Topic 1 - Cartesian Doubt

Descartes' "Meditations on First Philosophy" count among the greatest works of philosophy, and have fuelled great debate and controversy over the last 400 years. However, Descartes was not merely a philosopher, but was also a brilliant mathematician and scientist as well, who is credited with helping to sweep aside the mystical aspects of science as existed at the time he was writing, and introduce in their place the doctrine of empiricism, i.e. relying on recorded observation and experience of the senses to understand the world rather than constructing theories incorporating large doses of religious and mystical superstitions.
The First Meditation can be seen as the starting point on a journey to establish the foundations of a new scientific theory. Descartes believed that he was capable of developing a new scientific and philosophical system, not through any belief about his own superior faculties, but through the initial premise that there is nothing that we cannot know if we do not examine it closely enough and direct our intellect to uncovering the truth of a situation.
It is no wonder then, that in order to begin this quest for truth and knowledge, Descartes begins his philosophical inquiry by determining what of that which he already believes to be true can honestly be said to be true. By so doing, he can lay the base for the construction of his philosophical system. In removing any areas of doubt, he will be left with that which it is impossible to deny, and these are the basic truths that can form the base of our knowledge and can be expanded on.
He begins by turning his attention to the source of his previously held beliefs, his senses.1 Yet almost immediately he begins to doubt the validity of the information he has received from them; it is the case, he asserts, that the senses can on occasion deceive, as in the case of a round tower appearing square when seen from far away. Yet this is not to say that one can never trust the senses; clearly that would be a ridiculous over-reaction. Descartes accepts this point; it is when we are using our senses at the edge of their capacity, as looking at something far away, listening to something that is very faint, etc. that we are most likely to go wrong (although there are occasions when our senses deceive us about objects that are close up, e.g. a stick floating in water appears to be bent). Surely there are cases when we can distinctly perceive the data we are being provided with. Descartes himself provides the example of his sitting by his desk beside the fire, writing on a piece of paper, and wearing his dressing-gown. He can feel the heat from the flames, see the paper, and so on. This Descartes takes as being indicative of the most favourable conditions for the senses supplying us with correct data as they are being used in favourable conditions. If it can be shown that what he believes on the basis of what appear to be favourable conditions is false, then all the other sensory data he receives must also be false. If the best candidate for a job is rejected, then all the lesser candidates must also be rejected.
Is Descartes able to find fault with what he believes to be the case here, i.e. that he is sitting by the fire writing? Initially, he suggests that to object to this being the case would be mad, as if he were a pauper who insanely said that he was a king. On further reflection though, he can indeed find fault, for he acknowledges that he is in the habit of sleeping and often has dreams, many of which include representations of objects from his waking life. How is he to determine that he is not at this moment sleeping, yet at the same time dreaming that he is sitting by the fire writing?
It seems that in order to know that he is sitting by the fire, he must first of all know that he is not dreaming that he is sitting by the fire, for if he does not know this, then he cannot make any judgements about what is happening because, for all he can tell, all his sensory experiences to date could be dreams about real life situations. In other words, he must be able to distinguish waking from sleeping. Descartes discovers that he cannot do this, and is forced to conclude that he knows nothing about the world because he is unable to rule out the possibility that everything he receives from his senses is no more than a dream.2
Is there any way in which Descartes can either avoid or overcome this obstacle to knowledge of the outside world? If he can prove that he can know something whilst dreaming, or show that it is not necessary to know that one is not dreaming to have knowledge of the outside world, than this can be overcome.
The first problem appears insurmountable. Even if Descartes was sitting by the fire with a piece of paper, and was asleep but was dreaming that he was sitting there, one cannot say that he knows that he is sitting in front of the fire. Although what he is dreaming does correspond to reality, and that in itself is a highly unlikely coincidence,3 he does not know that it is so. He may recall some fact, e.g. that 2+2=4 that was demonstrated to him using the senses when he was awake, but given that he used his senses to learn this fact, and given that at the time when he learnt it, he could not determine whether he was dreaming or not, he cannot be said to know that 2+2=4.
This last point brings us to the issue of whether we can know we are not dreaming. This is easily resolved as a vicious circle. In order to determine if I am dreaming, presumably I must apply some test to the situation I find myself in. However, assuming such a test exists to be found, how could I know that I was not simply dreaming I was applying the test, given that the outcome of the test is being recorded by my senses. In other words, in order to know something about the world around me, I must know that I am not dreaming by applying this test, but I cannot know that the test is real, as I may also be dreaming about the test or its application. In order to test the authenticity of the test, I must apply another test to the test, and this second test also suffers from the same vulnerability as the first test, and so on, and so on. Thus, it is apparent that I cannot know that I am not dreaming, and given also that I cannot know something whilst I am dreaming, it seems that I can know nothing of the outside world.
