As I said in my first blog we will do a time-travel from pre-socratics to René Descartes. He was a man of many parts a philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. We will dwell on his contributions to philosophy or rather how he founded the System named after him - Cartesian Dualism,
Rene Descartes is often referred to as the father or founder of modern western philosophy. He lived from 31st March 1596 till 11th February 1650. To get an idea of the shift in time let us look at timeline.png.
Descartes's father was a councillor of the Parlement of Brittany, and possessed a moderate amount of landed property. Descartes inherited the property, and invested the money, obtaining an income of six or seven thousand francs a year.
He was educated, from 1604 to 1612, at the Jesuit college of La Flèche,where he studied mathematics and physics. He studied two years (1615–16) at the University of Poitiers, and earned a Baccalauréat and Licence in Canon and Civil Law.
He joined the army and while still in the army came up with what every school boy today knows as cartesian coordinates and analytic geometry.
In 1626 he settled in Paris, but moved to Holland, then a country at the height of its power, in 1628. He lived there for the next 20 years, devoting all his time and efforts to mathematics and philosophy and to the pursuit of truth. In 1649, at the invitation of the Queen of Sweden, he went to Stockholm to become the Queen's teacher, but he died a few months later, on February 11, 1650, of acute pneumonia.
We are concerned with Descates contributions to philosophy. His major works are Meditations, Discourse on Method and Principles of philosophy.
Background
We take a brief look at How philosophers prior to Descartes tried to answer the question How do our minds know? What were their methods for attaining true knowledge? What was their idea of ultimate reality?
Let us digress to take a look at two important ideas. Epistemology and Ontology
Epistemology comes from the Greek "Episteme" and refers to knowledge, science or understanding.It studies the nature of knowledge, justification, and the rationality of belief. The four important areas are (1) the philosophical analysis of the nature of knowledge and how it relates to such concepts as truth, belief, and justification
(2) various problems of skepticism,
(3) the sources and scope of knowledge and justified belief, and
(4) the criteria for knowledge and justification.
What's all this fuss? you might say we acquire knowledge by studying for a degree. But then what exactly is knowledge? Is it the facts such as Paris is in france? What is an idea? Does it come after or before sensation like seeing or hearing.
As philosophers are wont to do it is an analysis or breakup of the notion of knowledge.
What motivated or justified a breakup? such things as mirages, dreams, optical illusions and several others. A straight stick put into water appears bent. A rope may look like a snake or you might see water where there is none.... Here is a fruit-fly seen with bare eyes
When we look at the eye through electron microscopy.
which is the real one? (see more of the microscopic world at http://www.iflscience.com/technology/some-spectacular-sem-images-microscopic-world/)
There are many cases where our senses fail us. We want knowledge to be beyond failures of the senses. How to go about it?
Questions of epistemology are linked to questions of what is really real or ontology. Ontology is theory as to what exists, or inquiry into the nature of being."Onto", which means existence, or being real, and "Logia", which means science, or study. Studies and organises what is real. The objects around in my room table, chair etc are they real? We want to distinguish between appearance (such as can be captured by odinary camera) and real picture as can be captured Xray diffraction or electron microscope. Which of them is real? But scientists tell us that each of them is made of atoms-(The ultimate reality ?).
What about numbers such as 9 or 99. Plato developed this distinction between true reality and illusion, in arguing that what is real are eternal and unchanging Forms or Ideas (a precursor to universals), of which things experienced in sensation are at best merely copies, and real only in so far as they copy ('partake of') such Forms. In the Allegory of the Cave, the objects that are seen are not real, according to Plato, but literally mimic the real Forms. People in the cave only see shadows not real objects. For Plato the forms represented the ultimate reality -a substantial reality as opposed to notional reality.
