我的奮鬥

III.

 Now, I am in a position to draw my own contention and put it straightforwardly. I believe that for Descartes, something like BonJour’s third premise, namely, the very statement that under normal conditions our clear and distinct perceptions are true, is analytic in character. We are thus absolved from the obligation of justifying it, rather, what the statement at issue demands is a transcendental deduction in the Kantian sense, that is, an “explanation of the manner in which concepts can thus relate a priori to objects”.

 So far as I can see, there are mainly two concerns involved on this subject. One is argumentative, and the other, which weighs much more heavily in regard to the purpose of the present discussion, is interpretative. In what follows I shall deal with them in turn.

 Van Cleve has set up a framework so well that it is convenient to adopt to present my view more concisely. According to him, an epistemic principle is one that specifies the conditions under which propositions of various types are justified. By contrast, an epistemic proposition is one that attributes evidence, certainty, or some other epistemic characteristic to another proposition. Having these two distinguished, Van Cleve raises the question how epistemic principles, such as the statement that under normal conditions our clear and distinct perceptions are true, are justified. More specifically, are epistemic principles justified before epistemic propositions, or are they justified after epistemic propositions, or, they are immediately justified?

 Van Cleve attributes the first view to Descartes, and opposes to it. According to this view, a general procedure of justification goes with the following sequence:

1.  Propositions known immediately.

2.  Further propositions inferred from propositions at level 1.

3.  Epistemic principles inferred from propositions at level 2.

4.  Instantiations of antecedents of epistemic principles.

5.  Epistemic propositions inferred from propositions at level 3 and 4.

So formulated, and Van Cleve’s objections to it aside, as he trenchantly points out, the cogency of this view hinges greatly on whether there are valid inferences from level 2 to level 3. But, as I have argued at the end of the previous section, the bases upon which the inference in question is made cannot be empirical, for the epistemic principles thus derived can be no more than empirical laws, and these laws are not sufficient for the Cartesian scientia in that they are inextricably contingent. Still, many would say, we may have something else that could serve to meet the higher standard of sicentia, for example, rational intuitions. But, with one eye open to the coherence that is required for genuine knowledge, we might keep wondering how those rational intuitions are to be justified in the first place. Generally speaking, the predicament is that whatever we take as our base to infer epistemic principles, these bases themselves are in need of justification which only epistemic principles are qualified to provide. Up to this point, the vicious circularity is obvious, and we therefore have very good reason to abandon this picture, in order to liberate Descartes from the Cartesian Circle from which the true lesson to be learned, following Sosa’s terminology, we have to say, is that without the aid of some a priori truth recognized as such, there can be no way to raise cognitio to scientia.

 Van Cleve’s own proposal suffers from mostly the same predicament. He suggests that epistemic principles can be justified after epistemic propositions, and he gives the following example:

1.  I am certain that I am a thinking thing.

2.  The only possible source of this certainty is clear and distinct perception.

3.  Therefore, clear and distinct perception is a source of certainty (i.e. whatever I perceive clearly and distinctly is certain).

Here, indeed, epistemic principles seem to be justified by means of epistemic propositions such as 1. Nevertheless, the problem remains if we seek further to examine each of the premises employed in this argument. For one thing, how can I be certain in advance that I am a thinking thing, if, before this very argument is constructed, the certainty at stake is certainly wanted. And that it is wanted is evidently indicated by the conclusion of the argument. Moreover, in recapitulating his main idea, Van Cleve leaves us with the following passage:

Sometimes I reflect that I know a certain proposition, then ask myself how I know it (what makes me justified). I can be justified in my initial reflection even before I have successfully answered the question it provokes. (The analogue in ethics would be knowing that an act is right without yet knowing what makes it right.)

It must be made explicit at once that here, in speaking of “justification”, Van Cleve is referring to justification of a certain externalist kind, otherwise it is unintelligible that one can be said to be justified without knowing how. But, in the context of the Cartesian epistemology, such kind of justification would fail to cohere with other beliefs within a cognitive system since the justification in question is not even known, and this lack of coherence will be most fatal if our final goal is to achieve scientia of epistemic principles. The analogue in ethics would be that doing good things incidentally or instinctively does not yet confer the status of a virtuous person on anyone. In a word, if the scientia of epistemic principles are to be justified by cognitio of any kind, which is first granted in either externalist or internalist fashion, and the ultimate, reflective justification of the cognitio depends in return on the sicentia of the principles, there is no escape from the Cartesian Circle.

