ARTICLE

‘DESCARTES’S ONE RULE OF LOGIC’: GASSENDI’SCRITIQUE OF THE DOCTRINE OF CLEAR AND

DISTINCT PERCEPTION

Antonia LoLordo

We have arrived at an appropriate place for a few words about the Logicwhich the illustrious Rene Descartes has recently put forth under the name ofMetaphysics or Meditations on Metaphysics. He imitates Bacon in that he

wishes – in order to provide foundations for another new philosophy – first ofall to put aside all preconceived opinions, and then, having immediately afterfound some most solid Principles, to build up the whole structure again on

those foundations. However, the route is not the same as that which Baconuses; while Bacon sought in real things the means to perfect the thoughts of theIntellect, Descartes, banishing all thought of things, believed that there were in

the Intellect enough resources so that the Intellect could achieve perfectknowledge of all things – even the most abstruse, that is, not only bodies butalso God and souls – by its own power.1

Because he estimates that the way to have true and appropriate cognition ofthings is not by exploring things through themselves and in themselves, but bythe Intellect alone and depending on thoughts alone, to that extent Descartes’s

procedure is certainly less appropriate than Bacon’s appeared to be. If there isin the end anything that concerns Logic in all that which follows, it is above allthat Principle which the author poses as follows: Everything that I clearly and

distinctly perceive is true.

(I 90a)

Gassendi’s talk of ‘the Logic which . . . Descartes . . . has put forth underthe name of . . . Meditations on Metaphysics’ sounds rather odd tocontemporary readers. We tend not to think of Bacon and Descartes asengaged in the same project. Nor do we share Gassendi’s understanding ofDescartes’s principle of clear and distinct perception as a principle of logic.

1 Pierre Gassendi, Opera Omnia I 65b; Georg Olms, 1964. All references to Gassendi’s works

are to volume, page, and column in his Opera Omnia. Volumes I and II are the Syntagma

Philosophicum and references to volume III are to the Disquisitio Metaphysica. Translations

are my own but I have benefited greatly from consulting the CSM translation of the

Objections.

British Journal for the History of Philosophy 13(1) 2005: 51 – 72

British Journal for the History of PhilosophyISSN 0960-8788 print/ISSN 1469-3526 online # 2005 BSHP

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/0960878042000317582

However, Gassendi’s objections to Descartes’s main logical principle, theclarity and distinctness rule, ultimately draw in most of the central themes ofthe Meditations and of Gassendi’s own philosophical programme. For hisobjections derive in large part from theories about the human cognitivefaculties and concomitant views on appropriate methodology which areradically different from Descartes’s. Thus we can learn something aboutGassendi’s own views and the presuppositions of the Meditations throughGassendi’s over-arching line of criticism directed against the doctrine thatall clear and distinct perceptions are true.

I begin (1) by considering the context of Gassendi’s reading of theMeditations as a treatise in logic. Understanding the then-currentconception of logic will help us understand Gassendi’s insistence that theprocedure of the Meditations needs to be psychologically effective. In (2) Iconsider Gassendi’s objections to clarity and distinctness and – in (3) – hisunderstanding of the method of doubt, which he thinks is intended to justifythe clarity and distinctness rule. In (4), I examine Gassendi’s argument thatthe genuinely psychological doubt that Descartes requires is impossible forus. I conclude in (5) with a consideration of Descartes’s rather polemicalresponse that accepting Gassendi’s objections would require disavowingknowledge entirely. This is a line of response widely taken over by laterCartesians against their objectors.

My presentation throughout tends to take the side of Gassendi over thatof Descartes. This is partly a matter of focus, since one goal of this paper isto explicate the methodology underlying Gassendi’s objections. But it is alsointended to provide a new perspective on the Meditations by showing themthrough the eyes of one of Descartes’s prominent contemporaries.

THE MEDITATIONS AS LOGIC

Gassendi describes the clarity and distinctness rule as a rule of logic both inthe Counter-Objections and in his history of logic, where Descartes occurs asthe last historical figure and the foil against which Gassendi puts forth hisown logic. Such histories of logic were quite a common feature ofcontemporary texts.2 Gassendi’s list of figures to be discussed is rathercatholic: as well as Descartes, he includes Epicurus and planned to includeHobbes.3 Why this is so is a matter for speculation. Perhaps the influence ofEpicurean canonics, or of his self-conscious advocacy of philosophicalreform, contributed to Gassendi’s construing logic more broadly than was

2 For example, Franco Burgersdijck, Robert Sanderson, and Zabarella append histories of

logic to their expositions. See also E. J. Ashworth (Language and Logic in the Post-Medieval

Period, D. Reidel, 1974) and Gabriel Nuchelmans (in the Cambridge History of Seventeenth-

Century Philosophy, ed. Garber and Ayers, 1998).3 After Gassendi’s death, Sorbiere (in a letter of 1656) asked Hobbes to write the ‘Hobbes’

Logic’ chapter that Gassendi had planned to write before he died. Hobbes declined.

52 ANTONIA LOLORDO

typical. In any case, the early seventeenth-century construal of logic wasmuch broader than ours. Logic tended to include material we would callepistemology, philosophy of science, or psychology.4 That is, it had bothdescriptive aspects – corresponding to how we actually think – andnormative aspects – telling us how to think better.5 This was not thought toimply the disunity of logic, as the normative and descriptive aspects seem tohave been thought of as inseparable.

Gassendi conceives of logic as an ars rather than a scientia, i.e. as apractical, not theoretical, discipline. The ars conception was the dominantconception.6 For Gassendi, logic is the ars bene cogitandi, the skill of usingour cognitive faculties most effectively in order to reach the truth:

because the mind can easily err in thinking . . . and because it recognises its

errors and wants to guard against making them . . . the mind provides for itselfthis art [logic], by which it can direct its operations and by making themimmune from error attain truth itself, the mark it aims at.

(I 91a)

The mind is not, of course, a perfect instrument, but the study andpractice of logic can improve it. Thus Gassendi’s logic offers a great deal ofpractical advice (as well as discussions of the figures of the syllogism). Forinstance, he warns against allowing one’s ideas to be distorted by one’s stateof mind (as when those in love take their lovers’ warts for beauty-spots) orby one’s temperament (as when an abstemious man conceives of wine asunpleasant to taste) (I 96b ff).

