1. Why doubting? Why in first person?

Descartes is a Christian believer and a scientist. Hence one would expect him to rely on some religious or scientific truths, or at least on certain religious or scientific methods of investigation in his searching for truth. Yet, Descartes chooses not to rely on religion or science in his investigation. Instead, he embarks on a kind of personal journey which relies only on his own thinking. Why does he not employ religious or scientific method for this investigation? Why does he assume that his self-thinking is superior to these authorities?

One could find a personal and psychological answer to these questions at the opening of Meditation One:

Descartes goes on to confess that he spent years in a state of distress as a result of this recognition. He realized that he could not trust his certainties, since they were time and again revealed to be false. This is a very destructive existential state. Yet, it took Descartes a long time to find the time, the conditions and the ability to cope with it. This might explain the importance that he assigns to this investigation, but it does not provide an answer to the original questions: Why does he not turn to science or religion for coping with this epistemological and existential discontent? Why does he assume that philosophical investigation is better suited to his goal? Do these questions send us back to Descartes' psychology?

I believe the answer lies elsewhere. Descartes is indeed embarking on a very personal journey, but its rationale does not lie in Descartes' unique psychology. It is, rather, the Socratic legacy of preferring self-thinking over any external authority which guides Descartes in his way. Descartes does not invent a new way of thinking, though he certainly forms it in his own image. By turning to philosophy, Descartes actually expresses his distrust in religion and science. Philosophy, in contrast to religion and science, recognizes no authority beyond the individual's own thinking. However, since self-thinking can potentially be arbitrary and biased, each philosopher must suggest his own way for preventing these fallacies. Descartes believes he has found a foolproof way to do this.

Descartes is well aware of the fact that our personal psychology determines our beliefs no less than our thinking. Therefore, he suggests a methodological doubt which is based on two moves: one is logical, the other psychological. The logical move is the hyperbolical doubt, which takes us from the actual to the possible. It employs our capacity for imagining speculative possibilities in order to cast doubt on our actual beliefs. This move often defies common sense, but finds its justification in logic: logical validity lies in the sphere of the possible rather than the actual. The psychological move completes the logical one by engaging our capacity of self-deception. This capacity enables us to think against the grain of our own beliefs and thus to distinguish between our philosophical inquiry and our daily, common beliefs. Its role in Descartes' investigation is to help us keep in mind the conclusions of the logical move, against our tendency to return, unconsciously, to our old beliefs. The climax of this move is the conception of the evil spirit with which Descartes ends his first Meditation.

Descartes, then, proposes a logical-psychological method in the first person as a way to search for true certainty. Certainty is the ultimate goal of philosophical investigation, but it is also its greatest enemy, since nothing misleads us in self-thinking more than our false certainties. Descartes' method aims at coping with this challenge by using the most powerful faculties of our mind: our logical thinking and our capacity of self-deception.

Descartes uses logical thinking for doubting his own beliefs, i.e. for testing his certainties. His first analysis distinguishes between two groups of beliefs according to their source: the senses or the intellect. He doubts the first by pointing out the fallibility of each concrete sense-perception. His ‘dream argument’ takes a step further by demonstrating that our world of perceptions does not necessarily correspond to reality. This is logically sufficient for eliminating the senses as a reliable source for certainty. Yet, the logical move is not sufficient for an investigation which based on self-thinking, since it does not remove the certainty we feel in our perceptions. This is the reason why the logical move must be complemented by a psychological one:

We are asked to imagine that we are sleeping and that all our present perceptions are nothing but illusions, while we feel certain that we are not sleeping and cannot avoid believing in the reality of our perceptions. Descartes sends us off on a tough psychological experience that goes beyond logical thinking. It is one thing to recognize that our sense perceptions are not totally reliable, and entirely another thing to persuade ourselves that our present perceptions are merely illusions. This is a very difficult psychological task, since we usually feel just the opposite; it requires a great effort of self-deception. This is the first way in which Descartes uses self-deception in his philosophical investigation.

The second way relates to Descartes' doubt concerning the intellect as a source of knowledge. Since mathematical truths do not depend on sensual reality, they escape the first doubt. And yet, Descartes argues, the certainty we feel about these truths should also be doubted: since we have often been certain of the truth of a mathematical judgment which was later found to be false, it is not impossible that every time we feel certain, we are in fact wrong. Here again, Descartes makes a logical move that extends the actual recognition of fallibility into an all-encompassing doubt in the truths of the intellect.Footnote ⁴ And again, the psychological move of self-deception completes the logical move:

The doubtful should thus always be considered false in our investigation for certainty. Why not consider it merely as doubtful? Descartes does not actually explain here, but does explain this later when he introduces the methodological idea of the evil spirit. In this step, he only implies that it is better for a fallible mind to take preventive measures in its search for certainty. Again, the investigation relies on our ability to manipulate ourselves in order to advance our search for true certainty.

