Objections to the Meditations and Descartes's Replies
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Objections to the Meditations and Descartes’s Replies René Descartes Copyright © Jonathan Bennett 2017. All rights reserved [Brackets] enclose editorial explanations. Small ·dots·enclose material that has been added, but can be read as though it were part of the original text. Occasional •bullets, and also indenting of passages that are not quotations, are meant as aids to grasping the structure of a sentence or a thought. Every four-point ellipsis. .indicates the omission of a brief passage that seems to present more difficulty than it is worth. Longer omissions are reported between brackets in normal-sized type. The seventh set of objections is long, bad, and omitted. Originally only Hobbes’s comments were inter-leaved with Descartes’s replies; but that format is adopted here for all six sets, creating a little strain only with the replies to Caterus. Unadorned surnames in this version usually replace something less blunt—‘Dominus Cartesius’, ‘the author’, ‘my critic’, ‘the learned theologian’ and so on. First launched: July 2006 Last amended: November 2007 Contents First Objections (Caterus) and Descartes’s replies 1 Can God cause God to exist?....................................................3 Inferring God’s existence from his essence............................................. 10 ‘Proving’ the existence of a lion................................................... 14 Second Objections (mainly Mersenne) and Descartes’s Replies 18 The cause of our idea of God..................................................... 20 Two challenges concerning basic certainty............................................. 25 Can God lie?.............................................................. 26 Two more objections......................................................... 31 Objections and Replies René Descartes Methods of presenting results.................................................... 34 A ‘geometrical’ argument for God’s existence and the soul’s distinctness from the body.................. 36 Third Objections (Hobbes), and Descartes’s Replies 42 First Meditation: ‘On what can be called into doubt’....................................... 42 Second Meditation, ‘The nature of the human mind’....................................... 42 Third Meditation, ‘The existence of God’.............................................. 46 Fourth Meditation, ‘Truth and Falsity’............................................... 50 Fifth Meditation, ‘The Essence of Material Things’........................................ 52 Sixth Meditation, ‘The existence of material things’....................................... 53 Fourth Objections (Arnauld) and Descartes’s Replies 54 Objections concerning the human mind.............................................. 54 Objections concerning God...................................................... 64 Points that may give difficulty to theologians........................................... 75 Fifth Objections (Gassendi) and Descartes’s Replies 83 Objections to the first meditation.................................................. 84 Objections to the second meditation................................................ 86 Objections to the third meditation................................................. 101 Objections to the fourth meditation................................................. 121 Objections to the fifth meditation.................................................. 129 Objections to the sixth meditation................................................. 135 Sixth Objections (Mersenne and others) and Descartes’s replies 147 Distinctness of mind from body................................................... 147 Animal thought............................................................ 149 God as a liar.............................................................. 151 Freedom................................................................ 153 Surfaces................................................................ 155 Modality and God’s will........................................................ 156 Senses versus intellect........................................................ 157 Thought-experiments......................................................... 159 Appendix................................................................ 162 Objections and Replies René Descartes First Objections (Caterus) First Objections (Caterus) and Descartes’s replies Objection question·: what is an idea? It is a thing that is thought of, (1) [Caterus—a Dutch theologian—is writing to two friends who had considered as existing representatively in the intellect. But asked him to comment on the Meditations.] Since you strongly what does that mean? According to what I was taught, for x urged me to examine the writings of Descartes in some detail, to ‘exist representatively in the intellect’ is simply for some my friends, I felt that I couldn’t say No. I regard him as act of the intellect to be shaped up in the manner of x. And having the highest intellect and the utmost modesty. He this is merely an extraneous label that tells us nothing about writes: x itself. Just as x’s ‘being seen’ is someone’s performing •‘I am thinking, therefore I exist; indeed, I am thought an act of vision, so also x’s ‘being thought of’, or having itself—I am a mind.’ representative being in the intellect, is some mind’s having a Granted. thought—it is just a thought in that mind, and stops there. •‘But in virtue of thinking, I have within me ideas It can occur without any movement or change in x itself, of things, and in particular an idea of a supremely and indeed without there being any such thing as x being perfect and infinite being.’ represented. So why should I look for a cause of something that isn’t actual, something that is simply an empty label, a True again. non-entity? •‘However, I am not the cause of this idea, because I don’t measure up to its representative reality—·that ‘Nevertheless,’ says our ingenious author, ‘in order for a is, the idea in question represents something that given idea to have such-and-such representative reality, it has more reality, more perfection, than I have·. So must surely derive it from some cause.’ Not so! It doesn’t something more perfect than myself is its cause, and need any cause, because ‘representative reality’ is merely a thus there exists something besides myself, something label, not anything actual. A cause passes on a real, actual more perfect than I am. This is someone who is not influence; but something that doesn’t actually exist can’t be ‘a being’ in any ordinary sense, but who simply and on the receiving end of any actual causal influence! Thus, I without qualification embraces the whole of being do have ideas but I don’t have any cause for them, let alone within himself, and is as it were the ultimate original a cause that is greater than I am, indeed infinite. cause. .’ ‘But if you don’t grant that ideas have a cause, you must But here I am forced to stop for a while, to avoid becoming at least give a reason why a given idea contains such-and- exhausted. My mind ebbs and flows: first I accept, but such representative reality.’ Certainly; I don’t usually grudge then I deny; I give my approval, then I withdraw it; I don’t things to my friends, and am indeed as lavish as possible! I like disagreeing with Descartes, but I can’t agree with him. take the same general view about •all ideas that Descartes My question is this: what sort of cause does an idea need? takes about ·the idea of· •a triangle. He says: ‘Even if there ·To answer that properly, we need first to answer another aren’t any triangles outside my thought, and never were, still 1 Objections and Replies René Descartes First Objections (Caterus) there is a determinate nature or essence or form of triangle Caterus, wanting to draw me into explaining this more that is eternal and unchanging.’ What we have here is an clearly, pretends to understand it in a quite different way eternal truth, which doesn’t need a cause. ·Any more than from what I meant. ‘For x to exist representatively in the you need a cause for such eternal truths as that· a boat is intellect’, he says, ‘is simply for some act of the intellect a boat and nothing else, Davus is Davus and not Oedipus. to be shaped up in the manner of x. And this is merely But if you insist on an explanation, the answer lies in the an extraneous label that tells us nothing about x itself.’ imperfection of our finite intellect: because it doesn’t take in, Notice that he refers to ‘x itself’, as though x were located all at once, the totality of everything there is, it divides up outside the intellect; and when ‘x exists representatively in the universal good and conceives of it piecemeal—or, as they the intellect’ is taken in this way, it certainly is an extraneous say, inadequately. label ·pinned on x; because in this sense ‘The sun exists representatively in Henri’s intellect’ says something purely Reply about Henri, implying nothing about the sun. But that isn’t (1) [Descartes is writing to the same two men to whom Caterus’s at all what I meant·. I was speaking of the idea, which objections were addressed.] Well, you have called up a mighty is never outside the intellect; and in this sense ‘existing opponent to challenge me! His intelligence and learning representatively’ simply means being in the intellect in the might well have created great embarrassments for me if he way that objects normally are there. For example, if someone weren’t an earnest and kind-hearted theologian who chose to asks me ‘What