Logic is thus supposed both to help us arrive at the truth (to the extentthat truth is accessible under the present circumstances and with our presentcapacities) and to correspond to the way our cognitive faculties operate.This correspondence relies on an assumption that our faculties must tell usthe truth (again, to the extent that truth is accessible) if used carefully andwith constraint. Thus we learn how to gain knowledge by learning how touse our faculties properly. For, Gassendi thinks, we cannot doubt the truth-

4 For instance, Aquinas and his followers organized logic according to the three mental

operations: simple apprehension (forming terms); composition and division (forming

propositions); and reasoning (forming arguments). Some writers thus organized logic books

in three parts, terms, propositions, and reasoning (as well, perhaps, as method as the fourth

part). Others, like Gassendi, chose the names of the mental operations. See Ashworth (op.

cit.), who denies that this method of organization makes logic psychologistic in the strong

sense of implying that the study of logic simply is the study of the mental operations.5 See Stephen Gaukroger (Cartesian Logic: An Essay on Descartes’s Conception of Inference,

Clarendon Press, 1989) and Gary Hatfield (‘The Workings of the Intellect: Mind and

Psychology’, in Easton (ed.), Logic and the Workings of the Mind: The Logic of Ideas and

Faculty Psychology in Early Modern Philosophy. North American Kant Society Studies in

Philosophy, 1997) as well as Nuchelmans.6 The view that logic is an art was the standard humanist view, and was also held by diverse

writers like Burgersdijck and Zabarella. Cf. Nuchelmans.

GASSENDI ON DESCARTES’S ‘ONE RULE OF LOGIC’ 53

conduciveness of properly used faculties without doubting the goodness ofGod’s creation (III 363a–365b).

Descartes famously agrees that it is inconsistent with God’s nature thatproperly used cognitive faculties could be deceptive (AT IXb). This claim(with a caveat about proper use) was very widely accepted. Gassendi agreedwith the consensus position. For a consequence of the human faculties beingcreated by God is that they must be adequate for their purpose, i.e. capableof grasping the relevant, knowable truths. Any dispute is thus over what theproper use of the cognitive faculties involves, rather than whether proper useis compatible with radical deception.

Note that God’s goodness is not – for Descartes and especially forGassendi – supposed to imply human access to all truths. God need nothave given us a great faculty of cognition, but he would not have given usone subject to error when used appropriately and within its proper sphere.

Thus a preliminary requirement for doing science or philosophy is todetermine what the proper sphere of human cognition is. Gassendi arguesthat Descartes’s procedure of ‘using thoughts alone’ – his commitment toclear and distinct perceptions arrived at after a certain process of meditation– is inappropriate for seeking scientific or metaphysical knowledge because itinvolves improper use of the cognitive faculties. Such investigations shouldproceed instead by exploring things ‘in themselves and through themselves’.In this context, it is relevant that Gassendi thinks of theMeditations (like theDiscourse on the method of rightly conducting reason and seeking truth in thesciences) as a treatise on method. Consider how Gassendi introducesDescartes’s project, in the continuation of the above quote:

he wishes – in order to provide foundations for another new philosophy – to. . . build up the whole mass again . . . [Descartes] believed that there were in theIntellect enough resources that the Intellect could achieve perfect knowledge ofall things – even the most abstruse, that is, not only bodies but also God and

souls – by its own power. Hence he gave this preface: Some years ago I wasstruck by the large number of falsehoods that I had accepted as true in mychildhood, and by the highly doubtful nature of the whole edifice that I had

subsequently based on them. I realized that it was necessary, once in the course ofmy life, to demolish everything completely and start again right from thefoundations if I wanted to establish anything at all in the sciences that was stable

and likely to last.

(I 65a, paraphrasing AT VII 17)

Gassendi then reads the remainder of the Meditations as providing themethod whereby we gain access to these new foundations and then acquire anew picture of the world. On this view, the Meditations is not an exercise ofthe method but the provision of an amended and extended version of themethod itself.

What matters here is that method, like logic in general, fusespsychological and epistemological components. Thus, Gassendi assumes,

54 ANTONIA LOLORDO

for the project of the Meditations to succeed, the method has to be useful; ithas to be something that would give us the truth (or as close as canreasonably be expected) if used properly, and something that we can actuallycarry out. Gassendi, as we shall see, denies that we can carry out the methodof the Meditations. In fact, he denies that Descartes’s procedure fulfils eithercriterion. We cannot actually carry out the method, since we cannot doubtall sensory beliefs and thereby end up with a clear and distinct perception ofpurely intellectual ideas. Nor can we learn the truths of nature by focusingon Descartes’s allegedly clear and distinct ideas.7

Gassendi speaks of Descartes as both wanting to establish a ‘newphilosophy’ and to establish something stable ‘in the sciences’ (and, mostcommonly, as simply trying to discover ‘the truth’). It is not entirely clear whatGassendi takes the method of the Meditations to be a method for doing –whether, that is, he takes it to be a method for achieving genuine scientificknowledge to replace the false, scholastic, hylomorphic explanations or amethod for arriving at newmetaphysical conclusions. The passage just quotedand the comparison with Bacon tend to suggest the former, as does hischaracterization of theMeditations as an attempt ‘to extend the boundary ofthe sciences’ (III 273a). But the lack of discussion of purely scientific issues inthe Disquisitio – with the rather high-level exception of worries about thevacuum – suggests the latter.8 Fortunately, little hangs on this for presentpurposes. Gassendi thinks the method of theMeditations is supposed to leadto conclusions about the relation between mind and body, the differentfaculties of the mind, and the nature of bodies – that is, it is a method ofdiscovery and not amethod of justification.9And theMeditations do argue for

7 In these passages Gassendi reads Descartes as thinking that the acquisition of knowledge

requires only the intellect, thus discounting the role of sense-based knowledge in Descartes’s

programme. Whether this is a product of genuine misunderstanding or is an exaggeration

done for rhetorical purposes is difficult to tell. Gassendi certainly knew of and respected

Descartes’s empirical scientific work, having read the Discourse, Optics, Geometry, and

Meteorology, although I know of no evidence suggesting he took it as particularly closely

related to the project of the Meditations.8

we suffer so much loss of hope with you, so great a man, with so much expected from . . . can it

happen, that this man, brought up in the study of Mathematics and so well knowing what things

are demonstrations, considers and publishes these arguments as demonstrations, which

nevertheless cannot elicit assent from us who direct our attention toward them and are well-

disposed? Or that he – puffed up with pride from having thought of and discovered some new

things in Geometry – considers it possible that he will be equally fortunate in other related

matters and especially Metaphysics?

(Cf. III 275b)

9 Gassendi is certainly right in that the Meditations present clear and distinct perception as a

method of discovery rather than a way of legitimizing claims arrived at on some other basis. It

is rather less clear that Descartes himself used clear and distinct perception as a method of

discovery. The presentation of it in the Meditations is misleading, as scholarly work on

Descartes’s observational work has shown.

GASSENDI ON DESCARTES’S ‘ONE RULE OF LOGIC’ 55

such conclusions. Thus it is not terribly important for our purposes whetherthese conclusions are classified as metaphysical or natural philosophical.

