British Journal for the History of Philosophy 16(1) 2008: 215 227

DISCUSSION

FIFTH MEDITATION TINS REVISITED: A REPLY TO CRITICISMS OF THE EPISTEMIC INTERPRETATION

David Cunning
In a recent article in this journal, I oer an interpretation of Cartesian true and immutable natures (TINs) according to which they are identical with the objects that have them.1 I argue that any Fifth Meditation suggestions to the contrary reect that Descartess Fifth Meditation meditator is still making epistemic progress in the Meditations and is not yet a full-blown Cartesian. Here I defend the interpretation against recent criticisms.2 In the process I attempt to shed further light on Descartess larger epistemological project. First a brief review of the interpretation is in order. In the Fifth Meditation, Descartes considers his clear and distinct ideas of geometrical properties and says that even though the properties themselves perhaps do not exist, he can at least infer the existence of their true and immutable natures (AT 7, 64).3 Commentators have attempted to make sense of the ontological status of these natures: as third-realm entities,4 or entities in the mind of God,5 or innate ideas considered with respect to their
David Cunning, True and Immutable Natures and Epistemic Progress in Descartess Meditations, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 11 (2003) 23548. 2 For example, in John Edward Abbruzzese, A Reply to Cunning on the Nature of True and Immutable Natures, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 15 (2007) 15567, and Willis Doney, True and Immutable Natures, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 12 (2005) 1317. I focus on the criticisms in the former because I think that in the nal analysis Professor Doney and I are not so far apart. 3 I use AT to refer to the pagination in Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, Ouevres de Descartes, Volumes IXII (Paris: Vrin, 1996). I use the translations in John Cottingham, Robert Stootho and Dugald Murdoch, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Volume I, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1985); Cottingham, Stootho, and Murdoch, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Volume II, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1984); and Cottingham, Stootho, Murdoch and Anthony Kenny, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Volume III, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 4 Anthony Kenny, Descartes: A Study of His Philosophy (New York: Random House, 1968) 1506; and Anthony Kenny, The Cartesian Circle and the Eternal Truths, Journal of Philosophy, 67 (1970) 6913. 5 Tad Schmaltz, Platonism and Descartes View of Immutable Essences, Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie, 73 (1991) 12970.
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British Journal for the History of Philosophy ISSN 0960-8788 print/ISSN 1469-3526 online 2008 BSHP http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/09608780701789384

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objective reality.6 I argue instead that Descartes holds that the true and immutable nature of a thing is identical to the thing that has it. One of the central arguments to which I appeal starts with Descartess view that truth is a matter of the conformity of thought with reality.7 In the Fifth Meditation, the meditator has clear and distinct (or true) ideas of geometrical properties and so infers the existence of some reality to which these ideas conform. He infers that there exist the true and immutable natures of geometrical properties, and that these properties . . . are something (AT 7: 65). I want to argue that the true and immutable nature or something whose reality the meditator infers is simply the reality whose existence he is entitled to infer from the fact that his idea is true. Namely, it is the reality to which that true idea conforms. The meditator is not in a position (until the Sixth Meditation) to identify exactly what this reality is, for it might be the geometrical property as it exists eminently in a non-extended thing, for example a nite mind or God.8 However, in the nal analysis our true ideas of geometrical properties conform to properties of actually-existing extension.9 The defence of my interpretation also appeals to (1) Descartess Principles I: 15 claim that the true and immutable nature of God cannot but exist and (2) Descartess view that there is no distinction in reality between a thing and its essence.10 The benets of the interpretation include (a) that it respects Descartess dualism of created things, allowing that the true and immutable natures of thought and extension are creatures (which is what Descartes says they are), (b) that it does justice to his view that a true idea conforms with reality and that in particular, true ideas of geometrical properties conform to properties of extension, and (c) that it squares with the strong textual evidence that, for Descartes, a thing and its nature are identical in re.