Are there any objections to this account? Some have argued that the very fact that I can entertain doubt as to whether I am awake whilst I am dreaming means that I am not, in fact, fully asleep.4 However, recent scientific studies have shown that "false awakening," when a person who is still asleep dreams that they have woken up and have prepared for work, had breakfast, indeed, carried on their day as if it were real until the point where they really do wake up. Having experienced this also, I cannot but assert to it, and thus the objection is not sustainable. Before submitting to Descartes' argument, which has so far withstood all objections to it, I wish to explore some ideas of my own that would suggest that it is improbable that life is a dream. Although it is unable to be proven, I believe this may reassure some who are unwilling, as I am, to admit that the data my senses provide me are not in some way produced by the world as it is and not just by a dream.5
First of all, I do not believe that all the memories I have of events that have taken place in my life can possibly be crammed into one night's dreaming. Thus, I reject any notion that at some point in the future, either before what I will term "this life" finishes in my eventual death or simply when I wake up in the "real world," I will wake up and think "Gosh, what a curious dream," and get on with some life I previously had. If this life is a dream, than I must be asleep for close to 18 years to amass all these memories. Of course, time in this life may run many hundreds of times faster than in the real world, such that I have had time to amass 18 years of memories so far. However, I believe the continuity of the memories and experiences of this life, appearing as it does as a progressive timeline, and not a series of disjointed dreams, suggests that I have not generated it whilst asleep. Nor have I subconsciously recognised anything in this life as coming from what would be the real world, in that when I am asleep in this life and dream, I recognise the images from the real world whilst still asleep. If this is all a dream, than I have not recognised anything in it as corresponding to the real world outside this dream. Yet it might be said that I am in fact experiencing the very "false awakening" I have already referred to, and am still asleep although I appear to be sitting typing this essay out. I can reply to this by saying that, given that I went to bed at 11 p.m. last night, and the alarm on my watch was set for 8.45 a.m., I would have had a maximum of 9� hours sleep. Now, as I distinctly remember my alarm going off and getting up, etc. if this is a dream, then, given that it is now 4.15 p.m., and time in this dream appears to be running at the same rate as when I went to sleep last night, the 9� hours will elapse at 6.30 p.m., at which time I shall be woken up by my alarm, having spent the time asleep dreaming I had woken up this morning.6
Having established that this is unlikely to be a false awakening, I must conclude that, if it is a dream, then I have been unconscious for some period of time (assuming I am not an extra-terrestrial who hibernates for several Earth-years at a time, and is generating a dream of being an Earthling, etc.). Could I be in a coma? I reject the notion that I have been in a coma since birth, as surely there is no way that a new-born child could generate such complex memories as I now experience of being a teenager at university, even if, as medical science suggests, those in a coma can experience some sensory input. Besides, it is, I believe, implausible to suggest that any parents could let their child remain in such a condition for many years such as I believe my life outside this coma would have had to exist if time both within me and in the real world runs at the same speed.
However, can it be possible that at some stage an accident I experienced which I recall as being minor has put me in a coma? For instance, I remember falling whilst playing football in IVth Form, and hitting my head on the ground. I was unconscious for no more than a few seconds and had, as I recall, no more than a mild concussion, but what if that, or another similar incident, has left me in a coma, and the last four years of memories are completely made up?
I am forced to reject this also, on several grounds. Firstly, despite the argument that rages over whether comatose patients are aware of their surroundings, I doubt that even if they have some degree of awareness, the intensity of the memories and experiences that have taken place in my coma and continue to do so, which in my opinion correspond at least as much to those I have had before the accident happened, would not be available to them. Secondly, if I was dreaming, why would I end up at Oxford; I had no plans for my long-term education short of GCSEs, and they were 15 months in the future. I am reluctant to believe that memories generated by me would seem so realistic as these I have, in that I can accept all that has seemed to happen to me since then as being indicative of how my life could have proceeded, yet with none of the bizarre incidents that usually crop up in dreams, e.g. going to school in my pyjamas. This, combined with the apparent continuity I mentioned earlier between all my memories that suggests to me that this is unlikely to be a series of dreams, leads me to the conclusion that I am not dreaming. This is the evidence that convinces me that I am not asleep or in a coma, and whilst it does not amount to a proof in the same way Descartes' argument that we can never be sure that we are not dreaming does, it convinces me that I am not dreaming and have a life in the general sense.
