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Mental Conict: Descartes
Andr Gombay
Philosophy / Volume 54 / Issue 210 / October 1979, pp 485 - 500
DOI: 10.1017/S0031819100063518, Published online: 30 January 2009
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Andr Gombay (1979). Mental Conict: Descartes. Philosophy, 54, pp 485-500
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Mental Conflict: Descartes
ANDR GOMBAY
In a famous text Descartes has written this:
Whenever the thought of God's supreme power occurs to me, I cannot
help feeling that he might easily, if he so wished, make me go wrong
even in what I think I see most clearly with my mind's eye. On the
other hand, whenever I turn to the matters themselves which I think
I perceive very clearly, I am so convinced by them that I burst out: 'let
who will deceive me, he can never bring it about that I should be nothing
at the time of thinking that I am something, nor that it be true that
I never existed if it is true that I exist now; nor even that two and three
together make more or less than five, or any such thing in which I see
manifest contradiction' (AT VII, 36; HR I, 158-159).
1
Descartes is reporting in himself incompatible beliefs. Whenever he
entertains the thought of God's power, he believes that this God could
deceive him about any proposition, however obvious; but whenever he
actually contemplates one such proposition (e.g. '2 + 3 = 5'),
n e
f
ee
'
s s u r e
that he could not be deceived by any God, however powerful. So on those
occasions where Descartes entertains one thought, he cannot help believing
that P (where P= 'a powerful God could deceive me about anything'); and
on the occasions where he entertains another thought, he cannot help
believing that not-P, or at least believing something that entails not-P, viz.
'about this nobody could deceive me'. Let me call this an inner conflict, or
at least one type of inner conflict: what we have is not one person at one
time divided between two opposite views, but a person at different, and
specifiable-by-himself, times fully committed to each of two opposite views.
Such a predicament is not extraordinary, and need not even cause alarm
in the person whom it befalls. For instance, we accept inner conflict readily
enough in the field of aesthetic appreciation. If you ask me who, in my
opinion, has expressed in music feelings that lie deepest in the human
1
References to Descartes' texts are as follows: (a) throughout: Descartes,
Oeuvres, C. Adam and P. Tannery (eds), I2vols. (Paris: Vrin, 1897-1911);
referred to as AT, followed by volume-, and page-, numeral; (b) where applicable:
(i) Descartes, Philosophical Works, E. S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (eds), 2 vols.
(London: Cambridge University Press, 1911); referred to as HR; (ii) Descartes,
Philosophical Letters, A. Kenny (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970); referred
to as K; (iii) Descartes, Conversation with Burtnan, J. Cottingham (ed.) (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1976); referred to as C.
Philosophy 54 1979 485
32
Andre Gombay
heart, I might reply that whenever I listen to his Clarinet Quintet I am
convinced that it is Mozart, and whenever I hear the Agnus Dei of the
B-Minor Mass, I am persuaded that it is Bach. A person can adopt toward
such a conflict a detached, spectatorial, attitude and make no attempt to
resolve it one way or the other; but this spectatorial attitude essentially
goes, I think, with his being able, prospectively or retrospectively, to view
his own conflicting beliefs as mental affections, or afflictions, that is to say
view them as ways in which his mind is affected according to circumstance,
and so not regard them as beliefs to be assessed for their intellectual
pedigree.
Of course Descartes' conflict is more serious, or at least he takes it more
seriously. A non-philosophical parallel of his situation occurs in Strindberg's
play The Father. Adolf, the hero, believes that women, all women, are
infinitely deceitful, and can feign love for a man when in fact they feel none.
Given this, and given well-known facts of human physiology, it follows that
no man can ever know for certain that the child whom he takes to be his
natural daughter, really is his daughter. Now true enough, Adolf acknowl-
edges that at various moments in his conjugal life he has been unable to
resist the conviction that his wife loved him; and for all he knows, in the
future he may again at times be unable to resist; but Adolf reflects that his
inability to doubt his wife on such occasions can be taken as yet one further
proof of women's immense ability to deceive. So in the end Adolf commits
suicide (and here, of course, the parallel with Descartes comes to an end
since, as we all know, Descartes' attempt had a happier outcome). I shall
none the less remain for a while with my Strindbergian analogue, because
I think it will enable me to set out vividly what is involved in a mental
conflict of this kind and in its solution, if indeed it can be resolved.
First of all, in order to describe the predicament properly, we must
individuate the thoughts of a man according to their temporal occurrence.
In this situation we have three episodes, or series of episodes: (i) the time,
or times, of passion when Adolf is unable to distrust his wife; (2) the time,
or times, of doubt when Adolf has the conviction of infinite feminine guile;
and finally (3) the time, or times, when there is neither passion nor despair,
and when Adolf simply reports the conflict and attempts to resolve it. Now
if you turn to the text of Descartes which I quote at the beginning, you will
notice that these temporal discriminations are very accurately marked.