Casting doubt on our two sources of knowledge does not satisfy Descartes. He is still afraid that our psychological tendency to return to our old beliefs threatens his investigation:

Descartes explicitly suggests self-deception as a methodological tool in the search for true certainty. He justifies such an apparently paradoxical move by the need to free his thoughts from the unintentional and uncontrolled affects of his old beliefs, assuming that by deceiving himself that these beliefs are false rather than just doubtful, he will achieve better control over his thoughts. Whereas the doubtful old beliefs affect his thought unwillingly and sometimes unconsciously, the process of self-deception is in his own hands. This is the reason why Descartes believes self-deception advances him in his effort to achieve mastery over his thoughts.Footnote ⁷ His logical capacity enables him to doubt his own beliefs; his capacity for self-deception enables him to consider them as false for the purpose of his investigation. Descartes is aware of the risk of using self-deception as a tool in the search for true certainty, but he is confident that he can control it because he is in a process of meditation. For the double purpose of deceiving himself and controlling his own self-deception, he creates the image of the evil spiritFootnote ⁸:

By projecting self-deception outside as an image of evil spirit, Descartes puts himself in a better position to control it. The elusive internal psychological process of self-deception turns into a clear picture of an external enemy. This, at least apparently, disentangles Descartes from the ambivalent stance of deceiver and truth-seeker, and enables him to direct his efforts solely towards the search for truth. The struggle is transformed into one of a truth-seeker against an omnipotent deceiver who uses all its power to mislead him. In this speculative situation, the only advantage of the truth-seeker is his awareness of the existence of this deceiver. This awareness alone, Descartes claims, could promise him philosophical achievement:

By depending on the hypothesis of the evil spirit, which in fact represents the threat of self-deception, Descartes protects himself from imagining he knows what he does not know. This is a philosophical achievement, according to the Socratic legacy, and a kind of solution to Descartes' distress. Yet, Descartes is searching for true knowledge, and hence does not stop his philosophical investigation at this point. He believes that he is not taking a great risk by doing it, since the hypothesis of the evil spirit protects him from taking false certainties to be true. But what about the counter risk? Isn't Descartes troubled by the possibility that his extreme hypothesis might cause him to take true certainties to be false?

When our only goal is not imagining we know what we do not know, it is reasonable to use hyperbolic doubt, without being troubled by the possibility that this doubt may cause us to imagine that we do not know what we actually know; when our goal lies in one direction (not taking the false to be true), we are not concerned about the other direction (taking the true to be false). Descartes, however, is looking for true knowledge, and therefore should be troubled by the other direction as well. Apparently, Descartes assumes that true belief is stronger than any doubt. He does not explicitly argue it but it is implied by his definition of truth as ‘beyond any doubt’. By defining truth in this way, Descartes assumes not only that the doubtful may be false, but also that the true is indubitable. This is a psychological assumption, and therefore a truth based on this assumption is psychological as well. Descartes, as I'll demonstrate later, is aware of this psychological status, but nevertheless uses it for advancing his epistemological investigation: the psychological truth of the Cogito will be a crucial step in revealing the first ontological truth of the existence of God.

2. First psychological truth and first philosophical truth

The formulation of the Cogito in Descartes' The Principles of Philosophy emphasizes its psychological status:

Is a feeling of repugnance a philosophical justification? Why is it an indication of truth and not of psychological weakness?

The first truth is based on a psychological argument: I cannot doubt it, therefore it is true. Furthermore, this argument, in first person, is valid only for the one who thinks it and depends on his feeling of repugnance rather than on logical or epistemological justification. That is to say, the Cogito finds its justification in psychological resistance rather than in logical or epistemological proof: we feel such a strong repugnance when we try doubting our own existence when we think, that the hypothesis of the evil spirit collapses and leaves no space for doubt. Furthermore, this psychological experience is so strong and deep that it causes us to wrongly consider the Cogito as the first ontological truth. Descartes reveals this mistake in the first demonstration of the existence of God:

Descartes' analysis of the idea of God reveals that the Cogito is not a first philosophical truth, since the truth of the existence of God is prior to it. Furthermore, this prior truth is the origin of the process of doubting, which leads to the Cogito, and gives it its justification. Thus, the demonstration of the existence of God reveals that it was a mistake to take the Cogito to be the first philosophical truth.Footnote ¹³ Yet chronologically this truth was revealed first and serves as a crucial step on the way to the philosophical proof of the existence of God. That is to say, the truth of the existence of God is (logically) prior to the Cogito, but (psychologically) could be understood more clearly after the Cogito.

