but this sounds more like a 19th century way of reading than 17th century.
— J

None of the quotes are from 19th century authors. — Fooloso4

I know. I meant that your reading of these contemporary comments is "19th century" a la Kierkegaard and the Romantics, full of mystery that (to me) isn't there. Admittedly, it's hard to tell because you give no context for them. I don't want to pursue this in great detail, but a for-instance would be this one from Leibniz:

Descartes took care not to speak so plainly [as Hobbes] but he could not help revealing
his opinions in passing, with such address that he would not be understood save by those
who examine profoundly these kinds of subjects.

What is the context? Which opinions is Leibniz referring to here? What are "these kinds of subjects"? I'm guessing this was about religious doctrine, where plain speaking in a Catholic country could get you in trouble.

It's hard to know how to respond to this line of thought. All I can do is read Descartes as carefully as I can, noting problems as they come up. If he was in fact playing a devious game of disguising his true thoughts, using inconsistencies as spurs to help us think more deeply, deliberately conflating "soul" and "mind" in contradictory statements . . . then perhaps he was a "cunning and abstruse genius" but this sounds more like a 19th century way of reading than 17th century. Neither of your quotes from Descartes himself seems to support such a reading. To say in one's unpublished Private Thoughts that one "goes forth wearing a mask" surely speaks to the difference we all experience between our private and public selves, no? Why would you think he was referring to his philosophical writings?

when a careful writer says things that seem contradictory . . . — Fooloso4

But that's just it -- on the basis of these contradictions, I don't think he was a careful writer. He just seems muddled about minds and souls -- understandably, since the theology of his era didn't give him much to work with, soul-wise.

I suppose it depends on how you evaluate Descartes' status as a philosopher. I grant his historical importance but have never found him especially deep or insightful. That said, the challenge to try to read ever more deeply is always appropriate.

Thanks for doing all this detective work in the Meditations -- it's very helpful and illuminating. A few thoughts:

- We see how conflicted Descartes is about what to say concerning essence, nature, thinking thing, etc. He wants "thinking thing" to be primary -- "nothing else belongs to my nature or essence" -- but he's aware that the mind's connection to the body is not merely like a sailor and a ship. Rather, it's an "intermingling". (I'd be interested to know the Latin here.)

-- He also clearly has trouble with using "mind" and "soul" interchangeably. If his own nature is a "totality of things bestowed by God," surely this is the soul, rather than a thinking thing. As you show, this results in a number of contradictions, both philosophical and theological.

-- All these represent criticisms of Descartes on his own terms, pointing out contradictions or inconsistencies. But what is most striking to me (and I think to Ricoeur) is that, for Descartes, the problem is a mind/body/soul problem: How can we best describe the capacities, natures, and overlappings of these three aspects of humans? Which is ontologically primary, if any? What depends on what? Whereas, for us moderns, the essential element left out of this analysis is the unconscious. I think Descartes might partially understand this as an aspect of the soul, an aspect not encountered by the thinking thing. This is in keeping with many spiritual traditions which describe the vital connections between unconscious processes and spiritual insight and experience. But I doubt if Descartes would have liked the idea that there are aspects of the soul (read "the self") that are not only different from thoughts and desires and sensations, but are actually unknown to him. Or, if he did grasp what this meant, he would probably dismiss it as unimportant: What counts is what we experience via the ego, the "I" (as he conceived it).

are not those second and third thoughts a result of our evolution, too? — Questioner

Then how do we know which to heed -- the first, second, or third thought? Is the idea supposed to be that there is yet another evolutionary capacity that indicates the correct choice among thoughts?

Because we are vulnerable beings who can feel pain and can be injured or killed by certain actions, which I do believe would have to be considered facts of evolutionary nature. It has its relevance. Do you see where I'm coming from with that? — Outlander

I do, and it makes sense to me. Many scientific stories, including evolution, can give us information about our species and help us decide what would aid human flourishing. But ethics is asking different questions. Can evolution instruct me in whether it's better for me to feel pain or to let my mother do so? How about a stranger? The idea is that no amount of info about us as a species can provide the answer to questions about right and wrong, except in a hopelessly broad sense.