Lawrence Nolan, The Ontological Status of Cartesian Natures, Pacic Philosophical Quarterly, 78 (1997) 16994. 7 See To Mersenne, 16 October 1639, AT 2: 597, and Fourth Replies, AT 7: 226. Of course, the same view is in Spinoza, Ethics, Part I, Axiom 6. 8 Or perhaps some creature more noble than a body (AT 7: 79), to use the language of the Sixth Meditation. 9 After oering his argument for the existence of material things in the Sixth Meditation, Descartes writes, It follows that corporeal things exist. They may not all exist in a way that exactly corresponds with my sensory grasp of them, for in many cases the grasp of the senses is very obscure and confused. But at least they possess all the properties which I clearly and distinctly understand, that is, all those which, viewed in general terms, are comprised within the subject-matter of pure mathematics. (AT 7: 80) 10 Professor Abbruzzese barely notices my argument from Descartess view that the true and immutable nature of X is just whatever it is to which our true idea of X conforms. He says (157) that I oer two reasons for my view namely, the reasons that stem from (1) and (2) above. I spend only a few sentences on the argument from (1), for example, but a number of pages on the argument from Descartess view on truth as conformity.

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My general approach in the paper and in other work is to highlight that Descartes is working within a tradition in which enquirers are supposed to take the rst-person point-of-view so that we can see for ourselves what is and is not true.12 A problem, however, is that at the start of inquiry, and to a lesser degree as we progress, we are not in a position to see things as they are: we think that things are real to the extent that they are sensible;13 we are unable to grasp the (very abstract . . .) primary notions of metaphysics, and indeed we are primed to reject them (along with anything else that conicts with our current conceptions and commitments);14 our conceptions of mind and God represent mind and God as sensible when they are not;15 our conceptions of qualities such as colour and sound represent these qualities as existing mind-independently;16 we think and speak by way of terms that we do not understand or that may have no corresponding idea;17 and what

Descartes on the Dubitability of the Existence of Self, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 74 (2007) 11131; Semel in Vita: Descartes Stoic View on the Place of Philosophy in Human Life, Faith and Philosophy, 24 (2007) 16483; Descartes on Sensations and Ideas of Sensations, An Anthology of Philosophical Studies, edited by P. Hanna, A. McEvoy, and P. Voutsina (Athens: Atiner Publishing, 2006) 1732; Rationalism and Education, in A Companion to Rationalism, edited by Alan Nelson (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005) 61 81; Systematic Divergences in Malebranche and Cudworth, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 42 (2003) esp. 3567; Descartes on the Immutability of the Divine Will, Religious Studies, 39 (2003) 7992; and Descartes Modal Metaphysics, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2002), edited by Edward Zalta, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-modal. 12 See, for example, Appendix to Fifth Objections and Replies, AT 9A: 208, and Principles of Philosophy, Preface to the French Edition, AT 9B: 20. In the rst, Descartes writes that the thought of each person i.e. the perception or knowledge which he has of something should be for him the standard which determines the truth of the thing; in other words, all the judgements he makes about this thing must conform to his perception if they are to be correct . . . Although ignorant people would do well to follow the judgement of the more competent on matters which are dicult to know, it is still necessary that it be their own perception which tells them they are ignorant; they must also perceive that those whose judgement they want to follow are not as ignorant as they are, or else they would be wrong to follow them and would be behaving more like automatons and beasts than men. See also Gary Hateld, The Senses and the Fleshless Eye: The Meditations as Cognitive Exercises, in Essays on Descartes Meditations, edited by Amelie Oksenberg (Rorty Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986) 479; and Leslie J. Beck, The Metaphysics of Descartes, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965) 2238. 13 Principles of Philosophy I: 71; AT 8A: 36; Principles of Philosophy I: 73; AT 8A: 37; and The World, Chapter Four, AT 11: 17, 21. 14 Principles of Philosophy I: 4950, AT 8A: 234; Second Replies, AT 7: 1567, 164; Preface to the Reader, AT 7: 9; the First Meditation, AT 7: 22; and Principles of Philosophy I: 72, AT 8A: 367. 15 Second Replies, AT 7: 1301. 16 Principles of Philosophy I: 668, AT 8A: 323; Fourth Replies, AT 7: 2325. 17 Principles of Philosophy I: 74, AT 8A: 378; Fifth Replies, AT 7: 385.

