descartes attempts to arrive at a fundamental set of
principles that one can know as true without any doubt. To achieve this, he employs a method
called Methodological Skepticism: he doubts any idea that can be doubted. Initially, Descartes
arrives at only a single principle: if I am being deceived, then surely "I" must exist. Most
famously, this is known as cogito ergo sum, ("I think, therefore I am"). Therefore, Descartes
concludes that he can be certain that he exists. But in what form? You perceive your body
through the use of the senses; however these are unreliable (he uses the changing characteristics
of wax by a flame as an example and dreams - one's senses perceive things that seem real, but do
not actually exist). So Descartes concludes that at this point, he can only say that he is a thinking
thing. Thinking is his essence as it is the only thing about him that cannot be doubted. (Edited
from Wikipedia)
Descartes main interest was in the development of science, and he had very clear ideas about the
proper direction for this development. Mathematics, and in particular geometry, seemed to him
to provide the model for scientific procedure. He thought that the fundamental method in science
was the deductive method of geometry, which he conceived of as rigorous reasoning from self-
evident axioms; and he thought that the subject-matter of all the physical sciences must be
fundamentally the same as the subject-matter of geometry, and hence that, from the point of view
of science in general, the only important characteristics of things in the physical world were the
spatial characteristics which geometry studies. It is not the holding of these beliefs which makes
Descartes a metaphysician. It is rather the dramatic expression they receive in his doctrines
about the essential nature of knowledge and existence.

He offers a picture of a world in which the only realities, apart from God, are purely material
substance with none but spatial characteristics, and pure thinking substances whose being
essentially consists in the ability to grasp self-evident axioms and their deductive consequences.
Knowledge is nothing but the results of exercising this ability. ...
Thus Descartes teaches, on the one hand, that it is only through our confidence in God's veracity
that we can have reason to believe in the existence of material things; and on the other that it is
only through our willfulness that we ever believe what is false. (Encyclopedia of Western
Philosophy)

http://www.spaceandmotion.com/Philosophy-Rene-Descartes-Philosopher.htm

Rene Descartes

Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician and scientist born in 1596 in La Haye,
France. He is best known for his philosophical text Meditations on First Philosophy where he
seeks to doubt everything he has ever learned, in order to see what it is that he can actually know
with certainty. Descartes soon realizes that the only thing he is certain of is that, since he is
doubting, he must be thinking. This leads him to famously remark I think, therefore I am
(cogito ergo sum). From this fundamental principle, he puts forth what he believes are rational
arguments for the existence of God as well as the world. Descartes is considered to be the
Father of Modern Philosophy and was a key figure of the Scientific Revolution in the 17th
century.

While Descartes had grown up with a liberal education, he ultimately came to question whether
what he had learned in school was actually true. He noticed that in philosophy, any position that
one philosopher gave, another would argue the exact opposite. Descartes was therefore attracted
to mathematics, because of the certainty upon which the truths of Euclidean geometry were
based. As had been popular at the time, Descartes travelled throughout Europe, and on his
journey he came to the realization that it would be possible to ground all knowledge in the same
certainty as mathematics. He would then move to the Netherlands, in order to get away from the
distractions and social life in France, in order to write his philosophy.

In addition to being a philosopher, Descartes was also a famous mathematician and scientist. In
his Discourse on Method, he explains that the way for progress to be made in searching for truth
and knowledge is to start with what is known, and to logically and rationally proceed from there
to draw out the necessary conclusions. Descartes is considered a rationalist, because he sees
knowledge as rooted in reason. Scientific experiments are valuable because they allow us to
gather data about the outside world, which then through reason we can use to increase our
understanding. In the Discourse, he would also put forth a request to the scientific community of
Europe that everyone work together in order to benefit from everyones research and
experiments. As such, he would envision the way science is practiced today.

