Review: Descartes' Principles of Philosophy

I'd give this five stars, but both editions I've come across, Barnes & Noble and a digital reprint from Amazon, do not contain the whole Principles of Philosophy. Much of the science is missing like a description of Descartes' laws of motion and his vortex theory of planetary motion. This is unfortunate because that is the main reason to read this today, as part of the history of scientific thought. What we get is the entire first book which summarizes the arguments in the Meditations, and moves onto a deeper elaboration of his ontology. This is the most interesting part of the book and is very important to understanding how Descartes relates to the Scholastic tradition. 

            

Basically, instead of ten categories like Aristotle had, we have three or four depending on how you look at it. There are substances, principle attributes, modes, and maybe accidents. Or substance, quality, quantity, and affection (maybe). Gone are relation, action, passivity, place, time, and position. Using the famous method of doubt, Descartes denies or severely scrutinizes Hylomorphism (that every form has a corresponding material object) by arguing that what we think corresponds to something actually existing could only be a fiction of the mind. Real as thought, but not objectively. Given that, formal reality is different from objective reality. Fire does not have its own form, but has both an ideational content (color, smell, heat) and objective material content (motion in space). Position is just how something is situated among other object. Time is the duration of something in existence, but not something in of itself (without space). 

For Aristotle a substance is an individual thing. For Descartes substance is a distinct thing, known conceptually. His new standard for ontology is how doubtable it is as something existing independently. And so substances are designated by innate ideas. What always accompanies my perception of material objects is what reflects their true and distinct nature, which is spatial extension. Whatever I can doubt about the reality of my thoughts, there is always thinking and its modes willing, feeling, affirming, denying. Only those objects of either these two substances, matter and mind, exist.

This was intended to a be a textbook to replace the Aristotelean/Scholastic curriculum in schools. The very way it was written shows. It is written in a fairly subjective way almost without reference to anybody else except the thoughts and musings of the author. Everything in the book is quite parsimonious, following from what is said in the first half of Book I. He even says in Book IV that "there is no phenomenon of nature whose explanation has been omitted in this treatise." A bold claim. I think he is right, if you accept his foundational presuppositions. Overall it reads like a synthesis of Scholastic/Medieval philosophy and materialism. He acknowledges that he "made no use of any principle which was not received and approved by Aristotle." And to today's readers I think he is right. The language he used seems archaic today. Offering a proof of God and talking about substance for instance. He briefly mentions Democritus, mostly to deny more influence from him than anybody else. He was probably talking like this to avoid conflict with Catholicism and avoid charges of atheism because he is in retrospect key to the materialist, mechanistic conception of the universe. Nonetheless I see a synthesis between the old and emerging "corpuscular" or atomistic views of the universe which reigned until around the 20th century.

The Categories of Existence: My Ontology Part 2

(Please read part one of my ontology first. Then look at the square at the bottom to understand where I'm leading to)

Now to the categories of what can exist. There are four:

(1) A substance is that being which is self-explanatory. Substance exists independent of anything else, and its nature is contained in itself (all predicates are in the subject). What can be said about it belongs to it alone both clearly and distinctly, although other things may reflect its properties. Substance has the most reality of what exists in its clarity and distinctness. Substance has four distinctions; infinite and finite, and pure and impure.

-An Infinite substance is that which all its modes are defining attributes, which it has a greater number than anything else. An infinite substance's essence entails its existence, for if anything can be known to exist at all it describes the infinite substance.

-A finite substance has a single essence defining attributes, and so only exists objectively if this particular attribute exists (ideationally).

-A pure substance has no parts other than itself as a whole. If broken down into smaller parts it loses its nature. If it can be divided further, it is not pure. 

-An impure substance can be divided into smaller parts while retaining its nature. 

Infinite substance has more objective reality than finite substance, and pure substance has more clarity than impure substance. An infinite pure substance is more real than a finite pure substance, while a finite pure substance has more reality than an infinite impure substance. There is not a pure, impure, infinite, or finite substance by themselves just as there is nothing which is true ideationally alone (C or p) or objectively alone (N or c). 