CLARITY AND DISTINCTNESS

Gassendi denies that Descartes’s meditative method is practicable becausehe denies that we can isolate a stable, consistent, and commonly held set ofclear and distinct perceptions. He begins by noting that clear and distinctperception is supposed to be both introspectible and objectively justifica-tory:

1. the clarity and distinctness of a perception is something to which theperceiver has immediate, incorrigible introspective access;

2. all clear and distinct perceptions are true – in central cases, true in virtueof exhibiting to the perceiver the essences of things.10

Then Gassendi argues that (a) and (b) do not have the necessary connectionDescartes requires, in other words, that the link between the experientialproperty and the truth-linked property cannot be established.

In fact, Gassendi argues, (a) and (b) are incompatible as general rules. Forone thing, experience seems to tell us that they are inconsistent, for werecognize that there have been cases when we thought we perceivedsomething clearly and distinctly and later perceived something elseincompatible clearly and distinctly. Gassendi uses asymptotes as anexample:

At one time . . . I could have sworn that it is impossible that two lines,

continually approaching each other more closely, should not eventually meet ifthey are produced to infinity. I thought I perceived [this] so clearly anddistinctly that I counted [it] as among the truest and most indubitable axioms.

Nevertheless, afterwards I came across arguments which convinced me that

10 This requires qualification. Gassendi talks as if clear and distinct perceptions are supposed to

be true in virtue of exhibiting essences of existing things. On Descartes’s view, however, some

clear and distinct perceptions (e.g. perception of the thinking I or the common notion

whatever thinks exists) have objects which are not essences; others (e.g. perception of

mathematical entities) have as their objects essences which need not be instantiated. The first

sort becomes important only in disputes about the cogito. I shall bracket out the second sort

as much as possible, to keep the focus on clear and distinct perception. Readers interested in

an approach from the direction of essences should consult Olivier Bloch (La Philosophie de

Gassendi: Nominalisme, materialisme, et metaphysique, Nijhoff, 1970), Thomas Lennon

(‘Pandora, Or, Essence and Reference: Gassendi’s Nominalist Objection and Descartes’s

Realist Reply,’ in Roger Ariew and Marjorie Grene (eds), Descartes and his Contemporaries,

University of Chicago Press, 1995) or Margaret Osler (Divine Will and the Mechanical

Philosophy: Gassendi and Descartes on Contingency and Necessity in the Created World,

Cambridge, 1995).

56 ANTONIA LOLORDO

the opposite was the case and that I perceived it even more clearly anddistinctly. Yet now, when I consider the nature of mathematical propositions,I am in doubt again.

(III 314b)

Moreover, different people have inconsistent, allegedly clear and distinctperceptions:

everyone thinks they clearly and distinctly perceive that which they defend. And– lest you say that most either waver in or feign their beliefs – there are those

people who even face death for their opinions although they see others sosuffering for opposite opinions.You cannot really think that they are not sincere.

(III 315a)

This is supposed to show that anyone who holds that all clear and distinctperceptions are true must also hold that there can be mistakes aboutwhether a perception is clear and distinct.11 But if this is so – if clarity anddistinctness are not a matter of incorrigible, first-person access – then weneed a mark for telling which of our persuasive perceptions are actuallyclear and distinct:

What you should be working on is not so much confirming this rule which

makes it so easy for us to take the false for the true, but instead proposing amethod to guide us and teach us when we are mistaken and when not, in thecases where we think we clearly and distinctly perceive something.

(III 315a)

Since Descartes has not provided any such mark, Gassendi argues, hisvaunted method is all but useless.

Note here that Gassendi has not simply brought up the notoriousproblem of the criterion against Descartes. Rather, he has provided anargument for there being particular need for a criterion in this case, bypointing out that we have all experienced cases where our seemingly clearand distinct perceptions are incompatible with each other or with those ofother people.12

11 Descartes denies this by claiming that ‘it can never be proved that [such people] clearly and

distinctly perceive what they so stubbornly affirm’ (AT VII 361). Gassendi does not take this

denial seriously:

For us, who are men [as opposed to disembodied minds] and who, as is suitable for men, reason

from things done [ex effectis], the fact that these men go to meet death for the sake of some

opinion appears to be a perspicuous argument that they perceive it clearly and distinctly as the

best and the one which should be followed.

(III 317a)

12 It is important that Gassendi thinks the same could not be said for what is clearly and

distinctly sensed, as he holds that the appearances themselves cannot be false, only

judgements made on the basis of the appearances. Nor can appearances conflict with each

other, as the information they convey is always relative to the context of perception. This is

supposed to provide a basis for a genuine, sensory truth-criterion.

GASSENDI ON DESCARTES’S ‘ONE RULE OF LOGIC’ 57

In response, Descartes points out that clarity and distinctness are featuresonlyof theperceptionsofpeoplewhohave freedtheirminds fromthesenses, i.e.who have properly followed the method of meditating.13 Such people will notbe mistaken about what is clearly and distinctly perceived. But since Gassendihas failed to meditate in this way, inconsistencies among his apparently clearand distinct perceptions are irrelevant toDescartes’s project. Gassendi fails tograsp the efficacy of the method because he is still ‘mired in the senses’:

As for the method enabling us to distinguish between the things that we reallyperceive clearly and those that wemerely think we perceive clearly, I believe, as Ihave already said, that I have been reasonably careful to supply such a method,

but I have little confidence that those who spend so little effort on getting rid oftheir preconceived opinions that they complain that I have not dealt with them ina ‘simple and brief’ statement will arrive at a clear perception of it.

(AT VII 379)

Those who have not abandoned preconceived opinions and freedthemselves from the senses cannot perceive clearly and distinctly; but thosewho have freed their intellects will never disagree about what is clearly anddistinctly perceived. Hence clarity and distinctness need no mark beyond theassociated compulsion to believe. So, Descartes replies, the method fordetermining which perceptions are genuinely clear and distinct has alreadybeen given:

You say at the end of this section that what we should be working on is not somuch a rule to establish the truth as a method for determining whether or not

we are deceived when we think we perceive something clearly. This I do notdispute; but I maintain that I carefully provided such a method in theappropriate place, where I first eliminated all preconceived opinions andafterwards listed all my principal ideas, distinguishing those which were clear

from those which were obscure or confused.

(AT VII 361–2; cf. AT VII 477 & IXb 22–3)

This response initially seems unhelpful. Gassendi asked for a method fordistinguishing genuinely clear and distinct perceptions from belief-compel-ling, but not clear and distinct, acts of the mind. Descartes responds that amethod has been given, as follows: eliminate all preconceived opinions, listthe principal ideas, and distinguish the clear principal ideas from the obscureor confused principal ideas. One might now ask how the last step is to becarried out – isn’t distinguishing clear principal ideas from obscure ones justa special case of distinguishing the genuinely clear and distinct?

Descartes’s answer, I take it, is yes – but it is a case where error isimpossible. For error in seeing what’s perceived clearly and distinctly results

13 For the possibility of those who have not meditated mistaking something else for clarity and

distinctness, see e.g. AT VII 35: ‘. . . there was something else which I used to assert, and

which through habitual belief I thought I perceived clearly, although I did not in fact do so’.