But whereas Plato separated them into two different worlds , Aristotle instead said that the forms of things are in the things themselves and have no separate existence.Aristotle held that objects are built from matter and form. (hylomorphism).matter is formed into a substance by the form it has.The matter just is determined by the object so that particular activities and properties appear.horses, flowers, people, rocks, and so on have shapes and are subject to change but continue to be horses, flowers, people, rocks. Primary substances are subjects of predicates, single and persist through changes
The Samkhya philosophy regards the Universe as consisting of two eternal realities: Purusha and Prakrti. It is therefore a strongly dualist philosophy. The Purusha is the centre of consciousness, whereas the Prakriti is the source of all material existence. The twenty-five tattva system of Samkhya concerns itself only with the tangible aspect of creation, theorizing that Prakriti is the source of the world of becoming. It is the first tattva and is seen as pure potentiality that evolves itself successively into twenty-four additional tattvas or principles. The Tattvas range from 1. Purusha (Transcendental Self) 2. The uncreated unmanifest) Prakriti (primordial nature) 3. Mahat/Buddhi (intellect) ... 21-25. The five gross elements are space or ether (akasa), water, air, fire and earth.
Pramāṇa (Sanskrit: प्रमाण, Pramāṇas) literally means "proof" and "means of knowledge".[1][2] It refers to epistemology in Indian philosophies, and is one of the key, much debated fields of study in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, since ancient times. It is a theory of knowledge, and encompasses one or more reliable and valid means by which human beings gain accurate, true knowledge.The focus of Pramana is how correct knowledge can be acquired, how one knows, how one doesn't, and to what extent knowledge pertinent about someone or something can be acquired.
Ancient and medieval Indian texts identify six pramanas as correct means of accurate knowledge and to truths: perception (Sanskrit pratyakṣa), inference (anumāna), comparison and analogy(upamāna), postulation, derivation from circumstances (arthāpatti), non-perception, negative/cognitive proof
Perhaps no other classical philosophical tradition, East or West, offers a more complex and counter-intuitive account of mind and mental phenomena than Buddhism. While Buddhists share with other Indian philosophers the view that the domain of the mental encompasses a set of interrelated faculties and processes, they do not associate mental phenomena with the activity of a substantial, independent, and enduring self or agent. Rather, Buddhist theories of mind center on the doctrine of not-self[(Pāli anatta, anātma), which postulates that human beings are reducible to the physical and psychological constituents and processes which comprise them.(anupalabdhi) and word, testimony of past or present reliable experts (Śabda). Each of these are further categorized in terms of conditionality, completeness, confidence and possibility of error, by each school of Indian philosophies.
Are the views of science and spirituality contrarians? Here's something from http://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/science-embraces-ancient-indian-wisdom_n_6250978
Here's the short story: According to Eastern metaphysics, everything in the universe is interconnected, and consciousness pervades all matter, while the view most commonly held in Western science suggests that consciousness only occurs in humans as a byproduct of physical changes in the brain. But some research in quantum physics now supports the Eastern view that perhaps mental states do not rely exclusively on material states, and therefore consciousness may exist separately from any sort of changes occurring in the physical brain. In other words, there can be non-local connections between physical and mental phenomena -- even matter that appears to be separate may, in some way, be connected.
On Sense Descartes says
“Whatever I have up till now accepted as most true I have acquired either from the senses or through the senses” (7:18).
He then went on to challenge the veridicality of the senses with the skeptical arguments of First Meditation, including arguments from previous errors, the dream argument, and the argument from a deceptive God or an evil deceiver.
In sum, in considering Descartes' answer to how we know, we can distinguish classes of knowledge that differ as regards the degree of certainty one may expect to achieve. Metaphysical first principles as known by the intellect acting alone should attain absolute certainty. Practical knowledge concerning immediate benefits and harms is known by the senses. Such knowledge is usually good enough. Objects of natural science are known by a combination of pure intellect and sensory observation: the pure intellect tells us what properties bodies can have, and we use the senses to determine which particular instances of those properties bodies do have. For submicroscopic particles, we must reason from observed effects to potential cause. In these latter cases, our measurements and our inferences may be subject to error, but we may also hope to arrive at the truth.