"why should one value sustaining society more than one's self", as in possibly neglecting one's own well being for that of a neighbor's, — Outlander

That would be a very mild version. I had in mind the ordinary me-first situation where a person says to themselves, "Sure, it's better for society and all that if people don't cheat and steal, but I need money and I can get away with some cheating and stealing, so I'm going to do it." Would we say to such a person, "But in the long run, society can't function that way, if everyone took your attitude?" They would presumably reply, "And? First, what do I care about 'the long run'? Second, everyone doesn't take that attitude. I'm making an exception for myself."

As for the general point about a flourishing society leading to one's individual comfort or advantage, I see too many quite common cases where it simply isn't true. (Unless you're defining a flourishing society as a perfect utopia with no injustice or immorality.) I'm not saying it might not work out that way for some people, but the connection seems weak and unreliable. This is still trying to link ethics with "my own good," and I was arguing that we haven't even reached ethics as long as we're thinking that way.

At the moment of "cogito-ergo-sum" you're certain of your existence, but nothing else. It's a holiday from doubting, but little else. — Dawnstorm

Yes, we agree.

In general, I agree that Descartes's project can be accepted on its own terms -- he wasn't using the concepts of 20th century philosophy, and he wasn't asking the same questions. But the passage you quoted:

Well, then, what am I? A thing that thinks. What is that? A thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wants, refuses, and also imagines and senses.

does suggest that Descartes believed that being a thing that thinks was an identity. It is the answer to his self-posed question, "Well, then, what am I?" Perhaps Ricoeur would answer the question this way: "I do not know what I am, on the basis of the cogito. I identify a number of activities I can perform as a conscious ego (doubting, understanding, et al.) and am at the same time aware of many other aspects of myself that lie hidden. Maybe the question 'What am I?' will prove unanswerable, or maybe I will discover that I have an essence. But either way, the cogito shows me nothing pro or con."

So,

Is it unwarranted to conclude that he is a thing that thinks? Isn't thinking essential to being human? — Fooloso4

As to the first question, it's unwarranted if the "is" of "he is a thing that thinks" is construed as an essence or identity. (It doesn't have to be. To say "I am thinking" seems quite warranted, because it leaves open the further question, "Ah, but what am I?") As to the second: No, we have no basis in the cogito for concluding anything about what is essential to being human. Or, more liberally, thinking may be one of the essential items, but we have no way of knowing if there are not others equally essential. The cogito's epistemological value as a guarantor of existence doesn't extend that far, into ontology.

I would say the unwarranted conclusion has to do with an essential identity being attached to “thinking thing.” Again, Ricoeur’s criticism is coming through Nietzsche and Freud. Why may my self, my “I”, not just as well comprise the unconscious part of my being? Why assume that the thinking thing , and all its activities, is the most important and most characteristic part of being a subject? The cogito can’t say anything about that.

It tells me there is a thinker and I am it. And I am….what, exactly? — Mww

Yes. When I first read philosophy, the cogito seemed a miracle of cleverness and reliability. What a great result! -- I've discovered not only that I exist, but what sort of thing I must be. It does take a lot of reflection, and getting comfortable with some of the traditions after Descartes, to realize that this result is much less complete than it seems. I think, and thinking can be a special item for epistemology (it allows me to learn that I exist), but to go from that to any further knowledge about the self is unwarranted. Regardless of how one feels about Freudians, Freud himself made a huge contribution here by showing us the importance of the unconscious, which we are so loath to acknowledge.

Yes, exactly. Descartes has drawn what Ricoeur believes to be a false, or at any rate unwarranted, conclusion. In fairness, the idea that the self might be importantly different from the ego or the "conscious self" or the "false self" as criticized by Marx et al. was not really available to Descartes. You can see why it seemed natural to him to just seize on the "thinking thing" as constitutive of what he is. But I believe Ricoeur is right to question this.