In Descartes most famous work, Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes seeks to doubt
everything (what is known as methodological skepticism), in order to see what truly can be
known with certainty. Descartes realizes that the only thing he can truly know is that he exists.
Since he is doubting, he must be a thinking thing. He therefore proclaims, I think therefore I
am (in latin: cogito ergo sum). The fact that he exists as a thinking thing is so clear to him, that
he believes he has found the fundamental principle upon which he can ground all that can be said
to be true.

Although Descartes was himself a scientist, he recognized that the senses can be deceptive. He
famously uses the example of wax. He explains that in one state a piece of wax can have a
certain color and shape, however when heated, it takes on a completely different shape and color.
Everything about the wax, all of its sensible properties, are changed. From this, Descartes
reasoned that the senses can only tell us about the appearance of things, but not about their true
nature. Descartes believed that true knowledge must therefore be based not on sensory
experience, but on reason. This is known as rationalism.

In the Meditations, Descartes then realizes that it is possible that there are no external things in
the first place. The world could be an illusion, since he could either be dreaming, or alternatively
he could be deceived by what he calls an evil genius. Descartes will only be able to overcome
this skeptical doubt by explaining that, since God is perfect, God would not deceive him in this
way.

In order to do this, Descartes must prove that God exists. In the Meditations, he gives two
arguments for the existence of God. First, Descartes puts forth what is known as the Ontological
Argument which states that God must exist because of his very nature. Descartes explains that
just as a triangle must necessarily have three sides due to its nature, likewise since God is
perfect, he must therefore necessarily exist. This is because certainly something that exists is
more perfect than something that doesnt exist. This argument was originally put forth by the
11th century Christian philosopher Anselm of Canterbury.

Second, Descartes argues that God must exist based on his belief that any idea must have been
caused by something with an equal or greater degree of reality. Descartes explains, therefore, that
since he had the idea of God as an infinite being, the only thing with enough reality to cause this
idea would therefore be this infinite being itself. Therefore, Descartes believes he has found a
second rational argument for Gods existence. These arguments have been highly criticized, since
for example, one can have an idea of a perfect island without that island actually existing.

By proving Gods existence as a perfect being, Descartes was therefore able to assure himself
that he was neither sleeping nor being deceived by an evil demon, and therefore able to be
confident that the world did in fact exist. The logic which Descartes uses in the Meditations here
is referred to as the Cartesian Circle, since it seems that he is proving something on the basis
of that which he is trying to prove. Descartes believes knowledge can only come from seeing that
something is clearly and distinctly true. He sees God existing as clearly and distinctly being
true. However, his whole basis for believing anything is that God exists and as a perfect being
wouldnt deceive him. Therefore, he is only able to be certain that God exists because of the
certainty that God gives him, and in this way argues in a circle.

Descartes explains that, while he personally believes in God on the basis of faith, the reason he is
offering these rational proofs for Gods existence in the first place is to try and convince
nonbelievers (skeptics and atheists) who wouldnt accept Christianity otherwise. Descartes
believed it was important for people to follow religion, since without a belief in an afterlife,
people were more likely to commit bad deeds. He believed his philosophy was therefore able to
strengthen Christian theology, although the Meditations ultimately was banned by the Catholic
Church. In his time, the Christian philosopher Pascal would criticized Descartes for attempting
to rationalize a religion which was rooted in faith in God and the mysteries.

Descartes will debate with others about scientific, mathematical, and philosophical issues
throughout his lifetime. He actually requested for the intellectuals living in Paris at the time, such
as the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, to respond to his Meditations, so that he could respond to
their objections. While the French philosopher and scientist Pascal seemed to have proven that
vacuums exist in nature, based on his experiments with barometers, Descartes believed that the
concept of a vacuum was impossible. He believed that all matter was extended in space, and
therefore a vacuum, a matter with no extension, was a logical contradiction. Likewise, Descartes
argued against those who believed that the world was fundamentally composed of atoms, instead
arguing that things were infinitely divisible.
Descartes is famous for contrasting matter with soul, or that which is immaterial. This is known
as Cartesian dualism. Descartes recognized that as human beings, our thoughts cause our bodies
to do things, and likewise our bodies can cause thoughts to occur in our minds. The
understanding of ourselves as human beings that are composed of a body and a mind has deeply
influenced Western thought since as science continues to try and better understand this
relationship. Descartes believed that what separates humans from animals is that animals dont
have minds. He believed that animals therefore do not experience pain, but are simply
mechanical beings that elicit a response. This belief allowed him to comfortably perform
vivisections (i.e. the dissection of animals while they are still alive).

