ENSAIO MODELO - Nº09*
“The discovery of one absolutely certain truth, the cogito, may overthrow the skeptical attitude that all is uncertain, but, at the same time, one truth does not constitute a system of knowledge about reality. To discover or justify knowledge about the nature of things a series of bridges must be built, once the experience of being confronted by the cogito has provided the solid, firm point of departure. However, the one truth produced by the method of doubt is not a premise from with all other truth follow. Rather it is a basis for rational discourse that makes it possible to recognize other truths.” – Richard H. Popkin
1.introduction
In the first part of this essay, I am going to describe the methodology that will be used to analyze the excerpt above. First of all, it is necessary to understand the philosophical project that emerges in the modern period, of which Descartes is predecessor; after that, it is need to recognize the conflict between Descartes and the Skepticism, which leads to the cogito argument. In spite of Descartes' proof be considered one of the most important factors to modern thinking, it will emerge rather philosophers that are going to question his proof; or the nature of his conclusion, such as the author of the text. Finally, in the last part of the essay, I am going to present the contemporaneous consequences of Descartes’ thinking.
- Arise of modern thinking
In the medieval thinking, we had paradigms that formed the process of knowledge, — the term “paradigm” here is used in the meaning theorized by the physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn; which formulate the concept as the rules were the fundaments of science are supported on — the Christianity philosophy was, in its last four centuries, based in the thinking of Saint Thomas Aquinas, which by his turn was based in the thinking of the ancient philosopher Aristotle; his conception of science was a form of epistemology based in the logic formulation of the truths, and not necessarily in a methodology of experimentation.
This idea of science is going to be questioned in the 16th century by Galileo Galilei and by Nicola Copernicus. Regarding Galileo, what we going to have is a critique based on his invention: the telescope, for with it he observed and restudied the movement of planets, particularly Jupiter, and noticed that there were smaller spheres orbiting it; these were the moons of Jupiter. This notion that the Earth was not the only planet with a moon summarily concern the Catholic Church and Galileo was judged by his discoveries.
In his judgment, was pronounced words from the Summa Theologica, the most important book of the medieval period, after the Bible obviously. In these words, Saint Thomas claims that the experience, no matter how simple it is, could never be put against the logic principles of reality; and one of that principles was the differentiation between the Earth and all the other planets. Galileo, regardless of his principles, abdicates from his discoveries by a priority: his life.
In the discoveries of Copernicus, the same do not was repeated, for he published his work at the very ending of his life. On the revolution of the heavenly spheres, in a free translation, is the publication that is the center of the modern paradigm of epistemology. Nicola Copernicus proved by his experiences that it was not the Sun that orbited around the Earth, but the opposite. The heliocentric theory of Copernicus proved, to a group of thinkers, the efficacy of the active science, namely, that form of epistemology grounded in the experimentation.
However, this paradigm wasn’t established yet; the skepticism was one of the philosophical currents brought from the Ancient Greek Philosophy to the modernity. Plenty of thinkers of that current inquiry the fundaments of this new science; and, indeed, it doesn’t have criteria or logical statements to support it. For since the dedication of the modern thinking was to prove the new science as the infallible tool to understand reality. Hence there would need a method.
- The discourse of the method
With this central concern, Descartes’ philosophy is formulated, with the premise to create a methodology that permits us to understand the world we are inserted in. Nonetheless, how did it occur?
According to the visions of Descartes, the reason is already present in human nature, as an innate property. The error, however, would be a bad use of the reason; it is this notion of error that will conduce Descartes to pursue the formulation of a method, a path where the reason could be guided and avoid the error.
One important fact about Descartes was his love for the geometry, and that’s not in vain, for the scientific method is an adaptation of the geometrical method created by Euclid in his great work the elements, which joined all the knowledge of math in his time. This character of his thinking will be passed to the post-Cartesian rationalist tradition, especially to Leibniz and to Spinoza who write his ethics: demonstrated by geometrical order, such as the own subtitle indicates with this mathematical rigor.