Descartes was examining the basis for his knowledge he therefore examined the foundations "I shall only in the first place attack those principles upon which all my former opinions rested."
He finds that he "learned either from the senses or through the senses" and these are fallible. He goes on to say "there are no certain indications by which we may clearly distinguish wakefulness from sleep that I am lost in astonishment."
"At the same time we must at least confess that the things which are represented to us
in sleep are like painted representations which can only have been formed as the counterparts of something real and true, and that in this way those general things at least, i.e. eyes, a head, hands, and a whole body, are not imaginary things, but things really existent."
"And for the same reason, although these general things, to wit, [a body], eyes, a head, hands, and such like, may be imaginary, we are bound at the same time to confess that there are at least some other objects yet more simple and more universal, which are real and true;"
"Physics, Astronomy, Medicine and all other sciences are very dubious and uncertain; but that Arithmetic, Geometry and other sciences of that kind contain some measure of certainty and an element of the indubitable."
"Nevertheless I have long had fixed in my mind the belief that an all-powerful God existed by whom I have been created such as I am. But how do I know that He has not brought it to pass that there is no
Descates wanted all science to be beyond doubt of any kind
" an indubitability, or inability to undermine one's conviction. Descartes' methodic emphasis on doubt, rather than on certainty, marks an epistemological innovation. This so-called ‘method of doubt’ is discussed below (Section 2)."
The certainty/indubitability of interest to Descartes is psychological in character, though not merely psychological — not simply an inexplicable feeling. It has also a distinctively epistemic character, involving a kind of rational insight. During moments of certainty, it is as if my perception is guided by “a great light in the intellect” (Med. 4, AT 7:59). This rational illumination empowers me to “see utterly clearly with my mind's eye”; my feelings of certainty are grounded — indeed, “I see a manifest contradiction” in denying the proposition of which I'm convinced. (Med. 3, AT 7:36)
"Descartes is explicitly embracing the consequence of having defined knowledge wholly in terms of unshakable conviction: he's conceding that achieving the brand of knowledge he seeks is compatible with being "
"commitment to an internalist conception of knowledge."
Ultimately, all judgments are grounded in an inspection of the mind's ideas. Philosophical inquiry is, properly understood, an investigation of ideas. The methodical strategy of the Meditations has the effect of forcing readers to adopt this mode of inquiry.
An Aside : Descartes maintains that though atheists are quite capable of impressive knowledge, including in mathematics, they are incapable of the indefeasible brand of knowledge he seeks:
Descartes insists on indefeasibility. (Typically, he reserves the term ‘scientia’ for this brand of knowledge, though he uses ‘cognitio’ and its cognates for either context.)
The fact that an atheist can be “clearly aware [clare cognoscere] that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles” is something I do not dispute. But I maintain that this awareness [cognitionem] of his is not true knowledge [scientiam], since no act of awareness [cognitio] that can be rendered doubtful seems fit to be called knowledge [scientia]. Now since we are supposing that this individual is an atheist, he cannot be certain that he is not being deceived on matters which seem to him to be very evident (as I fully explained). (Replies 2, AT 7:141)
The dialectic of the First Meditation features a confrontation between particularism and methodism, with methodism emerging the victor. For example, the meditator (while voicing empiricist sensibilities) puts forward, as candidates for the foundations of Knowledge, such prima facie obvious claims as “that I am here, sitting by the fire, wearing a winter dressing-gown, holding this piece of paper in my hands, and so on” — particular matters “about which doubt is quite impossible,” or so it would seem (AT 7:18). In response (and at each level of the dialectic), Descartes invokes his own methodical principles to show that the prima facie obviousness of such particular claims is insufficient to meet the burden of proof.
An important function of his(Descartes) methods is to help would-be Knowers redirect their attention from the confused imagery of the senses to the luminous world of the intellect's clear and distinct ideas.