Descartes is considered to be the Father of Modern Philosophy because he represents a break

with the philosophical and scientific tradition of the past that was rooted in the thoughts
of Aristotle. First, along with others such as Galileo, Descartes sought to demonstrate that the
sun, and not the Earth as Aristotle had believed, was the center of the universe. Second, before
Descartes most scientists and philosophers embraced Aristotles understanding of the world as
being made up of particular substances that have a certain form which determines their character.
Aristotle believed that a stone, for example, by its nature seeks to fall to the ground. Because of
Descartes sharp distinction between material and immaterial things, he saw this sort of thinking
as improperly attributing intentions to material objects. Likewise, he rejected Aristotles belief in
final causes, that the things of the world are directed towards certain ends (this is known as
teleology). For Descartes, the world was to be understood in purely mechanical terms, as Newton
would later describe.

Descartes appeals to us in modern times because of his emphasis on mathematics, science, and
the use of reason. His philosophical arguments are a good test of ones ability to follow a logical
argument, and to determine for oneself whether it is really rational or not. Descartes skeptical
idea that we may be dreaming comes from the earlier French philosopher Montaigne,
meanwhile his idea that we may be deceived by an evil demon in recent times has been
reimagined in the scenario that our brains are being artificially stimulated while being preserved
in a jar (known as the brain in a vat scenario). The tradition of seeing knowledge as coming
from reason, known as Rationalism, would be continued by the philosophers and
mathematicians Spinoza and Leibniz. In contrast, the belief that knowledge comes primarily
through the senses, known as Empiricism, would arise in the philosophies of Locke, Berkeley,
and Hume. In this way, Descartes set the trajectory for Modern philosophy which would
culminate with Kant in the 18th century.

http://www.philosimply.com/philosopher/descartes-rene
Key Concepts of the Philosophy of Ren Descartes
Updated on February 10, 2017

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Ren Descartes was a 17th century French mathematician and philosopher who is now considered
the father of modern philosophy. As a mathematician, Descartes is responsible for the Cartesian
coordinate system and as a philosopher he moved the concerns of the medieval philosophers,
which were chiefly concentrated on theology, forward toward a philosophy that had interests that
went outside the church. This is sometimes overlooked by modern readers of Descartes because
so much of his work is interested in ideas such as the existence of God and the presence of a soul
that obsessed other philosophers before him but unlike the medieval theologians, Descartes did
not take the existence of God or the soul for granted. He instead developed a complex
metaphysical system that forced every major philosopher until at least Kant to respond to it.