The central axis of Descartes' investigation up until the Cogito is psychological. It is a process in the first person, in which he searches for the truth by doubting his own beliefs. Since he is aware of the tendency to unconsciously revert back to old beliefs, he uses his capacity for self-deception in order to neutralize this bias. He is taking a risk by using this manipulation, but he is confident he can control it. This inner confrontation between Descartes and himself ends with the recognition of the Cogito. He takes this psychological experience to be philosophical truth, since it satisfies his criterion of indubitable certainty. Only after analyzing this truth logically, Descartes reveals his mistake of taking it to be the first philosophical truth. This mistake, however, rescues him from a psychological breakdown. Thus, Descartes at the beginning of Meditation Two, just before the revealing of the Cogito:

The Cogito serves as a psychological lifeline for Descartes. This might explain why he tenaciously holds onto it and wrongly considers it to be the first philosophical truth. Yet, Descartes' philosophical experience and understanding don't allow him to stop his philosophical investigation with this undefined recognition. He moves beyond it, carefully attempting to clarify the meaning and status of this truth. First, he examines what thinking is. He concludes that it is surely not a corporeal thing, but finds difficulties in defining it properly: ‘But what then am I? A thinking being [res cogitans]. What is a thinking being? It is a being which doubts, which understands [which conceives], which affirms, which denies, which wills, which rejects, which imagines also and which perceives.’Footnote ¹⁵

Descartes includes under the title of ‘thinking’ all the modes of our mental life, not only our intellect.Footnote ¹⁶ It is true that in his discussion he does distinguishes between the intellect and other faculties of the mind more than once; nevertheless, every time he summarizes his view concerning thinking, he returns to the plural view of all the faculties of the mind. Thus, in the beginning of the third Meditation: ‘I am a thing which thinks, that is to say, which doubts, which affirms, which denies, which knows a few things, which is ignorant of many, [which loves, which hates,] which wills, which rejects, which imagines also, and which senses.’Footnote ¹⁷ Thinking is for Descartes, at this stage of the investigation, the entirety of his inner life.Footnote ¹⁸ This enables the interpretation that he speaks about existential experience rather than abstract definition. At this point, his existential experience is stronger than any definition or argument, and Descartes focuses on it. He reveals that ‘in this first conclusion, there is nothing else which assures me of its truth but the clear and distinct perception of what I affirm.’Footnote ¹⁹ There is no abstract idea or argument that justifies Descartes' conclusion besides a strong feeling of certainty, which he cannot resist. One might think that this recognition would bring Descartes back to his starting point, where he doubted certainty as a sign of truth. Yet, Descartes does not think this should return him to his starting point. Just the opposite: he believes he has found a new principle of truth:

Descartes turns this experience into a principle of truth, despite the fact that it is only subjective feeling. Its strength lies in its high level of certainty; its weakness is that it is just a subjective feeling of certainty. Descartes goes back to his first doubts in order to examine them from this new perspective. He finds that while the new principle serves to strengthen the doubts concerning sense-perceptions, it requires a reexamination of the doubts concerning the intellect. The latter doubt is based on the very hypothetical possibility that the intellect is always wrong. Although this possibility is entirely hypothetical and even sounds absurd, Descartes nevertheless knows he should refute this possibility for relying on his clear and distinct criterion of truth. He does it by proving the existence of God.Footnote ²¹ Thus, the circle is closed: the Cogito leads to the clear and distinct criterion and the criterion leads to God, yet this criterion is justified by God, and the Cogito is justified by the criterion. Does this circularity invalidate Descartes' conclusions?

Logically, there is no problem with circularity. Every deduction is in fact circular, since in deduction the conclusion should be found in the assumptions. The question, if so, is not a logical but an epistemological one. Descartes examines his first conclusion and discovers that although his experience of his own existence is the first thing he cannot doubt, a logical analysis of this experience reveals that logically there is a truth prior to this truth (the existence of God). That is to say, Descartes gives priority to logical analysis over psychological experience. This is not only a legitimate move in philosophical investigation but even a required one. Yet, is his revelation of the first philosophical truth a sufficient answer to his original distress?

3. The will and the intellect

In Meditation Four, under the title ‘Of the True and the False’, Descartes suggests an analysis of the psychological origin of wrong judgments. This analysis leads to the conclusion that it is our will, not our intellect that is responsible for our wrong judgments. It causes us to make judgments even when we know that we do not know. Descartes actually argues that our false judgments necessarily involve self-deception. How does Descartes explain the possibility of such a paradoxical psychological process?