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we take to be the paradigm of a distinct perception is hardly distinct at all.18 The reasoning of the Meditations is the rst-person reasoning of a thinker who is progressing from a state of deep confusion to a state of clarity, and the Meditations is to be read accordingly. In the course of making epistemic progress, the meditator endorses a number of commitments that seem obvious to him at the time: (i) that our beliefs (about bodies, etc.) are acquired either from the senses or through the senses (AT 7, 18); (ii) that it is possible that God is a deceiver (AT 7, 21); (iii) that we should use imagination to know ourselves better (AT 7, 27); (iv) that general perceptions are apt to be more confused than particular ones (AT 7, 30); (v) that the way to uncover the goodness of the created universe is to appeal (not to divine voluntarism but) to the t of the totality of objects (AT 7, 55 6); (vi) that the nature of a thing can exist even if the thing does not; and many others. In the course of making epistemic progress the meditator reveals that he is doing exactly that making epistemic progress. In the Fifth Meditation he appreciates that truth is a matter of the conformity of thought with reality.19 He has clear and distinct ideas of geometrical properties, and so he knows that there is something in virtue of which these clear and distinct ideas are true a truth-maker or conformable, whatever this may turn out to be. The true and immutable nature of a geometrical property is not a third-realm entity. It is instead the entity to which a clear and distinct idea of the property conforms, and in the nal analysis extension exists and has geometrical properties. The true and immutable nature of a geometrical property is not a part of the mind of God, for it is a creature.20 Nor are true and immutable natures to be identied with objective reality. The true and immutable nature of X is the reality to which a true idea of X conforms. But a true idea does not conform to its objective reality. A true idea includes its objective reality, and it conforms to an object that has that reality formally or eminently. True ideas of geometrical properties conform to properties of extension. Professor Abbruzzese oers a number of objections to my interpretation. One is that because I hold that truth is a matter of conformity and that true

Principles of Philosophy I: 71, AT 8A: 36; Principles of Philosophy I: 66, AT 8A: 32. Note that in the 1639 letter to Mersenne Descartes says that the conception of truth as the conformity of thought with its object is so obvious that it need not even be stated (AT 2: 597), but the meditator would have become explicitly familiar with it in the Fourth Meditation, and early in the Third Mediation (AT 7: 37) when Descartes distinguishes between ideas that conform to reality and ideas that do not. Indeed, at AT 7: 38 Descartes says that [m]y understanding of what a thing is, what truth is, and what thought is, seems to derive simply from my own nature. 20 A larger discussion of the views of Professors Kenny and Schmaltz is beyond the scope of this paper, but see also Nolan 1997, 1712, and Cunning, True and Immutable Natures and Epistemic Progress in Descartes Meditations, 2367.
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and immutable natures are the things that are true, I am committed to the view that it is true and immutable natures that do the conforming. Because I identify true and immutable natures as the relevant conformables, I have to say that they conform to themselves (164). Of course, my view is that for Descartes truth is the conformity of thought with its object, and that it is our clear and distinct (or true) ideas that conform to reality. Clear and distinct ideas are true, and thus secure the existence of some reality in virtue of which they are true. I am focusing on Descartess account of the truth of ideas. But Descartes also uses the designation true to identify things as having being or reality,21 and thus the designation true and immutable nature. Another objection from Professor Abbruzzese (165) is that my interpretation fails to make room for a supposed distinction in First Replies between true and immutable natures and ctitious natures. If true and immutable natures are identical to the things that have them, then a ctitious nature would be identical to the thing that has it, and thus it would not be a ctitious nature after all. In First Replies Descartes does not, however, make a distinction between true and immutable natures and ctitious natures.22 Instead he makes a distinction between ideas of true and immutable natures and ctitious ideas that are invented at will. He does say that winged horses and other such things do not have true and immutable natures, but that does not mean that he thinks that winged horses have ctitious natures that are identical to winged horses that actually exist. He is instead reecting the view that because ctitious ideas are ctitious, they do not guarantee the existence of a true and immutable nature. He also says that the natures of lions and horses are not transparently clear to us, but he does not refer to ctitious natures to say that they are not transparently clear. He does not speak of such natures at all. Professor Abbruzzese also objects (164) that on my view the Fifth Meditation proof of Gods existence would not be a demonstration, but more like a self-evident grasp that there exists a nature that has necessary and independent existence, and which therefore is God. Against this objection, recall that Descartes says in the Fifth Meditation itself that
as regards God, if I were not overwhelmed by preconceived opinions, and if the images of things perceived by the senses did not besiege my thought on every side, I would certainly acknowledge him sooner and more easily than anything else. For what is more self-evident than the fact that the supreme being exists, or that God, to whose essence alone existence belongs, exists? (AT 7, 69)

