Solving the Cartesian Circle

French philosopher and theologian Antoine Arnauld brought to light the alleged mistake in Descartes’ Meditations. In an attempt to prove God’s existence that is compliant with his method of doubt, Descartes allegedly commits a logical error that creates an argument with circular reasoning. Afterward, in the Replies to Objections, Descartes attempted to prove that there is no circle, but, to many scholars, unsuccessfully. Although some have supported what can be called “the most serious charge that could ever be brought against a philosophical argument,” other commentators have attempted to identify and eliminate the cause of the alleged error or suggest a different reading of the argument that would resolve the circularity; nevertheless, some scholars have argued that there is no circularity in Descartes’ argument, despite his work being riddled with other errors. Perhaps, due to the lack of general consensus among the scholars, the Cartesian Circle was never officially recognized as non-circular, but as evident from the research,  many academics seem to agree that Descartes’ argument only appears to be viciously circular, when, in fact, it is not. The scholars divide on the “solution” for the Cartesian Circle, on how and why the argument should be acquitted. I will examine arguments made in support of Descartes’ reasoning, the various approaches to his work, and the solutions proposed, and see if it is possible to break the Cartesian Circle through the restructuring of the argument and the adjustment of its premises with the use of formal logic.

At the beginning of his work, Descartes draws attention to the changing nature of opinions that, over time, can become false along with everything that has been built on top of them. In his Meditations, Descartes sets out to “establish anything firm and lasting in the sciences” and commits himself to a total, “general demolition of [his] opinions” until “eventually all that remains is precisely nothing but what is certain and unshaken.” This becomes the Method of Doubt with a general rule that anything that can be doubted must be treated as false. The foundation to the new science must be unshakable: “there is nothing among the things I once believed to be true which it is not permissible to doubt,” and “I will stay on this course until I know something certain, or, if nothing else, until I at least know for certain that nothing is certain.” Descartes reaches a point where he is sure of nothing, and (although some scholars, we will see, contest this wording) everything is subject to doubt.

With nothing being certain, Descartes proposes three theories for what might prevent him from being able to trust his senses and his intuition: if he is a madman, detached from reality, if he is asleep, or if there exists “an evil genius, supremely powerful and clever, who has directed his entire effort at deceiving” him. After much deliberation, he arrives at a point where the search for the undoubtable foundation comes to an end. He discovers the Cogito that must necessarily exist, even if he is being deceived: “it must be finally established that <...> “I am, I exist” is necessarily true every time I utter it or conceive it in my mind;” “But doubtless I did exist, if I persuaded myself of something.”

The Cogito is the “first instance of knowledge, there is nothing but a certain clear and distinct perception of what I affirm.” This lays the foundation for Descartes, on top of which he can build a new system, and it gives him a parameter by which to judge whether something is true or false and therefore must be rejected. Thus, arises the “Rule of Truth”: “I now seem able to posit as a general rule that everything I very clearly and distinctly perceive is true.” However, Descartes is only able to assert that with certainty after he shows that there exists a God who is not a deceiver, which makes clear and distinct perceptions reliable. In Meditation 3, in order to prove that God exists, Descartes examines many sides of the argument, including the attributes of God such as eternal, supremely good, omniscient, etc. He provides arguments regarding the chain of causality (something cannot come from nothing; the cause must be more or at least as perfect as the effect and have more or at least as much reality as the cause), the lack of potentiality in God, the absolute perfection of His essence, which must include existence. Finally, he says: “the more carefully I focus my attention on [the perceptions of God], the less possible it seems they could have arisen from myself alone. Thus, from what has been said, I must conclude that God necessarily exists,” and “of all the ideas that are in me, the idea that I have of God is the most true, the most clear and distinct.” As a result, Descartes shows that the good God that exists grants the truthness of clear and distinct perceptions.

In the Fourth Set of Objections to Descartes’ Meditations, Antoine Arnauld writes: “My only remaining concern is whether the author does not commit a vicious circle, when he says that we have no other basis on which to establish that what we clearly and distinctly perceive is true, than that God exists. But we can be certain that God exists only because we clearly and evidently perceive this fact. Therefore, before we are certain that whatever we clearly and evidently perceive is true.” Arnauld accuses Descartes of presupposing the existence of God to confirm the Rule of Truth and then using the same clear and distinct perceptions to prove God’s existence. In his response to the accusation, Descartes “suggested that [the critics] re-read what he had written.” Evidently, many scholars found Descartes’ Reply to this Objection insufficient, even disappointing: “it raised questions which he did not explicitly answer. And it seemed inconsistent with any number of statements in the Meditations and the Discourse and irreconcilable with the general plan of his metaphysics. This has led one recent writer to dismiss Descartes' answer as sophistry; another, after a painstaking investigation, to report “contradictory positions” rooted in a “concealed philosophical antagonism.”” Some scholars hold that “the circularity objection cannot be avoided, and Descartes simply did commit the error” and work hard to disprove the proposed solutions.

