Chapter 16 The third group refutes a well-known English philosopher's work, and the author's reply① Ⅰ

Things That Can Arouse Doubt About the First Meditation What has been said in this meditation seems to suffice to say that there are no reliable and obvious signs by which we can recognize and distinguish what is a dream and what is a real perception of waking and feeling, so that what we feel when we are awake Images② are not accidents attached to external things, they are not sufficient evidence to prove the actual existence of these external things.So if we rely on our senses alone, if we do not resort to other reasoning, we have good reason to doubt whether there is anything.So we think this meditation is right.But since Plato, and many other ancient philosophers before and after him, spoke of the unreliability of the perceptible, and since it is easy to point out that it is not an easy task to distinguish waking from dreaming, I would prefer that these new thinking Good authors don't have to publish something so old.

① First edition: Second edition: "The third group of rebuttals Author: The famous British philosopher Hobbes. The author's reply". ②Second edition: "Thus the images or phantoms which we perceive when we are awake are no more or less the same as we perceive when we are awake." The grounds for doubting what the philosopher has hitherto accepted as true seem to me to be nothing but plausible.The reason why I use the reason for doubt is not to convey it as something new, but on the one hand, it is used as a mental preparation for readers, so that they can consider rational things and let them distinguish what is rational. thing, what is a corporeal thing, because I always think it is very necessary to distinguish the intellectual from the corporeal;

On the one hand, for the purpose of answering in the next few meditations, and on the other hand, it is also to point out that the truths I later put forward are solid and reliable, because those truths cannot be shaken by so common and so unusual doubts. of. It is not for any honor that I state these reasons for doubt, but I think it is as necessary to explain them as it is for a physician to describe the disease he is treating. On the Second Meditation on the Nature of Man's Spirit "I am a thinking thing." It is very well said, because from my thinking or from my having a concept, it can be inferred that I am thinking, because I think and I am thinking, both mean the same thing .From I am thinking, it follows that I am; for what thinks is not nothing.But here our author adds "that is to say, a spirit, a soul, an intellect, a reason," and from this a doubt arises [for me].Because I think: it is incorrect to say that I am thinking, so I am thinking, or that I am rational, so I am rational.For I can also say with the same reasoning: I am a walk, therefore I am a walk.

Mr. Descartes equates the sensible with the intellect (which is the act of the former); or at least he says that the intelligible and the intellect (which is a faculty or function) is a thing.All philosophers, however, distinguish the subject from its functions and actions, that is, from its properties and essences.Because this is not the same thing as the existence of the thing itself and its essence; therefore a thinking thing can be a spiritual, rational or intellectual subject, and thus a physical thing, but what he proposed is the opposite. without proof.Nevertheless, this seems to be the basis for the conclusion Mr. Descartes wants to establish.

In the same place he says: "I have realized that I exist, and now① I ask, Who am I that I have recognized that I exist②. However, it is very certain that this concept and knowledge of myself, strictly speaking It doesn't depend on things that I don't know exist yet." ① "Now", missing in the second French edition. ② "who", the second edition of French: "what". He is quite right: the knowledge of the proposition that I am depends on the proposition that I think is very reliable; but where does the knowledge of the proposition that I think come from?Yes, this comes only from: without a subject we cannot comprehend any of its actions, just as thinking cannot be comprehended without a thinking thing, knowing without a knowing, and without a Walking is not the same as walking.

From this it seems to follow the conclusion that a thinking thing is something corporeal; It can only be understood on the surface, as he will show shortly later with the example of wax.Although the color, hardness, shape, and all other behaviors of the wax have changed, the wax is still understood as the same wax, that is, the same substance may have various changes.However, I am thinking, which is not inferred from other people's thinking; For even if anyone can think that he has thought (and this thinking is but a memory), he can never think that he thinks, and can never know that he knows;

Because it's going to be an endless question: "Where did you know that you know that you know...?" Thus, since the knowledge of the proposition that I am depends on the knowledge of the proposition that I think, and the knowledge of the proposition that I think depends on our inability to separate thinking from a thinking matter, it seems to follow that The conclusion: a thinking thing is material, not immaterial. I said there: "That is to say, a spirit, a soul, a reason, a reason...", I used these names not to refer to individual functions, but to things that can have the function of thinking. Just as people are accustomed to using the first two referents, and people often use the latter two referents.This is what I have explained often and in very obvious terms, and I see nothing suspicious about it.