58 ANTONIA LOLORDO

from the contagious effect of obscure and confused concepts acquired beforethe age of reason:

those who do not abandon their preconceived opinions will find it hard to

acquire a clear and distinct concept of anything; for it is obvious that theconcepts which we had in our childhood were not clear and distinct, andhence, if not set aside, they will affect any other concepts which we acquire

later and make them obscure and confused.

(AT VII 518)

Once methodological doubt removes such distortion, there is noprincipled difficulty identifying clear and distinct perceptions.14 There isthen no need for any further criterion of clarity and distinctness; it can bedefined simply by pointing at examples we have experienced.15 Recall whatDescartes says about clear and distinct perception in the GeometricalAppendix to the Second Replies:

I ask my readers to ponder on all the examples that I went through in myMeditations, both of clear and distinct perception, and of obscure andconfused perception, and thereby accustom themselves to distinguishing what

is clearly known from what is obscure. This is something that it is easier tolearn by examples than by rules, and I think that in the Meditations Iexplained, or at least touched on, all the relevant examples.

(AT VII 164)

The examples given in the Meditations are examples that must beexperienced by the reader in order to be compelling.16 Descartes asks thereader to follow him in getting herself in a position to, for example, perceivethe thinking I clearly and distinctly; we are supposed then to be certain ofthe existence of that I. Then he points out that the feature of the experiencewhich made the reader certain is what he means by clarity and distinctness(cf. AT VII 162–3).

14 All four causes of error listed at Principles I 71–4 pertain either to reversion to preconceived

opinions or to paying attention to words rather than things – that is, with lapses in attention

or failure to clear the mind of preconceived opinions. So Descartes allows occasional sources

of error aside from preconceived opinions of the senses, but, I take it, the contrast between

distortions like fatigue and distortions like reliance on the senses is intuitively clear.15 This may seem in tension with the Principles’ definitions of clarity and distinctness: clear

perceptions are ‘present and accessible to the attentive mind’; distinct perceptions are clear

and also ‘so sharply separated from all other perceptions’ that they contain within themselves

only what is clear. But note that the explanation of being ‘present and accessible to the

attentive mind’ – i.e. that presentness operates as it does in the case of vision, where we see

something clearly ‘when it is present to the eye’s gaze and stimulates it with a sufficient degree

of strength and accessibility’ – would not help anyone understand clarity and distinctness

from the outside. Here, again, Descartes points to an example of clear and distinct

perception and intends the reader, who has similar God-given faculties, to generalise.16 See Hatfield, ‘The Senses and the Fleshless Eye: The Meditations as Cognitive Exercises’ (in

Stephen Voss (ed.) Essays on the Philosophy and Science of Rene Descartes, Oxford, 1993).

GASSENDI ON DESCARTES’S ‘ONE RULE OF LOGIC’ 59

This experiential focus is also evident in the 3rd Meditation move from theclear and distinct perception of the thinking I to the ‘general rule’ of clarityand distinctness, a move which is to be defended by dismissing worriesabout a deceiving God:

I am certain that I am a thinking thing. Do I not therefore also know what isrequired for my being certain about anything? In this first item of knowledge

there is simply a clear and distinct perception of what I am asserting; thiswould not be enough to make me certain of the truth of the matter if it couldever turn out that something which I perceived with such clarity and

distinctness was false. So I now seem to be able to lay it down as a general rulethat whatever I perceive very clearly and distinctly is true.

(AT VII 35)

Gassendi says, in objection to this, that Descartes seems

in reverse order and contrary to the laws of Induction, to infer a universalproposition from the sole observation of a singular proposition, when, from

the mere fact that you have observed that the certainty of this proposition Ithink springs from clear and distinct perception, you infer this conclusion,therefore everything which I perceive clearly and distinctly is true.

(III 316a)

Descartes’s response is helpful. He is not, he tells us, inferring a universalproposition from one observed instance. Rather, experiencing that instancemakes him notice a general rule already implicitly and inevitably ascribed to,one whose truth-conduciveness he will examine in the worry about thedeceiving God.17 The general rule is supposed to gain its initial plausibilitynot from induction but because of our felt compulsion to follow it.

Descartes has thus in effect argued that the clarity and distinctness of aperception are obvious and unmistakable to someone who has meditatedproperly. Thus Gassendi has failed to establish that there is any problemabout clear and distinct perception besides the general sceptical problem Idiscuss in section V.18 This response, of course, relies on Descartes havingprovided reason to believe that after we have followed the method ofmeditating and have thereby abandoned all preconceived opinions, there

17 For it is left open at this point that the clarity and distinctness rule, though compelling, may

be false because his nature might be such that he is systematically deceived. This worry bears

on the metaphysical question, however, and not the methodological question: it is no longer

concerned with picking out a stable, consistent, and commonly-shared set of clear and

distinct perceptions but rather with determining that the set provides the basis for knowledge

of the world.18 Note that this does not fully explain why someone should not worry that his own clear and

distinct perceptions, although consistent as a set, are inconsistent with those of other people.

However, both Descartes and Gassendi seem happy to assume that the basic cognitive

faculties operate in the same way for all people, so that if what’s clearly and distinctly

perceived is a product of the basic operations of the intellect alone, clear and distinct

perception should be the same for all people.

60 ANTONIA LOLORDO

can be no inconsistency in what we perceive clearly and distinctly. Hence theterrain of the critique now shifts to the possibility of doubt itself.

THE METHOD OF DOUBT

Gassendi reads the 1st Meditation’s doubts as a tool intended to allow us toisolate the clear and distinct perceptions of the intellect, and hence readsdoubt as centrally important: ‘this Meditation about the avoidance ofpreconceived opinions is the fortress of your arguments, and it is like aTrojan Horse: when [your arguments] come forth out of it, they overcomeany defences, however greatly guarded . . .’ (III 279b).

For he takes this doubt to be an experiment intended to convince themeditator of the distinction between intellectual or innate ideas, and sensorycognitions.19 (There is a certain slippage in the debate here between ideasand judgements, since Descartes and Gassendi draw the distinctiondifferently: but it is not, I think, crucial to understanding what is goingon.20) Gassendi summarizes – or, perhaps better, parodies – Descartes’sargument for innate ideas of the intellect as follows:

He who, having previously known things, considers himself in a state of

ignorance as a result of his pursuit of the divestment of ideas, readilyrecognizes innate ideas, i.e. those which we would have in a state of ignoranceas a result of pure denial.

Now I, having previously known things, consider myself in a state of ignorance

as a result of my pursuit of the divestment of ideas.

Therefore I readily recognize innate ideas, i.e. those which I would have in astate of ignorance as a result of pure denial.