Even though many commentators agree that “Descartes’s use of his own terminology is not always consistent,” some “find the bulk of his arguments unacceptable,” and his system is “riddled with problems <...> circularity need not be one of them.” Thusly, many scholars rose to his defense.

Matthew Kelly offered a unique reading of the Meditations. After showing how certain solutions fail to resolve the Cartesian Circle, he argued that the Meditations should be read as “a different kind of book.” To him, the Circle is simply a successful tool for what was the true purpose of the Meditations: “to provide a secure foundation for the scientific study of nature.” Because “the case of Galileo made clear to Descartes, it was not safe <...> to support the position of science in opposition to the churches,” in Kelly’s view, Descartes covertly, intentionally, and effectively “used” the circle to say “to those who have ears to hear, that what God knows is irrelevant when it comes to claims about nature supported by science <...> [and that] the question of knowledge must precede the question of being.”

Some scholars who agreed that Descartes’ reasoning is “viciously circular,” nevertheless, tried to find “a way out” of the Circle. For Douglas Odegard, the source of circularity is perfect knowledge. “Descartes cannot avoid circularity as long as he tries to prove that he has the kind of knowledge he claims to have.” Odegard shows that the root of the problem in many forms of “solutions” to the Cartesian Circle is, in fact, the inability to attain perfect knowledge. “Even though a non-circular proof can be constructed, claiming perfect knowledge of anything still faces a serious empirical obstacle” for there can arise good reasons “to doubt even those things we perceive clearly and distinctly.”

Because our considered beliefs are sometimes false, “we cannot claim a perfect knowledge of anything, since we cannot claim the impossibility of there being good reasons for doubt. But we can claim the “imperfect” type of certainty.” The solution that is proposed is the “imperfect certainty” that “imperfectly” guarantees that based on past experiences and reasonable expectations of the future, there is not, never was, and never will be a good reason to doubt. “This simply means that, for any belief, there may be a genuine chance that it is false. It does not mean that, for any belief, there is a genuine chance that it is false.” According to Odegard, this works for the dream and the evil genius arguments since it only suggests that there may be a reason for doubt. But Descartes wants perfect certainty, an unshakable, stable foundation, which Odegard’s solution deprives him of. Odegard says, “of course, it would be irrational to settle for probabilistic certainty claims if we could realistically expect to claim more. <...> But in fact nothing more is available.” “If I am right, we never know that we have knowledge and our knowledge is never perfect.”

George Nakhnikian claimed that after a closer look, it is obvious that Descartes’ Circle generates another vicious circle within the system that “leads to intellectual hara-kiri.” Nevertheless, he argued that the circle exists “if, and only if, we assume that a certain aberrant view is part of Descartes’ considered doctrine.” “The aberrant view is that even the most clearly and distinctly intuited propositions are not really known to be true except by those who know that God exists and that He cannot be a deceiver.” In other words, for Nakhnikian, Descartes’ assertion that “certitude about other things is so dependent on this [knowledge of God], that without it nothing can ever be perfectly known” is exactly the cause of the circularity of his otherwise valid argument. “According to the aberrant view, no matter how clearly and distinctly he perceives the premisses for God’s existence, he does not know that they are true unless he knows that the principle of clarity and distinctness is true, he must know that God exists. We are in a vicious circle.”

Nakhnikian shows that not only does the aberrant view generate the circle, it also “is intrinsically absurd by way of being self-stultifying.” This aberrant view does not exclude self-evident principles like the Cogito. Furthermore, without the confirmed knowledge of God, any cognition is merely “persuasio” and can never be true knowledge that Descartes is seeking. This argument reaches absurdity when one considers that Descartes also doubts mathematical principles: “according to the aberrant view, as long as Descartes is ignorant that God exists, he “doubts'' all mathematical propositions. But to doubt all mathematical propositions is to doubt deduction itself.” With that, nothing can be deduced for deduction itself is now the subject of doubt, and one can never claim to have successfully deduced, demonstrated, or proven anything.