Descartes begins: 'whenever [quoties] the thought of God's supreme power
occurs to me . . . etc.'; he goes on: 'on the other hand, whenever [quoties
vero] I turn to the matters themselves . . . etc.'; finally, Descartes' report
of the conflict occurs itself at a definite, more detached, moment, namely
the beginning of Meditation Three, and Descartes marks this by saying: 'I
must at the first opportunity [quamprimum occurret occasio] examine if there
is a God and, if so, if he can be a deceiver; for without knowing this, it does
not seem to me that I can be certain of anything else'.
486
Mental Conflict: Descartes
So: to describe Adolf's (and Descartes') mental conflict, different times
must be assigned to different thoughts. But now there arises a question. It
is unnatural to suppose that men have no memory of their past thoughts
and convictions even when they are in the grip of a contrary conviction. So
at the very moment when Adolf believes that no man can ever be certain of
being loved by his wife, he is likely to remember moments when he none
the less did feel certain of her. Of course we could suppose that the intensity
am
the
ard
: to
illy
ew
say
ce, of the present despair erases in Adolf all memory of the past, but that seems
ual unrealistic. What is the present Adolf, who is racked by doubts, to say of
his past feelings of confidence, which he still remembers? It seems to me
)re that he has basically three options, (a) He may choose to distrust his
g's recollection: true, he now thinks that at earlier times he was sure, but his
ire memory may be playing him tricks. Or (b) he may choose to doubt not his
ie. memory, but the constancy of human affections: wives may love you at one
lat instant, and yet betray you the next; so you can never trust them. Or
iis finally (c) Adolf may choose to doubt neither memory nor constancy, but
A- simply hold that his earlier trust in his wife was misplaced when it occurred:
to yes, he was certain of his wife but that certainty was even then misguided,
he Let me call these three doubts respectively the doubt of one's memory, the
iis doubt of the constancy of truth, and the doubt of one's certainty; and let
er me transpose my earlier question from Adolf to Descartes: which, among
ts these, is Descartes' scepticism when he entertains the thought of a deceitful
id God yet presumably also remembers having held about certain propositions
ill that they were true, no matter what? Does he doubt his memory, the
se constancy of truth, or the worth of his certainty? Of course he might doubt
al on all three counts; still, I ask, which is the primary and most important
doubt? This is an exegetical problem, with whose intricacies I do not intend
st to detain the reader. I align myself with those commentators (notably
e. Anthony Kenny
2
and Harry Frankfurt
3
) who have argued that Descartes'
2, doubt is not of the first kind: what he doubts is not his memory. Does he
5, then believe, when he doubts, that perhaps truth does not stay put?
Granted, he did intuit yesterday that in a right-angled triangle the square
r, on the base was equal to the squares on the sides; but this is perhaps no
longer true today. The ascription of this doubt to Descartes rests on
II evidence t hat is entirely indirect, and has t o do wi t h t he doct ri ne of t he free
creation by God of t he eternal t r ut hs. Not ori ousl y, Descart es held t hat
r necessary t r ut hs were freely created by God, hence not necessarily necessary.
s ' Even if God has willed t hat some t r ut hs shoul d be necessary, t hi s does not
t mean t hat he willed t hem necessarily; for it is one t hi ng t o will t hat t hey be
f necessary, and qui t e anot her t o will t hem necessarily, or t o be necessitated
2
A. Kenny, Descartes (New York: Random House, 1967), 187-189.
3
H. G. Frankfurt, Demons, Dreamers, and Madmen (Indianapolis: Bobbs-
Merrill, 1970), 160-162.
487
Andre Gombay
to will them' (Letter to Mesland, 2 May 1644, AT IV, 115, K 151). What con
is more, necessary truths are eternal only because God wills them to be of 1
such. Sothe argument goessomeone ignorant of the existence of God, atti
hence ignorant of the free creation by God of the necessary truths, is also sta
bereft of the comfort of knowing that these truths endure. Now this view ina
of the doubt has been championed by a number of scholars, following ev<
Emile Brehier,
4
most recently by Ian Hacking.
5
Again, I shall eschew int
exegesis. In my opinion, the evidence for ascribing this form of doubt to rm
Descartes is not strong. The strongest I know is this. Gassendi, the Fifth co:
Objector, read Descartes a la Brehier and asked: 'How often among thi
believers do you come across one who, if asked why he is sure that in a he
right-angled triangle the square on the base is equal to the squares on the th
sides, will reply: "because I know that God exists, and that God cannot or
deceive, and that He is the cause of this fact as likewise as of all others"?' th
(AT VII, 328; HR II, 189-190). Descartes replied (AT VII, 384; HRII, st
229), and did not say that the objection rested upon a misunderstanding, ot
That is the best textual evidence I can find. So on balance, Descartes'
scepticism seems to be basically of the third kind. A man who entertains c<
the thought of the supreme deceiver says to himself: 'I was certain yesterday e:
that in a right-angled triangle the square on the base . . . etc., but how do r;
I know that I was not being deceived yesterday?' Descartes' formulation is a
this: the doubter 'cannot be sure that he is not deceived in the matters that f
seem most evident to him' (AT VII, 141; HR II, 39). a
So much, then, for Descartes' assessment of his earlier certainties, at
those moments when he is doubting. But there is another, more important,
assessment to be considered. Let us go back to my initial text, the passage
in Meditation Three. Descartes reports a certain peculiar mental conflict:
sometimes he cannot help thinking that he might always be deceived, at
other times he is certain that he cannot there and then be deceived. Now,
a man might choose to do nothing about a conflict of this kind, he might
choose to accept the periodic alternation of scepticism and certainty in his
life as a brute fact, in the way in which I accept the periodic swing of my
musical judgment as a brute fact. That, however, is not Descartes' attitude.