21 22

See To Clerselier, 23 April 1649, AT 5: 356. See AT 7: 117 for Descartess discussion.

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Descartes clearly thinks that we are capable of a self-evident grasp of Gods existence,23 though he also thinks that some of us are more equipped to grasp Gods existence through the discrete steps of a demonstration.24 Therefore, I am perfectly happy (as is Descartes) to allow that the Fifth Meditation proof of Gods existence is (or at least can be) simple and quick. On my view, the proof runs as follows: we have a clear and distinct or true idea of God, and thus there exists the reality or nature to which that idea conforms, and then we read from that idea that the nature has necessary and eternal and independent existence a kind of existence that cannot be contained eminently in something else but that can only be had by God.25 If this is not Descartess proof, it is dicult to understand how he would ever be able to handle the objection that the contents of our ideas cannot tell us that things exist, but only what they are like if they do exist.26 Descartes can and does handle the objection: he neutralises it by pointing out that clear and distinct ideas are true and so guarantee the existence of a conformable. On the view that Professor Abbruzzese prefers the view according to which true and immutable natures are ideas considered with respect to their objective reality Descartes would still have to uncover a reason for saying that the nature that exists objectively in thought also exists in reality, for merely pointing out that it exists in thought would not be enough. At some point Descartes has to provide a bridge between our ideas and their objects, and I am arguing that he has provided that bridge up front with his view that truth is the conformity of thought with its object.27
See also Second Replies, AT 7: 1634, and Lawrence Nolan, The Ontological Argument as an Exercise in Cartesian Therapy, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 35 (2005) 52162. Descartes also holds that if we know a demonstration well-enough, we grasp it just as easily as we do a self-evident intuition, and so in some cases the (Cartesian) distinction between knowing something through a demonstration and knowing it self-evidently will not be precise. See Rules for the Direction of the Mind, Rule 12, AT 10: 42930. 24 Clearly some if not most Third Meditation meditators proceed in this manner. The Fifth Meditation text reects that there are some meditators who grasp the Fifth Meditation proof by the discrete steps of a demonstration (AT 7: 65, 67) and that there are others who (perhaps with a great deal of practice) grasp it as a single intuition. 25 I have developed this reconstruction of the argument in work that is yet unpublished. 26 See, for example, First Objections, AT 7: 99. 27 Abbruzzeses view is also problematic in that it has the Fifth Meditation proof of Gods existence dependent on the Third Meditation argument, and so is circular as well. (See John Edward Abbruzzese, The Structure of Descartess Ontological Proof, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 15 (2007) 25382.) Descartes himself makes terribly clear that the Fifth Meditation argument is a free-standing argument that he is oering to those who were not able to follow the arguments of the Third Meditation. (See for example First Replies, AT 7: 120; Second Replies, AT 7: 1634, 136; and also the Fifth Meditation, where Descartes refers to the already amply demonstrated truth rule (AT 7, 65) and says that even if he had not demonstrated it, and even if it turned out that not everything on which I have meditated in these past days is true, he would still be able to proceed with the proof of Gods existence (AT 7: 656). Of course, Descartes himself does not reject the argumentation of the Third and Fourth Meditations. He is a teacher, and a teacher who appreciates that not all of his students are of the same mind. See Seventh Replies, AT 7: 482, and Fifth Replies, AT 7: 350, 3556).
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Another objection from Professor Abbruzzese (162) is I cannot be right that the true and immutable nature of a geometrical property is just that property as it actually exists, for Descartes holds that geometrical properties do not exist formally. Abbruzzese grounds his objection in Descartess Fifth Replies statement of the view that our ideas of geometrical properties are innate. Here I quote the larger passage:
I do not, incidentally, concede that the ideas of these gures ever came into our mind via the senses, as everyone commonly believes. For although the world could undoubtedly contain gures such as those the geometers study, I nonetheless maintain that there are no such gures in our environment except perhaps ones so small that they cannot in any way impinge on our senses. Geometrical gures are composed for the most part of straight lines; yet no part of a line that was really straight could ever aect our senses, since when we examine through a magnifying glass those lines which appear most straight we nd they are quite irregular and always form wavy curves. Hence, when in our childhood we rst happened to see a triangular gure drawn on paper, it cannot have been this gure that showed us how we should conceive of the true triangle studied by geometers, since the true triangle is contained in the gure only in the way in which a statue of Mercury is contained in a rough block of wood. (AT 7, 3812)

