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]

I don't think there's any significant difference between the three on these points.

As you say, for Malebranche the connection between mind and matter is accomplished through God's ordainment. This is really the same thing as what Spinoza says. We can say that Spinoza argues for monism while the Cartesians argue for pluralism, but in fact this mistakenly supposes that there's an underlying notion of substance they both share and on the basis of which such a distinction can be made. But what happens between the Cartesians and Spinoza is a redefinition of substance. If we take substance to mean its Spinozist sense, the Cartesians would agree to monism. They certainly do not think finite minds and matter can be conceived in themselves (Spinoza's definition of substance), but rather that they are conceived through God (this is the argument of the first three of Descartes' meditations). When we correct for this redefinition, there is no substantial difference between Malebranche and Spinoza here. Like Malebranche, Spinoza denies any interaction between mind and body. Like Spinoza, Malebranche makes finite minds and bodies inhere in God's substantial activity.

Nor is Descartes substantially difference. His supposed account of interaction is just a materialist account of the same ordainment by God articulated by Malebranche and Spinoza. There is nothing about the willing of the mind that in itself causes there to be a certain motion in the brain. Rather, God ordains that when there is a certain act of will, there will be a certain motion in the brain. Descartes argues for this quite explicitly, denying that the mind has any causal connection to the body outside of that constituted in God's decrees. He uses the example of focussing the eye, arguing that we cannot control the eye by directly willing it to change shape, or for the pupil to dilate, but that we can will to be looking at, for example, objects closer and further away. When we do this, our eye changes accordingly, because the benevolent God has set up this ordainment so that the unity of mind and body functions according to a natural manner. But there is no inherent causal connection between mind and body, rather this connection is constituted only in God's decree. And the movements of the brain are just an account of what goes on in the body on the occasion of the mind's activities, in accord with this decree.

Similarly, Cartesian dualism almost invariably gets oversold. In the first four meditations, he is establishing an epistemology which links sensible natures, finite minds, and God in two different orders of priority. But his conclusions about the relation between mind and body are in meditation six, and this gives us a much stronger notion of a mind-body unity, rather than a strict dualism. Indeed, Descartes will argue that it is the joy of the naturally function body that provides the highest reward of the soul, and that the good life is consequently inherently the embodied life.

[lhynard]

Yes, we were discussing last night how much Malebranche and Spinoza are really saying the same sort of thing. (If I recall correctly, one of their contemporaries argued such, which really annoyed Malebranche, because he did not want to be associated with Spinoza.)

I recall Descartes giving the example of the eye, but I guess I missed the occasionalist bent within it. Thanks for pointing that out and for commenting in general.

[anosognosia]

Yeah, Leibniz famously argued that and maintained that his philosophy was the only way for rationalism to avoid being Spinozist. Although there's a good question as to whether he ultimately ended up saying anything substantially different either.

The Cartesians were polemically divided on several issues of interpretation, probably because Descartes was never as clear or systematic as we might expect him to be. Malebranche's position became the most influential interpretation, to the point that most people responding to Cartesianism for the next couple hundred years are really responding to Malebranche. Yet because he argues so clearly for a position which is rather strange at face, he is also often seen as heterodox, in the sense that we need to distinguish (orthodox) Cartesianism from Malebranchism. Getting into the issue of their similarities is really getting back into the debates of the early Cartesians. Certainly in some sense they are different, though I would argue not in this sense. If you look at Meditation 6 or the book on Passions, I think you'll find that Descartes is fairly clear that the relation between soul and body is entirely mediated by the ordainment of god. His non-occasionalist followers argued for a theory of "physical influx" which posits a causal relation inherent in the activity of the soul. But it's dreadfully difficult to conceive what the relation could possibly be without going back to the pre-modern theories of causation by "transmission of species", which all the Cartesians were highly motivated to avoid.