(III 320a)

19 Gassendi tends to equate innate ideas with purely intellectual ideas. However, innateness

does not do any work of its own in Gassendi’s argument; it just functions as a corollary of

the existence of peculiarly intellectual ideas (and the consequent postulation of the intellect

as a distinct faculty not dependent for its operation on sense or imagination). The reader may

substitute ‘intellectual’ for ‘innate’ in reading Gassendi’s texts if she wishes.20 For Descartes, an idea can be either term-like or propositional in form, and a judgement is

the giving or denying of assent to something presented in idea. For Gassendi, ideas must

always be terms, and judgments are the joining of two ideas by is or is not. (This leaves him

with a problem in distinguishing between believing a proposition and entertaining it.) On his

theory of ideas, judgements are wholly determined by the ideas possessed, so that

withholding or granting assent to a propositional complex is never an act of will but is fully

determined by the intellect. Hence, for Gassendi, the contents of judgement are determined

by the contents of ideas, so that he is unwilling to allow Descartes that judgements can be

doubted while ideas remain unchanged.

GASSENDI ON DESCARTES’S ‘ONE RULE OF LOGIC’ 61

He interprets Descartes as claiming that the fact that a certain class ofideas – the ideas of body, extension, shape, quantity, etc (AT VII 20 & 27–38)– remains after all the ideas acquired through the senses have been thrownoff, shows that those ideas are innate and pertain to an independent faculty ofthe intellect. If this is right, then Descartes’s argument for purely intellectualideas relies quite clearly on our actually having carried out the divestment ofall sensory ideas. If we do not divest our minds of sensory ideas then we havenot carried out the experiment; we have merely feigned doing so.

Gassendi proceeds to argue that the divestment of sensory ideas isimpossible. In fact, he argues, we cannot even divest ourselves of the beliefsof the senses. Thus the method of doubt establishes nothing: ‘. . . from whatyou imagine in this divestment [of pre-existing cognition], you cannot drawa conclusion concerning those things which you would have done in thatpure denial of all pre-existing cognition’ (III 320a).

Grant that if we were to abandon all the ideas acquired through the sensesand found ourselves left with certain purely intellectual ideas, we wouldhave some reason to take them as constituting a special class for thepurposes of scientific or metaphysical cognition. That is, grant that if theexperiment were carried out with the result Descartes describes, it wouldshow what he wants it to. Gassendi denies that the experiment has actuallybeen carried out. The method of doubt does not enable us to doubt allpreconceived opinions – as I shall argue, on Gassendi’s view nothing coulddo that. Rather, it is ‘merely verbal’, and merely verbal doubt is unhelpful:

If [you hold preconceived opinions to be false] in name and as a jest, then thisdoes not make you advance at all toward the correct perception of things. Forwhether you do this or not, the mind is not affected at all, and it is not helped

either to perceive or to perceive more clearly.

(III 280b)

For merely verbal doubt does not change the way the mind perceives; inparticular, it cannot make the mind capable of clear and distinct perception,for it cannot erase the sensory beliefs which Descartes thinks distortjudgement. Without genuinely doubting the beliefs of the senses, we cannottell whether certain intellectual beliefs rely on them without our knowing it.Gassendi quotes Descartes saying that ‘no sane man seriously doubts’beliefs like the Sun is round, I am a man, from two straight lines are formedtwo right angles or two angles equal to two right angles, and then asks, ‘if it isonly in words that you can doubt these things and similar preconceivedopinions, then do you still suppose that you are able to destroy allpreconceived opinions?’ (III 280a, paraphrasing AT VII 351). ThusGassendi argues that the meditator has only pretended to carry out theexperiment. And this thought experiment cannot establish the conclusionswhich Descartes wants it to. Rather than establishing that there is aprivileged class of non-sensory ideas, Descartes merely establishes that hethinks there is such a class.

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Compare the methodology of this thought experiment to two caseswhich Gassendi thinks could help determine whether there are ideas innateto the intellect: the cognitive state of those with sensory deficits, and theresults of brain damage. Gassendi argues that the case of the man blindfrom birth gives us good reason to doubt that there are innate ideas. For aman born blind has no idea of colour, and a man born deaf no idea ofsound, and this is presumably because ‘external objects have not been ableto transmit any images of themselves to the minds of such unfortunates’(III 320b). Descartes replies, first, that Gassendi does not know that theblind man has no idea of colour; and second, that even if Gassendi isright, one could ‘just as well attribute the absence of ideas of colour in theman born blind to the fact that his mind lacks the faculty for formingthem’. For this last hypothesis ‘is just as reasonable as [Gassendi’s] claimthat he does not have the ideas because he is deprived of sight’ (AT VII363). To this, Gassendi replies that – while he cannot demonstrate that theblind man has no idea of colour – nevertheless Descartes’s claim is not asreasonable as his own. It is more probable that the blind man has no ideaof colour, and that this is because he has never seen coloured objects. Andthis observation, although it only gives us probable reason to deny innateideas, is still more legitimate than Descartes’s thought-experiment, whichlends no probability at all.

The case of brain damage works more or less the same way. Gassendiargues that Descartes fails to establish the distinction between imaginationand intellect either by means of the 1st Meditation doubt, or by means ofexamples of ideas allegedly knowable only by the intellect, such as the ideasof the chiliagon and the substance of the wax. For an alternate explanationof the genesis of those ideas is available to us, namely, the operations ofabstraction and composition over materials derived from the senses.21 Thuswe need not posit two genuinely distinct faculties of mind. Gassendi asks,

my good Mind, can you establish that there are several internal faculties andnot one simple and universal one which enables us to know whatever we

know? . . . If, after brain damage or some injury to the imaginative faculty, theintellect remained as before, performing its proper functions all unimpaired,then we could say that the intellect is as distinct from the imagination as the

imagination is distinct from the external senses. But since things do not happenin this way, there is surely no ready way of establishing the distinction.

(III 300b)

21 We abstract the idea of substance, such as the substance of the wax, from the idea of body

(etc.) which is in turn arrived at by abstraction from the idea of rocks, trees, dogs, etc. These

last ideas are arrived at by grouping together particular sense perceptions on the basis of

similarity. The chiliagon case is more complicated, and for Gassendi mathematical ideas are

a special case since – unlike the ideas of other ‘theoretical entities’ – they do not carry

existence claims with them.

GASSENDI ON DESCARTES’S ‘ONE RULE OF LOGIC’ 63

These two cases are Gassendi’s suggestions as to what might actuallyestablish the distinction between the intellect and its objects, a distinctionwhich, he thinks, Descartes wants the method of doubt to establish. Unlikethe method of doubt – which is ineffectual because it cannot actually becarried out – the cases of brain damage and of sensory deficits could,Gassendi thinks, give us compelling (although not wholly certain) reason tobelieve. In fact, these suggestions fit into a larger pattern of what Gassenditakes to be proper scientific method, one which gives recommendations forachieving scientific knowledge which are incompatible with Descartes’srecommendations. Gassendi does not object to the Cartesian methodbecause he denies the possibility of knowledge, but because he thinks theCartesian method validates precisely those ideas which are arrived atthrough dubious, potentially misleading psychological processes, ratherthan ideas such as sensory ideas, which at least in paradigm cases are fullyevident.