Descartes relates the capacity of affirming and denying, like the capacity to do something or not to do it, to our will and not to our intellect. By means of the intellect, he claims, we conceive ideas but we do not judge them as true or false. Only with the cooperation of the will, which holds the power to affirm and deny, we make judgments. In other words, wrong judgments are not a fallacy of our faculty of understanding (i.e. the intellect) but a result of our manipulative use of our own will. Yet, although the will is more expansive than the intellect and therefore enables wrong judgments, the intellect, according to Descartes, is stronger than the will. The will cannot go against the intellect when the latter achieves clear (and distinct) understanding. When this happens, the will has no choice but to follow the intellect, and this, claims Descartes, is the highest level of freedom we can attain: by following our intellect we are free from any external influences.Footnote ²² Wrong judgments are possible, according to this view, only when our understanding is unclear. In these cases, our intellect does not guide our will and, therefore, the will moves indifferently between given alternatives. Its choices can lead arbitrarily to truth or falsity, to good or bad, and it is vulnerable to manipulation.Footnote ²³ Descartes illustrates our capacity to manipulate our will, which means, in effect, to manipulate ourselves, by using self-deception in his own philosophical investigation:

We can manipulate ourselves into believing that we know what we do not know, since it is our will and not our understanding that determines our judgments.Footnote ²⁵ Our capacity for this self-manipulation, Descartes emphasizes through this example, is very high, and is even at times able to turn very probable truths on their head. Only when our understanding is entirely clear (and distinct), we are not threatened by this manipulation. For Descartes, the recognition that we are able to control our will is very promising, since it enables us avoiding wrong judgments:

Descartes believes he has discovered not only the first philosophical truth, but also the foolproof way for avoiding false certainty: keeping our will within the limits of our intellect (i.e. understanding). This, indeed, was Descartes' goal at the beginning of his investigation. Descartes has found the answer to his distress in a proper use of the will. The way to this recognition, however, demanded that he go against his most basic intuitions concerning the material world. Descartes feels he should now return to this issue, armed with his new recognition, in order to release himself from his troubling doubts:

Descartes returns to his doubts concerning the existence of material objects with his new epistemological recognition, and finds that their existence is probable but cannot be proved true. In other words, Descartes claims that when we limit our will to the limits of our understanding, we must recognize our own existence as thinking beings, as well as the existence of God; but we cannot be certain about the existence of material objects.

This conclusion can be perceived as evidence of the imperfection of the human mind, but also of the superiority of the spiritual world over the material one. Whatever our interpretation of this conclusion may be, it seems that Descartes has achieved the goals of his investigation. He has found the solution for false certainties, and he has even arrived at true knowledge (about God and about his own existence) Yet, Descartes ends his book with a short pessimistic statement that stands in stark opposition to his philosophical achievement: ‘[…] and we must in the end recognize the infirmity [and weakness] of our nature’.Footnote ²⁸

How should one read this statement? Does it imply that Descartes is not satisfied with his philosophical achievement? Should one limit this statement to our knowledge of the material world? Is the reason for this statement to be found in his recognition, stated in the sixth Meditation, that ‘the nature of man, insofar as he is composed of mind and body, cannot escape from being sometimes [faulty and] deceptive?’Footnote ²⁹

My interpretation is that Descartes was indeed not completely satisfied with his conclusions. The threat that troubled him and motivated his intensive investigation still troubles him at its end. This is the philosophical threat of self-deception, which was defined by Socrates as imagining we know what we do not really know. Descartes has found an explanation for this fallacy, and even a way to avoid it. Yet his investigation also confirms his fear that we cannot totally escape this fallacy. He relates it to the fact that we are composed of body and mind, a fact which he cannot prove since according to his view, the existence of the body is only probable. Therefore, it can be argued that Descartes' pessimistic statement at the end of his Meditations expresses his distressing recognition that man cannot absolutely avoid false certainties. If, as I argue at the beginning of the paper, Descartes is motivated by the philosophical goal of utterly avoiding false certainties, then his conclusion is that this goal is unachievable, despite his great philosophical achievements. We are affected by different forces of which we are unaware, and which we cannot control (for example, the forces which are responsible for our imagining corporeal things), and therefore our mind is not entirely in our own hands. According to Descartes' analysis, however, it is not these forces that deceive us, but our own will. Our will has the power to judge (true or false, good or bad), and when we have not reached a clear (and distinct) understanding, we can use our will to manipulate ourselves. We make judgments of true or false (good or bad) even when we know that we do not have sufficient knowledge to make these judgments. This analysis enables me to claim that Descartes conceives our epistemological mistakes (and also our ethical mistakes) to be a result of self-deception. He is aware of this capacity, and even recruits it for the good of his philosophical investigation, but in the end, he cannot find an ultimate answer to its threat. He explains the possibility of self-deception in the gap between our infinite will and our finite intellect. The intellect indeed controls the will, and this is the source of our epistemological power, but only insofar as the will confines itself to the boundaries of the intellect. Therefore, although Descartes thanks God for giving us infinite will, he is nevertheless troubled by his recognition that we cannot escape using it in order to manipulate ourselves. As paradoxical as it might sound, Descartes recognizes that even the revelation of absolute truth (the existence of God) cannot protect us from being deceived by ourselves.