Nakhnikian offers a solution in which it must be recognized that at least some clear and distinct perceptions are not dependent on God’s existence and that at least “some clearly and distinctly perceived propositions are, and known to be, true.”

The answer to that can be found in Lynn E. Rose’s “The Cartesian Circle.” Although Rose was challenged by Norman Kretzmann on the grounds that this position lacks textual evidence and that not all of Descartes’ premises for the existence of God fit into Rose’s idea of separate clear and distinct perceptions, I find Rose’s argument to hold a lot of ground. Rose claimed that Descartes’ argument is not circular, and “this appearance of circularity in Descartes’ arguments is due to a lack of precision in his statements of them, rather than to any flaw in his reasoning.” Rose’s solution to the apparent circularity is to clarify the distinction between two kinds of clear and distinct perceptions. Thus, it would become evident that “the clear and distinct perceptions used in the demonstrations of the existence of God are not the same as those whose reliability depends upon the existence of God.”

Rose distinguishes two categories of doubt and certainty: metaphysical and psychological, with metaphysical being a higher level. “What lacks metaphysical certainty is said to be subject to metaphysical doubt in that it can be conceived to be false on the demon hypothesis, and what lacks even psychological certainty is subject to psychological doubt in that even without the demon hypothesis we find that we can conceive of its being false.” But there is a type of clear and distinct perceptions, the “metaphysical principles” that withstand even the demon hypothesis and are not subject to even metaphysical doubt for they are metaphysically certain. Such perceptions are “given to us through the light of nature.” The Cogito is an example of such metaphysical principle. And those are the things that would be excluded from Descartes’ doubt of everything in the beginning.

When Descartes presupposes clear and distinct perceptions, “his remarks are often oversimplified in such a way as to suggest that he bases his arguments for the existence of God on the reliability of all clear and distinct perceptions,” when in fact he only acknowledges that there are clear and distinct perceptions that are “so clear and distinct that [they] cannot in any way be supposed false, even on “the most extravagant suppositions.”” Thus, “in the proofs of the existence of God he in fact presupposes the reliability only of those metaphysically certain principles which are given by the light of nature and withstand the demon hypothesis.” The other clear and distinct perceptions are confirmed by the existence of a good God who is not a deceiver. Therefore, there is no circularity.

Since Descartes’ argument was never collectively recognized as non-circular, I would like to attempt to make a proposition of my own for how to solve the Cartesian Circle. If one adds to it or subtracts from it, consulting Descartes’ Meditations to make sure one does not drift away too far from his framework, it might become possible to arrive at a non-circular, valid argument that is in compliance with his philosophy. To summarize, the simplified Cartesian Circle argument goes like this: clear and distinct perceptions must be true because God exists and is not a deceiver; I have a clear and distinct perception of God, God must exist. The assertion that clear and distinct perceptions are true and reliable because God is not a deceiver works for Descartes’ initial arguments that lay the foundation for his philosophical approach that is necessary to avoid succumbing to extreme skepticism or infinite regress, “as if I had suddenly fallen into a deep whirlpool;” but it is also exactly what forces him into the circular reasoning.

From the standpoint of formal logic, the error in Descartes’ argument is in presupposing the conclusion in its premise. Hence, there are two ways to break circular reasoning: either change the conclusion or change the premise. Because Descartes’ goal in the given argument is to prove that God exists, one ought to change the premise in order to arrive at that conclusion. In other words, the fact that clear and distinct perceptions are true must be proven without the reliance on God’s existence.

Doing the research, I encountered many definitions of “clear and distinct perceptions,” and for this argument, I will lean on the foundation that Descartes was building in Meditations 1-2. Descartes sought that which would put an end to his search for an unshakable foundation for his thought, thus, the undoubtable, self-evident perceptions. This is close to Rose’s definition of the light of nature, and it is still consistent with Descartes’ idea of clear and distinct perceptions. It seems as though this foundational concept can only be shaken if our world is such that there does not exist a possibility for anything to be self-evident and undoubtable. This would attack the very definition of clear and distinct perceptions, annihilating their right to existence. If this is true, the argument is unsalvageable (at least from this approach), and the circular reasoning would remain. Therefore, it is exactly what must be asserted, using the form of an argument “contradictio in contrarium” or proof by contradiction.

