Descartes' Temporal Dualism
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Descartes' Temporal Dualism
Descartes' Temporal Dualism
Rebecca Lloyd Waller
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Waller, Rebecca Lloyd.
Descartes' temporal dualism / Rebecca Lloyd Waller.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7391-7522-4 (cloth : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-7391-7523-1 (electronic)
1. Descartes, Rene, 1596-1650. 2. Time. I. Title.
B1878.S67W35 2014
115.092--dc23
2014034965
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank a few of the people who have supported me in my scholarship—in particular, those who generously offered their input and critiques on some of the ideas in this book. I would first like to thank Jan Cover, Michael Jacovides, Jeffrey Brower, and Martin Curd for the support and criticisms they offered while I was studying at Purdue. Thanks also to Kimberly Blessing, whose long-standing support has left an indelible mark on all of my philosophical work. And, finally, I give my heartfelt thanks to my husband, Jason Waller, whose generosity, philosophical acumen, and intellectual honesty improves all my work (and all of my life) in more ways than I can express.
Note on Abbreviations
AT:
This abbreviation refers to the original language text of Descartes’ works. The full citation is: Descartes, Rene. Oeuvres de Descartes. Edited by Charles Adam and Paul Tannery. Paris: J. Vrin, 1905. The ‘AT’ will primarily be used in this text to indicate the line numbers cited in the English translation by Cottingham, Stoothoff, and Murdoch. The ‘AT’ abbreviation is followed by a volume and page number.
CSM:
This abbreviation refers to the English translation, whose full citation is: Descartes, Rene. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes Vols 1-2. Edited and Translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press. The ‘CSM’ abbreviation is always followed by a volume and page number.
CSMK:
This abbreviation refers to the English translation, whose full citation is: Descartes, Rene. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes: The Correspondence. Edited and Translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, and Anthony Kenny. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press. The ‘CSMK’ abbreviation is always followed by a volume and page number.
Introduction
In studying Descartes’ views on time, the challenges are immediately apparent. One quickly discovers that time plays various important roles in Descartes’ physics and metaphysics, and likewise finds that understanding these roles is extremely difficult. Understanding these roles is difficult because Descartes’ own texts offer so few discussions on time, and there are numerous, long-standing disagreements concerning how to interpret the few that there are.[1] Since Descartes’ comments on time are so limited that even learned commentators have failed to reach anything near consensus, it is natural to feel hesitant to enter the fray and propose a “new” interpretation of Descartes’ account. It is tempting to ignore Descartes’ account of time, under the assumption that his views were either too poorly defined, or too poorly expressed to offer valuable material for study. Yet, when one recalls the various important roles that Descartes gives to time, it seems that one cannot ignore Descartes’ account without leaving an important gap in Cartesian scholarship. Thus (showing either bravery or foolhardiness), I offer this book into the fray.
The important roles that Descartes gives to time are not hard to recognize. In Principles II.23, for example, Descartes indicates that time is necessary for distinguishing bodies since he claims that “any variation in matter or diversity in its many forms depends on motion.”[2] In making diversity dependent on motion, Descartes makes it equally dependent on time, since he claims that there can be no motion without time.[3] Descartes also assigns time the important function of grounding the Second Causal Argument in Med III when he claims that one need only consider “the nature of time” to see that God must exist.[4] Given the important roles that Descartes gives to time in both his metaphysics and physics, it seems appropriate to wonder why a thorough account on the nature of time itself appears to be missing from the Cartesian corpus. In this book, I propose a rather simple answer to this question; namely, that Descartes’ account was presupposing the accounts of time that were generally known and followed by Descartes’ predecessors and contemporaries.
It is certainly true that Descartes offers very few discussions on the nature of time. Likewise, it is true that these sketches, when considered in isolation of their historical context, offer frustratingly few details upon which to ground a Cartesian account of time. When considered from within this context, however, the texts seem far more fruitful. Indeed, I believe that much current confusion concerning Descartes’ views has resulted from interpreters attempting to understand his account without first considering the alternative approaches available in the seventeenth century. If Descartes’ account is considered in a historical way then his view sounds particularly odd. Indeed, contemporary ways of conceiving of time are so foreign to the ways in which time was conceived by Descartes and others of his era, that today’s “basic” understanding of the subject (which contains a background that includes Newton, Einstein, McTaggart, etc.) is a hurdle that must be overcome if Descartes’ account has any hope of being understood.