Descartes does not say in this passage that extended bodies do not have geometrical properties. He is considering Gassendis empiricist view that all of our ideas are formed through the senses, and he is rejecting it. Indeed, the fact that we do not acquire an idea through our senses is not by itself evidence that the ideas object has no formal reality, and on Descartess view it is not our sensory experiences but our clear and distinct innate ideas that tell us what reality is like at the joints.28 Bodies surely have geometrical properties in some sense, for Descartes, and he reveals as much at the end of the above passage. In the Fifth Meditation he species that these properties are something, and in the Sixth Meditation he further species that the things to which our clear and distinct ideas of geometrical properties conform are actually existing properties of extension. Professor Abbruzzese also objects to my citation of Descartess Principles I: 15 claim that the idea of God represents a true and immutable nature which cannot but exist. He says that I ignore that Descartes holds that essences/natures exist not only in reality but also in thought, and so ignore that Descartes might just be talking about Gods nature as a mental item
Finally, note that another advantage of the view that I am oering is that it makes straightforwardly clear the way in which the discussion of geometrical properties is the background and set-up for the Fifth Meditation proof of the existence of God. 28 This is a constant refrain throughout Descartess corpus, but see, for example, the Sixth Meditation (AT 7: 80, 823), the Second Meditation discussion of wax, and Principles of Philosophy Parts IIIV.