(2) An attribute is what belongs to a single substance and not another. They are distinct thoughts that are clear in what they represent. These are all innate modes. Also can be called quality, essence or defining mode. There are three attributes; perfection, thought, and extension. 

-Perfection. What is called perfect contains everything that can be said about it, and there is nothing else which is like it to be greater or lesser than. The concept of a square having four equal sides or a circle's points all being of equal distance from the origin. 

-Thought. Thought is what occurs with everything we do even in the absence of any objects of sense. This includes willing, doubting, judging, affirming, denying etc. Deprived of all senses, if we still think there is something to think about, ourselves, which has an objective existence. Thus we can think of ourselves and only ourselves. The activities which occur in regard to only ourselves and accompany anything we do. 

-Extension. What is extended takes up space, in more than one dimension, and can be divided into smaller parts. Whenever we imagine an object, we cannot conceive of it without being extended in space. We can imagine something without color or smell, but not without spatial extension. An extended thing can be divided further and further and be what it is, otherwise it is not extended. 

(3) Modes are ideas which themselves exist in regard to something they represent. Modes are intentional thoughts, they are about something. Also called quantity. Some modes however refer to consciousness, thought itself, and are not intentional in the same way. Modes are the different ways a substance can exist in thought, all having reality because they are thought and represent something. There are two kinds of modes; innate modes and caused modes. 

-Innate modes are those that are present to consciousness itself regardless of what is thought about, as if they inhere to mind substance. Yet they are not essential to mind substance, and so can belong to other things. 

-Caused modes arise from without consciousness and so are not as clear, yet they are intentional and so belong to something objective. 

(4) Accidents are ideas prior to any determination, present in thought yet not known to belong to anything outside of thought, even mind substance. Also referred to as affection or being affected. Accidents are neither clear nor distinct. Accidents are not essential to substances and their relation to the powers a substance has is unknown. There are two kinds of accidents; passions and the unconscious.

-A passion is present in thought, yet does not give us a clear idea of what the cause is nor whether it is essential to anything.

-The unconscious refers to a cause of ideas which is not a body or mind as we know them, and yet is not out of consideration. There is no clear notion of what the unconscious is, nor is it necessary to explain what we know. But it is not impossible. 

There are three substances which are determined by three attributes (essences, or defining modes) and by whether they are pure, impure, infinite, or finite. 

(1) Mind-pure,finite-thought

(2) Body-impure,finite-extension

(3) God-pure,infinite-perfection

There are two kinds of modes

(1) Innate Modes

(2) Caused Modes

And two kinds of accidents

(1) Passions

(2) The Unconscious

All together, we get:

Clarity	Distinctness
Substance	Pure>Impure, Infinite>Finite
Attribute ^	Perfection>Thought>Spatial Extension
Mode ^	Innate>Caused
Accident ^	Passion>unconscious

We have ten subcategories when we differentiate distinctiveness and clarity to the four general categories, in an ordinal rank.

1) Sfp= Mind Substance. Cc.

2) Sfi= Body Substance. Cc.

3) Sip= God Substance. NC. 

4) Ap= Perfection Attribute. NC. 

5) At= Thought Attribute. NC. 

6) Ae= Extension Attribute. NC. 

7) Mi= Innate Mode. Cc.

8) Mc= Caused Mode. Np. 

9) Ap= Passions Accident. pc.

10) Au= Unconscious Accident. pc.

All substances are clear. My existence as mind is clear, though it is contingent. The existence of bodies is clear, both empirically and as a concept, yet it could be that there are no bodies, at least as conceived. I can still think and have a mind (exist) without a body as mind is its own substance. God  is clear as being infinite, anything which exists describes this being, and God is necessary as nothing else is needed to explain what is said to be God, being perfect. 

(The c below N is lowercase c; the C above p is uppercase). 

Nicholas' Ontology: A Beginning

There are two ways something can be real. 

