The Myth of Descartes

Rene Descartes is regarded as the father of modern philosophy. So what is what is Descartes contribution to philosophy? Why is Descartes regarded as the father of modern philosophy? Does he deserve the title? In order to understand Descartes we must destroy, what I call the "freshman understanding of philosophy". And we must understand Descartes method an his crowning achievement. To do the above we must know what Descartes aim. Before continuing I must acknowledge some intellectual debts. I have received much needed help from two individuals. I am indebted to Steve Barboni, a professor of philosophy at S.D.S.U. for the many pleasant and productive discussions we have had on seventeenth century philosophy. The other person I wish to thank is Rutger Hadge a grad. student at S.D.S.U. for giving me the final puzzle piece to the Cartesian method. We shall start with the freshman understanding of philosophy; I call it this, because it is how Descartes is taught in Introductory classes of philosophy. The trouble with the freshman understanding of philosophy is that people who go on to the higher levels of philosophy (including the PhD. level) seem to still subscribe to it. The way the freshman understanding of philosophy is inscribed into people is by thinking the "Second Meditation" is sufficient to understanding Descartes. Before examining the "Second Meditation we must understand Descartes goal for his philosophy. What he was trying to accomplish.Descartes' goal was to come up with a philosophy of science, or as it was called in his day, a philosophy of discovery. Descartes was first and foremost a philosopher of science, interested in practical results. Descartes was not a logic chopping metaphyscian. This is made clear in his writings where he insists that abstractions must have consequences, and condemns in the harshest terms "useless abstractions". For Descartes ideas or abstractions had to have a pragmatic function. When reading Descartes one gets the impression that ideas are like little levers that humans can manipulate for their benefit. If abstractions do not have a practical aspect they are useless. Descartes' goal was to find a method to produce ideas with consequences, abstractions that have pragmatic value. This is the purpose of the Cartesian method. Now we can begin to understand the "Second Meditation". So what is Descartes doing in the "Second Meditation"? What he is doing is showing off his methods ability to solve problems. To understand why there is so much metaphysics in the "Second Meditation" we must understand that there is an intellectual gulf between Newton and Descartes even though the were not separated by many years. Descartes, unlike Newton, had to lay a metaphysical groundwork for his theories, he could not start from givens or occult qualities like Newton. It also must be said that Newton's "Principia" would never have been written without Descartes' "Principles of Philosophy". So let us go right to the parable or myth of the "Second Meditation" that of Descartes sitting by his stove in a dressing gown calmly laying down the first principles of philosophy. Nothing could be further form the truth of Descartes. Descartes was high strung and highly emotional he did not calmly sit around when he had ideas. He tells us of the great excitement and enthusiasm that came over him on November 10, 1619 when he discovered his method. The parable or myth is a demonstration, and advertisement for his method. Before going on let us go Descartes explaining his method in the"Discourse on Method":( taken from "The Philosophical Writings of Descartes Vol 1" Cambridge university press 1985): "The first was never to accept anything as true if I did not have evident knowledge of its truth: that is carefully to avoid precipitate conclusions and preconceptions,and to include nothing more in my judgements than what presented itself to my mind so clearly and distinctly that I had no occasion to doubt it. The second to divide each of the difficulties I examined into as many parts as possible and as may be required in order to resolve them better. The third to direct my thoughts in an orderly manner, by beginning, with the simplest and most easily known objects in order to ascend little by little, step by step, to knowledge of the most complex, and by supposing some order even among objects , that have no natural order of precedence. And lastly, throughout to make enumerations so complete, and review so comprihensive that I could sure of leaving nothing out." It should be clear that Descartes' method is a way of thinking to create ideas or abstractions that have consequences or practical value. As I said earlier Rutger Hadge gave me the final puzzle piece when in a discussion he compared Descartes' method with trouble shooting algorithm. what Descartes did was to invent reverse engineering. Of course, people like Galileo, and Gilbert were using reverse engineering before Descartes, but the credit must go Descartes, he was the first to explain, systematize, and abstract the method out of practice. The same as the Pythagorean theorem. The ancient Egyptians were using the Pythagorean theorem before Pythagoras did the same for it. The genius of both Descartes,and Pythagoras was to abstract a theory out of practice to be universally used.Descartes claims a universal validity for his method. Most ideas originate in practice before they become theory. When we deep this in mind while reading Descartes' "Second Meditation" the parable becomes pellucid. As I said before Descartes does not have the luxury of skipping metaphysics. He has to do more than describe and quantize the world, Descartes had to show why things worked the way they do. So Descartes must first give us first principles or a metaphysical ground. It must also be said this is the weakest part of Descartes philosophy. Descartes recommended to his readers and correspondents not to get hung up on the metaphysics; so let us begin. The first thing Descartes needs for his foundation is a subject, and God. The subject is the famous 'cogito" a thinking thing to comprehend, for Descartes purpose he uses himself. Descartes needs God to establish eternal laws governing nature. God is the basis for laws, he holds them into existence eternally. Descartes of course gets God by using the ontological argument, which I am going to skip over. with the ontological argument Descartes has his subject the thinking thing, and the object the laws of nature. Enough has been said about the ontological argument already. In keeping with his method of reverse engineering he starts with mind. The next thing Descartes does is his famous substance dualism. Mind is the key of his dualism. Most students of Descartes wonder why did Descartes separation of mind and body is so radical. the reason is that Descartes may be the first philosopher who needs freedom for his epistemology to work. Descartes needs mind to be separate from body, because for Descartes matter of body is completely mechanistic; like a line of falling dominoes. Descartes has to exempt mind from causality, in order for there to be new inventions and new discoveries. He needs causality in matter, and freedom in body, so mind can become a causal agent. Matter or body is what the works on to achieve its ends. Descartes definitely has a view from outside.In reading Descartes the reader gets the impression that mind somehow hovers over matter in order to manipulate matter for its goals.This is a big step. For the Classical Greeks and the Scholastics freedom or in determinism was a bad thing. The Medieval Scholastics regarded freedom in a very limited sense; either one accepts the faith or one does not. In other words free will was only the freedom to make a mistake. Remember Thomas Aquinas' essence and existence. Essence is determined, while existence is indeterminate. Again the freedom not to follow the form, to make a mistake. Descartes realized the freedom to make a mistake is also the freedom to come up with something new. We know Descartes spent much of his time in Holland working on life extension. Of course Descartes did not realize the primitive state of science at his time. And Descartes was an optimist. This is why matter or body is determined and mind is free.The mind in order to invent new things must be a causal agent: free. Otherwise there is no philosophy of discovery. This is one of the things that distinguish Descartes form Spinoza. Descartes view is from the outside, while Spinoza has a view form the inside. I will have more to say on this later, but now back to Descartes' philosophy. Once Descartes gets the tools he needs, he moves to body; the famous piece of wax. Where he demonstrates how his method can create useful abstractions. The useful abstractions to understand the material world. Abstractions to collect, enumerate, and to synthesize, and to put into practice. In other works Descartes method. The freshman understanding misses the whole point of Descartes philosophy; which is practical. There is much more to Descartes than the "Second Meditation". The whole goal of Descartes' philosophy is to create useful abstractions. To sum up what is Descartes place in philosophy. In my opinion Descartes was much like Plato, or Nietzsche, he left a collection of fragmentary writings others would attempt to synthesize into a system. Descartes can truly be called the father of modern philosophy.