There is no relation between walking and thinking; for walking never signifies anything but the action itself, and thinking sometimes means the action, sometimes the function, and sometimes what resides within this function. I am not saying that intellect is the same as understanding, nor that understanding is the same as intellect (if intellect is considered a function), but only when intellect is understood as intellect. I only say they are the same thing when they are different.I confess frankly that I have used as simple and abstract terms as possible in order to explain a thing or a substance from which I want to strip everything that does not belong to it; Describe the same entity, but use other very specific and complex terms, such as subject, matter, and object, so as not to separate the mind from the object (or body) as much as possible.I am not afraid that his method (that is, to connect several things together) is more effective in realizing the truth than my method (that is, to distinguish each thing as much as possible).But without further talk, let's see what the problem is.

He said: "A thinking thing can be physical, but what he puts forward is the opposite, without proving it." No.I do not propose anything to the contrary, nor do I take it for granted, but I leave it to the sixth meditation to prove it. He later said it well: "Without a subject [body], we cannot understand any of its actions [use], just as we cannot understand thinking without a thinking thing, because the thinking thing is not nothing." But he To say then: "From this it seems to follow that a thinking thing is something corporeal" is unreasonable, illogical, and even contrary to the usual way of speaking.For the subject [substance] of all acts [uses] of course refers to substance (or, if you prefer, matter, i.e. metaphysical matter); but it does not follow that they are bodies.

On the contrary, all logicians, and almost everyone, generally say that among substances some are mental and others bodily.What I use as an example of wax to prove is nothing else but that color, hardness, shape, etc., do not belong to the formal reasons of wax, that is to say, they do not belong to all that can be understood necessarily in wax, without Thinking of wax, therefore, I said neither the formal reason of the mind nor the formal reason of the body there. It is useless to say that one thought cannot be the subject of another, as the philosopher does.For, besides him, who else has ever pretended to be like this?However, here I want to explain the problem in a few words.