Thus, in this book, I attempt to interpret Descartes’ account of time by reading his texts in light of the issues and disagreements that concerned Descartes’ predecessors and contemporaries. I thus offer a historically sensitive approach to interpreting Descartes’ views on time, which attempts to expand upon Descartes’ otherwise brief (and apparently inconsistent) discussions. When viewed from within this context, Descartes’ discussions are not only significantly clarified, but they can also be used to ground a new interpretation of Descartes’ account of time. As one might expect, however, the background assumptions grounding Descartes’ account are so radically different from today’s background assumptions that the new interpretation I offer will sound pretty odd.
Over the next several chapters, I will argue for the view that Descartes maintained a type of temporal dualism that had certain characteristics in common with his historical contemporaries, but that nonetheless maintained a uniquely Cartesian character. Of note in this account, will be the claim that Descartes maintained two temporal attributes: (1) successive duration and (2) an innate idea of time. The latter attribute, which I will call time
-in-thought, is the more radical claim, but one whose significance will be explained and defended toward the end of the book. Indeed, I will argue that this latter temporal attribute has been overlooked in a way that has led to much of the confusion that has enveloped contemporary discussions on Descartes’ account of time. By failing to give sufficient notice to the nature and role of this second temporal attribute, commentators have missed a key feature of Descartes’ account which is capable of resolving a number of puzzling problems in the scholarship. When the innate idea of time-in-thought is brought to the forefront, one sees that Descartes’ account is less obscure than it may otherwise seem and that it poses an important development in the historical conceiving of time. Indeed, his account might even be read as suggesting an interesting precursor to Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetic.[5]
This first book-length study of Descartes’ account of time will compose five brief chapters. The structure is as follows:
Chapter One: Pre-Cartesian Approaches to Time
I begin the book by providing a historical context for a study of Descartes’ philosophy of time. I do this by outlining the alternative views on time that were prevalent among Descartes’ contemporaries. I argue that a basic familiarity with these views brings clarity to Descartes’ account, since during the seventeenth century, all accounts of time were structured around these various alternatives. Analyzing these views reveals the three most important questions to ask of Descartes’ account. These questions are:
Is time an independent or dependent entity?
Is time dependent on motion, or in what way is it dependent on motion?
Is time a mental entity?
Having argued for the centrality of these three questions, I then indicate how Descartes answers each of these questions in the three following chapters. I deal with the dependence question in chapter 2, the question of time’s relationship to motion in chapter 3, and the question of time’s relationship to minds in chapter 4.
Chapter Two: Why Cartesian Time is Not (and Could Not be) a Substance
In chapter 2, I argue that time cannot exist as an independent entity for Descartes. Insofar as independent entities are substances in Cartesian metaphysics, I argue that time could not be a type of Cartesian substance because (i) there would be no grounds for a substantial time to be divisible into the numerically distinct parts/moments that Descartes’ account requires and because (ii) a substantial time would contradict the Med III claim that any substance can exist at one isolated moment. Since Descartes’ ontology exhaustively divides between substances and attributes (i.e., that which depends on substances), I thereby conclude that time must be a type of attribute for Descartes. As this fact is explicitly stated in Principles I.57, this chapter provides both an explanation for I.57’s assertion and grounds for thinking that I.57 offers a significant statement on the temporal account that Descartes consistently maintained.
Chapter Three: Descartes’ Temporal Dualism
In chapter 3, I address time’s relationship to motion via a close analysis of Principles I.57. By considering the relationships between motion, duration, and time, I demonstrate that Descartes’ account of time includes two really distinct temporal attributes (namely, duration and time-in-thought). These two attributes are really distinct since time-in-thought (the mode of thought by which duration is measured) is dependent on motion but motion is not directly dependent on time-in-thought. In contrast, duration (the successive enduring of any thinking or extended substance) is not dependent on motion but motion is directly dependent on it. From these differences, I establish that these two attributes are really distinct and also that they appear to be very similar to the “extrinsic” and “intrinsic” times found in Suarez.
