Explicating Descartes's Clear and Distinct Ideas

In studying Husserl, I’ve ran into Descartes’s Clear and Distinct Ideas which Husserl adopts in Logical Investigations. However, I do not understand how Clear and Distinct Ideas operate in Descartes. In an ILP search, xyc, attributed Descartes to mean by Clear and Distinct Ideas, intuition. But that is not enough to elucidate the concept for me. Sanford offers the distinction between clear and distinct sensory perception and that of the cogito, The external senses result in, at best, “a spontaneous impulse” to believe something, an impulse we’re able to resist. In contrast, occurrent clear and distinct perception is utterly irresistible: “Whatever is revealed to me by the natural light—for example that from the fact that I am doubting it follows that I exist, and so on—cannot in any way be open to doubt.” (Med. 3, AT 7:38) As Descartes repeatedly conveys: “my nature is such that so long as I perceive something very clearly and distinctly I cannot but believe it to be true” Sanford Encyclopedia. So, we have,

[…] from the fact that I am doubting it follows that I exist […], from A follows B. This does not seem intuitive, nor self-evident, but deductive. How is this not propositional? Is intuition really different from begging the question (e.g. From my doubting I can clearly see that I exist)? Where have I made a mistake?

Furtheremore, from what I understand,
Clarity seems to be the moment of instantiation that an idea is intended, and
Distinction is that this idea is not that one (I intend a triangle, not a square).
(The above are guesses.)

So, elucidation, please, I plead with Dalmation spots on top.

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Well it’s deductive reasoning as the conclusion follows from the premises absolutely, albeit, it is Begging the question (technically a Logical Fallacy).

E.g.
P1 All dogs and cats are Mammals
C All dogs are mammals.

But It can be framed with two premises, I guess the second was just hidden,

P1 I am doubting
P2 To doubt is to exist
C I exist

(whatever the ontological properties of “I” are, is not relevant)

Phenomenologically, I can see, that is, I am aware that I am doubting, which means that whatever it is that is doubting, exists. Still, from A follows B. I think I understand it better now though, as from the self-evident intuition, or observation of the fact of my doubting (I doubt), another fact must be deduced (I exist). So, to observe Clearly and Disinctly the idea that “I doubt,” or “I am having a doubt,” it follows absolutely that I exist. From inner sight follows absolute deductive knowledge.

Corrections please.

Still I need someone to offer their clear and distinct idea of what clarity and distinction are as criteria for truth. Simple definition would suffice, ty kindly.

the cogito isn’t a syllogism

-Imp

this may help: frank.mtsu.edu/~rbombard/RB/Spinoza/cnd.html

(deleted post for time being) … reading link.

not for descartes. the cogito is a clear and present idea (self evident truth). read the above link…

-Imp

Thanks for the link imp, it was very helpful.

So… to conclude, (from imps link) I call ‘clear’ that perception which is present and manifest to an attentive mind: just as we say that we clearly see those things which are present to our intent eye and act upon it sufficiently strongly and manifestly. On the other hand, I call ‘distinct’, that perception which, while clear, is so separated and delineated from all others that it contains absolutely nothing except what is clear." […] Descartes’ usage suggests that we read “all clear and distinct ideas are true” as excluding propositions from the set of ideas, so that he means “all clear and distinct ideas have objects to which they conform.”

The def. Bombardi provides: An idea is clear and distinct if and only if all and only properties essential to the object of that idea (its referent or ideatum) are represented in the idea.

Examples of clear and distinct ideas:

Attempt 1.
The clear and distinct idea of an equilateral triangle.

The equilateral qualifies it as distinct, say, from an icosoles.
It is clear when one focuses sole attention on all that entails (all of the definitions) of an equilateral triangle.
Within the idea are all the properties essential to any objectified equilateral traingle.

Attempt 2.
The clear and distinct idea of ‘doubting.’ To doubt is not to assume, not to conclude, et al, ad infinitum; therefore doubting is distinct. Clear because… when one doubts all that manifests is the ‘doubting’-of-some-thing.

