More on Descartes: His Second "Proof"

[lhynard]

My third ever entry on this blog had to do (in part) with René Descartes and his famous Cogito, ergo sum.[1] I have referred back to that entry many times in discussions here about epistemology, how my belief in my own existence is (after believing in logic) the second most secure of all my beliefs.[2]While I highly respect Descartes - he's the

Comments

[anosognosia]

"Only in a reflexive mental act do we infer the concepts and psychological states on which all nondiscursive mental acts are based, as well as the bearer of those concepts and states."

Yes this is Descartes' position as well. He does not advance the cogito through an immediate act of a priori reasoning, as does Spinoza for the concept of substance for example, but rather shows how it followed "in a reflexive mental act" from sensible experience.

"...shows how that of which we are first and most certainly aware is not the Cogito, but the sensible, material world."

The Cartesian objection here is in line with most medieval thought, and indeed back to Aristotle and perhaps Plato, in observing a conflation in your remark between "first" and "most certainly." For something to be the first object of cognition in the order of nature is not the same as for something to be the first object of cognition in the order of fact, or we may say in regards to their transcendental rather than temporal nature. The fact that we are (temporally) first in thinking sensible nature does not contradict the evident fact that it is God that is the (transcendentally) first object of thought, without which no thinking is possible, even that thinking that is evident to us first in the order of nature.

And this is indeed Descartes' position: that sensible nature is first temporally and God is first transcendentally. (The cogito for Descartes in fact occupies neither place, but rather is intermediate in both orders.) Thus his meditation follows the order of nature in arguing from sensible natures (Med 1) to the finite mind (Med 2) to God (Med 3), from which point it becomes evident that the opposite course becomes necessary to depict the order of fact.