“Whatever I have until now accepted
as most true I have acquired either
from the senses or through the senses.”
With this statement what we understand as Descartes seems to believe it is beginning an inquiry into the nature of its own existence at its foundations. This is not true. Instead, it is starting with at least five concepts in action, including those of the “I,” “time,” “choice,” “truth,” and “perception.”
The first Meditation is supplemented with the subscript “What can be called into doubt.” This is significant insofar as Descartes understands its project as aiming toward the complete demolition of its opinions; the very idea strikes of nihilism, solipsism, the very core of perception. However, it does not completely deconstruct; in fact, it seems rather aloof about the matter, as when it remarks that the task had seemed “enormous” to it in the past. It seems to think that deconstruction entails in some way the isolation of each and every belief and the subsequent “doubting” of each of these beliefs in turn. It is for this very reason that Descartes’ point of departure chiefly concerns the process of doubting, but what it overlooks is the baggage that doubt brings with it - namely, that the process of doubting necessitates there first exist a discernible concept of truth.
It makes no sense to “doubt” if the concepts of “truth” and “falsehood” are not simultaneously active. In this connection we can understand how Descartes’ deconstruction is incomplete at best: without acknowledging that it is operating within a frame that assumes the existence of truth and falsehood, it has exposed a missing link, and this is why, in turn, the statement we are considering the point of departure is so utterly unsubstantiated: it is impossible for Descartes to substantiate that specific block of information because it cannot (or is unwilling to) reveal the nature of truth to itself. That is, the missing link is the hows and whys of Descartes’ dualism and rationalism.
Its goal is to “critique the senses,” and it does so admirably, but this, too, represents a leap. Indeed, it is a matter of complete indifference if what the senses present to consciousness is “true.” If the waters aren’t already murky enough thanks to the premature inclusion of “doubt,” the very concept of “the senses” represents an even bigger problem. That is, from the perspective of nihilistic solipsism, what we call “the senses” is virtually indiscernible from any number of concepts: consciousness, reality, existence, being, I, these can go on and on. That they are discernible and distinct is not important. The point is that Descartes does not clarify this point, and we are left to make the same assumptions it is making: that it is, that it is an I, and that this I accepts and acquires things from or through the senses.
If we are honestly to proceed from here, it follows that an examination of what is meant by each of these terms is in order. Descartes, however, is assuming we know just what it means, and proceeds through the Meditations without ever acknowledging this misstep.
Despite these difficulties, on to “doubting the senses” we turn. The point is simple enough: it seems as though there are instances in which what we see, for example, does not accurately represent how things “actually are,” as when we look at the sun and deduce it is much smaller than the earth. But Descartes wonders how it is it can doubt what the senses are telling it with respect to its body and its surroundings. How can it be doubted, for instance, that it has a body?
The answer to that question is that it can’t. As mentioned, what we have until now understood as the senses means little more at this point than “reality.” Descartes tells us as much: “Whatever I have up till now accepted as most true I have acquired either from the senses or through the senses.” Unless we are supposed to assume there’s a degree of “true” that is higher than “most” true (because clearly there must be something less true than most true), it would seem Descartes’ conception of reality is such that whatever representations are given to it by the senses, it relates these representations to the concept of truth. Now, understand, that would be fine; but what Descartes turns and does is doubt these representations.
It seems that at this point Descartes is occupying a hierarchy of values at which truth is at the top. It’s a slick move, and a rather far one from nihilistic solipsism. Doubting truth in such a context is just scattering the garbage. It’s bad faith to use Sartre’s term. Descartes isn’t really doubting anything because nothing has been set up for it to doubt; all the concepts in its vicinity are at present related to truth. Doubting in this manner is the act of contradicting yourself: it is literally impossible (as distinct, please, from Descartes’ own “quite impossible”) to hold something as truth something you hold as false. The reason doesn’t involve any fancy logic or semantics, it’s simply because that at this specific location of the deconstruction project, truth, reality and, yes, the senses are the same concept, for that’s where the door was opened: “Whatever I have up till now accepted as most true I have acquired either from the senses or through the senses.” At this point, all information received from the senses (what we tend to call empirical or scientific data) must manifest in direct relation with the concept “truth.” The category for non-truth has not been established (read: and thus cannot be doubted); it follows that Descartes’ attempts to now doubt information that it has already regarded as certain elsewhere is a move that it cannot, and does not, pull off.