Sdentia res gravior quam musica. He announces that he will now attempt to
resolve his quandary. It is my thesis that a man who wants to do thisi.e.
not live with the conflict but resolve itmust proceed from one of two
possible assessments of his conflicting beliefs. Let me return to my conjugal
example. Consider again the man who at certain moments feels that husbands
can never be sure of their wives, yet at other moments feels absolutely
4
E. Brehier, 'The Creation of the Eternal Truths in Descartes's System',
Descartes, W. Doney (ed.) (New York: Doubleday, 1967), 192-208.
5
I. Hacking, 'Leibniz & Descartes: Proof & Eternal Truths', Proceedings of
the British Academy, 1973.
488
1
Mental Conflict: Descartes
at confident that his wife loves him. He now attempts to relieve himself of one
>e of these beliefs, the belief in the boundless guile of women. I hold that this
i, attempt must proceed from one of two opposite hypotheses. The man might
io start from the position of Strindberg's Adolf, who regards his occasional
w inability to &trust his wife as simply a sign of human weakness, or perhaps
g even as a further sign of women's immense ability to deceive. Here the
w intellectually reputable belief is the belief of constant deception, and the
o man seeks disconfirmation of the belief. On the other hand, we might
h conceive the opposite starting point: the man might be in the position of
g the husband who goes to his psychoanalyst and complains that even though
a he knows full well that his wife loves him, he periodically becomes convinced
e that she is putting arsenic into his coffee. Here it is the inability to prevent
>t oneself from having these thoughts of uxorial treachery which is taken to be
the mental affliction. In one case, the weakness is the inability to retain
steady in one's mind the conviction that women cannot be trusted, in the
other, it is the inability to retain steady the conviction of one's wife's love.
Let me put my thesis a little more abstractly. I can offer no proof, but
contend that a man who attempts to resolve a mental conflict of the kind
experienced by Descartes must, as he sets out, make some estimate of the
rationality of his conflicting beliefs. Which does he regard as a mental
3 affection (or affliction), that is to say as a way in which he cannot help
t feeling in certain circumstances; and which does he view as rational (arrived
at, or buttressable, by reasons), and in that sense as intellectually respect-
able ? There is one feature of this distinction which I am keen to stress. To
view, prospectively or retrospectively, a belief of oneself as a mental
affection, is not the same as to hold that this belief is false, and conversely
to view it as intellectually respectable is not the same as to hold it true.
When I hear Bach's Agnus Dei, I can no more help being overcome by the
conviction that here indeed is the most sublime music than I can help the
shivers running down my spine; yet the conviction may be correct all the
same. Adolf may take his despair to be rational yet hope it mistaken.
So we should ask: what is Descartes' assessment of his conflicting beliefs
as he sets out to resolve the conflict between them? Which does he view as
a mental affliction, and which as the offspring of rationality? Is his inability,
once he has become convinced of a mathematical truth, to remain steady
in that conviction the human weakness to be remedied by a proof of God's
veracity, or on the contrary is the weakness his inability to go on doubting
once the thought of a mathematical proposition comes clearly before his
mind? In my conjugal examples the assessments were clear: Strindberg's
Adolf does not go to the psychoanalyst, and my candidate for analysis does
not go to the detective agency. My question is this: at the beginning of
Meditation Three is Descartes in the position of Adolf, or in that of the
patient of the psychoanalyst? Does he view as intellectually respectable his
doubt, or his certainty?
489
Andre Gombay
The question is important because its answer affects the objection which ing
one wishes to level at Descartes' resolution. To resolve his quandary he autl
wishes to prove the existence of a truthful God. But now suppose that what
is removed by this proof, the fear that a supreme deceiver might exist, is
something which was viewed by Descartes as a mental affliction, then one
will object that Descartes should not attach great intellectual value to the
achievement. To put it crudely, all that he will have removed is a certain
neurosis in himself; intellectually, the atheist ( = the man who does not
believe in any God, let alone non-deceiving) is in no worse position than
the believer. This is the objection, often made to Descartes, that an atheist
may have knowledge of mathematics; it proceeds from attributing to him
one assessment of his mental conflict, namely the view that the intellectually
reputable state is the inability to doubt a clearly perceived mathematical
proposition. Suppose on the other hand that we ascribe to Descartes the
opposite starting point. Suppose we ascribe to him the view that these
certainties, which he cannot help feeling, are none the less not intellectually
reputable; then one will object that for Descartes the proof of God's
existence cannot succeed. For its steps will be, at best, propositions which
he cannot doubt while conducting the proof; hence propositions which he
must prospectively find unacceptable since he prospectively knows that he
will be able later on to suppose that he might have been deceived about
their truth by a malignant God. For the proof to succeed Descartes must
view its future steps as intellectually reputable; and for him so to view them,
the proof must already have succeeded. This, as is well known, is a charge
of circularity.