Descartes is credited at beginning the school of thought called rationalism which asserted that
there was important knowledge that could be gained without the senses through reason alone. As
a mathematician, Descartes would use the rules and language of math as examples of how this
was true. His philosophy is a response to the skepticism that he saw becoming prominent after
the scientific advancements of the enlightenment. Some have contended in recent years that
Descartes was not in fact a Christian, or more accurately, that he was a believer in God but had a
radically different idea of God than that of mainstream Christianity. I cannot say for certain
whether this is true but Descartes did spend a big portion of his life examining cadavers looking
for the soul, something that seems to indicate belief in the soul but being in opposition to
Christian views of the time that considered such practices blasphemy.
Cartesian Doubt
Descartes begins his Meditation on First Philosophy by doubting everything there was to
doubt. The purpose of this exercise was to strip away all knowledge that could possible held in
doubt as genuine in order to arrive at something that could be determined to be known at
absolute certainty. Descartes determines that because his senses can be fooled, he has no reason
to believe in the findings of science, the existence of the external world or even that his own
body exists. He postulates that reality may be a dream and that he would have no way of
knowing whether he was dreaming.
Descartes also uses a thought experiment called the evil demon (sometimes evil genius or
other phrases are used for the concept) which consists of a being that exists only to fool his
senses. Descartes uses other analogies, such as a piece of wax that changes shape to appear to be
something different but remains a piece of wax and of people walking across the square that he
cant be sure that they are not automations. Descartes realizes that he cannot be sure that even
other minds exist but he comes to a conclusion that he can know one thing and that is that he
doubts.
Because he doubts he knows that he is a doubting thing. In order to doubt there must be
something to do the doubting and that doubting thing is Descartes himself. Descartes conclusion
is, I think therefore I am. Now that Descartes has established the one thing that he can be
absolutely certain of he begins to construct other things that he believes he can know based on
that single certainty.
The Ontological Argument
Descartes goal with the Meditations of First Philosophy was to make an argument for the
existence of God. I feel that in order to do this justice I must give the argument a little
background. Descartes was not the first to propose an ontological argument for the existence of
God. His just happens to be the best one that has ever been proposed. There is an essential
misunderstanding of the argument that nearly every modern reader of Descartes makes and that
is a misunderstanding of what he means by the term perfect and perfection. Descartes does
not mean perfect the way that we mean perfect today, as in the absence of flaws, but he means
it in a context of a medieval definition.
When Descartes says perfection he means a positive trait. For instance, intelligence is a
perfection while ignorance is not a perfection because it is merely the absence of intelligence. A
perfect being would be a being that had all perfections, meaning all positive traits. Another
concept that was widely believed during Descartes time was that in order for something of
complexity to exist it must have come from something more complex. So if a human could have
intelligence (a perfection) then he must have been created by something of even greater
intelligence. (That would be God.) When most people look at Descartes argument they look at in
from a modern perspective that has evolutionary biology as explanations for human complexity
and a different definition of perfection so they often completely miss what the argument is
saying.
After Descartes had established that he is a thinking thing he begins to try to extract other
certainties from that concept. Descartes makes the next step that ideas are real and they come
from him because he is a thinking thing. Certain ideas, he claims, are innate and those ideas
include the ideas of mathematics. He needs no outside information to come to the conclusion that
2+2=4. This is true and he can be certain without any use of his senses. He goes on to say that
ideas that are true by definition must be true. A triangle is a three sided figure. It is this by
definition and therefore a triangle must exist because he can conceive of such an idea. A
perfection, like Intelligence exists because he can conceive of such a thing. (so far so good.) God
is by definition a being of all perfections. Existence is perfection because non-existence is
merely the lack of existence therefore God must exist. (Here is where we have issues.)
Many philosophers tried to beat up on Descartes argument for a long time but it is a testament to
how strong it was, based on the premises that people accepted at the time, that nobody ever
really killed it completely until Immanuel Kant. Kant pointed out that existence is not a
predicate. When you say that something exists because it must exist, this is true of anything that
has any trait. A thinking thing must exist. An intelligent thing must exist. A strong thing must
exist. Even a weak or ignorant or non-thinking thing must exist. Saying that something must
exist because existence is necessary is redundant and proves nothing. Descartes definition of
perfection was what was essentially flawed about the argument. Kants argument is considered
the absolute death blow to Descartes Ontological Argument but even now we are still talking
about it.
Dualism
Descartes went on to accept that because God existed he could not necessarily be a deceiver and
because God had created his mind, body and senses then the external world must exist. Satisfied
that he had settled the whole matter, something he was completely wrong about, he dedicated a
lot of time to defining the existence of the soul and how it worked. Descartes came to the
conclusion that the mind was completely separate from the body. In philosophy of mind, what
constitutes the Mind Body Problem is that the experience of consciousness and the physical
processes of the brain and body seem so at odds with each other. Descartes came to the
conclusion that this was because they interacted but were at the same time completely separate
from each other.
In an effort to try and find some biological evidence for this, Descartes came to the conclusion
that the mind and the body interacted in the pineal gland. His reasoning for this was that the
gland was located at the base of the brain and while most human body parts came in twos, there
was only one pineal gland. In reality, even Descartes was dissatisfied with this explanation and
he struggled to come up with an answer to this problem for the rest of his life.
https://owlcation.com/humanities/Key-Concepts-of-the-Philosophy-of-Ren-Descartes

Lived 1596 1650.

