STUDY GUIDE FOR DESCARTES'S DISCOURSE ON METHOD

Gerald J. Massey
Full title:    Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and Seeking the
                Truth in the Sciences, and in addition the Optics, the Meteorology and the
                Geometry, which are essays in this Method (published anonymously in French
                in Leiden, The Netherlands, in June of 1637)

PART ONE:  Various Considerations about the Sciences

1.   In what respects does Descartes think that all human minds are equal?  In what respects does he think that some minds surpass others?  What is his evidence for these claims?
     Descartes says that his views on these matters are the same as the common opinion of philosophers who hold that the instantiation of a {substantial} form (by individuals of a given species) is an all-or-nothing matter, whereas their instantiation of an accidental form is often a matter of degree.  What are substantial forms?  Accidental forms?  Explain the aforementioned common opinion.  Does it really coincide with Descartes's views?

2.   If there's nothing special about Descartes's mind, how did he happen to make truly extraordinary contributions in many fields, e.g., in mathematics, theoretical physics, optics, cosmology, anatomy, neuroscience, and philosophy?

3.   In what sense is the method that Descartes has discovered incremental?  Does he expect everybody to adopt it?  If not, why did he write this work?  What is its purpose?

4.   The young Descartes had a passionate desire for knowledge and truth, so why was he disillusioned by his formal studies at the Jesuit College of La Fleche (which he describes as one of the most famous, and presumably one of the best, schools in Europe)?  In what did his disillusionment consist?  Had he himself supplemented the curriculum at La Fleche in any way?  Just how good a student had he been?
     Did La Fleche instill Socratic wisdom (vivid knowledge that one really knows nothing) in its students?
     What things of positive value did Descartes take away from La Fleche, and why did he value them?  What did he then think of languages, history, literature, ethics, mathematics, philosophy, jurisprudence, medicine, the sciences, theology?  In what way do even the most accurate histories distort things?  What consequences does this distortion often have?

5.  What does Descartes think that travelling and reading works by past authors have in common?  How can each be overdone?

6.   What was it about mathematics that most appealed to the young Descartes?  What use did he think could be made of mathematics?  What about mathematics quite surprised him?
     By contrast, what about philosophy most put off the young Descartes?  What attitude did he adopt toward philosophical claims that were "merely probable"?
     Where did Descartes think that the other sciences got their principles?  What did he think this implied about their solidity?

7.   Why did Descartes at a young age abandon all formal studies?  In which two places did he propose now to seek truth?  What did he resolve to do?

8.   Where did his travels take him?  Why did he expect to find more truth in the reasonings and judgments of practical men than in those made by scholars about speculative matters?
     How did Descartes view the unfamiliar and even bizarre customs he came across in his travels?  What did he learn from the diversity of customs?  Did they make him a skeptic?
     After some years of traveling, Descartes decided to look elsewhere for knowledge and truth?  Where did he then seek them?

PART TWO:  The Principal Rules of the Method

1.   What took place in Descartes's stove-heated tent (probably in a village near Ulm) in Germany on November 10, 1619, when Descartes was on his way from the coronation of Ferdinand II in Frankfurt to rejoin the army of Duke Maximilian?

2.    What were Descartes's thoughts about solo works versus the works of many hands?  How did he apply these thoughts to the sciences found in books?  Did these thoughts also apply to the demonstrative sciences?  What did he understand by demonstration?

3.   Do people tear down all the buildings of a city in order to renew it?  Why did Descartes reject the idea of reforming the sciences?  Why did he decide to chuck out his former beliefs "all at one go?"  With what did he hope to replace them later?  Does he think others should follow his example?  Which two classes of persons ought not to follow his example?

4.   Descartes thinks that the reform of public (e.g., political) institutions is so difficult that it is far better to accept their imperfections (many of which are corrected or ameliorated by custom), so why doesn't he adopt the same attitude toward the reformation of the sciences?  Exactly how far does he propose to carry out his intellectual reforms?  Reform whose thoughts?  Put them on what kind of foundation?

5.  Why did Descartes feel that he had to be his own guide in the pursuit of certainty and truth?  Wasn't there anyone he could apprentice himself to?  Why did Descartes think that this circumstance mandated his going slowly and circumspectly?  What did he think he ought to do before chucking out all his former beliefs?

6.   With what values does Descartes credit logic?  If logic is not devoid of useful and true precepts, why not adopt them?  What use did Descartes see for ancient geometrical analysis and modern algebra?  What does he take their drawbacks or defects to be?

