“...to include nothing more in my judgements than what presented itself to my mind so clearly and so distinctly that I had no occasion to doubt it.”
D gets a lot of mileage out of insisting on ‘clear-and-distinct’ ideas, of course—it’s one of the anchoring ideas of his theory of knowledge. But I always find it hard to explain what this really means to newcomers to his philosophy. I think most people think they have clear and distinct ideas, and in order to persuade them that their ideas are less than clear it seems necessary to invoke visual metaphors, which seem entirely out of place (isn’t it the ideas that make the vision possible? So how could the ideas be ‘visually’ clear?), or else to point out the ‘un-clear-ness’ of imagined objects like unicorns or whatever (but the problem with those is not their un-clear-ness but their imaginariness, no?).
The best I can usually get started is the precision (is that the same as clear-and-distinctness?) of, say, mathematical propositions like ‘2+3=5’ or whatever. Everyone can easily perform mathematical operations like that, and do them with great precision (easily telling the difference between ‘2+3=5’ and ‘2+4=6’ or whatever).
But then has D captured the right feature that makes these ideas reliable in judgments of what is true? Isn’t the relevant feature precision, or maybe calculability? Care needs to be taken to avoid circularity: the goal is to give a criterion for demonstrability, and calculability might be the same thing. Hmm, but how different is precision from calculability? Does ‘precise’ mean the same thing as ‘can be separated out from nearby elements’? If so, is that not the same thing as saying ‘playing a different role in some comparison’, which seems a lot like a calculation to me, no?
If we avoid the circle by sticking with clear-and-distinct-ness as a property of a mode of presentation of an object of thought, we are left with some sort of non-sensory presentation that, frankly, is tough to get a handle on. Hmm.
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4 comments:
i think that when it comes to the question "precision Vs calculability" that they are very different. you maybe able to describe a calculation as being precise but how does anyone really know what it is done correctly. If it is not correct then it would not be precise, right?
I feel that it may be impossible to have "doubtless" visions or ideas. I agree that we need to find truth in our beliefs, or as close to the truth as we can get, but in general, can we really find truth in everything? If so, then great, but who has the final judement as to what really is the truth and what isnt?
It does seems a bit out of place to use visual metaphors to explain the idea of "clear and distinct" ideas, since according to Descartes, these ideas shouldn't come from the use of any of our senses, haha. I find this idea a hard one to grasp. Maybe Descartes is right that we rely on our senses way too much, but I don't see how it's possible to experience any knowledge without using any of our senses.
In reference to the quote at the beginning of the blog. I feel Descartes is saying all his thoughts are true, because they are his. But then he confuses me when he always has doubts.
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