Ren Descartes invented analytical geometry and introduced skepticism as an essential part of
the scientific method. He is regarded as one of the greatest philosophers in history.
His analytical geometry was a tremendous conceptual breakthrough, linking the previously
separate fields of geometry and algebra. Descartes showed that he could solve previously
unsolvable problems in geometry by converting them into simpler problems in algebra. He
represented the horizontal direction as x and the vertical direction as y. This concept is now
indispensable in mathematics and most other sciences.
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Beginnings
Ren Descartes was born into a well-educated upper-class family on March 31, 1596 in the
French village of La Haye en Touraine. The village is now called Descartes, Indre-et-Loire in his
honor.
Rens father was Joachim Descartes, a lawyer at Britannys Court of Justice. His mother was
Jeanne Brochard, daughter of the Lieutenant General of Poitiers. Ren was their third child.
A year after Rens birth his mother and her fourth child died during childbirth.
Rens fathers worked six months of the year in the Court of Justice in Rennes, about 200 miles
(300 km) from their home. Ren was raised by his grandmother and his great-uncle. His father
remarried when Ren was four and began living in Rennes permanently. Despite this, there was
always affection between Ren and his father.
From birth Ren suffered poor health and had a permanent cough. Local doctors thought he
would not survive infancy. His father employed a nurse who devoted herself to Rens care. As
an adult he believed his nurse saved his life he paid her a permanent pension.
Education
At the age of about ten or eleven Ren was finally considered healthy enough to begin school.
He boarded at the Jesuit School at La Flche in Anjou. In a concession to his delicate health he
was allowed to rise in the morning later than the other students.
He was a boy of prodigious curiosity, asking questions endlessly.
Ren spent seven or eight years at La Flche learning logic, theology, philosophy, Latin and
Greek. In his final two years he also learned mathematics and physics. The physics was that of
Aristotle almost entirely wrong.
Ren learned something of Galileos work including his recent amazing discovery of Jupiters
moons. At this time, Galileo had still not published his greatest works overturning Aristotles
physics; his trouble with the Catholic Church lay in the future.
At the age of 18, in 1614, Ren Descartes left La Flche. Later he recorded his thoughts about
his education as follows:
On Mathematics

<imgsrc="//www.famousscientists.org/images1/100-rene-descartes.jpg"
alt="Ren&eacute; Descartes" width="100" height="100" class="alignleft"/>I took pleasure,
above all, in mathematics, because of the certainty and the absoluteness of its reasons; but I had
not yet discovered its true use I was astonished that with such solid foundations nothing more
eminent had ever been built upon them.
Ren Descartes
1637

On Philosophy

<imgsrc="//www.famousscientists.org/images1/100-rene-descartes.jpg"
alt="Ren&eacute; Descartes" width="100" height="100" class="alignleft"/>Seeing it had been
cultivated by the most powerful minds but nevertheless there is not in it one single thing which
is not disputed, and therefore open to doubt, I had not the presumption to hope that I should
succeed better than others. Considering how many different opinions there are while it was
impossible that more than one of them could be true, I regarded as little better than false
everything that was merely probable.
Ren Descartes
1637

On the Sciences
 <imgsrc="//www.famousscientists.org/images1/100-rene-descartes.jpg"
alt="Ren&eacute; Descartes" width="100" height="100" class="alignleft"/>Since they all
borrow their principles from philosophy, I judged that nothing solid could have been built on
such insecure foundations.
Ren Descartes
1637