7.   What does Descartes propose to put in place of logic, geometrical analysis, and algebra in order to reap their advantages while avoiding their defects?  Carefully formulate the four rules of his Method?

8.   Explain what the First Rule of Descartes's Method prescribes?  Give examples.  How does one go about following it?  How can one tell if one has followed it correctly?

9.   Explain what the Second Rule of Descartes's Method prescribes?  Give examples.  How does one go about following it?  How can one tell if one has followed it correctly?

10.  Explain what the Third Rule of Descartes's Method prescribes?  Give examples.  How does one go about following it?  How can one tell if one has followed it correctly?  Isn't it arbitrary to inject order where none is to be found?  How can this practice be justified?

11.  Explain what the Fourth Rule of Descartes's Method prescribes?  Give examples.  How does one go about following it?  How can one tell if one has followed it correctly?

12.  What is the relevance of geometrical demonstrations (geometrical proofs) to Descartes's Method?  Does he think that anyone has produced demonstrations, i.e., certain and evident reasonings, outside mathematics?

13.  What did Descartes take the starting points (analogous to the postulates of Euclidean geometry) of his Method to be?  Why did he propose to begin his solo project by applying his Method to mathematics?  Did he propose to master all the branches of mathematics?

14.  Descartes begins his project by examining relations or proportions in general conceived as holding among objects that would make them easiest to grasp, so he supposed them to hold between geometrical lines and designated them with the briefest possible symbols.  In this way he thought he had incorporated all that is best in geometrical analysis and algebra, using the one to correct the other.  With what did he then begin?  How did he proceed?  What did he accomplish in this part of his solo project?  What problems did he solve?  Even when unable to solve a problem, what benefits did his Method yield?  What kind of certainty did he claim for the results achieved by his Method?

15.  Did Descartes think his Method was restricted to mathematics?  Did his use of the Method improve with practice?  How?

16.  Why did Descartes think that, having become skilled in the mathematical use of his Method, the next step was to apply it to principles of philosophy rather than to some other science?  Did he think himself equipped to do this at age twenty-three?  What kind of preparation seemed to him necessary?
 

PART THREE:  Some Moral Rules Derived from the Method

1.   Why did Descartes think that he had to formulate and follow a provisional moral code?

2.   Formulate the first of the four maxims that make up Descartes's provisional moral code and explain what it means.  How does he defend it against the charge of provincialism?

3.   When it comes to ascertaining what people really believe, why does Descartes look to actions over words?  Does Descartes think that believing is self-transparent in the sense that if someone believes p, then he also believes that he believes p?

4.  Why does Descartes prefer moderate opinions over extreme ones?  What does Descartes mean by "promises by which we give up some of our freedom"?  Does he mean to include marriage vows, religious vows, and legal contracts?

5.   Formulate the second maxim of Descartes's provisional moral code and explain what it means.  How does he justify it by appeal to the fact that "in everyday life we must often act without delay"?  Where and how do probability considerations become relevant?

6.   What positive values does this maxim promote?  What undesirable things does it prevent?

7.   Formulate the third maxim of Descartes's provisional moral code and explain what it means.  What things does he think lie within his power?  What things lie outside his power?

8.   Explain how Descartes employs the scholastic principle that the will naturally tends to desire only what the intellect represents to it as somehow possible to justify his second provisional moral maxim.

9.   Why does Descartes concede that long practice and repeated meditation are needed before one becomes able to see life in accordance with his third maxim?  Why does he admire the ancient Stoics?

10.  Formulate the fourth element of Descartes's provisional moral code and explain what it means.  How does this element differ from the other three?  Is this one really a maxim?

11.  What occupation does Descartes choose as the best?  Does he mean best absolutely, or just best for himself?  Why did he choose precisely this occupation?

12.  Descartes says that "since our will tends to pursue or avoid only what our intellect represents as good or bad, we need only to judge well in order to act well, and to judge as well as we can in order to do our best -- that is to say, in order to acquire all the virtues and in general all the other goods we can acquire."  What can be said for, and what against, this Socratic thesis?  (Socrates, too, had taught that knowledge was virtue, and ignorance vice.)

13.  What did Descartes do once he had formulated his provisional moral code at the age of twenty-three?  What role do the self-proclaimed truths of his Catholic faith play in his enterprise?  Why does he now feel free to reject all his other former opinions?  How does Descartes differentiate his project from that of traditional skepticism?

14.  Where did Descartes go to initiate his project of pure inquiry?  How much progress did he claim to have made?  What regimen did he follow?