Descartes goes on to offer a handful of potential solutions to the problem it sees: that there needs to be reasons to doubt the truth. Notice how this is all setting up very nicely for Descartes: it needs (has reason to believe it needs, or, better, is specifically looking for) reasons (the source of truth) to doubt (impossible) the truth (reasons). Later, notice that Descartes will conclude that God (which is the same as “the source of truth” above) . . . . [this paragraph is incomplete]
It mentions that it could be insane, asleep, or the puppet of some malicious demon. But we have already established that the concept of doubt necessitates the inclusion of the concept of truth: to doubt a thing means to assert the non-truth of that thing, or, at least, to withhold understanding that thing as truth. Descartes’ solutions are, in turn, are mere reasons for doubting its apparent reality; and while this might be self-evident in the context of reading the Meditations, what is important for our concern is that here we are made aware of another of Descartes’ assumptions: that reason leads to truth, or that reasons for doubting are a necessary component of doubting truth. This is problematic because, as mentioned, Descartes is operating within a frame that assumes the nature of truth to be self-evident; it assumes, that is, that we know what it means by “truth” despite the fact it has not presented those details. Through this point, in fact, all we know of Descartes’ conception of truth is that, in the past, what it had considered most true (implying, of course, degrees of truth, which is problematic on its own), it acquired through its senses. The distinction Descartes is missing, the move it’s not explaining, is the move from the totality of reality manifested in the midst of nihilistic solipsism (i.e., where reality and self are understood as the same concept), and the dualistic reality that has long since manifested in its own perception.
When I say Descartes has missed a step, I mean to stress not that it was wrong about anything. I am not arguing for a particular view and against Descartes. On the contrary, the picture drawn in the Meditations is admirably meticulous. The difficulties outlined here are not criticisms of its reason, where “reason” designates the extent to which the information being presented to consciousness makes sense - but are rather symptomatic of information that has not been presented. This is to say, it should be plainly clear that, even at this earliest of stages, Descartes has already established itself as a mind-body substance dualist and rationalist. What is unclear, however, is the means by which it attained this view: it doesn’t explain it to us, and it’s possible it didn’t know either. But in either case what is certain is that the picture - as Descartes presents it - manifested in the Meditations is a mapping of mind-body substance dualism and rationalism. My criticism, in turn, is to point to major phenomenological issues that, in sheer ignorance or otherwise, Descartes neglects. The question might go something like this: why would someone neglect to investigate the nature of truth prior to activating the services of doubt, services that require a nature of truth in order to operate? Answer: Because they’ve already established their nature of truth.
Descartes is hiding from us all along its epistemology: again, mind-body substance dualism and rationalism. Returning to the Meditations, then, any further criticism requires only that mistakes be consistent and predictable. Descartes states clearly, for example, that “doubt is quite impossible” when it comes to specific things, “that I am sitting here, sitting by the fire, wearing a winter robe, holding this piece of paper in my hands, and so on.” But doubt is not impossible, of course. It should be, just like it says, because it hasn’t established a theory of truth, or the meaning of the concept truth. But it’s not, because Descartes is deceitfully (I’m kidding - or am I?) working from a frame that already includes its theory of truth. This is why it can so easily come to doubt that which only moments ago it declared was impossible to doubt.
And there is no coincidence either in the fact that it chooses to go the “unless I was insane” route as means to conger up this impossible doubt. It says, “I would be thought equally mad if I took anything from them as a model for myself.” This is only another way of saying that those people who have a different conception of truth than it does cannot possibly be correct about anything. Again, notice the concepts necessary to complete that sentence: “truth” (obviously) and “correct” both designate that the topic of information being presented already assumes a cohesive definition of truth. Given that the Meditation has barely gotten off its feet at this point, how in the world can Descartes confuse itself with another who had established what a word like “mad” would even mean in this context? A discrepancy in information of this magnitude (i.e., are the phenomenological presentations at “insanity” less “real”?) is only explainable if Descartes is already operating from an undisclosed intellectual location, and one at which the meaning of “truth” has already been established. Even the term “model” implies a sense of hierarchy, of order and rank. Furthermore, the introduction of those concepts presents notions of good and evil, right and wrong, truth!
If we consider the Meditations thus far as the journey of a Self, navigating from nihilistic solipsism toward something, anything, that it can establish with certainty, the Self we’re calling “Descartes,” having already prescribed meaning to delicate and problematic terms, and without giving any indication of why, is literally dozens of concepts ahead of itself here.
But press on we shall! Descartes next introduces the concepts of numbers and of shapes, mathematics, etc., and adds the rather charming “regardless of whether they really exist in nature or not, [these things] contain something certain and indubitable.” Once again Descartes has failed to make any sense at all. Now, of course it makes perfect sense if you’re familiar with rationalism or Plato, even Christianity - but here? Descartes wants to argue that it is of no consequence for a presented concept to really exist or not. Forget what the concept refers to, the fact is that Descartes has positioned itself such that it can utter something such as this and call it philosophy; it has officially presented us with a statement, no more than five pages into this classic work, that conceptually mirrors: there exists things that may or may not exist.