Does the notion that the idea of doubting can be clear and distinct also require that the idea of certainty be clear and distinct? My initial reaction is yes.

Thus, the two examples you give seem problematic - first, because there are no equilateral triangles except as clear and distinct ideas (they exist only in principle), which again begs the question - and second, because doubt is a state of being, with a phenomenology all its own, so to say that the IDEA of doubting is clear and distinct is merely to examine doubt strictly as an act rather than an experience, which places arbitrary limits on our idea of it even as it distinguishes and clarifies it - in fact, it places those limits IN ORDER to distinguish and clarify it

Hey upf,

I think for Descartes and Husserl, certainty is a neccessary property of clear – an idea is clear because it is certain that it manifests before one’s “attentive mind.”

I do not deny that the examples I offered may very well be problematic, and if they do not succeed the test of Clear and Distinct Ideas (in Descartes’ usage), I do hope someone else will offer an example that does. I am not sure how Descartes would feel about ‘equilateral triangles’ because they only exist in principle, but I do know that Husserl would probably not have a problem with them because ideal objects for him are just that, objects.

As for doubting being an act rather than an experience, I need for you to clarify in what sense you use the word act. For example, in Husserl, an act is an “intentional experience.”

Hey UGM,

Is Husserl that much of a dualist? For some reason (i’m not sure why) i find that surprising - tho i have very little exposure to his ideas, so i wouldn’t really know

Yes, if ideal objects just are objects that works; but then it would seem, phenomenologically speaking, that ONLY ideal objects could ever be clear and distinct . . . if that were the case, then you might seemingly still run into trouble listing the equilateral example alongside the doubt example

Doubting can certainly be intentional, but i wouldn’t limit the experience of doubt to the feild of purely intentional behavior - I think it’s more like, say, eating, maybe - we have to do it because we are constituted in such a way that requires it, but the when, where, what, how much etc. then introduces a necessary degree of intentionality.

At the moment I hesistate to label Husserl anything. He is interweaving so much into his phenomenology: rational idealism that can only be justified by a grounding in experience, that is, phenomenological experience. I keep wanting to call him a Platonist but must bang my head against paragraphs in Logical Investigations that admit an affinity to platonism but deny that phenomenology is platonism. As for dualsim, I certainly cannot comment, as phenomenology after Husserl’s trancendental turn always has an egological center which intends objects of possible experience, real, ideal, hallucinations, pink elephants, what have you, yet the egological subject is itself part of the stream of experience. A problem I’m not sure Husserl had the time to solve before he died, even though he wrote forty-eight THOUSAND pages of manuscript – which would take a lifetime to study if anyone ever wanted to. So who really knows how far his philosophy really developed. I think with Husserl, everyone should approach his work with a great degree of humility.

As for only ideal objects as the only objects possible about being Clear and Distinct, I think you may very well be right. Husserl, after all, is after pure logic, pure intuitive insight about Truth, Proposition, Number, Concept, Object, Fact, Law, etc., on which normative logic will rest. He’s after the a priori. For example, the species Red, opposed to any particular instantiation of red; so any red-thing, simply does not cut it. Yet, somehow, this is supra-mental (so as not to fall as psychologism) and YET, somehow, it is not a platonism of heavenly ideas. Now, it sounds cooky, but just yesterday I jumped out of my chair when I thought I saw the ideal unity of the Concept ‘A’ stripped of all physical and mental instantiations. Who knows, if it’s phenomenology I did, then according to Husserl, I can re-intend the object (re-create the experience). Did I say mental? I must be going mental . . . don’t ask for elaboration just yet, I’m going to e-mail my professor and get his opinion first.

Anyhow, about doubting,
Why do we have to doubt?

Also, this is an appeal to psychologism, which doesn’t fly at all in Husserl.

Very interesting, Ugd - thank you. Husserl is someone i’ve been wanting to read for a while now, and you make him sound quite appealing.