(1) As being thought, and (2) representing something objective (or thought about). 

(1) The first kind of reality, in thought, differs in degrees from the certain to the possible. 

(2) Representational or objective reality differs in degrees between the necessary to the contingent. 

Something can be, with these distinctions, more or less real. Something must have both ideational and objective reality, in addition to having either ideational or objective reality, to be real. Having an idea of something must refer to at least the objective reality of what has the idea, just as the reality of something objective is accompanied by an idea of it, otherwise it is not known at all. There is not something with only one kind of reality alone. Whatever is clear or possible is at least contingent, and whatever is necessary or contingent is at least possible. Though things can differ in degrees over how ideationally and objectively real they are. 

There are two reasons for the distinctions of ideational and representational reality. 

1) Subjectivity of knowledge. Being is established by perception, prior to any determination of what it is. What is present to me as an idea is more real than what I don't have an idea of. 
2) Parsimony of being is preferable (Occam's Razor). There is less room to go wrong (fewer assumptions to account for) and more reliance on what I perceive. The simplest explanation is more distinct in what its conditions for being right and wrong are, and so has a greater reference to reality. 

Both types of reality give us what is clear (ideational) and what is distinct (representational). The following divisions of knowledge follow from the two types of reality, each differing between degrees of clarity and distinctness. These are the clear and the possible (ideational reality), and the necessary and the contingent (representational reality). 

What is certain is not subject to doubt and does not require the explanation of something else existing.

The possible is known to exist in thought, as in subjectively by a knower, but it is not known whether the possible actually exists in itself or exists because of something else which I already know.

The possible refers to the existence of something I do not have a conception of (in relation to what I already know), yet still exists by virtue of having an idea of it.

The clear is that which I can account for in terms of what else I know. 

The clear and the possible are not opposites but degrees of the reality thought has in itself. With its own objective reality.  

Examples: It is certain that I exist, for whatever I know of is thought and nothing else has these thoughts besides myself. It is possible that a Sasquatch exists, but I do not know if it is wholly imaginary (explained by myself) or representative of what exists outside of thought (as a representation).

Of what can be said about what exists, there is what is necessary and what is contingent. These determine what is distinct by degrees. 

What is said to be necessary is what we cannot conceive of as not-existing without contradiction. The necessary is always true, because of what it is, and what it is not. The ground for this distinction is between being and nothing. Given that nothing will not give rise to existence, what we have before us either must exist by its own nature or owes its existence to what existed prior ad infinitum eventually requiring a necessary being. Something also cannot exist in the same way and the same time as something else if they really are different things (Identity of Indiscernibles).

It is from necessity that we get the great laws of thought:

1) Law of Identity. A is A.

2) Law of Non-contradiction. A is not ~A.

3) Law of the Excluded Middle. A is not A and ~A.

4) Principle of Sufficient Reason. If A is an effect, the cause is not ~A. 

The contingent is what can be conceived as not existing without contradiction. These are empirical truths. Seeing is believing, but not enough to establish what something is other than it has objective reality. An inductive truth only stands contingently, on further experience. That it rained all this week will not tell us for certain that it will rain tomorrow. We cannot know that it will rain until it happens, as rain is not inherent to there being a tommorow. With different things, there is no necessary relationship, but a contingent one. 

The contingent will not give us a distinct idea of something either. That ice is cold does not give us its nature, what makes it what it is. Neither does the sensation of cold explain how it got that way. Still, experience is of something, which means some objective reality. 

-The necessary/contingent distinction is based on how we reason, with logic & language. The predicate is either contained in the subject or it is contained in another subject. When we speak about something, we assume that it refers to something that does exist. What is necessary owes to nothing else an explanation, and we can discern what it is solely in terms of itself and what it isn't. The contingent is objective, but not as objective as the necessary. 

Examples: A dog is a mammal is a necessary truth because saying a dog is a reptile or not a mammal is contradictory. That a dog has black fur is contingent as something can be a dog with yellow or brown fur.