True, thinking cannot be without a thing that thinks, and in general no accident or action can be without a substance.Behavior is the behavior of an entity.But since we do not know the substance itself directly, but only in virtue of its being the subject (body) of certain actions, it is quite reasonable, and custom demands it, that we refer to it by different names. Calling the many subjects of acts or accidents which we recognize as quite different acts, we then examine whether these different names signify different things, or are but the same thing. There are some acts [with] which we call bodily, such as size, shape, motion, and whatever else can be apprehended as not occupying space, and we call the substance in which they reside bodies, and not to be mistaken for shape. The subject is a subject, the subject of the status movement is another subject, and so on.For all acts agree with one another in that they presuppose extension.Then there are other acts [with] which we call intellectual, such as understanding, willing, imagining, feeling, etc., all of which cannot do without thought or perception, or comprehension and knowledge. are common; the substance in which they reside, we call the thinking thing, or the spirit, or whatever we like, so long as we do not confuse it with a bodily substance.For the intellectual act [use] has nothing to do with the bodily act [use]; thinking (which is the common reason for the mutual agreement of all intellectual acts) and extension (which is the common reason for the mutual agreement of all bodily acts) totally different. But after we have formed two clear and distinct concepts of these two entities, we can easily recognize them as one thing or two different things by looking at the words mentioned in the sixth meditation. "What is different from my thinking? What is, so to speak, separate from myself?" Someone may answer this question by saying: I am different from my thinking, I think; although thinking is actually inseparable from me, it is different from me, just as walking (as I said before) is Different from people who walk.If Mr. Descartes pointed out that the person who understands and reason are the same thing, we will fall into the saying of scholastic philosophy: the reason understands, sees and sees, and the will wills; And to use the apt analogy, take a walk, or at least the function of a walk, go for a walk.All these things were muddied, which did not commensurate with Mr. Descartes' usual clarity. ①The second French edition has: "One can speak" before "walking". I have no objection that the thinking I am different from my thinking, just as a thing is different from its appearance; but I said there: "What is different from my thinking?" I am talking about several ways of thinking (these ways of thinking are explained there), not about my entity.There I went on to say, "What is there that can be separated from myself?" I was simply saying that all these ways of thinking that are in me cannot exist outside of me.I see nothing in it to call suspicion, and I see no reason to accuse me of making a mess here. "So I must admit that I cannot even comprehend ① what this wax is with my imagination. Only my reason can comprehend ① it." There is a great difference between imagination (that is, having ideas) and intellectual apprehension (that is, reasoning to conclude that there is something or something exists); but Mr. Descartes does not explain the difference between Where.The ancient peripateticism also teaches quite clearly that entities cannot be perceived by the senses, but can be inferred by reason. ① The second edition of the French version is "Understanding". ② That is, the Aristotle school. ③ French second edition: "understand". What shall we say if reasoning may be but the sum of a series of names concatenated with this string?From this it follows that, with reason, we can derive nothing about the nature of things, but only names about them, that is to say, with theory we can only see The meaning of arbitrarily made conventions connects the names of these things right or wrong.If this is the case (and it probably is), then reasoning will depend on names, names will depend on imagination, and imagination will perhaps (I think) depend on the movements of the genitals of objects; thus the spirit is nothing but in certain parts of organic objects exercise. In the second meditation, when I used the example of wax to point out what is what we imagine in wax and what we apprehend with the intellect alone, I explained the difference between the imagination and the pure concepts of the intellect or spirit. different; but I have elsewhere explained how we understand a thing differently than we imagine it, e.g. to imagine a pentagon requires special concentration on the side and the space contained within the five sides) as if it were in front of us; to comprehend it, we do not use this method.The sum that is made in the inference is not the sum of the names, but the sum of what the names signify.I wonder why anyone would be able to think of the opposite. For who doubts that a Frenchman and a German, though apprehended by quite different names, cannot think or reason alike about the same things?Does not the philosopher condemn himself when he speaks of the conventions we make arbitrarily about the meaning of names?For if he admits that something expresses its meaning by words, why is he unwilling to admit that our words and reasonings are words and reasonings of that which expresses meaning, and not mere words and reasonings of words?Of course, in the same way and with the same right reasons he concluded that the spirit is a movement, he could also conclude that the earth is the sky, or he can say what he likes; for there is no other Things fit in between like the difference between motion and spirit, which belong to two quite different kinds of things. On the Third Meditation on God "Among them" (i.e., in each individual's various thoughts) "some are images of things, and only these images are really suitable for the name idea: for example, I think of a person, or a monster, or a sky, or a Angel, or God." When I think of a person, I represent to me an idea or an image composed of colors and shapes, about which I may doubt whether it fits a person, or whether it does not.It is the same when I think about heaven.When I think about a monster, I represent an idea or an image. For this idea or image, I can suspect that it is a portrait of an animal. This animal does not exist, but it can exist, or it has existed before. When someone thinks of an angel, what comes to my mind sometimes is the image of a flame, sometimes of a child with wings, and I can say with certainty that this image does not resemble an angel, and therefore it is not an angel. The idea of ​​an angel; but we believe that there are invisible, immaterial creatures who are ministers of God, and we give the name angel to a thing we believe or suppose, though I imagine an angel from it. This idea of ​​things is made up of ideas of things that can be seen. The same is true of the venerable title of God.We have no image or idea of ​​God; that is why we are forbidden to worship him with idols, lest we seem to comprehend what we cannot comprehend. Therefore, we seem to have no idea of ​​God at all in our minds; like a man who is born blind, he has approached fire many times, he feels the heat, and realizes that the fire is warmed by a thing, which is called fire, as people say. , so he concludes that there is fire, although he does not know the shape and color of fire, really speaking, he has no idea or image of fire expressed in his mind at all.In the same way, when a man sees some of his images or ideas, there must be some reason, and above this reason, there must be other reasons, and this goes on to the end, or to some eternal cause, because it did not begin to exist. However, there cannot be a cause before it, which makes it necessary for him to say that there is an eternal being, although he has no idea of ​​this eternal being which he may say is, but faith or his reason persuades him to refer to this cause. Call it God. Now since Mr. Descartes makes the theorem that God (that is to