Unit 4 VCE Philosophy – Descartes Week 19 Descartes on the Rational Soul We have already met Rene Descartes and his cogito. Descartes (15961650) was struck by the thought that a great deal of what he thought he knew had turned out to be false. Descartes on the Rational Soul An ancient Greek school, the Sceptics, had delighted in collecting examples of ways in which our senses deceive. An oar looks bent when we place it in water. A tower that looks round (in cross-section) from a distance turns out to be square. Descartes was impressed with these examples. These are the examples he quotes. Descartes on the Rational Soul However, he was surely also thinking of the many age-old beliefs that had been overthrown by the growing natural sciences. In 1609, Galileo had overthrown the view that the moon and planets were perfect spheres by observing the pock-marked face of the moon through his telescope. Descartes on the Rational Soul Galileo’s telescope had also overthrown the belief that all heavenly bodies orbited the earth by showing that there were at least four objects – the moons of Jupiter – that did not orbit the earth. Descartes shared Galileo’s views on Copernicus’ sun-centred cosmology. (Although Galileo’s troubles with the Church led Descartes to refrain from publishing these views). Descartes on the Rational Soul In the early seventeenth century, a great number of things that people thought they knew were being challenged. This raises a question: Is it possible that everything I think that I know is false? Descartes’ most significant work was the Meditations in which he attempts to rebuild knowledge on solid foundations. In the first Meditation, he introduces a series of arguments that show that all sense knowledge can be doubted. Descartes on the Rational Soul Not that it is all false but merely that there is room for doubt. Even mathematical knowledge may be doubted, he thinks, because we may be deceived by an Evil Demon who may make us believe that 2+2 = 4, even though it does not. An Evil Demon may convince us of a great many things that are false. Descartes on the Rational Soul A more modern piece of science fiction may help make his arguments more vivid. Even if you have not seen The Matrix (a serious gap in your education), you are probably familiar with its main premise. At some time in the distant future, machines rule the world and use humans as a source of power. In order to keep the humans under control and hooked up to the power grid, the machines have hooked the brains of the humans to a computer program that feeds impulses into the brain that simulate life in a world. Consequently, the people in the Matrix believe that they are walking around the streets of some city (Sydney) when they are lying immersed in a tub of goo. They would be inclined to say that they know certain stuff that they do not know.You cannot be said to know something that is false; you can only think that you know it. Knowledge is “justified, true belief” and however justified their beliefs about the tables and chairs and steaks and pussy cats that they find in their world, these beliefs are false. Descartes on the Rational Soul If this scenario is a possibility, then can we provide a foundation of knowledge? At the beginning of the Second Meditation, Descartes is looking for an item of knowledge that is certain, that cannot be doubted. Put his question this way, is there anything that the people stuck in the Matrix do genuinely know? At very least, they know that they are aware of something. They know that they have sensations consistent with the presence of tables and steaks and pussycats. They know that they think and that there’s someone doing the thinking. Hence, cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. Descartes on the Rational Soul What do I know about this thinking thing? Only that it is a thinking thing, a mind. Do I know that it has a body? This is not certain. This could be an illusion created by the Evil Demon (or The Matrix). Harvard philosopher Hilary Putnam has brought this suggestion more up-to-date by suggesting that you might be a brain in a vat. Not a whole body, as in The Matrix, but merely a brain. In that case, the claim that I have a body is false. This suggests that we could have a mind but no body. Indeed if we analyse our ideas of mind and body, we find that they are very different concepts. A mind is a thinking thing; a body is an extended thing. So what am I? I am a thinking thing, a mind. You may object – in The Matrix they do have bodies.True enough. But what if Agent Smith got amnesia and forgot that he was a ‘sentient programme’? Then he might believe that he had a body though he did not. What if a glitch in the Matrix produced a sentient programme that was ignorant of its status from its beginning? Actually this is not quite true. After all, a brain is a body, a piece of matter. So a brain in a vat is not wrong in believing that it has a body, it is merely wrong about the kind of body it has. However, this is a small point. Cartesian dualism Descartes is going to say that the soul is distinct from the body and survives the death of the body. This is the famous doctrine of Cartesian dualism. It is easy to be misled by the term ‘thinking’. Descartes is not merely talking about doing maths or science or philosophy or deciding what to wear or what movie to watch. These are obvious examples of thinking. One peculiarity of Cartesian (and post-Cartesian) thought is the view that sensations are ideas. Hence, you are thinking in Descartes’ sense if you are merely aware of sounds or colours. Anything that belongs to consciousness belongs to the realm of thought or ideas. So a thinking thing is a conscious thing and vice versa. thinking = conscious Note that this equation would not have made sense to the Greeks. You don’t need a nous to be conscious. A nous is for doing maths or science or philosophy or deciding what to wear – if you tend to decide such things on rational grounds. You