THE POSSIBILITY OF DOUBT

Gassendi construes Descartes as attempting, in the 1st Meditation, to drawa sharp distinction between sensory (or imaginative) cognition andintellectual cognition. He supposes this distinction to be drawn throughthe method of doubt, which strips the mind of sensory beliefs leaving behindonly intellectual cognition of innate ideas. The cogency of Gassendi’sobjection thus relies on the 1st Meditation being intended to bring aboutbelievable psychological doubt, rather than merely providing epistemicconsiderations against everyday beliefs. For it is in no way plausible thatpurely epistemological doubt would alter the structure of the mind in theappropriate way.

That Cartesian doubt is intended to be psychologically efficacious, toactually change the contents of the doubting mind, is relatively clear. Forone, consider Descartes’s customary notes that radical doubt is very difficultand requires ‘months, or at least weeks’, which would not make sense excepton a psychological reading (AT VII 94; cf. AT VII 17 & Principles I.1); foranother, consider the way the method of doubt is introduced in the Searchfor Truth (AT X 508–9). Of course, not all belief is supposed to be destroyed– only the sensory beliefs. Thus not all the 1st Meditation doubts need bebelievable. We need not genuinely cease to have beliefs like 2+3=5 orwhatever thinks exists: and this is fortunate, since only a ‘slight andmetaphysical’ doubt of such self-evident beliefs is possible (AT VII 146–7).When I talk about Cartesian doubt from now on, I have in mind only thesort of doubt applicable to propositions such as I am seated in front of a fireand not the sort applicable to 2+3=5.

Now, Gassendi argues that the hypotheses of the 1st Meditation areinsufficient to bring about believable doubt about all the beliefs acquired

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through the senses. For, he argues, such doubt is impossible given the waythe human cognitive faculties work. The method of doubt assumes ‘that it ispossible for a mind to be freed from all preconceived opinions; but that seemsto be an impossible occurrence’ (III 279a). A fortiori, considering thedeceptiveness of the senses, the possibility of dreaming and the evil demoncannot be sufficient to empty the mind:

in order to call everything into doubt you pretend that you are asleep andconsider that everything which occurs is an illusion. But can you thereby

compel yourself to believe that you are not awake, and to consider as false anduncertain whatever is going on around you? Whatever you say, no one willbelieve that you have really convinced yourself that not one thing you formerlyknew is true, or that your senses, or God, or an evil demon, have managed to

deceive you all the time.

(AT VII 258)

Gassendi has three reasons for thinking that genuinely psychologicaldoubt is impossible. His first reason is experiential: despite a great deal ofeffort, he himself has not succeeded in freeing his mind from preconceivedopinions by meditating along with Descartes. The method, Gassendi says,did not help him any.

Second, Gassendi argues, the way memory operates makes abandoningall beliefs impossible. Even if we want and have reason to abandon thebeliefs of the senses entirely, the influence of old beliefs remains in thememory:

since the memory is like a storehouse of judgements that we have previouslymade and deposited in its keeping, we cannot cut it off at will . . . judgementsalready made persist so strongly by habit, and imprints similar to those of a

signet are so fixed, that it is not in our power to avoid them or erase them atwill.

(III 279a)

Here, Descartes might agree that in some sense we still ‘retain the samenotions in memory’ (AT IXA 204) when we withhold assent. But because,on Descartes’s view, the intellect has some capacity to judge which isindependent of the traces held in the corporeal memory, the existence ofcertain material traces does not prevent us from withholding assent tocertain judgements voluntarily, but only makes it somewhat more difficultfor us to do so. And the difficulty of carrying out the method of doubt issomething which Descartes has already very clearly noted.

Third, there are some types of belief which we cannot help assenting to:

there are some preconceived opinions that can be changed and there arelikewise some that cannot . . . since every judgement refers to some object as itappears to the mind, it results that if the object always appears the same way –

as the Sun always appears round and shining, or as the meeting of two straight

GASSENDI ON DESCARTES’S ‘ONE RULE OF LOGIC’ 65

lines always appears to form two right angles or two angles equal to two rightangles – then we always make the same judgement . . . [these] judgementscannot be changed (because what appears in the object is not changed), and

therefore . . . the mind cannot escape them.

(III 279b)

Gassendi thinks this accords with introspection. But the argument alsorelies on substantive theses about cognition. On Gassendi’s theory of themind, our ideas determine our beliefs so that, if the appearance of somethingis always the same, we cannot help always having the same belief. Forinstance, so long as the ideas of the Sun and of light are fixed – so long as thesun always appears the same in the relevant respects – we cannot avoidingbelieving that the Sun is light:

consider, for as long as you wish, the Sun and Light separately; and similarlytwo straight lines crossing each other and two right angles or two angles

equalling two right angles. When it behoves you to connect the terms orattributes of the subject again you will not apply any connection other thanthat same word ‘is’. You will not say, the Sun is not light, or that two straight

lines intersecting is not [a thing] creating two angles which are either right orequal to two right angles.

(III 279b)

For judgement is simply a matter of comparing ideas, and the agreementof the ideas of the sun and lightness is unmistakable. Since there are manyobjects of which we have entirely constant ideas, not all judgements can bechanged.22

It makes no difference here that Cartesian doubt is intended to operatemerely temporarily, within the limits of the pursuit of truth. On Gassendi’stheory of judgement, we cannot doubt everything even temporarily and fora restricted purpose

you suppose that it is possible to hold [every preconceived opinions] falseduring some period of time; but either you suppose them to be held false

seriously and in fact, or in name and as if in jest. If seriously and in fact, then itis as impossible to hold them false for an hour as for a year or a century. If inname and as a jest, then this does not make you advance at all toward the right

perception of things.

(III 280b)

22 When things do not always appear the same – when we have several different ideas of, i.e.

caused by, the same thing – the judgements can be changed. Consider the idea of the size of

the sun: through sight, we obtain an idea of the sun as something very small; but the idea of

the sun modified by the mind on the basis of the empirical observations that distant objects

appear smaller than they are and that the sun is distant, is an idea of something much larger.

In learning astronomy, our idea of the size of the sun changes; the ideas which determine

judgement are not exclusively basic sensory ideas. See III 321a ff.

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For restricting doubt to a limited sphere does not affect the basicmechanisms of the mind which, on Gassendi’s account of human cognition,render radical doubt psychologically impossible. We need not enter into thedetails of the account of judgement presupposed here. All we need to see isthat Gassendi’s criticism relies both on his experienced inability to doubtand, more importantly, on a worked-out theory of cognition.