The Law, the Army, and Mathematics

His father encouraged Ren Descartes to follow in his footsteps and study law. He did this,
graduating from the University of Poitiers in 1616, aged 20, with a diploma and license in church
and civil law.
Rather than becoming a lawyer, however, Descartes went traveling for about two years,
including time in Paris. He joined the Dutch States Army in Breda in 1618 and began studying
engineering in a military academy. He soon met the Dutch scientist and philosopher Isaac
Beeckman. In 1619 Descartes wrote Beeckman:

<imgsrc="//www.famousscientists.org/images1/100-rene-descartes.jpg"
alt="Ren&eacute; Descartes" width="100" height="100" class="alignleft"/>To tell you the
truth, it was really you who got me out of my idleness and made me remember things I once
learned and had nearly forgotten: when my mind wandered from serious [mathematical] matters,
you put me back on the right path.
Ren Descartes
1619

Descartes, aged 23, was now profoundly serious in his desire to make new discoveries in
mathematics.
Ren Descartes Contributions to Science
The Miracle
On November 10, 1619 Descartes was dozing in a warm, stove-heated room in the German town
of Neuburgan der Donau.
There he had a series of dreams that would ultimately change the way scientists work. He
believed a spirit sent by God had given him new ideas about:
The Scientific Method
Analytical Geometry
Philosophy
18 years later, in 1637, he published his ideas in Discours de la mthode (Discussion of the
Method), La Gomtrie (Geometry), Les Mtores (Meteorology), and La Dioptrique (Optics).
The first two of these works contain his most significant contributions.
The Method
In Discussion of the Method Descartes shared his framework for doing science.
One of his main lines of thought was skepticism that everything should be doubted until it
could be proved.
His four main ideas for scientific progress were:
1. Never accept anything as true until all reasons for doubt can be ruled out.
2. Divide problems into as many parts as possible and necessary to provide an adequate solution.
3. Thoughts should be ordered, starting with the simplest and easiest to know, ascending little by
little, and, step by step, to more complex knowledge.
4. Make enumerations so complete, and reviews so general, that nothing is omitted.
It is ironic that Descartes own method might lead us to doubt that a dream 18 years earlier could
have been the true source of his ideas!
Analytical Geometry
Descartes made the revolutionary discovery that he could solve problems in geometry by
converting them into problems in algebra.
In La Gomtrie he showed that curves could be expressed in terms of x and y on a two-
dimensional plane and hence as equations in algebra.
The Cartesian coordinate system used in the image below is named in his honor. (Descartes
name in Latin is Cartesius.)