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(159). My reply to this objection is that I am assuming that Principles I: 15 displays (without much elaboration) that therein Descartes is talking about Gods nature as it exists in reality. He is saying of Gods true and immutable nature that it has necessary and ontologically independent existence. No mental item has that kind of existence, and indeed the only being in Descartess system that has that kind of existence is God, so God just is His true and immutable nature. Of course, it is possible to motivate alternative readings of Principles I: 15, but I am trying to take the passage at face value. I imagine that I am also reading the claim against the background of the view that for Descartes truth is the conformity of thought with reality. If the true and immutable nature of a thing is just the reality whose existence our clear and distinct idea of the thing guarantees, then the nature that Descartes is mentioning in Principles I: 15 is not the objective reality of an idea, and the necessary existence in question is the necessary existence of the divine being itself. Professor Abbruzzese nally agrees with Professor Nolan that the text of the Fifth Meditation is most consistent with the view that true and immutable natures are innate ideas considered with respect to their objective reality (1667). Professor Abbruzzese notes in particular (163) that the Fifth Meditation claim that clearly and distinctly perceived geometrical properties are something comes very close to Descartess Third Meditation claim that objective reality is not nothing (AT 7, 41).29 In my original paper I argued that the Fifth Meditation claim that these properties . . . are something is meant to reect that the properties of geometry have at least some ontological status. After all, that is what Descartes is indicating about the representational content of ideas in the Third Meditation when he says that it is not nothing.30 We know that the properties of geometry are something because we know that there is some reality to which our true ideas of them conform. The being whose existence we can infer from a clear and distinct or true idea is not just the ideas objective reality, for if that were the case then the only reality whose existence we would be able to derive from the fact that we have a true idea is the existence of the idea itself (along with its objective reality), but we can derive that from Third Meditation resources alone.31 The meditators reections on truth are additive. We marshal the
See also Nolan 1997, 176. There are other passages in which Descartes goes out of his way to highlight the reality or being of non-sensible things, presumably because his beginning meditator is inclined to arm that things are real only to the extent that they are sensible. See for example the Second Meditation, AT 7: 279, and also the passages cited in n13. 31 See, for example, the Third Meditation: whether it is a goat or a chimera that I am imagining, it is just as much true that I imagine the former as the latter . . . [E]ven if the things which I may desire are wicked or even non-existent, that does not make it any less true that I desire them. (AT 7, 37) Descartes does make the claim that false ideas arise from nothing (AT 7, 44), and some commentators have argued that that claim entails that false ideas have no objective reality
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richer premise that our ideas are clear and distinct (and true), and we conclude that our perception has a truth-maker or conformable. Descartes would not be able to get us outside of our own thought if he did not think that our true ideas of things guaranteed the existence of some reality to which they conformed. He moves us beyond our thought by appealing to the intuition that truth is the agreement of thought with reality (and not just the agreement of thought with itself). I think that I have replied to every objection raised by Professor Abbruzzese. I would now like to address the three objections raised by Professor Doney. Professor Doneys rst objection (1312) is that in the Fifth Meditation Descartes does not drive as much a wedge between a thing and its true and immutable nature as I am suggesting he does. I am happy to agree with Professor Doney here. In the Fifth Meditation Descartes does make the claim that the true and immutable natures of geometrical properties exist even though the properties themselves may not, and I highlight that claim in part because of the role that it has played in motivating interpretations according to which things and their true and immutable natures are not identical. However, the claim in fact leaves wide open that things and their true and immutable natures are identical. The Fifth Meditation meditator is not in a position to infer the existence of extended substance and its geometrical properties, and so he says that they perhaps do not exist, but he is in a position to infer from the fact that he has a true idea of a geometrical property that there exists a corresponding conformable or true and immutable nature. For all he knows, extended substance and its geometrical properties do exist and, if so, they are the things to which our true ideas of geometrical properties conform. The second objection that Professor Doney raises (1324) is that Descartes does drive a wedge between a thing and its true and immutable nature in First Replies, and in a way that suggests that they are not identical. Doney cites the following passage:

(assuming Descartess view that something cannot come from nothing). (See, for example, Margaret Wilson, Descartes, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978: 111.) Immediately after saying that false ideas arise from nothing, Descartes elaborates: that is, they are in me only because of a deciency and lack of perfection in my nature (AT 7, 44). He is not saying that false ideas have no cause but that they exist as a result of our lack of perfection: we take simple ideas and then combine them into composite ideas that do not have a corresponding existent. Presumably he is just anticipating his Fourth Meditation view that falsity and error are due to our reckless acts of volition and our participation in non-being. See Alan Nelson, The Falsity in Sensory Ideas: Descartes and Arnauld, in Interpreting Arnauld, edited by E. Kremer (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996) 1332; and Dan Kaufman, Descartes on the Objective Reality of Materially False Ideas, Pacic Philosophical Quarterly, 81 (2000) 399403.