Both charges were made to Descartes himself, and both have been
extensively studied by scholars, the second more than the firstas is under-
standable, since it is more damaging. It is worth pointing out, however, that
they are so to speak the opposite faces of the same coin: they proceed from
attributing to Descartes opposite assessments of the mental conflict which
the proof of the existence of God is designed to resolve. In this conflict at
least one belief must be taken by Descartes as pure mental affliction. If the
affliction is his inability to remain certain, there is no philosophical need to
prove that God exists, though this may have a certain therapeutic value.
On the other hand, if the affliction is the inability to go on doubting, there
is no possibility of proving that God exists, since any proof will proceed
through the prover's accepting something that he is unable to doubt, hence
disqualified from accepting. So the proof is either unnecessary or impossible.
Differently: Descartes is in the position of either my analytic patient or
Strindberg's Adolf. However, the patient requires not proof but therapy;
and Adolf will accept nothing as a proof.
Such are the objections, which I shall name respectively the objection
of the possibility of atheist science ('the proof is otiose'), and the objection
of the impossibility of theist science ('the proof is circular'). It is an interest-
490
If
A
P
1
E
lich
he
Mental Conflict: Descartes
ing fact that both objections were first made in print by the same person, the
author of the Second Set of Objections:
hat
Since you are not yet certain of the existence of God, and what is more,
according to your own statement, cannot be certain of anything or know
anything clearly and distinctly unless you already know certainly and
clearly that God exists, it follows that you cannot know clearly and
distinctly that you are a thinking thing, since according to you that
knowledge depends on the clear knowledge of God's existence, the proof
of which you have not reached when you conclude that you clearly know
what you are.
Take this also that while an Atheist knows clearly and distinctly that
the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, yet he is far
from believing in the existence of God; in fact he denies it (AT VII,
124-125; HRI I , 26).
To which objection is the Descartes of Meditation Three more vulnerable ?
If he is like the analytic patient, he should parry the charge about the
Atheist; if like Adolf, the charge about the Cogito. On reading the fine
print of our initial text, we might incline to the second alternative. When
Descartes reflects on God's supreme power he 'can't help admitting' [non
:, is
sne
the
ain
not
lan
:ist
im
illy
cal
:he
;se
lly
i's
ch
he
he
u t
possum nonfateri] that this God mi ght deceive hi m in anyt hi ng: this sounds
i s t
like the report of a reasoned belief. On t he other hand, when Descartes
n
> turns his mi nd to t he mat t ers themselves, he is ' so convinced by t hem that
S
e
[he] burst[s] out [tam plane ab Mis persuadeor, ut sponte erumpam in has
voces]', "let who will deceive me . . . etc."' This sounds more like the
; n
report of an affliction. Still, it would be unwise to rest much weight on such
r
" slender evidence.
a t
Fortunately we need not do this, because in his Reply Descartes put
m
forward a doctrine which he took to be an answer to both objections. I hold
; n
this Reply to be crucial because, as well as being Descartes' first answer, it
a
* is also his last: on all subsequent occasions where he is confronted with
i e
either objection, he either reiterates the doctrine presented here or refers
0
his objector (as for instance Arnauld [AT VII, 245-246; HR II, 114-115])
e
- back to this text. Here it is, quoted at some length:
e
d . . . as soon as we think that we rightly perceive something, we spon-
:e taneously persuade ourselves that it is true. Now if this conviction is so
strong that we can never have a reason to doubt that of which we have
convinced ourselves, there is nothing further to inquire: we have all
that can rationally be required. What does it matter to us if perchance
someone should feign that that of whose truth we are so firmly convinced
a. appears false to God or to an Angel, and hence is, absolutely speaking,
1 false? What heed would we pay to that absolute falsity, since we should
not believe it in any way, or even in the least entertain its existence? For
491
Andre Gombay
we have assumed a conviction so strong that nothing can remove it, and
that conviction is clearly the same as the most perfect certainty [perfectis-
sima certitudo.].
But it may be doubted whether there is any such certainty, whether
such firm and immutable conviction exists... If it does, it can reside
only in matters which are clearly perceived by the intellect.
Among these, some are so clear and so simple that we cannot think
of them without believing them to be true, e.g. that I while I think exist,
that what is once done cannot be undone, and other similar truths about
which we clearly possess this certainty. For we cannot doubt them unless
we think of them, but we cannot think of them without believing them
to be true. Hence we cannot doubt them without at the same time
believing them to be true; hence we can never doubt t hem. . . Again it
does not matter if someone feigns that these appear false to God or to an
Angel, because the evidence of our perception will not permit us to hear
[audiamus] such fictions.