The famous wax thought experiment of the Second Meditation is supposed to illustrate (among other things) a procedure to “dig out” what is innate. The thought experiment purports to help the meditator achieve a “purely mental scrutiny,” thereby apprehending more easily the innate idea of body
Descartes now resumes the question of our knowledge of bodies. He takes as an example a piece of wax from the honeycomb. Certain things are apparent to the senses: it tastes of honey, it smells of flowers, it has a certain sensible colour, size and shape, it is hard and cold, and if struck it emits a sound. But if you put it near the fire, these qualities change, although the wax persists; therefore what appeared to the senses was not the wax itself. The wax itself is constituted by extension, flexibility, and motion, which are understood by the mind, not by the imagination. The thing that is the wax cannot itself be sensible, since it is equally involved in all the appearances of the wax to the various senses. The perception of the wax "is not a vision or touch or imagination, but an inspection of the mind." I do not see the wax, any more than I see men in the street when I see hats and coats. "I understand by the sole power of judgement, which resides in my mind, what I thought I saw with my eyes." Knowledge by the senses is confused, and shared with animals; but now I have stripped the wax of its clothes, and mentally perceive it naked. From my sensibly seeing the wax, my own existence follows with certainty, but not that of the wax. Knowledge of external things must be by the mind, not by the senses."
The central insight of foundationalism is to organize knowledge in the manner of a well-structured, architectural edifice. Such an edifice owes its structural integrity to two kinds of features: a firm foundation and a superstructure of support beams firmly anchored to the foundation. A system of justified beliefs might be organized by two analogous features: a foundation of unshakable first principles, and a superstructure of further propositions anchored to the foundation via unshakable inference.
Descartes' own designs for metaphysical Knowledge are inspired by Euclid's system:
His idea of the self does ultimately draw on innate conceptual resources.
The very next paragraph (the fourth) draws an epistemically important contrast with external sense perception (as just characterized).
This juncture of the Third Meditation (the end of the fourth paragraph) marks the beginning point of Descartes' notorious efforts to refute the Evil Genius Doubt.
For example, while reflecting on his epistemic position in regards both to himself, and to the wax, the Second Meditation meditator says:
Surely my awareness of my own self is not merely much truer and more certain than my awareness of the wax, but also much more distinct and evident. For if I judge that the wax exists from the fact that I see it, clearly this same fact entails much more evidently that I myself also exist. It is possible that what I see is not really the wax; it is possible that I do not even have eyes with which to see anything. But when I see, or think I see (I am not here distinguishing the two), it is simply not possible that I who am now thinking am not something. (Med. 2, AT 7:33)
In the concluding paragraph of the Second Meditation, Descartes writes:
I see that without any effort I have now finally got back to where I wanted. I now know that even bodies are not strictly [proprie] perceived by the senses or the faculty of imagination but by the intellect alone, and that this perception derives not from their being touched or seen but from their being understood; and in view of this I know plainly that I can achieve an easier and more evident perception of my own mind than of anything else. (Med. 2, AT 7:34)
. The theme that ideas are the only immediate objects of awareness repeats itself elsewhere in Descartes' writings. As he tells Hobbes: “I make it quite clear in several places … that I am taking the word ‘idea’ to refer to whatever is immediately perceived by the mind” (Replies 3, AT 7:181). A sine qua non of judgment error is that there be an act of judgment, but acts of judgment require both a perception and a volition. Descartes' claim that mere seemings “cannot strictly speaking be false” is therefore innocuous: for in isolating the mere seeming, he isolates the perceptual from the volitional. My merely seeming to see a speckled hen with two speckles could not, per se, involve judgment error, because it is not in itself a judgment.
The worry is that he presupposes the C&D Rule (Clarity and Distinctness) in the effort to prove the C&D Rule. There is much of interest in Descartes' arguments for an all-perfect God. (The Fifth Meditation advances a further such argument.)