And the method consists in four steps: the evidence rule that claim that the only thing that could be considered true is that which we don’t have any doubt about its ratification; the analysis rule, in which we would separate the statement in a group of other smaller affirmations; the organization rule that consists in a selection of the affirmations starting by the simplest ones and using they as auxiliaries to the understanding of the most complex ones, based in the composition of theorems by another theorems yet proved; and last the revision rule that obliges us to made revisions and correction in all the points of this path to made us sure that we don’t make errors in it.
However, even with this high criteria method, the skeptical still doesn’t accept it. Nevertheless, remains to Descartes to find an unquestionable, eternal, and immutable truth. This would be his Arquimedian Point. By this truth, all the other truths would be possible. Descartes believed that he had found that truth in his Cogito Argument, and that’s exactly what the excerpt disagrees in “the one truth produced by the method of doubt is not a premise from with all other truth follow”. But before understand that critique; let us see the argument itself.
- Cogito Argument
Regardless of Descartes disagree with the skepticism, he always considered its objections, and it is possible that this consideration has made him who he represents in nowadays. By this idea, it is now understandable that the argumentation of Descartes that doesn’t try to prove itself independent, but with the own skepticism. In effect, the Cogito Argument is a radicalization of the skepticism.
In the first argument, Descartes uses of the skeptical objections to question our sensible capacities, by introduce the idea that they are barely precise. In fact, I can question the distance between me and an object that a see further, or I can question the composition of something that I glanced once. However, still are experimentation that I cannot question, such as the fact that right now I am writing an essay in a computer, or the fact that I am in a chair; could I question this?
This questioning brings us to the second argument: can we prove that we are awaked? I mean the distinction between dream and reality is tenuous, there a lot of moments in my dream that I cannot recognize that I am not awake. Why should I believe right now? Nonetheless, even in my dreams, there are immutable properties; such as length, and areas, and the logical causality between effects. These are the object of study from the geometry, hence, even if we are in a dream, we still sure about the formulation of math, therefore we still have an unquestionable truth. Finally in the third part of the argument, Descartes take the skepticism to a new level supposing the existence of an evil God that could control our thought.
First of all, Descartes pass this notion to the concept of an Evil Genius, for the own nature of a God doesn’t can be connected to the evil. This Genius, have all the powers of a God, except His perfect moral nature. Such creature could have created our entire universe and formulated all our forms of thinking. With this, I could trust not even in math, for this Genius is inside our consciousness, corrupting all our truths. By this, Descartes articulate an omnipotent being to avoid us from the true knowledge. However, if this Genius avoid me of truth, first he need to made me doubt, and it can’t be thought in doubt without presupposes thinking, that by its turn, cannot be considered without existence. Therefore I doubt, therefore I think, and therefore I am. Cogito ergo sum.
Finally Descartes believed have found an unquestionable truth, his Arquimedian Point. However, this will still be questioned.
- The Cogito is an axiom?
One axiom, or postulate, can be here defined as an essential true that is able to prove other statements as true or false. In the except, we can see that Popkin doesn’t agree with the classification of the Cogito as an axiom, in fact, we can infer by the last phrase of the text, that the great Arquimedian point to Descartes, in the conception of Popkin, was God. For understand that we need to resort to the Classic theory of correspondence.
With the formulation of the Cogito, what Descartes really found was not an axiom, for the consequence of the argument was not a truth that leads to other truths, but an isolated truth that separated mind and body; feature known as solipsism. The cogito, or the subject, would be completely separated to its object, the reality. Nevertheless, it would even be separated to its own body.
To solve this problem, Descartes formulate the theory of correspondence, in which every concept would be originated by an existent being or thing; or the melt of more than one existent thing. For instance, I can think in a unicorn, not because unicorns do exist, but because horses and horns do exist. In fact, by this idea, it is clear that God has to exist, for the idea of an infinite being composed by finite other existent things is absurd. With the existence of God, there would be a being capable to show us things by its essences.
That what Popkin means by “it is a basis for rational discourse that makes it possible to recognize other truths.” Was by the Cogito that the realization of God became a possible task. However, the prove of the own Cogito would be questioned by philosophers such as Leibniz and Nietzsche. Leibniz claims circularity in the argument, by the assumption of the existence as precedent to the thinking, which is thesis of the own argument. Nevertheless, I am going to analyze the critique of Nietzsche in a deeper perspective by the relevancy of the author to the Contemporaneous thinking.