There are other matters which are also perceived most clearly by our
intellect when we attend sufficiently closely to the reasons on which our
knowledge of them depends, and at that time we cannot doubt them; but
since we can forget those reasons and yet remember the conclusions
deduced from them, the question arises whether we can entertain the
same firm and immutable certainty about these conclusions while we
recollect that they were deduced from evident principles . . . I reply that
those possess it who, thanks to their knowledge of God, realize that the
faculty of understanding which was given to them by God must tend
toward the truth; but that this certainty is not shared by others (AT VII,
144-146; HR II, 41-43).
What is remarkable in this doctrine is not so much (a) the thesis that
about some propositions all men have perfect certainty, nor even (b) the
thesis that about some other propositions only believers can have perfect
certainty, but (c) the notion of perfectissima certitudo which is invoked.
Perfect certainty is certainty that is firm and immutable. I shall discuss
firmness later; for the moment, consider only immutability. According to
Descartes, a proposition is perfectly certain now only if I cannot doubt it
now, but more important, only if there will never be a moment at which
I can doubt it, or at least never a moment at which I cannot remove at once
any doubt that I might entertain about it. If I can sustain a doubt tomorrow,
then I am not perfectly certain today. Men have sometimes thought of love
in this way: Abelard loves truly now, because he will love Heloise all his
life. More dubiously, we might also think of health in this fashion. I might
say: my heart is perfectly hale now, if that heart will remain hale as long as
I live. It follows of course that a man is not the last judge of his perfect
certainties: he may be certain of something now and believe that he will
492
Mental Conflict: Descartes
and never stop being certain, yet be mistaken in that belief. It also seems proper
:tis- to distinguish, as Descartes does in the Reply, between two kinds of perfect
certainties, the immediate and the derived: the first are of propositions
her which can never be entertained without being believed (e.g. 'I while I think
side exist'); the second, of propositions which through reasoning become certain
at some point (e.g. Pythagoras's Theorem) and then never cease being such,
ink Likewise, there is love at first sight, and love that is grown into, and then
ist, never relinquished.
Jut Armed with this conception, Descartes can now answer on both fronts,
ess To the charge that the atheist, too, can have knowledge of mathematics,
sm Descartes replies that this knowledge will be very much more restricted in
ne scope than the believer's, because (a) perfect certainty (not just certainty)
i it is required for true knowledge, or scientia, and (b) the atheist is by and
an large confined to his immediate perfect certainties. The first part of this
:ar reply, that perfectissima certitudo is required for scientia, is a thesis which
with some variation in terminologyruns throughout Descartes' v/ork. It
ur appears in the Fifth Meditation (At VII, 70; HR I, 184), in the Reply to the
ur Second Set of Objections, a few paragraphs before the long text which I have
ut just quoted (AT VII, 141; HR II, 39), and most clearly in a Letter to
is Regius, 24 May 1640 (AT III, 64; K 73-74):
You say that the truth of axioms which are clearly and distinctly con-
ceived is self evident. This, I agree, is true during the time they are
clearly and distinctly conceived because our mind is of such a nature that
, it cannot help assenting to what it clearly conceives. But because we often
remember conclusions that we have derived from such premisses without
actually attending to the premisses, I say that in such a case if we lack
knowledge of God, we can pretend that they are uncertain even though
we remember that they were deduced from clear principles; because per-
haps our nature is such that we go wrong even in the most evident matters.
Consequently, even at the moment when we deduced them from those
principles we did not have scientific knowledge {scientia) of them, but
only a conviction {persuasio) of them. I distinguish the two as follows:
There is persuasio when there remains some reason which might lead us
to doubt; but scientia is persuasio based on an argument so strong that it
can never be shaken by any stronger argument.
The important sentences are the last two. Descartes says: even at the time
when the atheist deduced his theorem and was certain of it, he did not have
scientia, because there existed then an argument which might later (once
the steps of the deduction were forgotten) overturn that certainty. It does
not matter if that argument never strikes the atheist, it is enough that it be
possible that it should strike him. So atheistic science is by and large
confined to the stock of immediate and unshakeable certainties owned by
every man. Of course, there might occur small individual variations: an
493
Andre Gombay
atheist geometer might become so fluent in the proof of Pythagoras's
Theorem that he can never entertain the theorem without the proof. His|
science will then extend to that. But given human mental capacity, such
fluency cannot be pushed very far; to the atheist, the bulk of knowledge is |
a Sisyphean goal. The believer is in an altogether different position. He
knows that 'the faculty of understanding which was given to [him] by God i
must tend towards the truth'. So, to remain certain of Pythagoras's
Theorem, he need only remember that he once understood how it was
proved.
Such is the doctrine of perfectissima certitudo; such the reply to the
objection that atheist science is possible. But the same doctrine will also
enable Descartes to answer the opposite charge, that theist science is
impossible (or that his argument for God's existence is circular). Whereof
a man is certain, thereof he cannot doubt; and whereof always certain,
thereof never doubt. Suppose two things:
Suppose that there is a proof that a truthful God exists, a proof such that
each step, while entertained, is certain. It does not matter how many axioms
are required, how many steps, how long it takes the mind to run through
them all; each step, while entertained, cannot help but be believed. If there
is such a proof, a man can become certain that God exists and does not
deceive.