I have probably dwelt on this particular point for longer than is necessary, and feel I should now return to the rest of the First Meditation. Descartes has proved that we cannot know that we are not dreaming, but as part of his own reluctance to accept that his experiences could be from a dream he suggests that as dreams contain images from real life, just as paintings do, so these things must exist. Yet he realises that many paintings contain no symbolism from what he perceives as the real world, and thus it is with dreams; they need not contain images from the real world.
If the specifics of what Descartes now thinks to be dreams are not real, what about general things like numbers, time, space, matter, etc. Surely these must exist in some form, along with the likes of mathematics that are surely true even if nothing exists. Two plus three must equal five regardless of whether Descartes is awake or asleep. But what if God, who certainly has the power to make Descartes go wrong every time he considers the question, is indeed deceiving him? Or what if there is no God, and Descartes' existence is a result of a myriad chain of causality. If he was not created by a perfect being, but by a series of imperfect causes, then it is ever more likely that he can and would go wrong in any consideration he makes. Thus he concludes that none of his former beliefs can be safely trusted as truly representing the state of the world; indeed, he cannot even deduce that there is an external world.
This is a difficult step to take for Descartes; he complains that his habitual beliefs keep returning to haunt him and try to force him to accept them when he has cast doubt on them. He thus invents an aid to his deliberation, the famous "malicious demon." This creature has control over the sensory data he receives, and can, presumably, shape Descartes' vision (as well as his other senses) to anything its imagination can conceive of.
Is this malicious demon theory any more susceptible to objection than the dreaming argument? I initially believed so. Why would this powerful demon allow us to reach a stage where we suspected his existence? However, upon further reflection, I see two ways we could achieve knowledge of him even if he were controlling our sensory inputs. Firstly, he may wish to see our reaction when we realise that the possibility exists. More plausibly I feel, is the fact that he does not control our intellect and thinking processes, merely our sensory perceptions, and thus are still able to think for ourselves when we ignore all spurious sensory data. Of course, if the demon noted we were reflecting on the nature of our existence, he could surely prevent us from reaching this stage of doubt by overloading our senses, thus distracting us from reaching the conclusion. Could this be enough to prevent us from ever doubting our own existence? Here I must admit that I have no answer, but I don't think this possibility should be explored to the nth degree; it was merely intended by Descartes to reinforce his suspicion that his senses could not be trusted, and was not meant as a suggestion as to the nature of our true lives.
What then, has Descartes accomplished in the First Meditation? He has cast doubt on his sensory perceptions as unreliable; he cannot trust them as he may simply be dreaming. On the other hand, his brain may be all that exists of him, sitting in a laboratory wired up to the malicious demon's apparatus for feeding sensory data into it. Although these seem extreme examples, and indeed they are, they serve the purpose of casting doubt on what we previously considered to be true, and as have shown that our senses can be deceptive. Descartes ends the first meditation surrounded by all these doubts, and it is not until the second that he finds something that he cannot deny, that he thinks, and therefore must necessarily exist.
Notes:
1) The idea of rejecting that which is open to doubt was first cited by Descartes in his "Discourse on the Method." The First Meditation can be seen as expanding on this line of thought.
2) This is not Descartes' final conclusion on the subject; on the contrary, by the Sixth Meditation, he believes he has resolved this crisis. This is only an intermediate conclusion based on those considerations of the First Meditation.
3) There are records of people dreaming about what they were actually doing at the time they were dreaming. G. E. Moore cites the example of the Duke of Devonshire who once dreamt that he was speaking in the House of Lords and woke up to find that he was doing so, although I'm inclined to take this with a large pinch of salt. On second thoughts, watching a debate in the Lords, I'm not so sure . . .
4) Norman Malcolm, "Dreaming and Scepticism," Philosophical Review LXV (1956)
5) Although Descartes' argument proves that I cannot be sure that what data my senses provide me with are not from a dream, it does not prove that they are not from reality. I believe that the evidence I am to put forward would prove more supportive of the reality of what I sense than the argument that I can't be sure. In other words, I may not be able to prove that I am not dreaming, but I can suggest that it is highly unlikely that I am.
6) It is now 7.08 p.m., and I have not woken up. If this is a false awakening, than I have overslept my alarm, which has never happened before, and the scouts in the New Building are also being especially quiet this morning, as they normally wake me up with their weekend stories of family tragedy broadcast quite audibly through the wall. I believe that this is improbable enough that I can assume I was not experiencing a false awakening,