But aims themselves can be more or less choiceworthy, more or less good. And we might suppose that in order to determine which aims are most choiceworthy we should seek to discover what is choiceworthy for its own sake and not for some other good or end. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But:

What is choiceworthy will depend on what one's goals are. — Count Timothy von Icarus

So the challenge is to explain how "choiceworthy for its own sake" isn't incoherent. I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm just pointing out the difficulty. You need a way of talking about aims that is significantly different from how we talk about goods. If "it doesn't make sense to choose the worse over the better," this would seem to apply to our aims as well -- we'll choose better aims rather than worse ones. But it's supposed to be those very aims that determine good choices, so how do we get out of the circle? What is the meta-level above aims that results in an aim being intrinsically choiceworthy?

That might be too strong. The cogito does tell me that an aspect of myself manifests itself in the act of thinking. I may not be a "thinking thing" in some definitional or essential way, but thinking is something I do. That's not "nothing." It just may not be as informative as we would wish it to be.

even if the cogito is represented as this kind of something from which can be derived that it does this other something, one could still be left to wonder what the “I” itself really is. — Mww

Paul Ricoeur also raises this question of the nature of the "I" of the cogito -- whether what it is is self-evident as a consequence of the cogito. Sample passage:

This impregnable moment of apodicticity [the cogito] tends to be confused with the moment of adequation, in which I am such as I perceive myself. . . . I am, but what am I who am? That is what I no longer know. In other words, reflection has lost the assurance of consciousness. What I am is just as problematic as that I am is apodictic. — Paul Ricoeur, 'The Question of the Subject' in The Conflict of Interpretations

Ricoeur attributes this problematic to Nietzschean, Marxian, and Freudian critiques of the identification of the conscious ego with the "I" or self. But it stands on its own as an important point, I think. We can all agree that "therefore I exist" says nothing about whether this thinking "I" is also the primal seat of my self, my agency, even my soul. What guarantees my knowledge of my existence, the cogito, may not necessarily reveal very much about that existence.

Yikes, really? We should have continued impregnating 12-year-old girls?

We are neurologically hard-wired to form bonds.
— Questioner
And it might well be that our moral duty is to fight against this supposed hard-wiring. — Banno

Consider the likelihood that human males are hard-wired to find girls (and often boys) sexually attractive from puberty on. What would the ethical conclusion be, here? Give in or fight against?

I had to look up "virtue signaling." Could you explain how it connects to meta-ethics? I'm not seeing it.

But I suggest we not worry overmuch about the truth/good parallel -- though you're right, it's interesting-- and instead look at the ways that reason does try to justify values"

"But that's the very point I was putting in question, — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sorry, this might be a silly query but . . . which is "the very point" here? And by "put in question," do you mean "call questionable" or "offer it as a discussion point"? I'm asking because I agree with just about everything you go on to say, so I'm trying to understand where my comments about the truth/good parallel represent a spanner (or monkey wrench; not sure of your nationality!) in the works.

And what is good for the individual cannot be divorced from what is good for the species. — Questioner

But can this be reversed: What is good for the species must be good for the individual? How would that follow? That's the doubtful premise.

A version of rational egoism says, "I don't believe 'the good of society' or 'the good of future generations' are goods at all. It's not that I'm unable to act with those goals in mind because it's painful or difficult; I deny that they're worth sacrificing anything for. I want my own desires to be satisfied, period, and no, I'm not a selfish monster, because some of those desires include concern for those I love. But they are still mine. Societal progress has absolutely no claim on me."

Ok. Do you think this is a good position? Is it "as defendable as any other?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

No, I do not. I think it completely misses the point of ethical thought. But we have to be able to say why, without invoking doubtful premises like "Everyone ought to do what is good for society" or "Evolution shows us what is good for the species" etc. That was my reason for articulating it in this context.

Yet the good is essentially filling the role in practical reason of the true vis-á-vis theoretical reason. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. But there's a key difference, which you indirectly alluded to. Using reason to justify reason as a method of arriving at what is true, is self-reflexive. Using reason to justify values as a method of arriving at what is good, is not.

Lots more to be said here, obviously! But I suggest we not worry overmuch about the truth/good parallel -- though you're right, it's interesting-- and instead look at the ways that reason does try to justify values. We need a strong answer to the person who would simply dismiss ethics as "not something I want." We need to be able to show why he or she should want them. But we have to do this without appealing to reasons for changing his/her mind that are also ethically based.