With the assumption of Descartes’ definition of clear and distinct perceptions as undoubtable, self-evident perceptions, I assert that all clear and distinct perceptions cannot and do not exist or, in other words, are always false. In Descartes’ account, nothing that can be doubted exists. When even the undoubtable perceptions themselves can be false and, therefore, rightfully doubted, it follows that it is impossible to assert anything; no knowledge is reliable. There exists no explanation for why non-contradictory, self-evident perceptions should be false, except one: if nothing is true. If nothing is true, logic is unreliable, and I am being deceived (either by my senses, my mind, the universe, God, evil demon, or all five), and I cannot grasp anything.

However, Descartes clearly shows that “cogito [ergo] sum” cannot be false, and any attempt at asserting the opposite unavoidably confirms the truthness of the original statement. One cannot know or think anything if one does not exist. To think that you do not think is thinking, hence, existing. “Then too there is no doubt that I exist, if he is deceiving me <...> he will never bring it about that I am nothing so long as I shall think that I am something.” Even if it is assumed that the evil genius is tricking me into thinking that I exist, I must exist in order to be tricked. The Cogito cannot be doubted. It follows that at least one clear and distinct perception must be true.

Furthermore, according to the given definition, there cannot be a measure or a degree of clearness and distinctness of clear and distinct perceptions. Such perception cannot be less or semi-self-evident or partially undoubtable; it either requires outside evidence or it does not; it is either unequivocally true or unequivocally false. Anything less than self-evident and undoubtable is not a clear and distinct perception. It follows that, theoretically, clear and distinct perceptions are all equal in the sense that they are all either true or they are not clear and distinct perceptions.

Hence, if it is possible for one clear and distinct perception to be true, then this is not the world in which nothing is true. If one clear and distinct perception is true, and all clear and distinct perceptions are self-evident and undoubtable and equal in their truth value, then by association, all clear and distinct perceptions must necessarily be true, or they must not be clear and distinct perceptions. Conclusion: all clear and distinct perceptions must be true. Now all that is left to do is to prove that God exists, using Descartes’ original argument: if clear and distinct perceptions are true, and I have a clear and distinct perception of God, He must exist.

This chain of reasoning is in agreement with Nakhnikian’s point of view. For there is no aberrant view in this argument if there is no supposition that without the knowledge of God, we cannot know anything: “for if I am ignorant of this, it appears I am never capable of being completely certain about anything else.” It also supports Rose’s claims that there are different types of clear and distinct perceptions and that one type or the light of nature is self-evident and does not require the proof of God’s existence or veracity.

At least from the presented points of view, the Cartesian Circle only appears circular. Scholars have identified different causes of the alleged circular reasoning, for example, a tight grip onto perfect knowledge or the aberrant view that no knowledge is certain if one does not have the knowledge of God. They have also proposed alternative ways of reading Descartes' Meditations, for example, that the Circle is a tool, or that it is crucial to notice the different kinds of clear and distinct perceptions and separate them from the light of nature. It is also evident that through restructuring the argument and applying formal logic, it is possible to break the Cartesian Circle and turn it into a valid argument within the framework of Descartes.


Bibliography
Ariew, Roger, and Eric Watkins, eds. Modern Philosophy: An Anthology of Primary Sources. 3rd ed. Indianapolis/ Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2019.
Doney, Willis. “The Cartesian Circle.” Journal of the History of Ideas 16, no. 3 (June 1955): 324–38. https://doi.org/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2707635.
Huemer, Michael. “The Cartesian Circle Persists.” Summa Philosophiae, 1997. https://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/papers/descartes1.htm.
Kelly, Matthew J. “The Cartesian Circle: Descartes' Response to Scepticism.” Journal of Thought 5, no. 2 (April 1970): 64–71. https://doi.org/https://www.jstor.org/stable/42588184.
Kretzmann, Norman. “On Rose's ‘Cartesian Circle.’” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 26, no. 1 (September 1965): 90–92. https://doi.org/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2105471.
Nakhnikian, George. “The Cartesian Circle Revisited.” American Philosophical Quarterly 4, no. 3 (July 1967): 251–55. https://doi.org/https://www.jstor.org/stable/20009249.
Odegard, Douglas. “Escaping the Cartesian Circle.” American Philosophical Quarterly 21, no. 2 (April 1984): 167–73. https://doi.org/https://www.jstor.org/stable/20014042.
Rickless, Samuel C. “The Cartesian Fallacy Fallacy.” No;s 39, no. 2 (June 2005): 309–36. https://doi.org/https://www.jstor.org/stable/3506095.
Rose, Lynn E. “The Cartesian Circle.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 26, no. 1 (September 1965): 80–89. https://doi.org/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2105470.