 But one thing must be clarified at this stage of discussion. I am not suggesting that only sicientia can provide justification for other sicentia. Rather, what I am arguing is that in a fundamental sense we should give up the whole idea of justifying all sicentia. Especially, so far as Descartes is concerned, I do not see any necessity to regard him as someone so ambitious that his endeavor is to justify everything.

 So, within Van Cleve’s framework, the only option that remains is to claim that epistemic principles are immediately justified. Nevertheless, however the inference we have adopted to come to the conclusion may seem plausible, I hesitate to accept this statement. For if some proposition is “immediately justified”, what else can be expected to reveal the truth of it but an appropriate exposition of that very proposition, and the wording of “immediate justification” appears to me to be no more than a play of words. Moreover, this wording is very likely to distract us from what I think is most worth concentrating on, namely, an illuminating interpretation of Descartes’ epistemology. And now it is time to set about this task.

 Let us begin with a very brief question: why is God needed in Descartes’ epistemology? In the end of the second paragraph of the Third Meditation, Descartes lays down his famous epistemic principle that whatever he perceives very clearly and distinctly is true. Unfortunately, this principle is not enough to expel his doubt. Descartes continues to ask

But what about when I was considering something very simple and straightforward in arithmetic or geometry, for example that two and three added together make five, and so on? Did I not see at least these things clearly enough to affirm their truth? Indeed, the only reason for my later judgement that they were open to doubt was that it occurred to me that perhaps some God could have given me a nature such that I was deceived even in matters which seemed most evident.

So, in order for me to achieve knowledge with my clear and distinct perceptions, God must not be a deceiver, that is, more specifically, He must guarantees that my nature is such that whatever I perceive clearly and distinctly is true, at least under normal conditions.

 Here, the qualification “under normal conditions” is not unnecessary, because it will not make too much sense to speak of clear and distinct perceptions under “abnormal” conditions. Moreover, we can even conceive of a concept of “normality” such that a “normal condition” means no more than any condition under which our clear and distinct perceptions must be true. Given these preliminaries, we are now allowed to reformulate Descartes’ epistemic principle as follows: If the condition is normal, whatever I perceive clearly and distinctly is true. Indeed, this reformulation leaves intact the analytic nature of Descartes’ epistemic principle, granted the above conception of “normality”, nonetheless it serves to reveal more explicitly what God must bestow on us for our knowledge to be possible. Following the reformulation, we see definitely that God is there for Descartes to guarantee that the antecedent of the conditional is satisfied, that normal conditions do obtain in our cognitive lives.

 Furthermore, Let us notice here that the crucial point has nothing to do with God’s ontology in itself. If God exists, His existence has no other bearing on epistemology except the assurance of the normality of our cognitive condition. Therefore, so far as knowledge is concerned, and knowledge is certainly the main concern of Descartes’ and ours in this context, I propose that we should understand Descartes’ “idea of God” as the concept of “normality” indicated above, so that we would not be troubled any longer with the implications of God’s persona that necessarily follow from the idea of God.

 Thus understood, Descartes’ ontological argument can be regarded as an attempt to clarify the normality of our cognitive condition. With the somewhat bold analogy in mind, we can therefore ask the following question similar to Descartes’: what then, is the cause of our concept of normality? The positive account Descartes gives for the cause of his idea of God relies solely on the self-evident principle that

But in order for a given idea to contain such and such objective reality, it must surely derive it from some cause which contains at least as much formal reality as there is objective reality in the idea.

And I think it more efficient to put the subtleties with regard to the “formal reality” of a cause and “objective reality” of an idea aside and adopt another version of this principle that is easier to comprehend:

Now it is manifest by the natural that there must be at least as much reality in the efficient and total cause as in the effect of that cause.

So, simply speaking, there must be a “real cause” of our concept of normality if we possess such a concept, and that we do possess such a concept is beyond doubt. Just like for Descartes, there must be a real cause of our idea of God if we possess such an idea, and that we do possess that idea is beyond doubt. Furthermore, Descartes affirms this cause to be God Himself, and we can similarly claim that the only possible cause of our concept of normality is the normality of our cognitive condition itself.