Sure, this is not true for everyone, but for the majority. — Questioner

So if I'm one of the ones it's not true for, then it's OK for me to choose to act selfishly?

even leaving aside the question of "what is truly best," people are often unable to bring themselves to do what they truly see as better. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think this is true, but the "why not be selfish?" question goes further. A version of rational egoism says, "I don't believe 'the good of society' or 'the good of future generations' are goods at all. It's not that I'm unable to act with those goals in mind because it's painful or difficult; I deny that they're worth sacrificing anything for. I want my own desires to be satisfied, period, and no, I'm not a selfish monster, because some of those desires include concern for those I love. But they are still mine. Societal progress has absolutely no claim on me."

Why should you or I or anyone else value “sustaining society” more than our own comfort or advantage?
— J

We need to take the long view of our evolution, going far back beyond civilization. — Questioner

We "need to"? Why? Why in the world should I care about what happened millions of years in the past, or what will happen thousands of years in the future? Why, in particular, should I care about "sustaining society" more than I care about looking out for Number 1?

(These are meant to be devil's-advocate questions, but they do demand answers.)

That we have evolved to do something or to prefer something simply does not imply that we ought to do that thing. There remains the logical gap between what we do and what we ought do. Until you get your heads around that, you are not even addressing ethical issues. — Banno

I want to emphasize this point. It’s a big fork in the road for ethical theory. You can try to define ethical words like “ought” and “good” and “right” to mean, roughly, “referring to the stuff we’ve evolved to choose or prefer, all things being equal.” But you can’t just do it by fiat; this requires a powerful argument, because it cuts against the grain of how those words have always been used. You certainly can’t just stipulate it on the grounds of some sort of obviousness or scientific/evolutionary knowledge. Nor, it seems to me, can you use something like this as evidence for your argument:

We have new understanding of psychology and sociology that seems to offer near-empirical evidence as to what builds and sustains societies that last and what factors, behaviors, and deviations lead to their collapse. — Outlander

If this could be shown to be true, it still wouldn’t answer the (traditional) ethical question of what is the right thing to do. We’re supposed to combine this “new understanding” story with the idea that, obviously, any human being should want to build and sustain societies that last. But this isn’t true now, and it wasn’t true in classical Greece. It’s never been true. Why should you or I or anyone else value “sustaining society” more than our own comfort or advantage? That, to me, is a genuine ethical question that can’t even be posed until, as @Banno points out, we stop thinking that some naturalistic fact about human beings or evolution is going to contain the answer.

Guilty as charged!

Notice the connection between aporia and epochē. — Wayfarer

This is interesting. Can you say more about that?

I think there's a fourth, which also finesses the knowledge problem:

4. There's the person who has a mystical experience, which is life-changing and whose effects persist over time. This person isn't sure WHAT happened, but tries to pick the most likely explanation, given what they know or can learn about such experiences, coupled with their own ongoing experience of the life changes. The result is a hypothesis: that the most likely explanation is that the experience was indeed an experience of God. The person doesn't claim knowledge of this, not at all. They can be shown to be wrong, conceivably, and they know it. But like so many important things in life, we have to make our best judgment.

As for the 'regress' - perhaps what we perceive as laws and regularities are necessarily true. Asking why they must be, is rather like asking why two and two equals four. — Wayfarer

Yes, in the sense that we're wondering whether explanation can ever stop, and if so, on what grounds. But the difference I see between arithmetic and natural laws is this: We don't generally speak about anything being caused in arithmetic -- we speak of reasons why, e.g., 2 +2 = 4, we don't say that the sum 4 is caused by the addition of 2 and 2. Whereas with natural laws, we do want a cause. The laws seem to harness generative power -- they actually get stuff done. Here you need something more along the lines of a Prime Mover to bring explanation to an end, it seems to me.

What happens on the surface level is what appears as phenomena - ‘phenomena’ being ‘what appears’ - but why things happen as they do, is the consequence of uniform regularities that are real on a different level to the phenomenal. — Wayfarer

I think we need to go even deeper, in order to reach a classical idealist understanding of causality and laws. The above statement speaks about a "consequence of uniform regularities" as the reason things happen as they do. (It also speaks about "reality on a different level to the phenomenal," but put that aside for the moment.). Isn't this like saying that sleep happens due to "soporific properties"? Yes, we perceive the uniform regularities, and their uniformity is what calls for explanation. And yes, if we could offer that explanation, it would make the regularities a consequence of it. But have we really progressed?