Well, there is such a proofin the Third Meditation. On this point, the
Conversation with Burman is instructive. Burman wondered whether a man
could continue to attend to the axioms, hence continue to be certain, through-
out the demonstration:
Our mind can think of only one thing at a time, whereas the proof in
question is a fairly long one involving several axioms. Then again, every
thought occurs instantaneously, and there are many thoughts which come
to mind in the proof. So one will not be able to keep the attention on all
the axioms, since one thought will get in the way of another.
Descartes replied:
First, it is just not true that the mind can think of only one thing at a time.
It is true it cannot think of a large number of things at the same time, but
it can still think of more than one thing . . . . Secondly, it is false that
thought occurs instantaneously; for all my acts take up time, and I can
be said to be continuing and carrying on with the same thought during
a period of time . . . . Therefore, it is clear that we are able to behold
[complecti] in its entirety the proof of God's existence. As long as we are
engaged in this process, we are certain that we are not being deceived,
and every difficulty is removed (AT V, 148-149; C 6-7).
So, a man can become certain that God exists and does not deceive. Still,
you will object, this is only certainty, not knowledge: for the latter some-
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Mental Conflict: Descartes
thing further is required, namely perfect (immutable) certainty. We can
imagine Adolf conducting a proof in his wife's arms and reaching the
conclusion that she can, after all, be trusted in everything. Alas, his certainty
never survives the cruel light of dawn. Similarly, will Thursday's prover
iKftViavea relapse, and say to himself on Friday: 'Yes, I was sure yesterday
thax* a truthful God existed, but how do I know that I was not being tricked
yesterday by a deceiving God?'? If this relapse can occur, the believer has
,not escaped Sisyphus' fate. However:
Suppose that the certainty of God's existence, once acquired through
demonstration, is something which then can never be lost. It simply endures.
In that event, perfect certainty is attainable, and scientia also.
Well, such is precisely the caseaccording to Descartes. The conviction
of God's existence and integrity, once achieved, remains, provided only
that there remains a memory of its achievement. This crucial thesis is
asserted in the Fifth Meditation (AT VII, 70; HR I, 184), and most clearly
in the Letter to Regius, 24 May 1640 (AT III, 64, K 74), immediately after
the sentences which I quoted two pages ago:
A man who has once understood the arguments which prove that God
exists and is not a deceiver, provided that he remembers the conclusion
'God is no deceiver', whether or not he continues to attend to the
arguments for it, will continue to possess not only the conviction, but
real scientia of this.
So God's integrity can be known, and the circle escaped.
What do I think of these answers? First, I think, we should marvel at
Descartes' ingenuity. His very attempt to prove God's existence invites two
charges, and it looks as though he cannot answer them both. For the
attempt proceeds from a quandary which compels him to give intellectual
weight either to his certainties or to his doubts. If he does the former, the
proof appears unnecessaryexcept perhaps as an exercise in auto-therapy;
if the latter, the proof appears impossibleexcept perhaps as an achieve-
ment in self-hypnosis. Yet in answer to the two charges Descartes offers
a single doctrine which stands as Janus in his temple, facing both ways. It
enables him to claim that even if the doubt is given no intellectual weight,
the proof of God's integrity is required; and that even if the certainties are
given no weight, the proof is possible. This is the doctrine of perfectissima
certitudo. Descartes invites us to regard certainty as a condition stretching
out over time, as perhaps we view love or health. Where there is no
immutability, there is no genuine certainty. So Dr Knock's dictum: tout
homme bien portant est un malade qui s'ignore applies very properly to the
atheist. If it is argued, as by the Sixth Objectors, that an atheist is even
less likely to entertain the thought of a deceitful God, Descartes will reply:
'the more impotence he assigns to the author of his being, the more reason
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Andre Gombay
he will have to wonder whether he is not by nature such as to be deceived!
in what seems most evident to him' (AT VII, 428; HR 245). So the proof|
of God's integrity is required by all. On the other hand, it is also accessible [
to any. Once a man has become convinced that God is no deceiver, this<
conviction certifies itself. For at this point, justification and mental history
converge: once convinced, a man can never again sustain the thought thatj
he might be deceived in what seems most evident to him. That thought is
simply blocked out. So his certainty is sufficient unto his knowledge: in the!
words of the Second Reply, he has 'all that can rationally be required'.
Impressive though it is, I do not think that Descartes' doctrine succeeds 1
in the end. It is felled not by logic, but by a deeper unintelligibility. I claim
that Descartes' main theses concerning knowledge and certainty proceed
from a view of how the mind works, a view of what it is to know something,
which is quite foreign to us and which we can no longer properly understand.
We are able, by constructing models which fit the doctrine up to a point,
to come to appreciate its strangeness; able also, by reflecting upon
Descartes' place in the history of thought, to form an idea of the mental
universe within whose confines the doctrine was conceived, and of the
requirements which it was meant to satisfy. But even when that is done
there remains, I think, a core of deep obscurity.