<imgsrc="//www.f
amousscientists.org/images1/xy-graph.png" width="500" height="322" alt="xy-graph" class />
The blue line can be expressed by the equation y = 2x + 1.
Descartes never actually drew an x- or y-axis in his work. These were assumed in his diagrams.
The axes were formally introduced by the mathematician Frans van Schooten and other
mathematicians in Leiden who translated La Gomtrie from French into Latin, while
developing it further. Latin editions of La Gomtrie were released in 1649, 1659 and 1661.
Descartes also introduced the modern notation for exponents. For example, rather than writing
a.a.a he would write a3.
By unleashing the mathematical power of algebra to tackle problems in geometry, Descartes
surpassed the expertise of Ancient Greeces brilliant geometers: he could now solve problems
that had defeated them.
Analytical geometry was independently invented earlier by Pierre de Fermat, who lived in
France at the same time as Descartes. Fermat worked on mathematics for his own pleasure and
often kept his results private. He did, however, enjoy issuing challenges to other mathematicians
to solve problems.
In 1638 Fermat sent a work entitled Introduction to Plane and Solid Loci to the mathematician,
Marin Mersenne, to show how problems he had posed at an earlier date could be solved.
Fermats approach was different from Descartes. Descartes showed how geometry could be
expressed as algebra; Fermat showed how algebra could be expressed as geometry.
Influencing Isaac Newton and the Invention of Calculus
Calculus has been crucial to the progress of mathematics and the sciences. It was developed in
the 1660s by Isaac Newton, and developed independently in the 1670s by Gottfried Leibniz.
In La Gomtrie, Descartes showed how he could find tangents to curves. This process is a vital
part of differential calculus. His mathematical competitor Fermat was also able to find tangents
to curves; his methods were actually simpler than Descartes. Both Descartes and Fermat helped
guide Newton and Leibnizs development of calculus.
Silenced by Fear of the Church
Four years before he released his 1637 works, Descartes had intended publishing The World.
In 1633, however, he learned that the Catholic Church had tried Galileo for heresy and sentenced
him to life in prison. This was reduced to permanent house arrest because Galileo was rather
elderly. The Church had also prohibited Galileos works.
Descartes, like Galileo, believed the sun sits at the center of the solar system. He decided not to
risk the Churchs wrath and did not publish The World. (Galileo could have been burned at the
stake if his trial had gone worse than it did.)
Philosophy
Descartes is regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of all time. Here we are concerned with
science rather than philosophy, so we will restrict ourselves to noting his most famous
declaration:
I think therefore I am.
This could also be expressed as:
I can think, therefore I exist.
Descartes regarded this statement as the unshakeable foundation that all other philosophy could
be built upon.
His most famous philosophical work is Meditations on First Philosophy, published in 1641.
Deducing the Laws of Nature from First Principles
Descartes most comprehensive work, Principles of Philosophy, was published in 1644. In it he
tried to deduce all of natures laws from first principles. Although the book had much to
commend it to philosophers, its science was incorrect.
He argued that action at a distance is impossible and agreed with the Ancient Greek philosopher
Aristotle that there could be no vacuum. Soon, however, all his power as a philosopher would be
defeated by scientific experiments.
 <imgsrc="//www.famousscientists.org/images1/100-max-planck.jpg" alt="max
planck" width="100" height="100" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-5710"/>An experiment is
a question which science poses to Nature, and a measurement is the recording of Natures
answer.
Max Planck, Theoretical Physicist
1858 to 1947

In 1654 Otto von Guericke constructed the first vacuum pump. In 1662 Robert Boyle
demonstrated that the magnetic force can travel through a vacuum, establishing that action at a
distance is possible.
Unfortunately Descartes did not live long enough to learn of these developments.
Some Personal Details and the End
Descartes was wealthy enough to pursue his own interests. His father gifted him a number of
properties which Descartes, at the age of 24, sold. This raised enough money for him to live on
comfortably for the rest of his life.
Descartes spent much of his life on the move. He lived for 20 of his later years in various
locations in Holland. He also studied and taught mathematics there. He found he could work
better in Holland, with fewer distractions than in France.
Although he never married, in 1635, aged 39, he became a father. His partner was an Amsterdam
servant, Helena Jans van der Strom. Their daughter was named Francine. Mother and daughter
lived with Descartes in his house he told people Francine was his niece. He planned to educate
his daughter in France, but sadly, at the age of five, she died of scarlet fever. Francines mother
later got married, with Descartes playing a fatherly role by paying the wedding dowry.
In 1649 Descartes was invited to Stockholm by Queen Christina of Sweden. She wanted him to
set up a new academy of science.
Ren Descartes died, aged 53, of pneumonia in Stockholm on February, 11 1650. He was buried
at the Adolf Fredriks Church in Stockholm.
In death, as in life, Descartes was mobile. 16 years after his first burial his remains were moved
and buried in the Saint-tienne-du-Mont church in Paris, France. In 1819 his remains minus
skull and finger were moved again, this time to the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prs in Paris,
where he now rests.
In 1663, despite his efforts to avoid such a fate he regarded himself as a devout Catholic a
number of Descartes works joined Galileos on the index of books prohibited by the Catholic
Church. Over 300 years later, in 1966, this index was finally discontinued.