 Next, Descartes seeks to refute two main objections that may arise. First, I may derive my idea of God not from His reality directly, but by ways of negation. That is to say, it is not necessary that God exists for my having an idea of God, and it suffices that I conceive of Him first in terms of finite beings, and then negates their finitude. Descartes replies to this objection as follows:

And I must not think that, just as my conceptions of rest and darkness are arrived at by negating movement and light, so my perception of the infinite is arrived at not by means of a true idea but merely by negating the finite…For how could I understand that I doubted of desired－that is, lacked something－and that I was not wholly perfect, unless there were in me some idea of a more perfect being which enabled me to recognize my own defects by comparison?

Here, the idea is that the very recognition, or even conception of anything finite, presupposes the conception of the infinite, and not the contrary. That this is so becomes most obvious, if we remind ourselves of the third metaphysical exposition Kant gives for the concept of space. There, Kant demonstrates that

For, in the first place, we can represent to ourselves only one space; and if we speak of diverse spaces, we mean thereby only parts of one and the same unique space. Secondly, these parts cannot precede the one all-embracing space, as being, as it were, constituents out of which it can be composed; on the contrary, they can be thought only as in it. Space is essentially one; the manifold in it, and therefore the general concept of spaces, depends solely on 〔the introduction of 〕limitations.

With this example of the concept of space in mind, I think it can be fairly said that Descartes’ more general conclusion is well established. And, to keep in track with our analogy between God and normality, Descartes’ conclusion can be interpreted as confirming that the concept of normality cannot arise from the abnormal, but must result from actual normal conditions, for the similar reason that any detection or mere suspicion of abnormal conditions, the worst case being that of a Demon deceiving us, necessarily presupposes the concept of normality, and therefore, the reality of that concept.

 The second objection to be met is that I may derive the idea of God from myself. That is to say, it is not necessary that God exists for my idea of God, because whatever perfection I attribute to God is in me, not actually maybe, but at least potentially, and I can actualize that perfection gradually to an infinite degree. Therefore, Descartes asks himself:

And finally, if the potentiality for these perfections in already within me, why should not this be enough to generate the idea of such perfections?

By “such perfections”, of course Descartes means God, and the question amounts to whether something potential can produce the idea of something actual. So formulated, Descartes’ answer to this question is definitely no. And the most decisive reason he gives for this answer is that

And finally, I perceive that the objective being of an idea cannot be produced merely by potential being, which strictly speaking is nothing, but only by actual or formal being.

Recall our principle that there must be at least as much reality in the efficient and total cause as in the effect of that cause. According to this principle, it is obvious that the potentiality of something could at best lead to an idea of something potential, but not something real or actual. But what we possess an idea of is not a potential God, which is not so perfect comparing to an actual God, on the contrary, our very idea of God entails that he is actual. Therefore, I cannot derive the idea of God from myself. Still, the same also holds for our understanding of Descartes’ God. In this context, the argument can be employed to show that although I can by myself improve my cognitive condition, so that it gets closer and closer to the most desired, ideally “normal” one, the point is that the concept of normality cannot be derived from this potentiality, but must come from actual normal condition. Basically speaking, literally any condition can be said to be potentially normal, and this suffices to render the thought that we derive the concept of normality not from actual normal conditions, but conditions that are potentially normal as absurd.

 To conclude this whole discussion, what Descartes’ God serves to guarantee, in the epistemically relevant sense, is that under normal conditions our clear and distinct perceptions are true, which in fact is an epistemic principle indispensible in any justification of genuine knowledge. And my contention is that it is possible to understand Descartes’ God as referring to the normality of our cognitive condition, so that his ontological argument for the existence of God may well be accepted and adopted as a defense for the desired normality. As Stephen Menn inspiringly comments near the end of the sixth chapter of his Descartes and Augustine:

When we had “forgotten our father God, and whence we came, and what we are”, we did not know that we were capable of knowledge; this was the ultimate ground for doubt in the first Meditation, and at the beginning of the third”.

Nevertheless, so long as this normality is ascertained, the hypothetical Demon must be gone, and we shall therefore enjoy our knowledge on an ever so concrete and solid base. This is, I believe, Descartes’ true achievement through his painstaking meditations, whose care, as I see it, is precisely to remind us whence we came, to tell us who we are, and, to bring us home at this sometimes seemingly unintelligible world.