The kind of "basic" causality that you're talking about, I think, needs to be described more powerfully. You say (for the Platonist), "Laws exist at a deeper level than contingent facts." This is because the laws are supposed to cause the facts. Here a robust idealism emerges: A law, presumably, is not a material object. Yet it has the power, on this account, to cause and organize every phenomenon we experience. Now we reach that "different level to the phenomenal" -- what sort of thing must such a law be? I'm sympathetic to considering a vertical (higher) dimension, as you know, but how do we avoid an infinite regress? Do the laws shape themselves? Do they cause themselves? This raises the interesting question of whether hardcore idealism has to be, at bottom, theistic.

And it can go the other way
— Srap Tasmaner

Quite! And very pleased to have established some rapport. — Wayfarer

Yes. One of those other ways is what some call "whiggish" -- when we make moral judgments about people in the past as if they should have had the same (obviously correct!) attitudes we have today, in our enlightened age.

I think there's a real question whether supposed views of the past are ever really in play in a contemporary debate, or are people staking out contemporary positions in that debate but using the past to give their position the lustre of authority. — Srap Tasmaner

Another possibility: Some (not all) of those who make arguments using the past, want to persuade us of a narrative in which society (almost always Western society) as a whole has gone down the tubes since whatever the Golden Age was supposed to be. In this version, the decline in philosophy doesn't stand on its own, but is part and parcel of a decline in values, culture, and spirituality. We're meant to see the latter sorts of decline as obvious ("Just look around!"), and infer from this that the older philosophy must have been better too. We might even see a causal connection. I suppose if you have a grand narrative in which the West has declined, this doesn't fit well with a belief that philosophy has progressed, or at least not gotten worse.

Thank you for your patience. I'll have to reread AV. Your engagement with it is deeper than mine, and I suspect more accurate as to the arguments. I liked Whose Justice? Which Rationality? very much, though.

Yes, this is a good corrective to my somewhat peremptory rejection of MacIntyre's claim, as I understand it. But at the same time, isn't his whole argument based on a supposed "incoherence" in some monolithic thing called modern ethical philosophy? Is a "collapse into emotivism" supposed to be characteristic of how current moral philosophers think about ethics? That would be news to Bernard Williams or Thomas Nagel or Martha Nussbaum. That's what I meant when I said he was engaged in a degree of cherry-picking, naming approaches he particularly dislikes and making them exemplary.

the further equivocation as vice becomes the "vices" of the "vice unit" (i.e. primarily prostitution, gambling, drugs, and alcohol) and virtue becomes a sexually loaded term for women. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sure, that's exactly what they are -- equivocations, with a highly political purpose. But incoherent? I don't feel I have any trouble understanding the competing meanings of a term like "vice," nor do I think it affect my ability to engage in ethical thinking that is independent of the Aristotelian framework.

The irony here, for me, is that I actually rely more on virtue ethics than any other semi-systematic theory. I just don't feel it needs the kind of support MacIntyre wants to give it.

he argues that modern moral discourse is similarly fragmented because it has lost its connection to the broader, historically embedded frameworks (like Aristotelian virtue ethics) that once provided coherence. — Wayfarer

I think After Virtue is essential reading, but here again we see that one person's "history of philosophy" is another's "tendentious sour-cherry-picking." Here's a rephrasing and expansion of your (accurate) summary of one of MacIntyre's main points:

"There is no such thing as a single "modern moral discourse"; rather, ethics and moral philosophy have branched out in several interesting and important directions, each with their own problems for discussion both internally and with other branches. This branching-out no longer reveals a single direct connection to broader, historically embedded frameworks (like Aristotelian virtue ethics) that once provided a systematic view of ethics, along with the meta-ethical claim that the view could not be challenged without challenging an entire philosophical system. A number of branches of modern moral philosophy call this into question."

