Chapter Two of Frederick Wilhelmsen’s book Man’s Knowledge of Reality discusses the
Cartesian origin of the Critical Problem.
Descartes begins with two elements: universal doubt and a universal method.
While Aristotle and others would use different methods suited to the different objects of
study, Descartes proposes a single method for all objects.
This method is drawn from the powers and limits of the human mind, which is known before any
other object.
Descartes subjects all of his knowledge to a universal doubt, pending test by the method.
Because his prior knowledge is a jumbled mix of true and false, certain and uncertain,
it is vital that he leave no knowledge claim immune from this initial doubt.
Only claims that endure the test of the method can be accepted.
The method itself has three elements: good sense, logical principles, and mathematical methods.
The first is the natural reasoning capacity inherent and equal in all men.
It requires no education or training to use.
Scholastic logic does not add to good sense, but organizes and systematizes its operations.
Despite this, it was evident to Descartes that the combination of the two has failed
to produce certainty.
Thus there is a need for the methods of mathematics.
The first moment of the Cartesian method is an act of intuition.
The mind first clears itself of all sensation and imagination, and works to grasp an idea
in its simplest form.
By intuition the mind grasps the analyzed idea as clear and distinct.
The clarity of the idea includes both the object intuited and the act of intuiting it.
For this reason, the act of intuition requires a clear and focused mind.
A mind distracted by the senses cannot grasp its ideas with sufficient clarity.
Distinctness is the negative side of clarity.
An idea is clear by being evidently itself and grasped as such.
An idea is distinct by being clearly demarcated from all ideas that are not itself.
After intuiting clear and distinct ideas, the mind proceeds to the second moment, deducing
from these ideas whatever is implicit in them.
By this process, the mind acquires a stock of ideas that are immune from the general
doubt with which it began.
The Cartesian method requires us to go from thought to things.
This is because the content of a thing’s idea simply *is* its full intelligibility.
There is nothing true about a thing that is not contained in the idea of the thing.
So to grasp a thing’s clear and distinct idea is to know all that can be known about
that thing.
However, mathematical objects, on which this method is modeled, do not contain their existence
within their idea.
(The idea of a triangle does not require the existence of real triangles.)
As a result we are not only capable of doubting what we seem to know, we are capable of doubting
the reality of all things.
Since we cannot escape this doubt, we must raise it to the level of a methodical principle.
Over time, Cartesian methodical doubt becomes the Critical Problem.
Rather than beginning with a fact, or an intuition of being, philosophy begins with the overcoming
of doubt.
This brings us to the familiar territory of Descartes’ Meditations One and Two.
After throwing a blanket of universal doubt over all knowledge claims, Descartes rescues
them one by one: first the self, known as a thinking thing, then God, known as a perfect being.
These two ideas, once grasped in their clarity and distinctness, cannot be doubted.
Their objects must be real.
The mind also finds itself the passive recipient of ideas, seemingly from the senses.
If these ideas were not as they seem, if they were not caused by really existing material
things, then God would be a deceiver.
But deception is incompatible with God’s perfection, which we clearly and distinctly grasp.
Therefore, extended material objects do exist, and are the cause of our sensations of them.
In refounding philosophy like this, Descartes began what would become the Critical Problem.
For him, philosophy must begin in the mind and proceed from the mind to things.
The first object of knowledge is the mind’s own existence as a thinking and knowing thing.
Everything else it knows depends on this knowledge.
In a very real sense, everything I know depends on what I know about my process of knowing.
And this raises the Critical Problem: how can I move from my initial certainty of my
own mind to an equal certainty about things outside my mind?
Wilhelmsen ends this chapter by noting that philosophers may accept or reject the Critical Problem.
To accept it is to be a critical philosopher, who attempts to answer this challenge in one
of a variety of ways.
But a philosopher may, like Wilhelmsen and Gilson, reject the Critical Problem entirely,
and be a noncritical philosopher.
Such a philosopher would not begin with the human mind’s knowledge of its own knowing
processes, but rather with things themselves, with being.
Wilhelmsen calls this school of thought Metaphysical Realism, and it is the subject of Chapter Three.
That’s my quick overview of Chapter Two of Man’s Knowledge of Reality.
Thanks for watching today; goodbye.