Descartes has two possible lines of response, neither of which can resolvethe situation satisfactorily. He might respond that he himself has cast off thepreconceived opinions of youth entirely, so the project is obviously possible.Here both parties’ positions derive solely from introspective experience.There is no good way, at this point in the argument, to adjudicate between aDescartes who claims to be able to doubt all the judgements of sense, and aGassendi who says that he cannot do so – unless, of course, we simply wantto go by our own introspective experience.

Descartes could also respond, on the basis of his theory of the cognitivefaculties, that judgement is a matter of the will, and hence is voluntary:23 ‘. . .we nonetheless experience within us the kind of freedom which enables usalways to refrain from believing things which are not completely certain andthoroughly examined’ (AT VIIIA 6).

If, on the one hand, the appeal here is simply to the experience of suchfreedom – as in the examples of the sun’s brightness and the intersection oftwo straight lines – then, as we have seen, Gassendi simply denies that wehave such freedom in the case of all preconceived opinions. Appeals toparticular introspective experiences are no more conclusive here than wasthe general appeal to introspection. If Descartes claims, on the basis ofintrospection, to be able to genuinely doubt the sun’s brightness andGassendi denies on the basis of introspection that he can do so, there seemsto be no principled way to adjudicate the dispute. The reader must simplyexperience, or fail to experience, believable doubt as a result ofconcentration and meditation on what is said in the 1st Meditation.

If, on the other hand, the appeal is to a theory of cognition, then – ifGassendi’s interpretation is more-or-less right, as I have argued – then itcannot legitimately be made in this context. On Gassendi’s reading of themethod of doubt, the method of doubt is supposed, in large part, to providethe argument for a particular theory of the faculties. (If this is not the case, itis difficult to see where in the Meditations Descartes does provide such anargument.24) Thus theses about the structure of the cognitive faculties cannot

23 This is over-simplified. All judgement falls under the scope of the will and hence is voluntary

in one sense. However, clear and distinct perception is irresistible – ‘Admittedly my nature is

such that so long as I perceive something very clearly and distinctly, I cannot but believe it to

be true’ (AT VII 69) – and hence involuntary in another sense. This complication can be

ignored since the ‘preconceived opinions’ which the method of doubt applies to are not

perceived clearly and distinctly.24 The argument about the intellectual and imaginative conceptions of the chiliagon is the most

obvious other possibility: but this is given too late in the dialectic to help.

GASSENDI ON DESCARTES’S ‘ONE RULE OF LOGIC’ 67

be brought in to defend the method of doubt if the project is to be compellingto anyone outside the fold. If the Meditations argues for a controversialtheory of the faculties on the basis of clear and distinct perception, then thenotion of clarity and distinctness cannot be defended on the basis of thattheory without begging the question. Thus, although comparisons betweenthe theories of the cognitive faculties relied on by Descartes and Gassendi inthis dispute are both interesting and independently important, the disputecannot in any way be resolved by invoking or denying a certain set ofintellectualist principles. We have reached what is at best a stand-off.

DESCARTES’S RESPONSE

Perhaps the reader is wondering why God in his role as guarantor of thetruth of clear and distinct perception has not entered into the argument.Cannot Descartes argue for the truth of clear and distinct perception onthe grounds that God is not a deceiver; argue for the primacy of purelyintellectual ideas on the basis of his clear and distinct perception of them;and then infer from this to a conception of the intellect as capable ofoperating in isolation from sensory and imaginative cognition? Theneverything would be fine, except for the annoyance of the Cartesian Circle– the problem of how to achieve knowledge of the God who is not adeceiver without appeal to clear and distinct perception. And this, thereader might say, can hardly be taken seriously in this context. After all, Ibegan my argument by saying that both Descartes and Gassendi acceptthat there is a non-deceptive God who guarantees that properly usedcognitive faculties are truth-conducive (to the extent that truth is accessibleto us).

In other words, one might object that the shared assumption thatproperly-used cognitive faculties are truth-conducive rules out the possibi-lity of objecting to the doctrine of clarity and distinctness right away,without need for any investigation of its cognitive basis. Indeed, Descarteshimself makes this suggestion at times. Consider the letter to Gibieuf of 19January 1642, discussing the real distinction argument:

You will say perhaps that the difficulty remains [after granting that the idea of

the mind is of a substance], because although I conceive the soul and body astwo substances which I can conceive separately and even deny each of eachother, I am still not certain that they are such as I conceive them to be. Here we

have to recall the rule already stated, that we cannot have any knowledge ofthings except by the ideas we conceive of them . . . In the same way we can saythat the existence of atoms, or parts of matter which have extension and yet

are indivisible, involves a contradiction . . . I do not on that account deny thatthere can be in the soul or the body many properties of which I have no ideas; Ideny only that there are any which are inconsistent with the ideas of them that

68 ANTONIA LOLORDO

I do have, including the idea that I have of their distinctness; else God wouldbe a deceiver and we would have no rule to make us certain of the truth.

(AT III 477)

A similar point is made, this time explicitly against the Gassendists, in the‘Letter to Clerselier’. Responding to the objection that mathematicalextension subsists only in the mind, and thus that a physics based onmathematical extension must be imaginary and fictitious rather than real,Descartes says scornfully:

All the things that we can understand and conceive are, on this account, onlyimaginings and fictions of our minds which cannot have any subsistence. Andit follows from this that nothing that we can in any sense understand, conceiveor imagine should be accepted as true; in other words we must entirely close

the door to reason and content ourselves with being monkeys or parrots ratherthan men, if we are to deserve a place among these great minds. For if thethings we can conceive must be regarded as false merely because we can

conceive them, all that is left is for us to be obliged to accept as true only thingswhich we do not conceive.

(AT IXB 212)

This passage, like most of the 5th Replies, is rather on the rude side (evenfor Descartes). One might wonder why. I suspect that this is because wehave reached a point at which Descartes cannot answer Gassendi’s objectionin a way likely to be acceptable to someone not already within the fold (norvice versa).

Gassendi’s objection to the clarity and distinctness doctrine derives froma theory of cognition on which to say that mathematical extension ismerely an abstraction of the mind does not – as Descartes tries to suggest– imply that ‘all the things that we can understand and conceive are . . .only imaginings and fictions of our minds’. That conclusion follows onlyfor someone who, like Descartes, thinks there is no better choice of ideason which to base scientific knowledge than such ‘purely intellectual’ ideasas the idea of extension. And, as Gassendi argues, this principle cannot bemade compelling without already assuming that the clear and distinctperceptions resulting from divorcing the mind from the senses andfocussing solely on the idea of the pure intellect, are our pre-eminentsource of knowledge.

The objection is, in effect, that Descartes is simply assuming that the ideaof mathematical extension is one of the best cases, so that if it does notrepresent truly then nothing does. But Gassendi argues precisely thatDescartes has failed to establish that his clear and distinct ideas are the bestcase. Hence Gassendi sees no reason to give up his own view, that the ideasderived directly from sense are the best case: and hence he can deny thetruth-conduciveness of Descartes’s clear and distinct perceptions withoutraising any general sceptical worries. The issue is not whether God’s

GASSENDI ON DESCARTES’S ‘ONE RULE OF LOGIC’ 69

goodness implies the veracity of properly used cognitive faculties, but whatcounts as proper use.