Is this version any more accurate than MacIntyre's? I think it is, but I wouldn't completely endorse either one. My point is that we shouldn't be beguiled by the idea that a loss of connection with a particular older tradition renders the entire discipline incoherent. Make Philosophy Great Again? I don't think so.

But my point here is that saying something is more complex is different to saying it is of greater worth.

Ok. I don't know of anyone who has advocated such a position. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Oh, I do. I was trained in classical music theory, and the assumption that complexity equates to quality was nearly unquestioned. Why is Bach better than Telemann? More complex. Why is the Western classical tradition better than pop? More complex. Etc. The heck of it is, there's something to this. Complexity is a virtue, it's just not the only virtue. And whether it is important to a particular piece of music depends on the aesthetic purposes of the piece. But when someone says, "I just can't find anything of worth in Beyonce, it's too simple, I listen once and there's nothing more to hear," they're not saying something silly. IMO, anyway.

I do really like the idea of trying to come up with a continuous graduation reality concept, which isn't an accuracy of a representation, or a way of counting things that already apply, or a way of saying how individuated an entity is. But I don't think it's possible, honestly. — fdrake

What if we returned to one kind of common talk about reality, where "real" means something like "vivid," "solid," "experientially impressive" -- that whole collection of descriptions?

So my written-down account of the dream I had last night isn't very real, relative to what I'm trying to describe. My memory, on which basis I write the description, is a little realer but still quite far from the dream itself. The dream, when I had it, was considerably more vivid, more real. And the subject of the dream -- a trip I took to Venice, let's say -- far exceeds the dream-images in reality. Until I reach the Form of Venice, or some other heavenly realm, it's the realest Venice I can know.

Something like that? I think this is different from "accuracy of representation" because the important parameter is "vividness of impression," not accuracy.

Why dont you build a giant paddock, and collect all the furniture of the universe inside of it. Then you can determine degrees of reality among the objects
— Joshs

They were all real! — fdrake

That was quick work! I was still trying to build my paddock.

The Kimhi connection is interesting. Are you thinking of the passage starting on p. 100 about "Socrates is wise / Diotima is wise"? So associating a person with a property would be Kimhi's functionalism, and associating a property with an example of it would be factualism? Or maybe you have something else in mind, but I like this. And I think I get what you're saying about how the ascription of an exemplary subject as partaking of a property makes the property look primary, and hence perhaps "realer" in the sense you're exploring.

I'd be interested in hearing more from you on this comment. (I've read some of Husserl's anti-psychologist arguments and found them amenable, but not Frege's) — Moliere

Husserl and Frege seem quite similar to me, re psychologism. They both reject the idea that thoughts can only be said to be “caused,” rather than explained or justified. One of the things I see Husserl doing is to separate the fact that thought-terms describe mental/psychological phenomena from the further fact (as he saw it) that phenomena like judgments and syllogisms are also normative. Similarly, a number is not to be understood as a “presentation,” a thought that occurs to me or you. Husserl says, “The number Five is not my own or anyone else’s counting of five, it is also not my presentation or anyone else’s presentation of five.” Frege’s emphasis, as far as I know (I don’t know his work deeply), was more on what we’d call the analytic quality of logical truths. But the point is similar: The psychological origin of subjective (synthetic) and objective (analytic) truths may be the same – they’re all thoughts – but it’s the way we demonstrate them that shows the difference. So, “the psychological is to be distinguished sharply from the logical, as the subjective is from the objective.” (Foundations of Arithmetic)

Not quite in the spirit of the enterprise though. — Srap Tasmaner

True, and I admit to a lifelong dislike of the term "real". But when you say that you want to see if "I might have any use for saying something has a higher degree of reality than something else," this seems like a good way to go. One of the things we philosophers do a lot of is recommending or stipulating or otherwise offering a use of a term that makes sense for an interesting purpose. We can certainly treat "real" like that, as you're suggesting.

Here’s a suggestion I don’t usually make: Do a classic ordinary-language investigation of the word “real.” After you list and explain the 986 different usages, pick the one you think is most useful for your philosophical purposes. End of story. Moral: “real” doesn’t have any single meaning whose correct application you can argue about.

(OK, maybe not quite "end of story" :smile: )