15.  Why, during the first nine years of his project, did Descartes refuse to try to find new or more adequate principles or foundations of philosophy?  What caused him in 1629 to abandon this attitude of philosophical non-engagement and to move to Holland to work on the foundations or principles of philosophy?
 

PART FOUR:  The Arguments by which the Author Proves the Existence of God and of the Human Soul, which are the Foundations of his Metaphysics
1.   By rejecting as absolutely false everything about which he can find any reason to doubt, what does Descartes hope to find?  Why does he reject every proposition that depends on sense perception?  On chains of reasoning (as in mathematics)?  Why does he pretend that none of his thoughts or perceptions are no less illusory than his dreams?

2.   What status does Descartes claim for the truth "I am thinking, therefore I exist" [French: je pense, donc je suis; Latin: cogito ergo sum]?

3.   Having proved his own existence, Descartes turns to the question of what he is.  What does he take himself to be?  By what reasoning does he reach this conclusion?  What does he take the relationship of himself to his body to be?  Does he identify himself with his mind?

4.   Descartes next turns to the question of what makes a proposition true and certain.  What makes him think that the Cogito proposition ["I am thinking, therefore I exist"]  is true and certain?  What does he decide to take as the criterion of truth?  When he adopts this criterion as a general rule, what problem does he mention that it has?

5.   What makes Descartes think that he is not a perfect being?  Why does he take the source (ultimate cause) of his ability to conceive of something more perfect than himself to be itself more perfect than he is?  Does he think that such external things as the earth, the stars, heat, and light exist independently of him?  Why not?  Can he himself be the source or cause of his idea of a being more perfect than himself?  Why not?  Why does he think that the source or cause of this idea must be another being more perfect than himself?

6.   Set out the reasoning that leads Descartes to think that the source of his idea of a being more perfect than himself must not only be a being more perfect than himself but that it must possess every perfection that he can conceive?  What entitles him to identify this being with God?

7.   Explain Descartes's strategy for coming to know the nature of God.  What attributes does he attribute to God?  What attributes does he think God cannot exhibit?

8.   How does Descartes conceive of the object studied by geometers?  Why are geometrical demonstrations (geometrical proofs) widely believed to possess great certainty?  Do these demonstrations assure us of the existence of their objects?  E.g., do triangles exist in the real world (i.e., in rerum natura)?

9.   Does the idea of a triangle contain or include the equality of its interior angles to two right angles?  Does it contain existence?  Does the idea of God contain existence?  What does Descartes think follows from these observations?  How certain, then, is the existence of God?

10.  Why are many people convinced that it's difficult to know the existence and nature of God and even the nature of their own soul?  Do the ideas of God and of the human soul conform to, or do they somehow violate, the Aristotelian-scholastic principle that nothing is in the intellect (mind) that was not first in the sense?

11.  What kind of certainty do we have about such apparent facts as that we have bodies, that the earth and sun exist?  Are any facts as certain as the existence of God and of our soul?  How does Descartes appeal to dreaming to cast doubt on the existence of an external world?

12.  What justifies the rule that whatever we very clearly and distinctly conceive is true?  Is it circular for Descartes to ground this rule on the existence of a perfect being?  How does this rule enable us to overcome the skepticism of the dream argument?  If we clearly and distinctly perceive something while we are dreaming, should we accept it as true?

13.  When should we accept the evidence of our senses?  Of our reason?  Can dream thoughts be as clear and distinct as ones we have when awake?  Can we tell when we are dreaming from when we are awake?  Should we credit our dream thoughts with as much truth as we do our waking thoughts?  Why or why not?
 
 

PART FIVE:  The Order in which the Author has Investigated Questions in Physics, particularly the Explanation of the Motion of the Heart and other Questions in Medicine, and the Difference between Human and Animal Souls
1.   What does Descartes claim to have discovered by means of his method?  Why doesn't he give a full account of these truths here?  When and why did he decide not to publish his treatise on material (physical) things?  What, in outline, were the contents of this treatise?  Why did he write about an imaginary or possible world rather than the real or actual world?  What was the initial state of this imaginary world?  What assumptions did he make about it?  What does he claim to have shown about it?  How similar is it to the actual world?

2.   Does Descartes think God created the actual world in the way hypothesized for his imaginary world?  How, if at all, does preserving the world differ from creating it?  Is Descartes here talking about creation ex nihilo (creation out of nothingness) or temporal creation (a first moment of creation)?  Is his imaginary world incompatible with the doctrine of creation ex nihilo?

