Tuesday, May 05, 2009

On the Cogito

“I think, therefore I am.” This sentence, the most famous of Descartes’, is technically not in his Meditations on First Philosophy, but rather in his later work, Principles of Philosophy. The Principles is in effect a later revision of the Meditations, and as such expresses its major ideas intact but refined and explained in greater detail. As such, it is a vital companion to the Meditations and helps to clarify much that was written in it.

Today what I will seek after is the nature of that statement, “I think, therefore I am.” There is no dispute that it was Descartes who gave epistemology its modern turn, and, through the influence his questions had, dominated it for at least the next 150 years. Even after Kant, who was a unique event in more than one sense, that most basic idea of philosophy, dualism, the idea that mind and body are essentially separate, has lived on. For the budding philosophy student it is the initial question that has to be overcome; what is the relation of myself and the world? Through this question, dualism maintains itself as something of a default position. I, being the avid reader of Nietzsche that I am, have a problem with any position that acquires the position of “default.” Too much is left to tradition and habit in such a position. So let’s discuss the cogito, that most famous and deeply rooted of philosophical doctrines, from a different standpoint, that of phenomenology. Phenomenology will be discussed at length later, when I get to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s magnum opus, Phenomenology of Perception. For now, a good way to introduce phenomenology is to describe and address that which it most stringently opposes: Cartesian dualism.

As is commonly known, Descartes’ program is an attempt to overcome skepticism and achieve certainty in one’s knowledge, for, according to Descartes, only what is absolutely beyond any and all doubts can count as knowledge (another view which philosophy inherited for a long time, and which still positions itself as something of a default which needs to be addressed). One can easily doubt, according to Descartes, that the external world exists. Certainly we have illusions from time to time, or it is possible that we are merely dreaming without realizing it. Yet even in the act of doubting, one must already believe, nay, is absolutely compelled to believe, that one’s self exists as that which doubts.

[H]e who strives to doubt of all is unable nevertheless to doubt that he is while he doubts, and . . . what reasons thus, in not being able to doubt of itself and doubting nevertheless of everything else, is not that which we call our body, but what we name our mind or thought . . . . (Descartes, Principles of Philosophy xxv)

“I think, therefore I am.” What am I, that is? Something that thinks, and nothing more. How is this demonstrated? By the fact that anything else which I consider to be myself – namely, my physical body – can be doubted, while the mind cannot. That part of the self which thinks is the part, the only part, which cannot be doubted; it is unconditional, and always there, playing the part of essence. It is the thinking self which confirms my existence, not the body; which is only there some of the time at best. Thus, the self has to be thinking in its essence; there is an impenetrable wall, established by the difference between the indubitable and the doubtful, which separates mind and body. One is certain, the other is not. One is the product of dreams, the other creates them. One is subject to the senses, the other is that to which senses defer.

The above are the general ways in which we, along with Descartes, are wont to separate mind (which is to say, thinking mind) and body. The mind is not physically present, or subject to the sense, according to the Cartesian view, whereas the body is an object in space. Those who today do not accept the existence of “mind” as a sort of spirit still have to at least deal with the question of what exactly consciousness is. I know a very smart pre-med student who, no matter what his scientific and philosophical convictions argue, cannot persuade, much less convince, himself that consciousness is only a series of chemical reactions, or, more philosophically important, that the mind is of the same nature as the body. In light of the last hundred years of psychology, we are getting less dogmatic on this score. But the fact remains that the temptation towards dualism is still there. It exists not merely in the dividing line between mind-self and body-self; the whole classical epistemological problem, the problem of the existence of the external world, is built on another dualism of the same type, and another one that was given impetus by Descartes. It is, after all, because the body is ultimately considered of the same class as the external world that it is subject to the same doubts. So, as long as we are in a position where the external world as a whole is an epistemological problem, we are still subject to dualism.