don’t need a nous to find out whether the dress is blue or not. thinking = conscious And you are certainly not identified with your nous. You are perhaps identified with your soul. A soul has a rational part (nous) plus a spirited part and a sensual part. For Plato, nous does not even have a monopoly on decision-making. You can decide many things using the sensual part of the soul. For example, decisions to have a drink or a snack or to have sex are most often made by that part of the soul. thinking = conscious For Descartes, you are your mind – which he also calls ‘rational soul’. He uses the phrase ‘rational soul’ more or less interchangeably with that of mind. Descartes does not share the Greek view that a soul is what enlivens a body. A body may be alive without having a soul. We will see why very soon. SCIENTIFIC BACKGROUND Immediately before our extract from the Discourse begins, Descartes has been discussing his views on the mechanics of the body. In Descartes’ time, there had been some major developments in the scientific understanding of the workings of the human body. In 1628, William Harvey published his book, Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus (An Anatomical Exercise Concerning the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals), in which he documented his discovery of the circulatory system. SCIENTIFIC BACKGROUND In addition to this undoubted influence, Descartes would have had access to fine anatomical drawings of the human body, such as the Fabrica of Vesalius, which had been published in 1543. Above all, however, Descartes conducted his own research into human anatomy – into the workings of muscles and the nervous system. AUTOMATA:THE TAMAGOCHI OF THE 1630s? In our extract from the Discourse, Descartes mentions automata. Such automata – moving models of humans and animals – were a popular amusement in Descartes’ time. “Clockwork and hydraulic automata were common gimmicks from the seventeenth century onwards, and Descartes himself apparently possessed a mechanical doll called Francine which he took with him on his travels (Frude 1983, p. 121). Such animated dolls became increasingly lifelike, and some French life-size dolls demonstrated in the early eighteenth century actually played the musical instruments they held.” AUTOMATA:THE TAMAGOCHI OF THE 1630s? One is entitled to be sceptical of the claim that Descartes actually possessed such an automaton, especially given the claims made for her –that she could walk and talk and was barely distinguishable from a real woman. One’s suspicions are further aroused by the name Francine. This was the name of Descartes’ natural daughter, who died of scarlet fever at the age of 5. This was a great blow to Descartes and the legend has it that he created the automaton Francine as a surrogate for the real girl. Even if the legend is false, it is clear that Descartes was familiar with such creations. How are body and soul related? All of these factors – the research and the gadgets – would have contributed to Descartes’ view that the body is basically a machine. All this mechanical stuff clearly belongs to the realm of extended matter and is far removed from the experience of thinking. How are body and soul related? Descartes famously located the nexus between body and soul in the pineal gland. He could see no other function for this gland – the endocrine system was discovered much later. This claim has been unfairly emphasized. In the section before us, Descartes seems to suggest that looking for a single point of connection between soul and body – a metaphysical network hub – is too simplistic. How are body and soul related? ◦ I showed how it is not sufficient for it to be lodged in the human body like a helmsman in his ship, except perhaps to move its limbs, but that it must be more closely joined and united with the body in order to have, besides this power of movement, feelings and appetites like ours and so constitute a real man. Descartes’ reference to the view of the soul as “lodged in the human body like a helmsman in his ship” is a clear reference to Plato. This is one of Plato’s favourite metaphors. How are body and soul related? Given that most of the operations of an animal, including the human animal, can be explained in purely mechanical terms, what work is there for the concept of a mind? What does the mind actually do? solipsism (the argument that selfexistence is the only certainty) Note that Descartes assumes that the possession of a mind must manifest itself in some form of behaviour. This is an assumption that is shared by Turing and Armstrong (the other authors we will read). If there is no distinctively mind-caused behaviour, then we have no good reason to believe that there are other minds. It would lead into solipsism (the argument that self-existence is the only certainty). Descartes offers two ways we can judge whether something has a mind, can think; two behavioural marks of a mind (or rational soul), two qualities that an automaton would lack. These are (1) Language and (2) Behavioural Versatility or Flexibility. USE OF LANGUAGE An automaton “… could never use words, or put together other signs, as we do in order to declare our thoughts to others”. Descartes addresses an objection to this claim, namely that automata can be made to talk just as a parrot can be trained to speak. His response is that this is not genuine language use, which involves the ability to respond appropriately to different circumstances. We might say then that what marks rational souls is the ‘creative use of language’. BEHAVIOURAL VERSATILITY OR FLEXIBILITY Rational beings can modify their behaviour in response to their circumstances. A deterministic machine or automaton has a limited repertoire of pre-programmed behavioural responses. If you place an automaton under conditions in which that repertoire of responses is no longer appropriate, it will not cope. Perhaps it will continue its stereotyped responses. Perhaps, it