say, an omnipotent, all-intelligent, creator of the universe, etc. being) exists from this assumption (that we have the idea of ​​God in us), Well he should have explained this idea of ​​God, and then deduced from it not only the existence of God, but also the creation of the world. ① French second edition: "Proposition". By the name idea, he lets us here refer only to images of material things which are arbitrarily described as corporeal; and it is thus easy for him to show that men cannot have any real idea of ​​God, nor any real idea of ​​angels.However, I have often reminded that it is mainly here that I use the name idea to refer to what is directly apprehended by the mind.So when I want and I am afraid, because I perceive both I want and I am afraid, this wanting and this fearing, I put them in the idea.I use this name because it has been unanimously accepted by philosophers, in order that it signifies the apprehensive form of God's intellect, though we recognize no bodily phantasy or imagination in God, and I know of no more suitable.I think I have explained the idea of ​​God sufficiently to those who would take my word for it;Finally, he speaks of the creation of the world, which makes no sense; for I have proved that God exists before examining whether there is a world created for God, and only from God (that is, an all-powerful being ) exists, it can be concluded that if there is a world, then this world must be created by him. "Other thoughts have other forms, such as I want, I am afraid, I affirm, I deny; although I perceive something as the subject of my mental action, I also add something to it by this action. In the ideas I have of this thing; some of the thoughts belonging to this class are called wills or emotions, and others are called judgments." When someone wants or is afraid, he actually does have a picture of what he is afraid of and a picture of the action he wants, but what he wants or is afraid of contains more than his thinking, Not explained here. Although, if fear is really a thought, I don't see how fear can be other than the thought or idea of ​​what people are afraid of.For, if it were not for the idea of ​​the lion when a lion comes towards us, and the results produced in the mind by such an idea, the frightened man would do what we call running away. If this kind of animal behavior, then what else can this kind of fear be?But the act of running away is not thought; so there is still no other thought in fear, only the thought of something like what one fears. As for wanting, the same is true. Moreover, affirmation and negation cannot be done without words and names; therefore animals cannot affirm and negate, neither can they affirm or negate by thought, and therefore cannot judge anything.Even so, not only humans have thinking, but also animals; because when we are sure that a person is running, our thinking is the same as that of a dog seeing its owner running, so affirmation and negation are not in simple terms. Adds anything to thinking, unless it is thinking that the names that make up the affirmation are those of that which is in the man who makes the affirmation; The similarity is twofold. It would have been quite obvious: to see a lion and be afraid of it is not the same thing as merely seeing it; nor is it the same thing to see a man running and be sure to see him.I don't see what needs to be answered or explained here. "It remains only for me to examine by what means I have acquired this idea. For I do not receive it through the senses, and it does not, like the idea of ​​a perceivable, occur when the perceptible furnishes or It seems that when the external organs of my senses are provided, they are forced to me whether I want to or not. Nor is it purely produced by my spirit or invented; Because I don't have the ability to add or subtract anything on it.Therefore there is nothing else to say but that it, like my own ideas, has been with me since I was created. " If there is no concept of God (it cannot be proved that there is a concept of God), since there seems to be no such concept, then all such research is useless.Besides, my own idea is that I (if we look at the body) mainly get it from looking at it; if it comes to the soul, then we have no idea of ​​it, but reason makes us say that the human body contains something. , which gives animal motions to the body, with which the body senses and acts; nevertheless, there are no ideas, which we call the soul. ① French second edition: "Not usually". If there is an idea of ​​God (and there is, obviously), then all this objection falls away; and secondly, to say that there is no idea of ​​a soul, which is apprehended by reason, is like saying that it is not drawn arbitrarily. images of the soul, but have what I have hitherto called ideas. "The other idea of ​​the sun is derived from astronomical principles, that is to say, from certain ideas which naturally exist in my mind." Probably he could have at any one time only one idea of ​​the sun, which he either saw with his eyes, or which he reasoned into being many times larger; for the latter was not an idea of ​​the sun, but The conclusion of our reasoning, which tells us that the idea of ​​the sun is many times larger if we look at it from a very close distance.Yes, there can be several different concepts of the sun at different times. For example, when we see it with the naked eye and through a telescope, it is different. However, the principles of astronomy cannot make the concept of the sun larger or smaller. These principles The idea that only tells us the sun is perceivable is deceptive. Again I answer: it is not the idea of ​​the sun that is here spoken of; nevertheless, what he describes is what I call an idea.Since the philosopher is unwilling to agree with my definitions of these terms, it is pointless for me to object. "For, indeed, those ideas which represent substance to me undoubtedly have something more to them than those which merely represent mode or accident, and have themselves (so to speak) more objective reality; The idea from which I perceive a God who is supreme, eternal, infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, universal creator of all things but himself, is no doubt compared in himself to me with the idea of ​​representing finite entities. Those ideas need to have more objective reality.” I have several times before pointed out that we have neither any idea of ​​God nor of a soul, and now I add that we have no idea of ​​substance either; The substance which changes with the changes of accidents is discovered and proved by reasoning, but it cannot be comprehended, or we have no idea of ​​it.If so, how can it be said that those ideas which represent substances to us have more objective reality than those which represent accidents?In addition, Mr. Descartes should reconsider ① the statement that there is more reality.Are there really more and ② less features?Or, if he thinks that one thing is more of a thing than another, let him consider how it is possible to do so with all the clarity required for proof, which he has repeatedly used when speaking of other things. What about explanation ③? ①French second edition: "In addition, Mr. Descartes does not seem to have considered it." ② "and", the second version of French is "or". ③ "Explanation", the second French edition is: "Make the heart understand and explain." I have said many times that what I call ideas is what reason makes us know, like everything else we apprehend, no matter how we apprehend them.I have fully explained how much and how little reality is, that is, that substance is something more than mode; and if there are real properties or imperfect substances, they are also more than mode but not perfect less; finally, if there is an infinite substance independent of anything else, then this substance has more or more reality than a finite substance dependent upon something else, that is to say , shared more being or more things②.This is so obvious that it needs no further explanation. ① "There is something more", the second French version is: "It is more existence." ② "That is to say, more existence or things are shared", the second French edition is missing.