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The Origins of Descartes' Concept of Mind in the Regulae Ad Directionem Ingenii

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The Origins of Descartes' Concept of Mind in the Regulae ad directionem ingenii Author: Nathan Douglas Smith Persistent link: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/bc-ir:101348 This work is posted on eScholarship@BC, Boston College University Libraries. Boston College Electronic Thesis or Dissertation, 2010 Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. Boston College The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Department of Philosophy THE ORIGINS OF DESCARTES’ CONCEPT OF MIND IN THE REGULAE AD DIRECTIONEM INGENII a dissertation by NATHAN D. SMITH submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2010 © copyright by NATHAN DOUGLAS SMITH 2010 THE ORIGINS OF DESCARTES’ CONCEPT OF MIND IN THE REGULAE by Nathan D. Smith Adviser: Richard Cobb-Stevens The dissertation is primarily an historical and philosophical analysis of Descartes’ early, unpublished treatise on scientific method, the Regulae ad directionem ingenii. Ever since it first appeared—as a manuscript passed among a small circle of intellectuals—in the 1660’s, the text has been shrouded in mystery. When was it written? Why was it abandoned? What was the character of the original draft? We will attempt to answer these questions, but more importantly, our concern will be whether or not this text stands on its own as a significant contribution to the Cartesian corpus. Does it present a coherent picture of Descartes’ philosophical thought at a crucial point in its development? Recent commentators have made it clear that Descartes’ Regulae is a foundational text in his scientific career. It most fully develops Descartes’ early insights into scientific method and the nature of explanation. These insights ultimately provide the basis for Descartes’ theory of matter: that the physical world is nothing but extension; and wherever there is extension, there is matter. These insights will play a central role in the development of my thesis. In effect, what I will try to show is that when Descartes addresses the issues of method, epistemology, and scientific explanation, he does so in such a way that the answers to these questions prejudice Descartes toward a dualistic concept of mind. Though the Regulae cannot account for a concept of mind, Descartes’ mature concept of mind fits central elements in that work like a missing puzzle piece. Descartes’ mature concept of mind is grounded in two claims: that the mind is a substance whose existence cannot be doubted, and that it is entirely distinct from material THE ORIGINS OF DESCARTES’ CONCEPT OF MIND IN THE REGULAE by Nathan D. Smith Adviser: Richard Cobb-Stevens substance. For Descartes, the mind has one principle attribute, thought, of which ideas and acts of consciousness are its modes. These claims, like the claims addressed in contemporary philosophy of mind, are metaphysical. They answer the questions: what is a mind and what can be attributed to it? By contrast, the Regulae is primarily concerned with epistemological questions surrounding the scientific method: what counts as truth in science? How do we discover true principles? What techniques allow us to discern those principles? And how do our mental faculties confirm those discoveries? Moreover, the Regulae is firmly set on discarding or overturning the classical, Aristotelian scientific method—one that was intimately connected to Aristotle’s metaphysics. Consequently, the Regulae is opposed to metaphysics in general and never develops a metaphysics of its own. Thus, Descartes’ concept of mind in the Regulae is absent exactly that metaphysical foundation. In it, the mind appears solely as an engine of epistemological constraints, rather than a product of a metaphysical thesis (i.e., dualism). We do not see the missing piece of the puzzle, but we can study its absent contours. When we do, we perceive a very different Cartesian mind: not a disembodied soul, but an interface that mediates the subject’s most precise (scientific) knowledge of the world. In order to elaborate on this concept of mind, I propose to concentrate on three topics that demonstrate the nature of such a concept of mind: the mathesis universalis, the account of perceptual cognition, and the account of simple natures. These three topics certainly do not exhaust the important topics covered in the Regulae, but I do think that they are each central to the foundations of what we have been calling his science, but THE ORIGINS OF DESCARTES’ CONCEPT OF MIND IN THE REGULAE by Nathan D. Smith Adviser: Richard Cobb-Stevens what may be more appropriately called “natural philosophy.” These three topics, then, tell the story of why and how Descartes arrived at the principles of his natural