3.   What special problems do animals and humans pose for Descartes's imaginary-world scenario?  What suppositions does he make about the human body?  How similar in function and action is this imagined human body to animal bodies?  What about the phenomena of thought?  How did Descartes eventually invest his imaginary world with mental phenomena?

4.   Summarize,  in rough outline, Descartes's account of the motions of the heart, arteries, and blood.  What role do thermal phenomena play therein?  Why is this account usually called mechanical?  Does Descartes accept William Harvey's theory of the circulation of the blood?  Harvey's theory of the pumping action of the heart?  What, according to Descartes, causes the blood to flow into the right heart (the right side of the heart), through the lungs, into the left heart, into the arteries, to remote parts of the body, through capillaries and small venous vessels, and back to the heart via the veins and the vena cava?

5.   What does Descartes claim to have shown about our central nervous system?  About external perception, internal perception, memory, imagination, bodily motions, sleeping, waking, and thought?  What do automatons have to do with Descartes's conception of the body as a sophisticated, divinely engineered machine?

6.   Can we distinguish a real monkey from one of Descartes's monkey machines?

7.   What are the two tests that Descartes advances for distinguishing real humans from human-like machines (human-like robots)?

8.   Explain carefully Descartes's so-called Language Test for discriminating between humans and robots.  What, according to Descartes, makes this test work infallibly?  What kind of certainty does it produce?

9.   Explain carefully Descartes's so-called Action Test for discriminating between humans and robots.  Is it an infallible test?  What kind of certainty does it generate?

10.  Explain how these two tests apply to distinguishing humans from animals (beasts).  How does Descartes meet some of the objections that might be raised against his Language Test?  How does he appeal to animal failure to justify his Action Test?

11.  Does the mind (rational soul) reside in the body the way a pilot resides in his ship?  What is the true nature of the relationship between the mind and body?

12.  What are the two great errors that lead men away from the path of virtue?

13.  What justifies us in concluding that our souls are immortal?
 

PART SIX:  The Things the Author Believes Necessary in order to make Progress in the Investigation of Nature beyond what He has Already Made, and the Reasons that Impelled Him to Write this Discourse
1.   What significant event happened in 1633 that made Descartes change his mind and decide not to publish his treatise on the physical world?  What does he fear?  Why does he offer a lengthy justification of his decision not to publish his work?  Does he think his work is of purely speculative (as opposed to practical) value only?  Does Descartes think that the work he is suppressing has implications for medicine?  For making men wise?  What does he think of the practice of medicine in his time?

2.   According to Descartes, what two obstacles might prevent his method from generating indispensable practical knowledge in a host of fields, medicine among them?  How does he propose to get around these obstacles?  Is this proposal compatible with his earlier reflections on the necessity of arriving at absolutely certain knowledge solo?

3.   Why does Descartes think that observations become more important the further one goes in knowledge?  At the outset of inquiry into nature, should one rest content with natural (spontaneous) observations or should one seek more recondite observations via deliberate, contrived experiments?  Why?

4.   What order does Descartes follow with respect to observations?  What problems does he encounter at the third stage, i.e., after having dealt firstly with God and the first principles or causes of everything that exists, and secondly with the first and most ordinary effects deducible from these causes?  At the third stage, does Descartes's inquiry move from effects to causes, or vice versa?  What holds him back from further progress?  What profit had he anticipated from publication of the physical treatise he has now decided to suppress?

5.   Does Descartes see himself writing for his contemporaries, or for future generations?  How far does he think he has come with his project?  How many major difficulties did he have to surmount to make his discoveries?  How many major difficulties remain to be solved for him to complete his grand work?  Does he think he can solve them all?  What kind of help does he need?  Could someone else do the job as well or better than he can?  Is what remains to be discovered likely to be easier or harder than what he has already discovered?  What assistance does he seek from others?  Why should they offer it?

6.  Why does Descartes think that he has revealed enough of his project and method to enable genuinely kindred spirits to conduct independent inquiries into certain truth?  Does he think it would help them if he added more details and explanations?

7.   What has filled Descartes with a sense of urgency about his project of pure inquiry?  Why did Descartes append to the Discourse the essays on Optics and on Meteorology?  What are they supposed to show?  What are they meant not to reveal?  Why does he call the starting principles in these essays "suppositions"?  What is the direction of proof and explanation -- cause to effect, or effect to cause -- in these essays?

8.   Why did Descartes write the Discourse and the two attached essays in French rather than in Latin?  For whom does he intend the work?  By whom does he want to be judged?  To what does he intend to devote the rest of his life?  How eager is he for celebrity?