will cease to function altogether. Both responses show that the automaton lacks reason. our own bodies are automata Descartes’ research had convinced him that our own bodies are automata. It is clear that much of what goes on in our bodies is not under rational control. Our heart beats. We breathe. Wounds heal. Hormones are released into the blood stream. We have a little control direct and indirect over some of this activity. For instance, we can directly control the pace of our breathing. We can hold our breath, at least for a little while before the autonomic nervous system takes over. our own bodies are automata In addition to the internal workings of the body, some of our overt behaviour is involuntary. Our reflexes are barely under our control. If you go to strike me, I am likely to flinch. I may deliberately fake this response. I may learn to suppress it or modify it. However, our bodies are clearly pre-determined to make certain responses to certain stimuli. If you like, they are pre-programmed. our own bodies are automata This might lead you to ask whether all of our apparently rational actions are not simply highly sophisticated, pre-programmed responses. Many philosophers have gone that way but Descartes does not. Humans are able to respond appropriately to new conditions. We can figure things out. If our circumstances change so that our habitual actions no longer bring their usual results, most of us can fairly quickly work out that (if) something is wrong and adjust our behaviour accordingly. If the car does not start, I do not simply keep turning the key indefinitely. After a couple of goes, I get out the mobile and call the RACV. (Modern cars don’t leave you many other options.) This is a sign that I am rational. imprinting Descartes believes that automata and animals do not have this capacity. They are automata, behaving entirely according to instinct. We tend to think of this instinct along the lines of a programme that is ‘hard-wired’ into the brains of animals. It is easy to think of examples that support this claim. In a classic series of experiments, the zoologist Konrad Lorenz discovered the process of ‘filial imprinting’ in ducklings. “When recently hatched birds such as ducklings are hand reared for a few days, they strongly prefer the company of their human keeper to that of their own species.” (R.L. Gregory (ed.) The Oxford Companion to the Mind, OUP 1987, p 355) This looks like a pre-programmed response. imprinting Zoologists have also found that there are birds that will continue doggedly building their nests even when those nests are continually pulled apart. Again this seems like pure instinct pre-programmed behaviour. We could multiply these examples. In fact, Descartes is suggesting that all animal behaviour is like this. According to Descartes, there are three different types of sensation: physical, conscious and self-conscious. He proposed that animals only “felt” in the first type of sensation, that is, in response to a physical stimulus, and that “animal machines” could not consciously feel anything because they lacked understanding or mind. We cannot say that animals have minds because they lack the marks of a mind. In other words, animals do not think. a special case of the versatility criterion? Recall Descartes’ response to the objection that automata can use language. Rational language use involves appropriate responses to circumstances. This suggests that the ‘language use’ criterion is simply a special case of the versatility criterion. How do we determine whether certain language use is the manifestation of a rational soul? We apply the criterion of ‘behavioural versatility’. For this reason, we might say that the second requirement is more fundamental than the first. THINKING AND CONSCIOUSNESS Descartes denies that animals have rational souls, claiming that animal souls “are completely different in nature from ours”. Have you noticed that Descartes does not deny the existence of animal souls, but only the existence of rationality in animals? The two ‘marks of a mind’ provide evidence of rationality in men, and Descartes proposes that they are entirely absent in animals. In humans, the ‘rational soul’ is closely joined and united with the body (which would presumably also be the case with animal souls), but is also non-material and ‘specially created’. The existence in humans of a rational soul has special significance for Descartes. It enabled him to propose a firm point that cannot be doubted (his own existence: “I think, therefore I am”) as a foundation for his philosophical system. THINKING AND CONSCIOUSNESS What are the consequences of denying that animals have rational souls? Does this imply that animals lack consciousness? What do we mean by ‘consciousness’ anyway? If animals lack consciousness, can they still experience pleasure and pain? We will find that Armstrong has interesting perspectives on some of the questions opened up by Descartes’ argument. CAN ANIMALS FEEL? No doubt, very few of you would endorse the claim that animals do not feel. Here is a quick argument against Descartes. Animals clearly manifest pleasure and pain behaviour. Much of this behaviour is similar to pleasure and pain behaviour in humans. Now if these behaviours are not evidence of actual pleasure and pain in animals, they cannot be evidence of pleasure and pain in humans. Descartes might respond that the crucial difference is that other humans can report their feelings via language while animals cannot. This provides us with evidence in the human case that the behaviours correspond to sensations. We do not have this evidence for animals. Hence we have no good reason to think that the behaviour proceeds from feelings of pleasure and pain. CAN ANIMALS FEEL? There is a philosophical principle that ‘absence of evidence is not generally evidence of absence’. Not having evidence that animals feel is not the same as having evidence that they do not feel. In fact, Descartes believes