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My [Fifth Meditation] argument however was as follows: That which we clearly and distinctly understand to belong to the true and immutable nature, or essence, or form of something, can truly be asserted of that thing. But once we have made a suciently careful investigation of what God is, we clearly and distinctly understand that existence belongs to his true and immutable nature. Hence we can now truly assert of God that he does exist. (AT 7, 11516)

I am perhaps too much in the grip of a theory, but when I read this passage I see Descartes as identifying a thing and its nature. He says that whatever we clearly and distinctly perceive to belong to the nature of a thing we can rightly assert of that thing. One reason why this would be so is that a thing and its nature are identical. At the very least, the passage is neutral on the question at hand. Professor Doneys most pressing objection (1357) is that I do not have adequate grounds for attributing to Descartes the view that a substance and its essence are identical in re. For example, there is Descartess claim in To ***, 1645 or 1646 that in Peter himself being a man is nothing other than being Peter (AT 4, 350). Doney says (136) that the claim could be read as putting forward the view that a substance is inseparable from its essence.32 I suppose that the claim could be read in this way,33 but the fact of the matter is that the claim is not that being Peter is inseparable from being a man, but that being Peter is nothing other than being a man [in ipso Petro nihil aliud est esse hominem quam esse Petrum]. There is also Descartess application of his theory of the conceptual distinction between a thing and its essence in Principles I: 63. He writes,
Thought and extension can be regarded as constituting the natures of intelligent substance and corporeal substance; they must then be considered as nothing else but thinking substance itself and extended substance itself that is, as mind and body.34 (AT 8A, 312)

An impressive account of these matters is in the work of Professor Nolan.35 For now, it is enough to note that if a true and immutable nature is not the
Professor Abbruzzese repeats the objection (162). A systematic defense of the inseparability reading is in Paul Homan, Descartess Theory of Distinction, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 64 (2002) 5778. See also Justin Skirry, Descartess Conceptual Distinction and Its Ontological Import, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 42 (2004) 12144. 34 AT 8A: 312. See also the AT 4: 350 passage in which Descartes says that part of what it is for a things essence and existence to be conceptually distinct is for them to be in no way [nullo modo] distinct in reality. 35 See Lawrence Nolan, Reductionism and Nominalism in Descartess Theory of Attributes, Topoi, 16 (1997) 12940, Lawrence Nolan, Descartes Theory of Universals, Philosophical
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objective reality of an idea but the something to which that objective reality conforms, and if the nature of a thing is no other than the thing itself, then a true and immutable nature is just the thing that has that nature.36 Professor Abbruzzese argues that my interpretation of true and immutable natures is untenable (158). Perhaps a reason why the view that I am oering has been met with suspicion is that one of its methodological tenets is that much of the reasoning of Descartess not-yet-Cartesian meditator is confused, and thus that much of the Meditations is confused. But I am of course not arguing that Descartes is confused. Like many philosophers,37 he thinks that if we take the rst-person point-of-view in inquiry and our cognitive implements are unrened, we will reject the true and accept the false. We reason accordingly:
Each man is so strongly convinced of the truth of the principles with which he has been lled and even gorged during his childhood, and his self-respect depends so much on maintaining them without faltering, that even were I as determined as I am indierent, I could not, even with all of Ciceros eloquence, convince anyone that he was wrong. The reason is simple. What a philosopher considers to be clear and proven is uncertain, or rather untrue, for those who
Studies, 89 (1998) 16180, and also Alan Nelson Attributes and the Perception of Substance (unpublished paper presented at the 2007 Pacic Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association). In the texts themselves Descartes says that in reality a thing is nothing other than its nature, and so presumably the motivation for locating a competing interpretation is that there is some worry about attributing to Descartes a view in which there can be a distinction between things in thought but no corresponding distinction in reality. But it is certainly possible to allow Descartes to have the view that he says he has. As a matter of methodology we should presumably proceed along the lines suggested by Nadler (in Steven Nadler, Malebranches Occasionalism: A Reply to Clarke, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 33 (1995) 506): if a gures system entails a view that we nd it dicult to comprehend, and if the gure explicitly embraces the view, we should allow the gure to have it, rather than force an interpretation that we might think is more charitable. 36 Professor Doney also argues (137) that I engage in questionable reasoning when I isolate tenets of Descartess system that entail that a thing and its nature are identical in re, and then conclude that Descartes therefore accepts that a thing and its nature are identical in re. Of course, Descartes might be committed to views that he does not explicitly embrace. I am assuming that his claim that in re the nature of a thing is no other than the thing, and his claim that in re a things nature just is the thing itself, are evidence that he explicitly embraces the view. But I also make an attempt to isolate those of his systematic tenets that entail it. 37 See, for example, Plato, Republic, Book VII, 515c516b; Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, Book I, ll. 93148, translated and edited by Anthony M. Esolen Baltimore (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995) 51; Nicholas Malebranche, preface to Elucidations, in The Search After Truth and Elucidations of the Search After Truth, translated and edited by Thomas Lennon and Paul Oscamp, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) 53940; Benedict Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, in Spinoza: Complete Works, translated by Samuel Shirley and edited by Michael L. Morgan (Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Co., 2002), chapter thirteen, 512; and Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on Frazers Golden Bough, translated by John Beversluis, in C. G. Luckhardt, Wittgenstein: Sources and Perspectives (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979) 61.

