Clear and
Distinct Ideas
The
term ‘clear and distinct idea’ was used by Descartes in his ‘Meditations on
First Philosophy’, the book in which he comes up with the famous phrase ‘I
think, therefore I am’.
In
the ‘Meditations’ Descartes is in search of certainty and, in order to find
things that he is certain of, he has decided, quite sensibly, to get rid of all
of the things that he is uncertain of and the things that he’s left with when
he’s done all of that are going to be the certain ones.
Now,
this sounds like a pretty good approach but the problem for Descartes is that
he finds out that, actually, when you think about it, you can doubt pretty much
everything. For example, your senses are subject to illusions, so you can’t
trust them; when you dream, your dreams seem as real as reality, so you can’t
be certain that you are awake now and, finally, he believed that you could
actually be being deceived by a wicked God who wanted to make everything you
believed false, so in fact you can’t trust anything at all.
So
what does that leave us with? Well Descartes’ simple but brilliant realisation
was that the only thing he was left with was himself.
Think about it … if you suffer from visual illusions, then you are deceived but
you must at least be something in order to be deceived, if you mistakenly
confuse a dream with reality then you, again, must at least exist in order to
be mistaken and, finally, if you are being tricked by a wicked God then you
must at least exist in order to be tricked. Now, Descartes admitted that he
didn’t know what he was but he knew that he must at least be something … a thing
that could be deceived, mistaken and tricked, essentially a thing that could
think. Hence ‘I think therefore I am’ Here is the extract from the First
Meditation where Descartes proves this point.
‘But I had the persuasion that there was absolutely nothing in the
world, that there was no sky and no earth, neither minds nor bodies; was I not,
therefore, at the same time, persuaded that I did not exist? Far from it; I
assuredly existed, since I was persuaded. But there is I know not what being,
[the wicked God] who is possessed at once of the highest power and the deepest
cunning, who is constantly employing all his ingenuity
in deceiving me. Doubtless, then, I exist, since I am deceived; and, let him
deceive me as he may, he can never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as
I shall be conscious that I am something. So that it must, in fine, be
maintained, all things being maturely and carefully considered, that this
proposition I am, I exist, is necessarily true each time it is expressed by me,
or conceived in my mind.’
Later
in the Meditations Descartes goes on to say that this kind of idea is a ‘clear
and distinct idea’ which basically means something that is so self-evidently
true that it cannot logically be doubted. Descartes then tries to build up a
body of certain knowledge using clear and distinct ideas as a test: if it’s clear
and distinct then it must be true. This is extract from the Third Meditation where
Descartes proves this:
‘In this first knowledge [I think, therefore I am] doubtless, there is
nothing that gives me assurance of its truth except the clear and distinct
perception of what I affirm, which would not indeed be sufficient to give me
the assurance that what I say is true, if it could ever happen that anything I
thus clearly and distinctly perceived should prove false; and accordingly it
seems to me that I may now take as a general rule, that all that is very
clearly and distinctly apprehended (conceived) is true.’
Now,
whether or not Descartes was successful or justified in this claim has been
argued about for centuries but at this point, however, a more interesting
question arises. What exactly makes an idea clear and distinct?
Our
first impression might be that an idea is clear and distinct if it makes good
logical sense or there is a good logical argument behind it, a logical argument
that can’t be doubted. So we might break down the ‘I think, therefore I am’
argument in the following way:
This
would seem fairly clear, distinct and indubitable. However, this reading probably
isn’t what Descartes meant because it isn’t what he actually wrote down and, if
we read the above extract from the Meditations carefully, he just says ‘this
proposition I am, I exist, is necessarily true each time it is expressed by me,
or conceived in my mind.’ and we should notice that this doesn’t sound
like a logical argument at all.
So
what makes something clear and distinct? Well, the usual answer is that a clear
and distinct idea has a certain logical or rational force that is impossible to
deny. However, controversially, it could be argued that, actually, emotion is
playing a big role here. An emotional sense of conviction is what makes us
certain that something is clear and distinct. We just find it emotionally
impossible to doubt that we exist, there is a sense of certainty, a compulsion
to believe, a feeling we can’t ignore that ‘I am’ just has to be true.
Descartes believed that this compulsion, this sense, this feeling came from our
rational minds but it could just as plausibly come from our emotions and so
this could be an excellent example of emotion providing us with knowledge. The
best bit about it, however, is that, if true, in this case emotion would be
providing the basic truth that acts as the basis for an otherwise strictly
logical, rational and reason based approach to knowing about the world. A great example of emotion and reason working together to create
knowledge and certainty.