that we should never believe what we do not have good reason to believe. Descartes’ view is that we do not have good reason to believe that animals feel. Therefore we should not believe that animals feel. Accepting this response means accepting the claim that pleasure and pain behaviours are not on their own good evidence of pleasure and pain. My own view is that, all other things being equal, behaviour is good evidence and that Descartes has not provided us with a water-tight argument to the contrary. EVALUATING DESCARTES: LANGUAGE Let us leave aside Descartes’ assumption that animals do not feel and consider whether they think in the more usual sense of that word. Even if we accept Descartes’ criteria for a rational soul, we now know that he was dead wrong about the linguistic capacities of at least some animals. A great deal of work has been done in exploring the linguistic capacities of apes, principally chimpanzees. Certain individuals have been able to learn a basic system of sign language and to use that language ‘creatively’ (e.g. when faced with a swan an ape may put together the signs for water and bird). EVALUATING DESCARTES: LANGUAGE For a short article on chimpanzee and Bonobo use of language, please go to http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3218 Most language experts dismiss experiments like the ones with Panbanisha as exercises in wishful thinking. "In my mind this kind of research is similar to the bears in the Moscow circus who are trained to ride unicycles," said Dr. Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies language acquisition in children. "You can train animals to do all kinds of amazing things." He is not convinced that the chimps have learned anything more sophisticated than how to press the right buttons in order to get the hairless apes on the other side of the console to cough up M & M's, bananas and other tidbits of food. http://www.santafe.edu/~johnson/articles.chimp.html EVALUATING DESCARTES: LANGUAGE What are we to make of these discoveries? At very least, they suggest that Descartes is wrong to say that humans alone are rational. It seems that the divide between rational and non-rational animals is no longer that between human and non-human. This admission may lead us to question the desire to draw such sharp distinctions. After all, if we accept Darwinian evolution, we must acknowledge a fundamental continuity between human and nonhuman. Even our most distinctively human capacities are built upon foundations in animal behaviour. These reflections may lead us to stop thinking of consciousness and thought as all-or-nothing matters. More sophisticated animals are likely to have capacities that are more or less similar to our own. EVALUATING DESCARTES: BEHAVIOURAL VERSATILITY It has been common to lump all animal behaviour together under the heading ‘instinct’. This label tends to support the view of Descartes. Instinct sounds like something hard-wired, pre-programmed. That word ‘instinct’ is misleading. It is encourages us to ignore significantly different types of behaviour. Those ducklings automatically ‘imprinting’ on their keeper are very different from a cheetah hunting. One is clearly stereotyped behaviour that is largely unresponsive to circumstance; the other is learned behaviour that is highly responsive to circumstance. It is true but far too simplistic to say that the cheetah hunts by instinct. It blurs important distinctions. EVALUATING DESCARTES: BEHAVIOURAL VERSATILITY How are we to characterize the difference between the duckling and the cheetah? Is it unreasonable to say that the cheetah’s activity involves thought? There is a response to this. People often say that cats are killing machines. Their minds and bodies are geared utterly to the task of hunting. In this respect then, they lack the versatility that is Descartes’ second criterion of a rational soul. Now this specialization is a general feature of the animal kingdom. When humans evolved rationality, they were able to transcend specialization. They were able to adapt to changes in the environment in ‘real time’ rather than over the course of generations. When a food source dies off or the climate changes, humans do not have to wait until natural selection takes it course. They look for another food source or go somewhere else. This is perhaps good evidence that there is something special about human reason. I am less than convinced that it is evidence that humans are the only animals that think. QUESTIONS TO PONDER AND DISCUSS 1. 2. 3. 4. What is the relationship between thought and language? Is language necessary for thought? Is communication essential to thought? Do you agree with Descartes’ behavioural ‘marks of a mind’? EVALUATING DESCARTES: LANGUAGE Descartes pins part of his argument that animals don’t think on the proposition that they can’t use language. In some way, language and thought go together in Descartes. Kaspar Hauser To help you think about the questions above, consider the case of Kaspar Hauser. Kaspar Hauser lived in 19th century Germany. He was found wandering the streets of Nuremberg carrying a letter addressed to an officer in the cavalry. Although about 16 years old, he could say only a few words, and moved with difficulty. He was judged not to be intellectually impaired. From his own later account and investigations at the time, it is believed that he had spent almost the whole of his life secluded in a small, dark cellar approximately 1x2x1.5 metres in size, into which bread and water would be thrust each day. He had experienced virtually no human contact. In Nuremberg he was cared for by well-wishers, and eventually he learned to read and write. If you’d like to learn more about this ‘wild child’, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaspar_Hauser Kaspar Hauser Try this thought-experiment: what things would it be possible to think if you lived deprived of language – an isolated life like that of Kaspar Hauser in the cellar?