Various themes about innate truths are introduced in the Fifth Meditation.
References
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descartes
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pramana
3. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-indian-buddhism/
4. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-epistemology/
5. https://www.britannica.com/topic/epistemology
6. http://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_epistemology.html
Brief Bio Descartes
Descartes's father was a councillor of the Parlement of Brittany, and possessed a moderate amount of landed property. Descartes inherited the property, and invested the money, obtaining an income of six or seven thousand francs a year.
He was educated, from 1604 to 1612, at the Jesuit college of La Flèche,where he studied mathematics and physics. He studied two years (1615–16) at the University of Poitiers, and earned a Baccalauréat and Licence in Canon and Civil Law.
He joined the army and while still in the army came up with what every school boy today knows as cartesian coordinates and analytic geometry.
In 1626 he settled in Paris, but moved to Holland, then a country at the height of its power, in 1628. He lived there for the next 20 years, devoting all his time and efforts to mathematics and philosophy and to the pursuit of truth. In 1649, at the invitation of the Queen of Sweden, he went to Stockholm to become the Queen's teacher, but he died a few months later, on February 11, 1650, of acute pneumonia.
We are concerned with Descates contributions to philosophy. His major works are Meditations, Discourse on Method and Principles of philosophy.
Background
We take a brief look at How philosophers prior to Descartes tried to answer the question How do our minds know? What were their methods for attaining true knowledge? What was their idea of ultimate reality?
Let us digress to take a look at two important ideas. Epistemology and Ontology
Epistemology comes from the Greek "Episteme" and refers to knowledge, science or understanding.It studies the nature of knowledge, justification, and the rationality of belief. The four important areas are (1) the philosophical analysis of the nature of knowledge and how it relates to such concepts as truth, belief, and justification
(2) various problems of skepticism,
(3) the sources and scope of knowledge and justified belief, and
(4) the criteria for knowledge and justification.
What's all this fuss? you might say we acquire knowledge by studying for a degree. But then what exactly is knowledge? Is it the facts such as Paris is in france? What is an idea? Does it come after or before sensation like seeing or hearing.
As philosophers are wont to do it is an analysis or breakup of the notion of knowledge.
What motivated or justified a breakup? such things as mirages, dreams, optical illusions and several others. A straight stick put into water appears bent. A rope may look like a snake or you might see water where there is none.... Here is a fruit-fly seen with bare eyes
When we look at the eye through electron microscopy.
which is the real one? (see more of the microscopic world at http://www.iflscience.com/technology/some-spectacular-sem-images-microscopic-world/)
There are many cases where our senses fail us. We want knowledge to be beyond failures of the senses. How to go about it?
Questions of epistemology are linked to questions of what is really real or ontology. Ontology is theory as to what exists, or inquiry into the nature of being."Onto", which means existence, or being real, and "Logia", which means science, or study. Studies and organises what is real. The objects around in my room table, chair etc are they real? We want to distinguish between appearance (such as can be captured by odinary camera) and real picture as can be captured Xray diffraction or electron microscope. Which of them is real? But scientists tell us that each of them is made of atoms-(The ultimate reality ?).
What about numbers such as 9 or 99. Plato developed this distinction between true reality and illusion, in arguing that what is real are eternal and unchanging Forms or Ideas (a precursor to universals), of which things experienced in sensation are at best merely copies, and real only in so far as they copy ('partake of') such Forms. In the Allegory of the Cave, the objects that are seen are not real, according to Plato, but literally mimic the real Forms. People in the cave only see shadows not real objects. For Plato the forms represented the ultimate reality -a substantial reality as opposed to notional reality.
