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Descartes', Sixth Meditation: The External World, ‘Nature’ and Human Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

John Cottingham
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Extract

The Sixth Meditation deals, as its title proclaims, with ‘the existence of material things, and the real distinction between the mind and body of man’. In this paper, I want to start by examining Descartes' argument for the existence of material things—for the existence of an ‘external’, physical world around us. Next, in section two, I shall use this argument concerning the external world to bring out an important general point about the ‘dialectical’ way in which Descartes presents his reasoning in the Meditations. This will lead me on to the third section of the paper, which will analyse the concept of ‘nature’ and the role it plays in Descartes' reasoning, particularly in the Sixth Meditation. And this in turn will bring me to the fourth and final part of the paper, which will focus on what is by general consensus the most fascinating part of the Sixth Meditation—Descartes' account of the relation between mind and body. What I shall try to do in this final section is to highlight a curious tension between Descartes' recognition of the facts of human experience on the one hand, and on the other hand his doctrine that we are essentially incorporeal or non-physical substances.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 20: Philosophers Ancient and Modern , March 1986 , pp. 73 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1986

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References

1 E 127 (AT VII 71; CSM II 50). References to ‘E’ are to page numbers of the Everyman edition of Descartes which is the prescribed A-level text: Descartes, A Discourse on Method, Meditations and Principles, trans. Veitch, J. (London: Dent, 1912)Google Scholar. All quotations are taken from this edition. For the reader's convenience, I have added, in brackets, cross-references to the standard twelve-volume edition of Descartes known as ‘AT’— Oeuvres de Descartes, Adam, C. and Tannery, P. (eds), rev. edn (Paris: Vrin, 1964–1976)Google Scholar, and to the new two volume English translation ‘CSM’—The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff and D. Murdoch, (Cambridge University Press, 1985). Veitch's translations, though first issued by Everyman in 1912, originally appeared in 1850–53; they are tolerably accurate, if sometimes rather stilted. Readers should, however, be warned that Veitch sometimes follows Descartes' original Latin text, of the Meditations (1641) and sometimes (often without indication) follows the later French version of 1647 which was not by Descartes. Thus in the title of the Sixth Meditation quoted above, the phrase ‘of man’ is not in the original Latin.

2 E 78(AT VII 16;CSM II 50).

3 Ibid.

4 AT V 154 and 162/3. Cf. Cottingham, J. (ed.), Descartes' Conversation with Burman, 14, 23 and 74ff.Google Scholar

5 E 129 (AT VII 73; CSM II 51).

6 E 129 (AT VII 75; CSM II 52). Descartes first of all talks of the perception of qualities; later (E 130, line 2) he says that it is the ideas of these qualities ‘which alone I properly and immediately perceive’. For a useful discussion of the origins of this use of ‘idea’ see Alexander, P., Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles (Cambridge University Press, 1985), 97ff.Google Scholar

7 E 130 (AT VII 75; CSM II 52).

8 Cf. Berkeley, , The Principles of Human Knowledge (1710)Google Scholar Section 29: ‘When in broad daylight I open my eyes, it is not in my power to choose whether I shall see or not, or to determine what particular objects present themselves to my view … The ideas imprinted on [the senses] are not creatures of my will.’

9 Loc. cit., note 6.

10 For the ‘pre-philosophical’ man, cf. Descartes' Conversation with Burman, AT V 146; Cottingham (op. cit. note 4), 3.

11 E 80 (AT VII 18; CSM II 12).

12 E 131 (AT VII 76; CSM II 53).

13 Ibid.

14 E 132 (AT VII 77; CSM II 53).

15 Ibid. Cf. Meditation One: E 82 (AT VII 21; CSM II 14).

16 E 111/2 (AT VII 53;CSM II 37).

17 E 133 (AT VII 79; CSM II 55).

18 E 134 (AT VII 80; CSM II 55). Italics supplied.

19 Ibid.

20 This unfinished dialogue was found among Descartes papers on his death in Stockholm in 1650. Its date is uncertain, but it may well have been compiled at roughly the same time as the Meditations. See CSM II 399.

21 E 134 (AT VII 79; CSM II 55).

22 Ibid.

23 E 134/5 (AT VII 81/2; CSM II 56).

24 E 134 (AT VII 80; CSM II 56).

25 ‘God cannot incline to nothingness, since he is supreme and pure being’, Conversation with Burman, AT V 147; cf. Cottingham (op. cit., note 4), 5 and 56ff.

26 Principles of Philosophy (1644)Google Scholar Book I, art. 1: E 165 (AT VIII 5; CSM I 193).

27 Principles Book I, art. 71: E 195 (AT VIII 36; CSM I 219).

28 E 135 (AT VII 82; CSM II 56). Italics supplied.

29 E 136 (AT VII 83; CSM II 57).

30 Lumen naturale or lumen naturae (‘natural light’, ‘light of nature’) are the phrases most commonly found in the Meditations and Principles. For the phrase lux rationis (‘light of reason’), cf. Rules for the Direction of the Understanding (1628)Google Scholar: AT X 368; CSM I 14. Commenting on the ‘light’ metaphor Descartes observed to Hobbes: ‘As everyong knows, a “light” in the intellect means transparent clarity of cognition’ (Third Set of Objections and Replies) AT VII 192; CSM II 135). (The Objections and Replies were published with the Meditations in 1641.) For the innateness of the natural light see The Search for Truth, AT X 495; CSM II 400.

31 E 116 (AT VII 58; CSM II 41).

32 Cf. Fourth Meditation: E 119 (AT VII 62; CSM II 43).

33 Fifth Meditation: E 126 (AT VII 71; CSM II 49).

34 Wordsworth, W. Lines written above Tintern Abbey (1798).Google Scholar

35 Shakespeare, W. Measure for Measure (c. 1604), Act III, Scene 1.Google Scholar

36 E 134, 135, 137 (AT VII 89–83; CSM II 55–58).

37 For a stimulating treatment of this issue see Williams, B., Descartes, The Project of Pure Inquiry (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978) Ch. 8.Google Scholar

38 E 135 (AT VII 81; CSM II 56).

39 E 132 (AT VII 78; CSM II 54). Italics added.

40 Discourse on the Method (1637)Google Scholar Part IV: E 27 (AT VI 33; CSM I 127).

41 Loc. cit., note 37.

42 E 136 (AT VII 82; CSM II 57).

43 AT V 163; Cottingham (op. cit., note 4), 28.

44 E 76 (AT VII 13; CSM II 10). Note that ‘mind’ (metis, esprit) and ‘soul’ (anima, ante) are used interchangeably by Descartes.

45 Loc. cit., note 38.

46 For further discussion of the problems which sensations pose for mind/body dualism, see Cottingham, J., ‘Cartesian Trialism’ Mind XCIV, No. 374 (04 1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

47 E 88 (AT VII 28;CSM II 19).

48 Loc. cit., note 39.

49 E 139 (T VII 86: CSM II 59).

50 Cf. Antoine Arnauld's criticisms of Descartes in the Fourth Set of Objections: AT VII 201; CSM II 141.