In order to consider this problem at its source, which could provide us with a solution, we must first get back to the sources from which the problem springs. There is one source, one doctrine which allies with dualism, which interests us here: representationalism. “When we further reflect on the various ideas that are in us, it is easy to perceive that there is not much difference among them, when we consider them certain modes of thinking, but that they are widely different, considered in reference to the objects they represent.” (Principles 7, emphasis mine) Representationalism is never discussed explicitly by Descartes, namely because he assumes it from the beginning. It is an essential assumption in his quest; the reason he can doubt the external world is because it is separate from him, and so it must be accessible through representation if it is to be perceived at all. Certainly Descartes experiences things, even without knowledge of an external world; “the sensation itself, or consciousness of seeing or walking, the knowledge is manifestly certain . . . .” (Principles 3) But, for him, this is something altogether different from the experience of a thing itself. The whole section just quoted reads: “and if I understand[, for example,] by vision or walking . . . the work of the body, the conclusion is not absolutely certain . . . . if I mean the sensation itself, or consciousness of seeing or walking, the knowledge is manifestly certain . . . .” (Principles 3) Were Descartes seeking to prove merely the existence of a perceived world, there would be no issue here, and he could stop after having proved the cogito; for, as Descartes knew (and it is a vital point which will be touched upon later), our thinking is often, if not always, tied to something sensed or perceived; he could not, and would not, deny that we think about places, people, and things. Yet he went to all that trouble to prove God’s existence, and to prove that God was not a deceiver, so that he could thereby show that what we perceive must come from an external world. Why? Because it was assumed by him that the only world worth having was an external one; that, because everything has a cause, including ideas, we must show conclusively that our ideas have a cause outside of ourselves; and, because we perceive a world of real objects, for such a world not to exist itself would show God to be a deceiver (since certainly, we think we perceive an external world) and thus imperfect, which cannot be the case. Thus representationalism runs deeply in Descartes’ thought, which is no shock given that he was a dualist; after all, it would be pointless to be a dualist if there was a complete wall between the worlds, and only one was known, the other remaining completely sealed off from any kind of knowledge; this is the reason Kant is not a dualist, though he spoke of noumena and phenomena.

Why the concern over representationalism? After all, everyone assumes that there should be an external world to which our senses correspond. The alternative, it seems, would be solipsism, a self alone, a monad. No one wants that. And if you accept Descartes’ framing of the problem, representationalism does seem to make sense. It is certainly cause for concern if everything is just our thoughts, out there, alone. Yet within Descartes’ thought there is something of a (unintentional) deception, thanks to this representationalism. Descartes affirms that thinking is not just bare thought; “By the word thought, I understand all that which takes place in us that we ourselves are immediately conscious of it . . . even to perceive . . . here the same as to think.” (Principles 3) But at the same time, the image presented of the self doubting everything is that of a thinking self in the most abstract sense. When one tries to picture the self as doubting cogito, one pictures a completely isolated individual, completely free of the senses (because, of course, thinking beings don’t sense). But there’s a problem in the parentheses. Thinking beings do sense; they always sense. In the Meditations, Descartes talks about the experience of liberating the self from the senses, and yet this is literally impossible. The mind is always working through senses, always reaching out, never existing as a static thing isolated from all existence. This is not insignificant; in fact, it is, in a general sense, the basis of the cogito. Merleau-Ponty draws this out of Descartes in his lecture, The Primacy of Perception:

[T]here is a third meaning [of three] of the cogito, the only solid one: the act of doubting in which I put in question all possible objects of my experience. This act grasps itself in its own operation and thus cannot doubt itself . . . . I grasp myself, not as a constituting subject which is transparent to itself [that is, not as a abstract thing], and which constitutes the totality of every possible object of thought and experience, but as a particular thought, as a thought engaged with certain objects, as a thought in act . . . . In this sense I am certain that I am thinking this or that as well as being certain that I am thinking . . . . This thought, which feels itself rather than sees itself, which searches after clarity rather than possess it . . . . (Merleau-Ponty, “The Primacy of Perception and its Philosophical Consequences,” in Dermot Moran, The Phenomenology Reader 443-444)

In the Meditations, despite the image that we generate of the cogito, Descartes confirms Merleau-Ponty’s view:

But what then am I? A thinking being. What is a thinking being? It is a being which doubts, which understands, which conceives, which affirms . . . . Am I not that same person who now doubts almost everything, who nevertheless understands and conceives certain things, who is sure of and affirms the truth of this one thing alone . . . . (Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations 85)

If we are not careful, all of our attention is paid to the image of the isolated self thinking undefined thoughts. In fact, as Descartes himself states, these thoughts are all completely specific, and are about all the things we concern ourselves with. One who doubts can still imagine the tree, the house, the body. In other words, the world is still already there in its fullness. None of our experiences have changed that fact the slightest; this is why Descartes recommends a “provisional morality” to live by while one doubts everything. One can doubt that what one is experiencing is representing something real, but that does not make the experience itself less real. The only problem here is presented by representationalism; what are we to make of the world to which our experiences are supposed to correspond?

