Examining The Meditations (Part 3): Descent Into Skepticism

Entries in this series:

Examining The Meditations (Part 1): The Religion Of Descartes --https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/08/examining-meditations-part-1-religion.html

Examining The Meditations (Part 2): Cartesian Doubt --https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/08/examining-meditations-part-2-cartesian.html

Examining The Meditations (Part 3): Descent Into Skepticism


This is the third post in an ongoing series on Descartes' book called Meditations on First Philosophy.  I will not have the space to summarize every previous post in the series as I write each new entry, so reading the prior ones will be very helpful.  The one immediately before this, however, focused on how to obtain true knowledge one must accept only an infallible foundation and how reason brings the veracity of our sensory perceptions into doubt.  With that, allow me to continue!

As Descartes realizes that information provided to his mind by the senses is not necessarily reliable, he begins to observe that, still, he knows that his senses are perceiving specific scenarios, such as the one he describes here:


"Yet although the senses occasionally deceive us with respect to objects which are very small or in the distance, there are many other beliefs about which doubt is quite impossible, even though they are derived from the senses - for example, that I am here, sitting by the fire, wearing a winter dressing-gown, holding this piece of paper in my hands, and so on." (13)


Perceptions are infallibly certain (I mean the experience of perceptions is infallibly certain, not whether or not they represent reality).  It is impossible for me to not perceive what I am perceiving, and thus the fact that I have certain perceptions cannot be false.  Descartes acknowledges the fact that he really is perceiving that he is sitting by a fire and wearing certain clothes; of these perceptions he cannot be mistaken.  Yet whether or not the perceptions conform to the way reality is remains a serious inquiry, as Descartes will soon write.

He compares his degree of doubt to how madmen are disconnected from reality, supposing that he will be like an insane person if he continues doubting as he is:


"Again, how could it be denied that these hands or this whole body are mine?  Unless perhaps I were to liken myself to madmen, whose brains are so damaged by the persistent vapours of melancholia that they firmly maintain they are kings when they are paupers, or say they are dressed in purple when they are naked . . . But such people are insane, and I would be thought equally mad if I took anything from them . . .

. . . A brilliant piece of reasoning!  As if I were not a man who sleeps at night, and regularly has all the same experiences while asleep as madmen do when awake . . . How often, asleep at night, am I convinced of just such familiar events - that I am here in my dressing-gown, sitting by the fire - when in fact I am lying undressed in bed!" (13)


Descartes here raises what I will call the "madman objection" to Cartesian skepticism--he anticipates that someone might tell him, in effect, "You just doubt your senses because you are a madman!"  Just as the insane may not realize the way the external world is and have delusional false perceptions instead, Descartes considers that he might be called insane if he supposes that what he is perceiving is not real (the inverse of what the madmen in his example do).

He refutes this objection by acknowledging the fact that he has had experiences in dreams similar to what madmen experience while awake, the obvious next question looming ahead being "how can I distinguish being asleep from being awake?"  If he cannot prove to himself that he is or is not like the madmen, then how can he accuse himself of being insane for doubting things other people might call "obvious"?  His "A brilliant piece of reasoning!" line seemingly serves as a sarcastic response to those who would merely assume his skepticism is unfounded.  The "madman objection" holds no intellectual weight because it assumes its conclusion as true without actual verification, with verification being the goal of Descartes.

As I suggested, one of the next questions Descartes offers himself addresses the possibility of him dreaming his present experiences up:


"As I think about this more carefully, I see plainly that there are never any sure signs by means of which being awake can be distinguished from being asleep." (13)


Actually, there is a way to objectively and logically distinguish between being awake and asleep [1] (I mean in terms of everyday experience, not to say I can prove to myself that I am not in a simulation of some sort).  But at this point in my commentary on the Meditations, I will merely post the link to an article where I tackled the dream hypothesis at the bottom of this post and explain it again later in this series.  Still, Descartes entertains the idea because he has yet to demonstrate it to be false, seeing as he has only just leapt into his Cartesian doubt--the objective proof of being awake I discovered and posted about earlier in the year can only be known if other things are known that Descartes has yet to establish or reconfirm.  Even propositions later proven objectively false must be considered at the beginning of the descent into Cartesian skepticism, where all beliefs are doubted to identify what is true by necessity.  One must not assume the conclusions, one must prove them; this is the objective of knowledge.

Descartes then continues his consideration of the dream hypothesis:


"Suppose then that I am dreaming, and that these particulars - that my eyes are open, that I am moving my head and stretching out my hands - are not true.  Perhaps, indeed, I do not even have such hands or such a body at all." (13)


Note that the latter sentence does not seem to mean that Descartes has hypothesized that he has no body at all yet, but he is now skeptical of the claim that he has "such a body" as the one he perceives himself to have.  Later on in this series, once it becomes more relevant to Descartes' line of thought, I will, as I have done before on my blog, show how I know with absolute certainty that I have a body of some sort.  But for now, I will say that Descartes is correct in saying that just because his body appears a certain way to him does not mean it truly has that appearance at all.

So, in conclusion, Descartes has thus far recognized that the information perceived by his senses is not necessarily an accurate depiction of reality, although he has realized that he really is having specific sensory perceptions, and he has also legitimately considered the possibility that he is just dreaming up his current sensory perceptions.  There is still more to his first "Meditation" (the first of six chapters in this book of his) that I have not dissected, but in hopes of not frightening off readers with a massive post I will save assessment of the remainder of the first chapter for later.


Summary of observations:
1. Even if what my senses perceive does not correspond to the actual external world, I know for sure that I have certain sensory perceptions at any given time.
2. Calling someone insane does not prove that his or her claims or beliefs are false, however foreign or "strange" they sound to you.


Meditations on First Philosophy with Selections from the Objections and Replies.  Descartes, Rene.  Ed. Cottingham, John.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.  Print.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/07/dreams-and-consciousness.html