philosophical system. It is my claim that Descartes’ concept of mind grows out of and is naturally fitted to embrace those principles. With the mathesis universalis, we will find an elaboration of a method that is the basis of Descartes’ analytic geometry. Descartes came to see that arithmetical techniques could be applied to geometrical problems in order to discover their solutions. This is the source of the algebraic geometry that became Descartes’ pivotal contribution to mathematics in 1637, with the publication of La Géometrie. Yet the Regulae, and Descartes’ earliest writings on physico-mathematics, make it clear that the mathesis universalis was not only a technique for solving purely mathematical problems, but was also the foundation of an applied mathematics that would, at least in part, form the basis of Cartesian science. Indeed, it is in the application of mathematical techniques to understanding physical phenomena that modern physics is born. Descartes was perhaps not the most adept practitioner of this application, but he understood what was philosophically at stake. He understood that in order to apply mathematical techniques to solving problems in natural philosophy (or physics) one had to be able to conceive of any physical object entirely in terms of mathematical representation. According to Descartes of the Regulae, all physical entities are to be understood only insofar as they admit of order and measure, i.e., either discrete or continuous (numerical or geometrical) mathematical representation. Thus, there is an implicit metaphysical commitment THE ORIGINS OF DESCARTES’ CONCEPT OF MIND IN THE REGULAE by Nathan D. Smith Adviser: Richard Cobb-Stevens embedded in Descartes’ proposed method: he conceives of all physical entities as admitting of mathematical representation, and only considers them insofar as they are mathematically represented. Such a conception rules out the possibility that, for instance, sensible qualities, substantial forms, or living souls have any explanatory, or possibly even causal, role to play in science. With the idea of the mathesis universalis, we see that the epistemological concerns of method and exactness drive Descartes’ basic metaphysical theory of matter in general. This implicit metaphysical commitment in natural philosophy has an indirect implication for Descartes’ concept of mind. Descartes selects mathematical representation as the rubric by which all physical entities can be known because he understands the essence of thought to be intuition, or as he also calls it in the Regulae certain and evident cognition. Nothing is more certain and evident than the principles and products of mathematical calculation, so the mathematical representation of physical entities renders natural philosophy utterly clear and distinct. Moreover, once the objects of pure mathematical representation are identified with the essence of material objects, they are easily detached from the sensory impressions of the mind. Thus, in an effort to found physical science on certainty, Descartes effectively dissociates the mental from the physical. He will admit that our sensory impressions are the effect of underlying material (or mathematically represented) causes, but the character of those sensory impressions plays no explanatory role in the underlying material cause. So, the material world is THE ORIGINS OF DESCARTES’ CONCEPT OF MIND IN THE REGULAE by Nathan D. Smith Adviser: Richard Cobb-Stevens explained through a mathematical physics together with a metaphysical theory of matter, which is independent of the sensory impressions that compose our mental life. Though Descartes’ early insights into applied mathematics show a disposition toward substance dualism, the epistemological justification for dualism lies in a brief account of perceptual cognition. In Rule XII, Descartes outlines the principles of his later scientific theory of perception. In this text, we lack many of the details guiding the later theory, though its core principles are already outlined. The theory of perception serves two purposes in the Regulae: first, it provides an epistemological foundation for Descartes’ theory of natural philosophy; second, it justifies the use of certain methodological heuristics by relating them to physical capacities of the brain. The first objective is accomplished by accounting for a causal link between our faculties of perception and the external world. Thus, Descartes provides a reasonable physical explanation for why we ought to trust the evidence provided by our senses. This justifies the use of experiment and observation (broadly encouraged in the early Descartes) in order to discover the nature of physical phenomena. The second objective will be accomplished by attending to the nature of our cognitive faculties of representation
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