But whereas Plato separated them into two different worlds , Aristotle instead said that the forms of things are in the things themselves and have no separate existence.Aristotle held that objects are built from matter and form. (hylomorphism).matter is formed into a substance by the form it has.The matter just is determined by the object so that particular activities and properties appear.horses, flowers, people, rocks, and so on have shapes and are subject to change but continue to be horses, flowers, people, rocks. Primary substances are subjects of predicates, single and persist through changes
Indian ideas on reality and knowledge
The Samkhya philosophy regards the Universe as consisting of two eternal realities: Purusha and Prakrti. It is therefore a strongly dualist philosophy. The Purusha is the centre of consciousness, whereas the Prakriti is the source of all material existence. The twenty-five tattva system of Samkhya concerns itself only with the tangible aspect of creation, theorizing that Prakriti is the source of the world of becoming. It is the first tattva and is seen as pure potentiality that evolves itself successively into twenty-four additional tattvas or principles. The Tattvas range from 1. Purusha (Transcendental Self) 2. The uncreated unmanifest) Prakriti (primordial nature) 3. Mahat/Buddhi (intellect) ... 21-25. The five gross elements are space or ether (akasa), water, air, fire and earth.
Pramāṇa (Sanskrit: प्रमाण, Pramāṇas) literally means "proof" and "means of knowledge".[1][2] It refers to epistemology in Indian philosophies, and is one of the key, much debated fields of study in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, since ancient times. It is a theory of knowledge, and encompasses one or more reliable and valid means by which human beings gain accurate, true knowledge.The focus of Pramana is how correct knowledge can be acquired, how one knows, how one doesn't, and to what extent knowledge pertinent about someone or something can be acquired.
Ancient and medieval Indian texts identify six pramanas as correct means of accurate knowledge and to truths: perception (Sanskrit pratyakṣa), inference (anumāna), comparison and analogy(upamāna), postulation, derivation from circumstances (arthāpatti), non-perception, negative/cognitive proof
Perhaps no other classical philosophical tradition, East or West, offers a more complex and counter-intuitive account of mind and mental phenomena than Buddhism. While Buddhists share with other Indian philosophers the view that the domain of the mental encompasses a set of interrelated faculties and processes, they do not associate mental phenomena with the activity of a substantial, independent, and enduring self or agent. Rather, Buddhist theories of mind center on the doctrine of not-self[(Pāli anatta, anātma), which postulates that human beings are reducible to the physical and psychological constituents and processes which comprise them.(anupalabdhi) and word, testimony of past or present reliable experts (Śabda). Each of these are further categorized in terms of conditionality, completeness, confidence and possibility of error, by each school of Indian philosophies.
Are the views of science and spirituality contrarians? Here's something from http://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/science-embraces-ancient-indian-wisdom_n_6250978
Here's the short story: According to Eastern metaphysics, everything in the universe is interconnected, and consciousness pervades all matter, while the view most commonly held in Western science suggests that consciousness only occurs in humans as a byproduct of physical changes in the brain. But some research in quantum physics now supports the Eastern view that perhaps mental states do not rely exclusively on material states, and therefore consciousness may exist separately from any sort of changes occurring in the physical brain. In other words, there can be non-local connections between physical and mental phenomena -- even matter that appears to be separate may, in some way, be connected.
Descartes and Meditations
“Whatever I have up till now accepted as most true I have acquired either from the senses or through the senses” (7:18).
He then went on to challenge the veridicality of the senses with the skeptical arguments of First Meditation, including arguments from previous errors, the dream argument, and the argument from a deceptive God or an evil deceiver.
In sum, in considering Descartes' answer to how we know, we can distinguish classes of knowledge that differ as regards the degree of certainty one may expect to achieve. Metaphysical first principles as known by the intellect acting alone should attain absolute certainty. Practical knowledge concerning immediate benefits and harms is known by the senses. Such knowledge is usually good enough. Objects of natural science are known by a combination of pure intellect and sensory observation: the pure intellect tells us what properties bodies can have, and we use the senses to determine which particular instances of those properties bodies do have. For submicroscopic particles, we must reason from observed effects to potential cause. In these latter cases, our measurements and our inferences may be subject to error, but we may also hope to arrive at the truth.