Chapter Four: Two Temporal Attributes that are Ontologically on Par
In chapter 4, I address time’s relationship to minds by considering the nature of time-in-thought as distinct from duration. I argue that time-in-thought is an innate idea by first explaining the philosophical reasons why Descartes should think it is innate, and then presenting the compelling textual evidence that Descartes actually did think it was innate. I argue that Descartes should think it is innate by first arguing that it must be the idea by which one measures and then by arguing that this idea could be neither fictitious nor adventitious. I then note a number of textual passages where Descartes indicates his assumption of an innate idea of time. In arguing that time-in-thought is an innate idea, I establish it to be an attribute that is on an ontological par with duration. Thus, I indicate how Descartes’ temporal dualism diverges from that of Suarez. Unlike Suarez’s extrinsic time, Descartes’ time-in-thought is not simply a constructed idea. Rather, it is an innate idea and thereby an idea of a true and immutable nature. As such, time-in-thought is only “weakly dependent” on minds since it is found in minds but is not created by them. Thus, by establishing that Descartes’ two temporal attributes are ontologically on par, I establish the truly unique character of Descartes temporal dualism.
Chapter Five: Temporal Dualism as an Elegant Solution
In chapter 5, I apply my conclusions from the former four chapters to some of the enduring puzzles that have plagued Cartesian scholarship on time; namely, problems with reconciling Descartes’ “parts of time” language with his rejection of atoms and voids, and his commitment to the immutability of God. I argue that reading Descartes as a temporal dualist allows me to resolve a number of these enduring puzzles. In general, I argue that the continuity of duration is ontologically prior to its having successive parts, since it is continuous in its creation, but is divided into parts only as a joint consequence of its being conceived via time-in-thought and of God’s capacity to accomplish whatever can be clearly and distinctly conceived. Insofar as temporal dualism provides an elegant solution for a number of enduring problems in the scholarship, I argue that this fact itself provides a final and substantial piece of support for my interpretation as a whole.
Notes
1. Most such discussions focus on trying to determine if Descartes’ account of time is continuous or discontinuous. Some significant discussions on this debate include: Jean-Marie Beyssade, La Philosophie première de Descartes (Paris: Glammarion, 1979); Martial Guéroult, Descartes’ Philosophy Interpreted According to the Order of Reasons: The Soul and God vol. 1, ed. and trans. Roger Ariew (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984): Chapter 6; Daniel Garber, Descartes Embodied: Reading Cartesian Philosophy through Cartesian Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), and Daniel Garber, Descartes’ Metaphysical Physics (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992); Jorge Secada, “Descartes on Time and Causality,” The Philosophical Review 99 (1990): 45–72; Richard Arthur, “Continuous Creation, Continuous Time: A Refutation of the Alleged Discontinuity of Cartesian Time,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 25 (1988): 349–375; Bennett, Jonathan. Learning from Six Philosophers vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001); Clarence Bonnen and Daniel E. Flage, “Descartes: The Matter of Time,” International Studies in Philosophy 32 (2000); Ken Levy, “Is Descartes a Temporal Atomist?” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 13 (2005): 627–74.
2. See Principles II.23 and 25: AT VIIIA 52–54; CSM I.232–233. Descartes elaborates in Principles II.25, “by ‘one body’ or ‘one piece of matter’ I mean whatever is transferred at a given time.”
3. Principle II.39: “It is true that no motion takes place in a single instant of time.” AT VIIIA 64; CSM 242.
4. Descartes argues that by considering “the nature of time” it becomes apparent that each subsequent moment of a thing’s duration requires the same amount of causal efficacy to keep that thing in existence as would be required if the thing were not yet in existence. This is because time is such that “its parts are not mutually dependent, and never coexist” (AT 13; CSM I.200). As such, one’s existence at a subsequent moment cannot be accounted for by appealing to one’s existence in a previous moment since Descartes denies the possibility of a caus
e acting over a temporal distance. See Geoffrey Gorham,”Cartesian Causation: Continuous, Instantaneous, Overdetermined,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 42 (2004): 389–423 for a good discussion of this topic.
5. The Kantian-link is explained in the last chapter.
Chapter 1
Pre-Cartesian Approaches to Time
An unfortunate hurdle in understanding Descartes’ account of time is that his own discussions are scarce and seemingly under-developed. It seems, however, that such brevity might be excused if Descartes simply presumed that his readers had a working familiarity with the major historical approaches to the nature of time. If Descartes presumed that his contemporaries were well-familiar with the general landscape on how to understand time, then it seems he could have simply left markers to indicate how his views align with the broader intellectual landscape. Rather than “reinvent the wheel,” if the historical discussions on time all followed a similar mode of conceiving, then Descartes might be excused if he likewise assumed this general structure and simply located his account within it. Indeed, if Descartes thought he was making a radical break from the traditional ways of conceiving of time then one might have expected him to say more about his account. The very brevity of his discussions thus suggests grounds for thinking that Descartes did not think this view was particularly novel or inaccessible to his readers.