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The Extent of Doubt in Descartes' Meditations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Peter A. Schouls
Peter A. Schouls*
Affiliation:
The University of Alberta
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Extract

There is still considerable debate among commentators about the extent to which Descartes intended to, or actually did, exercise the principle of methodic doubt. Basically, the debate is about the import of the word “all” in the opening sentence of the synopsis of the Meditations: “In the first Meditation I set forth the reasons for which we may, generally speaking, doubt about all things … ” (HR 1, 140; AT 7, 12). A. K. Stout and Willis Doney have argued that the thing to be doubted is all knowledge to the extent in which memory plays a role in it. They attempt to show that Descartes is looking for a guarantee for the reliability of memory rather than for, say, a guarantee for the reliability of all clear and distinct ideas. Most commentators do not restrict methodic doubt in this way. For example, Alan Gewirth has recently suggested that sometimes Descartes even doubts the cogito.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , September 1973 , pp. 51 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1973

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References

1 Unless otherwise stated, all quotations from Descartes’ writings are from the translation of Haldane, and Ross, The Philosophical Works of Descartes (New York, 1955), vol. 1Google Scholar and 2. The second reference, in each case, is to the Adam and Tannery Oeuvres de Descartes.

2 This interpretation, presented by Stout, in his “The Basis of Knowledge in Descartes” (Mind, N.S., vol. XXXVIII, 1929, pp. 330–342CrossRefGoogle Scholar and pp. 458–472; reprinted in Doney's, Willis Descartes, A Collection of Critical Essays, New York, 1967, pp. 169–191)Google Scholar and by Doney, in his “The Cartesian Circle” (Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 16, 1955, pp. 324–338)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, has been shown to be totally misguided by Frankfurt, Harry G. in his “Memory and the Cartesian Circle,” Philosophical Review, vol. LXXI, 1962, pp. 504–511.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Gewirth, Alan “The Cartesian Circle Reconsidered,” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. LXVII, 1970, pp. 668–685.Google Scholar The relevant passage is on p. 679.

4 In “Descartes and the Autonomy of Reason” (Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. X, 1972, pp. 307–322) I have dealt in detail with Descartes’ distinction between intuition and deduction, as well as with the doubt directed to the latter and the way in which this affects the argument in Meditation I.

5 Loc. cit.

6 Anscombe, Elizabeth and Geach, Peter Thomas Descartes: Philosophical Writings (London, 1954), p. 79.Google Scholar

7 Since I have dealt with this aspect of the Cartesian doctrine elsewhere, these few comments will suffice. For a detailed account, see my “Descartes and the Autonomy of Reason,” loc. cit.; and “Cartesian Certainty and the ‘Natural Light’,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 48, no. 1; May, 1970; pp. 116–119).