- Ruptures with the modern thinking
There are a plenty of philosophers from the modernity that criticize the argument, but we going to concentrate our analyze in Friedrich Nietzsche, by the fact that he is considered by the literature — set of works of the history of philosophy – as the last thinker inserted in the modern period, and one of the most important precedent of the contemporaneous thinking.
In the 16th chapter of beyond good and evil, Nietzsche formulates a critique to the argument that is characteristic by its irony and sarcasm. In a few pages, the thinking of Descartes is deconstructed by malicious question of Nietzsche, such as by the claim that the conclusion of the argument is ungrounded. According to him, you can’t conclude: if someone is thinking; if are you that are thinking; if the act of thinking is a necessary causation of the condition of a subject, and a lot of other questions.
His critique is very similar to the 20th century logical philosopher Bertrand Russell whom affirms that the only possible conclusion of Descartes is that someone’s thinking.
In effect, the contemporary philosophy will emerge as a discontentment with the project of modern philosophy, rather than keep the focus of the thinking in a method of confirms the efficacy of the epistemology, those thinkers would create new approaches to knowledge, such as the language or an pragmatist attitude to the science; or even accept the Cogito and try to solve the mind-body problem. In the next segment will be studying some of this thoughts, and how they affect the world how it is.
- Cartesian heritage
I have to say that the conception of science formulated by Descartes was a basis for the formation of modern science, and consequently he is responsible for the technical reason which was theorized by Francis Bacon in his inductive method. If this idea is still not completely clear, we can better explain by taking the work Descartes’ error from the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio — An author that fundament its studies in the ideas of Baruch Spinoza, specially, the integration and interrelation between logos (reason) and pathos (emotion), the sense of emotion here is not merely the conventional, but as the concept of affects — whom claims that the great error of Descartes was to consider the emotion as separated from the reason, hence, considering the emotion as a bad using of the reason.
That was the error that introduced the unconsciousness of the science, which is going to be criticized by the Contemporary philosopher Edgar Morin in his science avec conscience. In this critique we can see an influence came from the School of Frankfurt. Both of them, disagree with the path took by the science, in which the scientist are much more concerned in control the nature than with the consequences of this changes. For instance, we can see little boy and fat man, the atomic bombs launched in Hiroshima and Nagasaki; we have the Colonialism, the Nazism, and the neoliberalism in the conception of some modern thinkers, including myself. All of these are fulfilled with an episteme, but the episteme isn’t immutable, we see this by Michel Foucault who claims that all period of time has its episteme. However those actions don’t are mutable, the Jews will not revive; the “scientific” racism must never be forgotten.
- Conclusion
In this essay, we analyze the context of the excerpt from Richard H. Popkin. Studying since the formation of modernity spirit until the formulation of the Modern thought; then understanding the position of the author about Descartes’ Thinking. After that, we made use of the thinking of other philosophers to pursue the antithesis of his idea and finally presenting the reflex of Descartes’ thinking in the contemporary world, such as the establishment of the efficacy of science, regardless of its unconsciousness. Nevertheless, I present new formulations of science that are being constructed in the current day.
SINTETIZANDO -
Autor da citação: Richard Popkin
Posição em relação ao autor: Concordância
Tese do ensaio: O cogito não é justificativa suficiente para resolução dos problemas do solipsismo, de fato, a verdadeira solução de Descartes é a existência de Deus. Assim como o método cartesiano é responsável pela instrumentalização da ciência.
Autores usados em suporte: Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), Antonio Damasio (1944-) e Edgar Morin (1921-).
*Este ensaio contém uma série de erros, tanto em relação ao língua inglesa, quanto em relação a fatos históricos; convido aqueles que se interessarem a buscarem esses erros e até mesmo reescrever este ensaio. Se quiser, pode usar como base a resenha escrita em cima da obra Discurso do Método de René descartes. Se além disso, se interessarem em uma correção, basta que nos mandem o ensaio por meio do formulário do último Desafio Noic. Ficaremos gratos em ler suas produções.
Bons estudos!
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