Regarding psychologism - i’m not quite sure in what way you mean that - doubt seems to me to be a fundamentally psychological phenomenon, after all? Therefore, I don’t think saying that we are constituted psychologically in such a way that doubt becomes inevitable (much the same way that we are constituted physiologically in such a way that eating becomes inevitable) is necessarily an example of psychologism, so much as it’s just an observation about one of the ways our psychology functions within the broader phenomenological mechanisms of our world. If the statement that ideal objects just are objects, for example, is not an example of psychologism in the way you are using the term then i’m not clear in what sense you’re invoking it when you use it to characterize my statement . . .

(i’m not being defensive btw, i’m genuinely curious about your meaning)

And now i realize that i didn’t answer your question: why do we have to doubt?

An ad hoc phenomenological formula might be:

Because our experience is not static and that creates uncertainy and eventual error - we are creatures of memory and learning - and the learned, remembered experience of uncertainty and error is behaviorally manifest in, among other things, doubt.

I accept your criticism upf, and consequently will reformulate ‘doubting’ in attempt 2. I have also uncovered an error in attempt 1, which needs to be reformulated to satisfy Clarity and Distinction.

Reformulating Attempts 1 and 2 (equilateral triangle; doubting)

Attemp 1a.
The Clear and Distinct idea of ‘Triangle.’
To be intuited as an ideal unity, that is, an universal (essence) that instantiates itself as ‘traingularity’ in every possible subset of triangle, ideal and real (mental and concrete). (Equilateral Triangle contained the combination of two clear and distinct ideas; further, equilateral triangle, even in the ideal, is itself an instantiation of the ideal unity of triangle.)

Atempt 2a.
The clear and distinct idea of ‘Doubt.’
Once again, as an ideal unity (an essence) that instantiates itself in any mental (psychological) act.

Husserl will respond, upf, that though doubt is a psychological phenomenon, the ideal unity of doubt, that is, the universal concept – that which unifies all the different mental acts of doubting – is a supra-mental object, which can be phenomenologically intuited (literally, seen with the mind). Now Husserl will grant you that it originates in the mental, that is, you need to have doubted something in order to even begin to talk about doubt, but the unity, Husserl will call this Species, is beyond any particular instantiation. Now, you mentioned whether or not this object can also be guilty of psychologism, and in my estimation I believe there is a chance that it may. Heidegger, as proffessor Stephen R. Hicks accounted to me, accuses Husserl of psychologism later on (but as of yet I do not know the particulars for I will only be studying Heidegger in a couple weeks). Is it in this case that he does so? Maybe. For it does seem like a legitimate question, although Husserl goes to great pain to deny this to be the case. Here, take a peek:

From Logical Investigations Volume I, Investigation II, Section 8.

" We do not wish to lose ourselves in erring paths of such a metaphysics. For us what is ‘in’ consciousness counts as real just as much as what is ‘outside’ of it. What is real is the individual with all its constituents (by that he means what can appear): it is something here and now. For us temporality is a sufficient mark of reality. Real being and temporal being may not be identical notions, but they coincide in extension. We do not, of course, suppose that psychical experiences are in a metaphysical sense ‘things’. But even they belong to a thinglike unity, if the traditional metaphysical conviction is right in holding that all temporal existents must be things, or must help to constitute things. Should we wish, however, to keep all metaphysics out, we may simply define ‘reality’ in terms of temporality. For the only point of importance is to oppose it to the timeless ‘being’ of the ideal.

It is further clear that the universal, as often as we speak of it, is a thing thought of by us: it is not therefore a thought-content in the sense of a real constituent in our thought-experiences, and likewise not a thought-content in the sense of intension, but is rather an object that we think of. Is it not obvious that an object, even when real and truly existent, cannot be concieved as a real part of the act which thinks it? And isn’t even the fictitious and the absurd, whenever we speak of it, something we think of? "

(… and he goes on, and on, and would like to go on for 800 years at which point he might actually decide to call himself a philosopher)

Cheers