Well, if you want a world, outside the self, to which all of our thoughts are supposed to correspond, so long as they are “clear and distinct,” I don’t think Descartes will provide you with one. Later philosophers won’t do much better, either; Kant’s solution to the problem was to deny there was basically to call knowledge of the “external world” a contradiction in terms. What I am advocating is that the problem seen here is a problem generated by dualism and representationalism, one that may not be necessary. Our experience of a world of some sort is not to be denied; for even Descartes, it simply cannot be rejected as it is, by arguments or anything else. Through the thinking self, the world is already there as a brute fact. It is present by way of the cogito, which is itself not an argument, and thus not in need of justification, because it is self-evident. For even when he doubts the ability of reason to prove his own existence, the evil genius “can never make me be nothing as long as I think that I am something.” (Meditations 82) The cogito is thereby affirmed through the act, for Descartes. In the Principles he attacks those who debate the meaning of the terms in the cogito as an argument, saying they miss the point:

And when I said that the proposition, I think, therefore I am, is of all others the first and most certain which occurs to one philosophizing properly, I did not therefore deny that it was necessary to know what thought, existence, and certitude are, and the truth that, in order to think it is necessary to be, and the like; but, because these are the most simple notions, and such as of themselves afford the knowledge of nothing existing, I did not judge it proper there to enumerate them. (Principles, 4)

There is no need to explain all the connections; for Descartes, they are so basic that one simply assents of necessity. And with necessary affirmation of the cogito, the thinking self, comes the content of thought, which is the whole world as experienced.

Thus, with the self, the world is already implied. But is it justified? The answer to this question depends upon whether you accept Cartesian dualism and representationalism. As we have seen, the picture of the mind present in Descartes’ projection of the cogito is a bleak and lonely picture. But in the subtext of Descartes’ philosophy, and even explicit in some cases, is the fact that the mind is neither empty not “worldless.” Because of the nature of the cogito, we experience a world all the same whether there are external objects or not. Our thoughts are always tied to that world; even the cogito is one who “doubts almost everything, who nevertheless understands and conceives certain things, who is sure of and affirms the truth of this one thing alone . . . .” These are specific propositions, referring to content of experience, content which is necessarily concrete and worldly. If we understand this as our interface with the world (For is it not? The challenge, for Descartes, is to prove that there is a world to correspond to it), if we reject dualism and representationalism as Descartes understood it, the skeptical doubts about the world completely disappear. Immediately many people, including many philosophers, would cry foul here. But the fact remains that, according to the assumptions of Cartesian dualism, whether or not the external world exists, the world we experience is the same. If, from here, one chooses to base one’s view of knowledge on experience, on what is actually experienced instead of some outside world that we don’t actually contact except from a distance, the existence of an external world makes no difference. What matters is the world of experience, which is, according to Descartes, indubitable.

What has all of this to do with phenomenology? What I have just proposed is, in essence, a phenomenological epistemology as an alternative to Cartesian epistemology. Descartes based his epistemology on the certainty of what existed. Things could not merely to be present, and thus to at least some degree dependent upon our finite minds, but had to have a real, independent existence, apart from thought, particularly sensation, and its limitations. That is why Descartes needed to prove that God existed and was not a deceiver; only then could he argue that our ideas were caused by an external world, and thus justified. The alternative, which it was the explicit purpose of the Meditations to reject, was that there was no external world outside of our perception. Thus our knowledge had to be based in a concrete world outside of ourselves.

Phenomenology rejects that subject-object distinction. Phenomenology is concerned not with things apart, but with the experience of them. The phenomenon, according to Kant, is the thing as it appears to us, as opposed to the noumenon, that which exists “in itself,” apart from all perception. Descartes and those who followed him focused all their energy on the latter, eventually resulting in Hume, who attacked the noumenon in all its forms and tore down knowledge with it. Kant eliminated knowledge of the noumenon, in a senses siding with Hume. But at the same time he rejected skepticism; not because he thought that there was nothing to know (one cannot confirm or deny the existence of noumenon, according to Kant), but because human knowledge simply doesn’t work that way. Knowledge, for Kant, is dependent upon experience. Not experience of an external world, but experience as understood through the mind and its processes. In this sense, Kant gave phenomenology its first form; what matters is the act of experience, and it is from that that knowledge follows, not from a “real” world, but because experience of the world, influenced as it is by reason, is our only way of understanding it. Kant saw experience as shaped by rules, and the rules were the domain of metaphysics; again, here he predicts a phenomenological viewpoint. Phenomenology is interested in the structure of our experience, how it is we come to perceive things. It does not start with a self isolated from the world and trying to reach it, for such a position is pointless. For this reason the old questions of epistemology are simply thrown out, because they start with bad assumptions. The question of the meaning of the world has to be raised anew, and phenomenology will attempt to do it.

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Next: we make that attempt. Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception. It’s nearly 550 pages, so expect it to take some time.

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