Descartes was examining the basis for his knowledge he therefore examined the foundations "I shall only in the first place attack those principles upon which all my former opinions rested."
He finds that he "learned either from the senses or through the senses" and these are fallible. He goes on to say "there are no certain indications by which we may clearly distinguish wakefulness from sleep that I am lost in astonishment."
"At the same time we must at least confess that the things which are represented to us
in sleep are like painted representations which can only have been formed as the counterparts of something real and true, and that in this way those general things at least, i.e. eyes, a head, hands, and a whole body, are not imaginary things, but things really existent."
"And for the same reason, although these general things, to wit, [a body], eyes, a head, hands, and such like, may be imaginary, we are bound at the same time to confess that there are at least some other objects yet more simple and more universal, which are real and true;"
"Physics, Astronomy, Medicine and all other sciences are very dubious and uncertain; but that Arithmetic, Geometry and other sciences of that kind contain some measure of certainty and an element of the indubitable."
"Nevertheless I have long had fixed in my mind the belief that an all-powerful God existed by whom I have been created such as I am. But how do I know that He has not brought it to pass that there is no
Descates wanted all science to be beyond doubt of any kind
" an indubitability, or inability to undermine one's conviction. Descartes' methodic emphasis on doubt, rather than on certainty, marks an epistemological innovation. This so-called ‘method of doubt’ is discussed below (Section 2)."
The certainty/indubitability of interest to Descartes is psychological in character, though not merely psychological — not simply an inexplicable feeling. It has also a distinctively epistemic character, involving a kind of rational insight. During moments of certainty, it is as if my perception is guided by “a great light in the intellect” (Med. 4, AT 7:59). This rational illumination empowers me to “see utterly clearly with my mind's eye”; my feelings of certainty are grounded — indeed, “I see a manifest contradiction” in denying the proposition of which I'm convinced. (Med. 3, AT 7:36)
"Descartes is explicitly embracing the consequence of having defined knowledge wholly in terms of unshakable conviction: he's conceding that achieving the brand of knowledge he seeks is compatible with being "
"commitment to an internalist conception of knowledge."
Ultimately, all judgments are grounded in an inspection of the mind's ideas. Philosophical inquiry is, properly understood, an investigation of ideas. The methodical strategy of the Meditations has the effect of forcing readers to adopt this mode of inquiry.
An Aside : Descartes maintains that though atheists are quite capable of impressive knowledge, including in mathematics, they are incapable of the indefeasible brand of knowledge he seeks:
Descartes insists on indefeasibility. (Typically, he reserves the term ‘scientia’ for this brand of knowledge, though he uses ‘cognitio’ and its cognates for either context.)
The fact that an atheist can be “clearly aware [clare cognoscere] that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles” is something I do not dispute. But I maintain that this awareness [cognitionem] of his is not true knowledge [scientiam], since no act of awareness [cognitio] that can be rendered doubtful seems fit to be called knowledge [scientia]. Now since we are supposing that this individual is an atheist, he cannot be certain that he is not being deceived on matters which seem to him to be very evident (as I fully explained). (Replies 2, AT 7:141)
The dialectic of the First Meditation features a confrontation between particularism and methodism, with methodism emerging the victor. For example, the meditator (while voicing empiricist sensibilities) puts forward, as candidates for the foundations of Knowledge, such prima facie obvious claims as “that I am here, sitting by the fire, wearing a winter dressing-gown, holding this piece of paper in my hands, and so on” — particular matters “about which doubt is quite impossible,” or so it would seem (AT 7:18). In response (and at each level of the dialectic), Descartes invokes his own methodical principles to show that the prima facie obviousness of such particular claims is insufficient to meet the burden of proof.
An important function of his(Descartes) methods is to help would-be Knowers redirect their attention from the confused imagery of the senses to the luminous world of the intellect's clear and distinct ideas.
