Descartes and Locke: Error, Substance, Ethics, and Thought

Descartes and Locke on the Causes of Error

Descartes: Causes of Error

Descartes posits a conflict between will and understanding as the root of error. The will, he argues, desires to extend beyond the boundaries of understanding.

He identifies a hierarchy of ideas:

• Innate ideas: Possessing the highest degree of certainty, originating from God. Examples include the cogito and adventitious substance.
• Adventitious ideas: Possessing a lower degree of certainty, with God serving as the guarantor of truth. An example is factitious extension.
• Factitious ideas: False ideas stemming from the imagination, representing arbitrary inventions.

Locke: Causes of Error

Locke attributes error to several factors:

• Insufficient evidence
• Inability to discover evidence
• Unwillingness to acknowledge evidence
• Erroneous measures of probability

Modes and Substance: Descartes vs. Locke

Locke on Modes

Modes are predicated of the substance.

Descartes on Modes

Modes are accidental properties of the substance.

Locke on Substance

Substance is the underlying substrate that unifies a set of qualities (simple ideas) that tend to appear together.

Hume on Substance

Substance is a collection of simple ideas, united by the imagination and assigned specific names, allowing us to recall that collection.

Descartes on Substance

Substance is that to which properties are inherent, requiring nothing else for its existence, such as thought.

Descartes: Cogito and Ethics

Descartes on Cogito

The cogito is an irreducible experience, serving as the foundation for explaining any consciousness, a truth that emanates from one's mind.

Descartes' Ethics

Descartes proposes an interim ethic, detailed in the second part of the Discourse on Method, comprising four moral maxims:

1. Refrain from changing anything until a superior alternative is found (respect for tradition).
2. Live life practically, without hesitation, even in the face of doubt.
3. Conquer oneself before the world order.
4. Dedicate one's life to the pursuit of reason.

His objective moral principles include:

• Free will
• God as an absolutely good being (evil being an absence of moral intellectualism), inherently good
• Generosity as the highest virtue

Locke's Ethics and the Social Contract

Locke develops the concept of the social contract. In his Treatise on Civil Government, he critiques the divine right of kings and proposes the principle of equality, asserting that we are born equal, possess the same powers, and share the same moral principles.

He describes the state of nature as living according to natural law (family, property, equality). However, the absence of an objective arbiter of conflict necessitates the formation of civil society, which, in turn, establishes a government. This government enacts laws and possesses the power to enforce compliance, representing the coercive capacity of the state. Just laws, applied equally to all, are essential to safeguard life, property, and freedom.

Descartes' Theory of Substance

Descartes defines substance as something that requires nothing else to exist. An attribute is predicated of the substance.

He distinguishes between different types of substances:

• Thinking substance: The subject whose attribute is thought (encompassing any mental operation), including doubt, opinion, and desire.
• Extended substance: Matter, whose attributes are size, position, and motion.
• Infinite substance: God, who is unextended but thinking.

Descartes' dualism posits that the self is a substance whose essence and nature is to think, independent of anything material. This view faces critiques from Spinoza, who argues that, strictly speaking, the only substance is God, and from empiricists, who question how we can know substance if all we know are its attributes.

The human being, according to Descartes, is dualistic, possessing both a mind and a body.

Three Types of Substances

• Thinking
• Extended
• Infinite

Modes of Thinking

Thought encompasses everything within us that we are immediately aware of. Its types include:

• Will: Wanting, not wanting
• Understanding: Understanding, knowing
• Imagination: Creating, inventing
• Sensation: Hearing, seeing
• Memory: Remembering, forgetting