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are not philosophers, particularly if they are not made to become philosophers. . . . But in this case, where shall we nd that vigour and those new habits capable of defeating and uprooting the old ones? . . . Philosophy can only be transmitted to already enlightened minds, which have nothing to fear, as we have seen. It passes a hundred feet over other heads, where it can no more enter than can daylight into a dark dungeon.38

Descartes is only a bit more sanguine about our prospects for arriving at truth, and in the Meditations he is lighting the way. The episode of reasoning that we encounter there is not so unusual. We often engage in reection about a particular matter and entertain views at the start of enquiry that we reject after we have made progress. That we do not have the right view at the start of enquiry is what necessitates our investigation in the rst place, and, in a manner of speaking, things may get worse before they get better. When matters do become clear, we do not reject the considered view at which we nally arrive just because, before we really thought about it, a competing view seemed plausible.39 As Descartes says himself,
In order to philosophize seriously and search out the truth about all the things that are capable of being known, we must rst lay aside all our preconceived opinions, or at least we must take the greatest care not to put our trust in any of the opinions accepted by us in the past until we have rst scrutinized them afresh and conrmed their truth. Next, we must give our attention in an orderly way to the notions that we have within us, and we must judge to be true all and only those whose truth we clearly and distinctly recognize when we attend to them in this way . . . When we contrast all this [clear and distinct] knowledge with the confused thoughts we had before, we will acquire the habit of forming clear and distinct concepts of all the things that can be known.40

When we think things through, matters become clearer, and there are things whose truth . . . we recognize.41 We think things through, and we come to
38 Julien Oray de la Mettrie, Preliminary Discourse, in Ann Thomson, Machine Man and Other Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) 156. 39 For example, at the end of the Meditations the meditator does not take his First Meditation opinion about the sensory origin of his beliefs as a reason for rejecting the considered view that the perception of a body always involves an act of purely mental scrutiny. Nor will he consider his muddled First Meditation assessment that it is possible that God is a deceiver (or that He may not exist at all) to count against the clear thinking that entails that God exists and cannot deceive. 40 Principles of Philosophy I: 75, AT 8A: 389. Of course, practice is required to ensure that we continue to see our pre-reective confusions for what they are. See To Princess Elizabeth, 15 September 1645, AT 4: 2956. 41 See also the Third Meditation, AT 7: 42, 512; the Fourth Meditation, AT 7: 53; Seventh Replies, AT 7: 481; Principles of Philosophy I: 4950, AT 8A: 234; Principles of Philosophy II: 21, AT 8A: 52; and Rules for the Direction of the Mind, AT 10: 4578, 409, 451.

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see a number of propositions as clearer and more obvious than the ones that we armed before. We will reject many of the latter, but we must begin at our state of confusion, inattention and resistance.42 The University of Iowa

42

The complete discussion of these matters is in my unpublished book manuscript, Argument and Persuasion in Descartes Meditations.