Descartes seems unwilling to argue against this sort of objection, and thusresponds by repeating that the objector asks for the impossible: asks that wethink without using ideas. That is, he responds as if the only possibleobjection to his position were to deny the possibility of knowledge and thedeliverances of our God-given faculties. Compare the following passage,again dealing with the real distinction:

had I not been looking for greater than ordinary certainty, I should have beencontent to have shown in the Second Meditation that the mind can beunderstood as a subsisting thing despite the fact that nothing belonging to the

body is attributed to it . . . I should have added nothing more in order todemonstrate that there is a real distinction between the mind and the body,since we commonly judge that the order in which things are mutually related in

our perception of them corresponds to the order in which they are related inactual reality. But one of the exaggerated doubts which I put forward in theFirst Meditation went so far as to make it impossible for me to be certain ofthis very point (namely whether things do in reality correspond to our

perception of them), so long as I was supposing myself to be ignorant of theauthor of my being.

(AT VII 226)

The presupposition of this argument is that, if we cannot move from clearand distinct perceptions to things, then we would be able to know nothing.

Later Cartesians made much mileage out of the argument that to denytheir doctrine of clear and distinct perception is to render knowledgeimpossible.25 The Port-Royal Logic gives a version of this argument:

This principle [that whatever is clearly and distinctly perceived is true] cannot

be contested without destroying everything evident in human knowledge andestablishing a ridiculous Pyrrhonism. We can judge things only by our ideas ofthem, since we have no other means of conceiving them except as they are in

the mind, and since they exist there only by means of their ideas. Now supposethe judgements we form in considering these ideas did not concern thingsthemselves, but only our thoughts. In other words, suppose that from the factthat I see clearly that having three angles equal to two right angles is implied in

the idea of a triangle, I did not have the right to conclude that every trianglereally has three angles equal to two right angles, but only that I think this is thecase. It is obvious that we would know nothing about things, but only about

our thoughts. Consequently, we could know nothing about things except whatwe were convinced we knew most certainly, but we would know only that we

25 I have in mind here primarily epistemologically-minded figures like Arnauld and

Malebranche. Those more oriented towards natural philosophy, such as Regius, tended to

be interested in a method of discovery and rejected clear and distinct perception as

inappropriate for that purpose.

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thought them to be a certain way, which would obviously destroy all thesciences.26

This response runs together two different claims: a general, anti-skepticalthesis and, less explicitly, an echo of Descartes’s claim about which sorts ofideas are ‘clear and distinct’ and thereby license inference to the nature ofthings. However, so doing makes the response less than satisfying, since thepoint of Gassendi’s empiricist objection is precisely that the Cartesianaccount of which ideas license inferring to the nature of things can bechallenged without falling into skepticism. Gassendi’s objection is notsimply that the gap between ideas and their objects, once opened, cannot beclosed. This is trivial once we grant, as both parties do, that ideas are insome sense the materials for thought. And it is not a problem given, as bothparties agree, that there are ways of improving our view of the objects of ourideas. Rather, the issue is which ideas we should take to be the truth-conducive ones. This is why Gassendi keeps coming back to the allegedinconsistency of what is apparently perceived clearly and distinctly:

do not say that your Ideas represent things, not just as they are in Idea or inthe intellect, but rather as they are in themselves and beyond the intellect. Forindeed this is what is in question; and since everyone can say the same thing,you see what discrepancy must be admitted to follow if there is a discrepancy

of ideas. You may say that this is limited to things known clearly anddistinctly. But the question is, what sort of thing this clear and distinctknowledge is, in which there can be no falsity at all.

(III 382a)

Gassendi, of course, has his own answer to propose about what sort ofthing can have no falsity at all. It lies in the combination of his version of theEpicurean doctrine that what appears to sense is always true, together withan account of how ideas are acquired from the impressions which theappearances leave in our brains. On this alternate proposal, what methodrecommends is to begin with the ideas of individual, particular things. Foron Gassendi’s account all abstract ideas are fictitious, so that Descartes’s‘clear and distinct perception’ of his essence is no more a guide to what thatessence really is than more obviously constructed ideas:

I add that when someone has in the intellect the Idea of a golden mountain

they understand clearly and distinctly that consisting of gold truly pertains tothe golden mountain and its immutable nature, essence or form and it cannotbe less true and immutable than that a golden mountain consists of gold, that a

rational animal is provided with reason. Thus can one move gradually fromthe nature which is represented in Idea and within the intellect to the nature

26 Arnauld and Nicole, Logic or the Art of Thinking, pp. 247–8 (trans. by Jill Buroker,

Cambridge, 1996). See Lennon (Ibid) for a different but (I think) compatible way of relating

this passage to the Gassendi-Descartes debate.

GASSENDI ON DESCARTES’S ‘ONE RULE OF LOGIC’ 71

which is in the thing itself and outside the intellect? Truly only this can be said:What we clearly and distinctly conceive to truly pertain to a golden mountainand its immutable nature, in so far as it is in Idea, we can with truth affirm of

the golden mountain to the extent that it is in Idea. And do not say that thereis a difference between the golden mountain and the rational animal. Forindeed, there is a certain difference, when you go from the ideal state to the real

state, or the prison of intellect into the theatre of nature: you can see a rationalanimal here and there, but a golden mountain nowhere. But as long as youremain in the ideal state, there is no difference of ideas; and you do not have a

Criterion by means of which you can judge if a certain idea conforms to athing existing outside the intellect or not; and you must wait until a Criterion isgiven in experience in the real state.

(III 382a)

This constitutes a denial that Descartes’s proposed internal criteria for thequality of ideas work, together with a claim that there are usable criteriagiven in experience. The claim that usable criteria are given in experiencerelies on basic features of Gassendi’s theory of cognition that cannot beaddressed here, but the point is clear. Descartes’s response that clear anddistinct perception cannot be doubted without leading to skepticism isplausible only if one already accepts the theory of the cognitive facultiesargued for in the Meditations. And, since Gassendi takes it that theargument for that theory fails – because it requires trusting the validity ofclear and distinct perception to begin with – he has no reason to takeDescartes’s anti-skeptical reply seriously. That God’s goodness is incompa-tible with the possibility that properly used cognitive faculties are deceptive,is no help in resolving the stand-off that emerges at this point in the debatebetween Descartes and Gassendi.27

University of Virginia

27 I would like to thank Martha Bolton, Raffaella De Rosa, Peter Klein, Paul Lodge and Jorge

Secada for helpful comments on previous versions of this paper. Some research was

generously supported by a joint fellowship from Caltech and the Huntington Library.

72 ANTONIA LOLORDO