Let us recapitulate. What a man knowshis scientiais of two kinds:
(1) propositions which he can never doubt (I have called these immediate
certainties); (2) propositions of which he becomes certain at some point, and
can never doubt from then on (I have called these derived certainties: they ,
are arrived at by deduction from propositions of the first kind). Naturally,
the bulk of knowledge is made up of derived certainties, and it accrues only ,
to the person who can forever hold at bay the supposition that he might be
deceived in what seems most evident. This ability in turn resides only in
someone who has once proved that God exists and has given him a faculty
of understanding which 'tends toward the truth'. Clearly, in this doctrine
matters of mental chronology occupy a central position: for the doubts to
occur, different times must be taken up by different thoughts; and for
immutable (derived) certainties to be possible, a certain stretch of time
must be given over to a certain sequence of thoughts (the thoughts involved
in the proof of God's existence.) Clearly, such a doctrine must reckon with
facts of human memory; yet here, Descartes' account does not seem right.
Consider for example how memory is supposed to behave both in the
genesis of his mental conflict and in its resolution. To Descartes, the
existence of God, once proved, remains perfectly certain, provided he
remembers having carried out the proof (vide Meditation Five). That, we
saw, is an essential requirement of the resolution. This certainty cannot be
of the ordinary immediate kind, for if it were, there would be no atheist and
no Meditation Three: no one could ever think of God's existence without
being at once certain that God existed. Nor can the certainty be of the
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Mental Conflict: Descartes
ordinary derived kind, for this would generate a regress. Derived certainties
depend for their survival on the knowledge that God exists; so a man who
had proved God's existence could continue to be certain of this only if he
already knew, hence was perfectly certain, that God existed; and for that
to be the case, he would already have to know, hence be perfectly certain,
that God existed; and so on. So we have here an acquired certainty which
survives through the mere memory of its acquisition. Why should this be
so? On Descartes' own admission (vide Conversation with Burmari) the
proof of God's existence is long and unobvious; surely a man can remember
its conclusion without recollecting all its steps. Normally this situation
opens the door to doubts; here, it does not. Why should memory, in this
one instance, have the remarkable power of sustaining certainty? What is
more, the same kind of problemthough in an opposite directionattends
Descartes' account of his initial predicament. Let us return to Meditation
Three, and let us take seriously the thesis that some propositions cannot be
entertained without being believed. When Descartes entertains '2 + 3 = 5',
he cannot help assenting. Later, he thinks of an all-powerful God, and
believes that this God could deceive him about anything. We must suppose
that at this later moment, either Descartes no longer remembers having had
the earlier thought, or that remembering having had the thought does not
involve having it again; for if it did, Descartes would again exclaim: 'Let
who will deceive me, he cannot bring it about that . . . etc.' So for the
conflict to occur, Descartes must either forget, or remember without enter-
taining. Both alternatives are unattractive. Why should he forget? Why
should remembering that he had the thought that 2 + 3 was 5 not be a case
of thinking that 2 + 3 is 5 ? So it looks as though Descartes both expects too
little and demands too much from human memory. For his conflicts to
arise, the memory of having entertained the most simple truths must
sometimes fall short of actually entertaining these truths; for his conflict
to be resolved, the memory of having once proved a complicated truth must
forever have the same impact as actually proving that truth.
Still, we might say: the problem here lies not with memory, but with
what is supposed to be remembered. After all, the requirements of Descartes'
account are met well enough by my examples. Remember, two things are
needed for a Descartes-type conflict to arise: (a) that it be between two
beliefs each of which saturates the mind of the believer: each, when actually
held, blocks out the other (for otherwise they could coexist); (b) that con-
versely mere memory of one of these beliefs does not have the same saturating
quality as the belief itself (for otherwise, that memory could not coexist
with the other belief). And for the conflict to disappear, something must
eventually occur in the person so definitive that it prevents one of the
warring beliefs from ever taking hold again. Well, passionate love or musical
rapture can perhaps satisfy all these requirements. As I hear the clarinet
subside quietly at the close of Mozart's Quintet, thoughts of Bachian
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Andre Gombay
supremacy simply cannot intrude; and Adolf in his wife's arms cannot bei
touched by doubt. Love and musical enjoyment also display the requisite'
gap between actual experience and its recollection: I can remember enchant-
ment at a performance of the Clarinet Quintet without feeling enchanted
1
now; and passion remembered is not passion relived. Finally, in the case
of love or music, we can also envisage a Cartesian resolution of the conflict.
1
I might hear a performance of the B-Minor Mass so sublime as to settle
once and for all the question of musical pre-eminence; Adolf might achieve*
serenity not perhaps at one memorable instant of his life but gradually,
through reaching an inner peace so profound that thoughts of uxorial deceit*
can no longer impinge. The question is: can we recognize these features in
the certainties that make up Cartesian scientia, for instance the certainty^
that 2 + 3 is 5, or the certainty about the square on the hypotenuse, or the
certainty that the heavens are fluid (there is a good list of them at the end'
of the Principles, AT IX, 324; HR I, 302)?