https://www.famousscientists.org/rene-descartes/
Born: March 31, 1596
La Haye, France
Died: February 11, 1650
Stockholm, Sweden
French philosopher and writer
The French thinker Ren Descartes is called the father of modern philosophy (the study of the
universe and man's place in it). His Discourse on Method and Meditations defined the basic
problems of philosophy for at least a century.
Early life
Ren Descartes was born on March 31, 1596, in La Haye, France. His father, Joachim, served in
the Parliament of Brittany, France. Jeanne Brochard Descartes, his mother, died in 1597. His
father remarried and Ren and his older brother and sister were raised by their maternal
grandmother and by a nurse for whom he retained a deep affection. In 1606 Descartes entered La
Flche, a religious college established for the education of the sons of noblemen. As a child he
was often ill and was allowed to spend a portion of each day studying in bed. He used this time
for meditation and thought. According to Descartes's description of his eight-year course of
studies at La Flche, he often felt embarrassed at the extent of his own ignorance.
Travel and study
After leaving college at age eighteen, Descartes earned a law degree in Poitiers, France. From
1618 to 1628 he traveled throughout Europe as a soldier. Living on income from inherited
properties, Descartes served without pay and saw little action. He was present, however, at one
of the major battles of the Thirty Years War (161848). Descartes sought out famous
mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers (those who seek wisdom) wherever he traveled. The
most significant of these friendships was with IsaacBeeckman, a Dutch mathematician, who
encouraged Descartes to begin writing scientific theories on mathematics and music.
Descartes was deeply influenced by three dreams he had in 1619 in Ulm, Germany. He
interpreted them to mean that all science is one and that its mastery is universal wisdom. This
idea of the unity of all science was in opposition to the belief that the sciences were distinguished
by their different objects of study. Descartes felt that if one could draw conclusions from a
correct method of reasoning, then one could know everything. He began to devote his efforts to
proving that he had discovered such a method. To focus better on his work, Descartes moved to
Holland, where he lived peacefully for the next twenty years.
First works
Descartes's first major work, Rules for the Direction of the Mind, was written by 1629 but was
not published until 1701. The work begins by assuming that man's knowledge has been limited
by the belief that science is determined by the various objects of experience. The first rule
therefore states that all true judgment depends on reason alone. For example, mathematical truths
are valid even without observation and experiment. The second rule argues that the standard for
true knowledge should be the certainty demanded of mathematical demonstrations. The third rule
states that the mind should be influenced only by what can clearly be observed. The remaining
rules are devoted to the explanation of these ideas or to showing their use in mathematical
problems.
By 1634 Descartes had written The World, in which he supported several theories, including the
idea of Nicolaus Copernicus (14731543) that Earth is not the center of the universe but revolves
around the sun. Only fragments of the book survive, because when Descartes heard that a book
published by Galileo (15641642), which also supported Copernicus, had been condemned by
the Catholic Church, his fear of similar treatment led him to withdraw his work. In 1634 he also
wrote the brief Treatise on Man, which attempted to explain human physiology (a branch of
biology dealing with organs, tissues, and cells).
Other works
In 1637 Descartes finished Discourse on Method, which uses a personal account of his education
as an example of the need for a new method of study. Descartes also presents four rules for
reducing any problem to its basics and then constructing solutions. In 1641 and 1642
Meditations on First Philosophy

Ren Descartes.
Courtesy of the
Library of Congress
.
appeared together with six sets of objections by other famous thinkers. The Meditations is one of
the most famous books in the history of philosophy. While earlier Descartes works were
concerned with explaining a method of thinking, this work applies that method to the problems
of philosophy, including the convincing of doubters, the existence of the human soul, the nature
of God, and the basis of truth.
The remainder of Descartes's career was spent defending his positions. In 1644 he published the
Principles of Philosophy, which breaks down and expands the arguments of the earlier
Meditations. In 1649 Descartes accepted an invitation from Queen Christina of Sweden (1626
1689) to become her teacher. During this time he wrote The Passions of the Soul, which explains
passion as a product of physical and chemical processes. The weather in Sweden caused
Descartes's health to suffer, however, and after a brief illness he died in Stockholm in 1650.

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