What I perceive clearly (certainly) and distinctly (necessarily) is better than what I perceive vaguely (possibly) and confusedly (contingently). This respects the limits of what we can know which condition what we can reason about as well as the subjective basis of knowledge. 

Going forward I have labeled these distinctions as Cp and Nc.

Epistemologically, what is clear or possible has precedence over what is necessary or owes itself to the necessary as I might not have a notion at all of what it is, even if it would make sense. 

So, Cp>Nc

Nevertheless if I have any idea of something, it will conform to either N or c. And so something can be CN as well as Cp. And it can be pN and pc. 

Thus there are four determinants of what exists

CN	Np
Cc	cp

The Clear and Necessary. The highest in ideational & objective reality. The most clear & distinct. 

The Clear and contingent. The highest in ideational reality, not objective reality, but being clear it is preferred above what follows. 

The Necessary and the possible. High in objective reality, but not clear. 

The contingent and the possible. Still real ideationally and objectively, but not clear and distinct. 

The clear is preferred over the distinct, but because thinking has an objective reality in the ego (Cogito Ergo Sum) the clear is never alone, objectively. The objective reality of the self is contingent, even as its existence is clear, without doubt. Something which has objective reality but no ideational reality cannot be known, and so it is not a suitable grounds for existence (subjectivity and parsimony). No C, p, N, or c alone. 

Our goal is to ascertain what Descartes called the clear and distinct, but what I call the clear and necessary. 

What we have here is a sort of synthesis of Descartes' cogito with Aristotle's Hylomorphism. The experience of something has with it it's reality as idea telling us what it is and its objective reality telling us what it is "made of" or caused by. The idea of something is not disconnected from the reality of what it is, as with Hylomorphism there is a unity of what something is with what it consists of. 

But what something is is a determination of thought, so there is a difference between the qualities something produces in the mind and what actually can be said about the object. This is because thought, the subjective, has its own reality and with which it has to have an idea of something to determine if it exists. 

Thus an object like a body is not the same as the qualities it brings to the mind. What we describe an object as having must be certain to belong to it, making the object distinct. We say ice is cold and hard, but these could just be purely mental qualities. We must respect the subjectivity of knowledge. We must also be parsimonious with what we admit to existing in itself as a substance and what is essential to something. For we could be mistaken in our determinations of what it objectively exists in. 

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

I saw the movie before reading the book, but I wasn't paying much attention and can't remember anything after they're at the cottages.

Which I was in so glad I checked out the book at a local library. I was looking for Remains of the Day, which turned out to be lost, but settled on this as I liked the movie. Roger Ebert called the novel "masterful" in his film review, so I looked forward to the experience.

This was an excellent novel. What I love is that while it is ostensibly a science fiction novel about human clones being bred to harvest organs, it focuses on the personal level and doesn't let that troubling future get in the way of our three main character's lives. It is only at the end that the cloning framework is given discussion.

This is a very emotional novel. It is about love, the love three people have for each throughout their lives no matter their situation or ultimate fate. They in a way practice Nietzsche's amor fatis (love of fate). It is interesting how little they dread their fate as organ donors, on a predetermined path. There is no mention of any of the Hailsham children trying to escape. It all feels like the lives of normal children.

And that is the point. By the end, you'll realize that these three are truly human. But with the ultimate knowledge of why they're here and what they're here for. With all that, they still manage to love. In part thanks to Hailsham where they were given a chance in life and were encouraged to reach their potential. They were all three very fortunate to be alive when and where they were. Their guardians really did care about them.

I really identity with Tommy. He has a big heart, but also a deep rage at his own existence. It's because deep down, he knows what's what. Knowledge brings that sadness. People who know me, especially early in life, see how creative and passionate I can be. But also how I rage in despair at the smallest things. Or at nothing at all. I just cannot forget, the feeling I came into the world with.

But love is what makes it all work. I loved this book.

“He who loves God cannot strive that God should love him in return"
-Baruch Spinoza