Without further discussion, let us accept Descartes' claim about
potency of the proof that God exists, by viewing that proof on the model of
the sublime musical experience: perhaps mere remembrance is sufficient to<
block out future doubts. Let us also note that Descartes claims for his
perfect certainties precisely that blocking out quality which we recognize*
in intense love. Read again the Second Reply:
What does it matter to us if perchance someone should feign that that
of whose truth we are so firmly convinced appears false to God or to an
Angel, and hence is, absolutely speaking, false ? What heed would we pay
to that falsity since we should not believe it in any way or even in the
least entertain its existence? For we have assumed a conviction so firm
that nothing can move it [supponimus enim persuasionem tamfirmamut
nullo modo tollipotesi], and that conviction is clearly the same as the most
perfect certainty.
A few lines later:
Again it does not matter if someone feigns that these appear false to God
or to an Angel, because the evidence of our perception will not permit us
to hear [evidentia nostrae perceptionis non permittet ut audiamus] such
fictions (AT VII, 145-146; HR II, 41-42).
The words which I have quoted in their Latin original are to be taken
seriously, for they enshrine a veritable theory of mental dynamics, a theory
of how thoughts move in and out of the mind. As Descartes describes his
perfect certainties, they are the mental counterparts of massive and solid
physical objects. As a solid object fills out entirely the space which it
occupies, so a Cartesian certainty fills out entirely the mind which it
inhabits: it will not allow that mind to 'hear' contrary thoughts. Like a
block of marble it will not be moved, and will keep all else out. In our text,
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Mental Conflict: Descartes
t be Descartes calls this firmness. Often the power of a certainty to block out
site' other thoughts is described by Descartes in vocabulary borrowed not from
mt- mechanics but from optics: certainty involves illumination. As is well known,
ted
(
that terminology pervades Descartes' work; how attached he was to it can
be gathered from an exchange with Hobbes. Hobbes, no lover of illumi-
nation, had remarked about a passage of Meditation Four:
:ase
ictJ
ttle
This term great mental illumination is metaphorical, hence not adapted
to the purpose of argument. Moreover everyone who is free from doubt
claims to possess a similar illumination.
eve
Hy,
:eit
I in Descartes replied:
ltVT
i It does not matter at all whether or not the term great illumination is
' ,1 adapted to the purpose of argument, provided it is explanatoryas
1 indeed it is. For no one can be unaware that by mental illumination is
i t meant clearness of cognition, which is perhaps not had by everyone who
r thinks he has it; but this does not prevent it from being something very
different from a bigoted opinion, into the making of which there goes no
perceptual evidence [absque evidenti perceptione concepta] (AT VII, 191-
192; HR II, 75-76).
The last line is important: where there is no illumination, there is no
evidens perceptio. The same phrase appeared in the Second Reply to
characterize firmness: where there is evidentia perceptionis, the mind will
at
in
iv
We are on Hobbes's side now. If we can attribute Cartesian firmness to
3t
not 'hear' a contrary supposition.
We are on Hobbes's side now. ]
any state of mind, it is not to intellectual certainties; illumination to us
bespeaks the non-intellectual. So very fundamentally, Descartes' concept
of knowledge is one which we no longer share, though we may recognize its
lineage. Like other philosophers before him, Descartes holds that knowledge
involves illumination. But there is another fact about knowledge which he
takes very seriously: truth often requires proof, demonstration; and proving
takes time. How is the mind to preserve its illumination as it goes through
the many steps of a proof? and more worrying still, how can it recapture
that illumination when it entertains a previously demonstrated truth and
not all the steps of the demonstration are remembered, and so the thread
along which the light travels is broken? It looks as though in his youth,
when he wrote the Regulae, Descartes believed that the gap between im-
mediate certainty and certainty achieved through deduction was bridgeable
by the simple assurance that all deduction could be made more or less instan-
taneous through practice (ATX, 388; HR I, 19). So presumably a man
entertaining a previously deduced truth and not now touched by illumi-
nation could reassure himself by reflecting that at any rate in principle he
could be so touched, because by going over the deduction again and again
he could collapse all its steps into a single quasi-instantaneous thought.
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Andre Gombay
Yet in the 1630s Descartes must have come to find this reassurance
insufficient, as the thought of the deceiving God inserted itself and gave
rise to the mental conflict which he described in Meditation Three, and
with whose statement this paper began. But now we can conjecture a
deeper origin for this conflict. Let me return to Adolf for the last time. We I
might say that Adolf is torn by a conflict between beliefs because more?
deeply he is torn by a conflict of aspirations. He wishes love to have the
texture of passion, ravishment; but this love is also to last for a lifetime.
Similarly Descartes wishes certainty to have the texture of firmness, of the
sort of impenetrability which excludes even the supposition of a mistake;
but this certainty must also endure. Alas, for both men the corrosive action
of time comes between aspiration and reality. Adolf cannot accommodate
himself and is destroyed. Descartes claims accommodation: the memory of
one proof bestows everlasting firmness upon his acquired certainties. Whose
fate is more believable, Adolf's or Descartes'? I do not think that we can
say. Since the eighteenth century we no longer aspire to Cartesian firmness,
or to Cartesian immutability; perhaps we do not even any longer understand I
these ideals. So we are unable to tell whether they can jointly be fulfilled.
University of Toronto
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