Wax thought experiment
Descartes now resumes the question of our knowledge of bodies. He takes as an example a piece of wax from the honeycomb. Certain things are apparent to the senses: it tastes of honey, it smells of flowers, it has a certain sensible colour, size and shape, it is hard and cold, and if struck it emits a sound. But if you put it near the fire, these qualities change, although the wax persists; therefore what appeared to the senses was not the wax itself. The wax itself is constituted by extension, flexibility, and motion, which are understood by the mind, not by the imagination. The thing that is the wax cannot itself be sensible, since it is equally involved in all the appearances of the wax to the various senses. The perception of the wax "is not a vision or touch or imagination, but an inspection of the mind." I do not see the wax, any more than I see men in the street when I see hats and coats. "I understand by the sole power of judgement, which resides in my mind, what I thought I saw with my eyes." Knowledge by the senses is confused, and shared with animals; but now I have stripped the wax of its clothes, and mentally perceive it naked. From my sensibly seeing the wax, my own existence follows with certainty, but not that of the wax. Knowledge of external things must be by the mind, not by the senses."
The central insight of foundationalism is to organize knowledge in the manner of a well-structured, architectural edifice. Such an edifice owes its structural integrity to two kinds of features: a firm foundation and a superstructure of support beams firmly anchored to the foundation. A system of justified beliefs might be organized by two analogous features: a foundation of unshakable first principles, and a superstructure of further propositions anchored to the foundation via unshakable inference.
Descartes' own designs for metaphysical Knowledge are inspired by Euclid's system:
His idea of the self does ultimately draw on innate conceptual resources.
The very next paragraph (the fourth) draws an epistemically important contrast with external sense perception (as just characterized).
This juncture of the Third Meditation (the end of the fourth paragraph) marks the beginning point of Descartes' notorious efforts to refute the Evil Genius Doubt.
For example, while reflecting on his epistemic position in regards both to himself, and to the wax, the Second Meditation meditator says:
Surely my awareness of my own self is not merely much truer and more certain than my awareness of the wax, but also much more distinct and evident. For if I judge that the wax exists from the fact that I see it, clearly this same fact entails much more evidently that I myself also exist. It is possible that what I see is not really the wax; it is possible that I do not even have eyes with which to see anything. But when I see, or think I see (I am not here distinguishing the two), it is simply not possible that I who am now thinking am not something. (Med. 2, AT 7:33)
In the concluding paragraph of the Second Meditation, Descartes writes:
I see that without any effort I have now finally got back to where I wanted. I now know that even bodies are not strictly [proprie] perceived by the senses or the faculty of imagination but by the intellect alone, and that this perception derives not from their being touched or seen but from their being understood; and in view of this I know plainly that I can achieve an easier and more evident perception of my own mind than of anything else. (Med. 2, AT 7:34)
. The theme that ideas are the only immediate objects of awareness repeats itself elsewhere in Descartes' writings. As he tells Hobbes: “I make it quite clear in several places … that I am taking the word ‘idea’ to refer to whatever is immediately perceived by the mind” (Replies 3, AT 7:181). A sine qua non of judgment error is that there be an act of judgment, but acts of judgment require both a perception and a volition. Descartes' claim that mere seemings “cannot strictly speaking be false” is therefore innocuous: for in isolating the mere seeming, he isolates the perceptual from the volitional. My merely seeming to see a speckled hen with two speckles could not, per se, involve judgment error, because it is not in itself a judgment.
The worry is that he presupposes the C&D Rule (Clarity and Distinctness) in the effort to prove the C&D Rule. There is much of interest in Descartes' arguments for an all-perfect God. (The Fifth Meditation advances a further such argument.)
Various themes about innate truths are introduced in the Fifth Meditation.
References
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descartes
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pramana
3. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-indian-buddhism/
4. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-epistemology/
5. https://www.britannica.com/topic/epistemology
6. http://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_epistemology.html
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