Abstract
This paper explores Descartes’s work with an eye towards abiding issues in moral epistemology. In so doing, I focus on the role played by the so-called provisional morality that surfaces in “Discourse on the Method”. What I argue is that despite the tenuousness with which it seems to be held, Descartes remained committed to the truth of this morality even in the midst of his most strenuous philosophical reflections. Put in the contemporary epistemological terms which provide the context of my discussion, I argue that Descartes believed in the goodness of his provisional morality as opposed to merely accepting its maxims.
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Notes
Quotations of Descartes’s works are from the first volume of the Cambridge University Press edition of The Philosophical Works of Descartes edited by Cottingham, Stoothoff, and Murdoch (Descartes, 1984). They are therefore cited as CSM I in the text. Following a widely accepted convention, I have also included parallel references to the standard edition of Descartes’s works edited by Adam and Tannery (1964–1976), denoted as AT with volume and page numbers to follow.
Though I do not think the term is uniquely his, I am borrowing it from Alvin Plantinga: “A person’s noetic structure is the set of propositions he believes, together with certain epistemic relations that hold among him and these propositions” (1983, p. 48).
See also CSM I, 186/AT IXB, 14 where Descartes compares the whole of philosophy to a tree where the “roots are metaphysics, the trunk is physics, and the branches emerging from the trunk are all the other sciences” as well as Bernard Williams’s comments on these passages (1978, pp. 34ff).
It is worth noting at this point that the term morale provisiore (provisional morality) is one used by commentators and not Descartes himself. See Marshall (1998, p. 16n6).
John Marshall notes that there is some question about how Descartes views the status of the fourth maxim since it does not appear to be a general rule “for living well that might be commended to all of us, whatever our particular vocation” (1998, p. 19). Marshall concludes that despite this lack of generality, the fourth maxim is supported by moral reasons and “is sufficiently justified in terms of values he could count on his readers to share” (1998, p. 22). Whether there are three or four maxims in Descartes’s provisional morality does not, so far as I can tell, directly impact the present work.
See Fine (2000, pp. 219–223).
“[I]t is striking that Descartes’s own way out of the argument bears more than a passing resemblance to Sextus’s. We have seen, for example, that Sextus distinguishes criteria of truth from criteria of action; skeptics suspend judgment on the former but rely on the latter. In just the same way, Descartes distinguishes the search for truth from matter of action; his doubt concerns the former but not the latter” (Fine, 2000, p. 222).
Quoted in Fine (2000, p. 222).
Quoted in Fine (2000, pp. 225–226).
I am indebted to an anonymous reviewer for this way of putting the point.
Cf. Fine’s approval of this statement (2000, pp. 216ff).
See also Burnyeat (1983a) who also argues for a account of acceptance (which he calls “assent”) and belief.
See Marshall (1998, p. 18).
Here I intend “claim” to be neutral with respect to acceptance and belief.
To be sure, this commitment would also involve the belief that one’s particular religion was true, such that if it were somehow demonstrated to be false, a change in morality would be necessitated. What I think this shows, however, is that (a) moralities can be quite complex and (b) that metaphysical beliefs can sometimes play a kind of moral role in one’s thinking—i.e., serve as fundamental commitments that shape what things we think we should do and what kinds of people we think we should be.
Of course, he may not give any thought to how the appropriate conduct of a baseball player relates to the appropriate conduct of a human being in general. But it seems safe to assume that anyone who asks whether a provisional morality is necessary would be concerned about how such things fit together.
I leave aside, at this point, the question to what degree one’s morality is, or can be, chosen.
Connecting morality and self-definition lends some measure of plausibility to Alasdair MacIntyre’s narrative account of personal identity. According to MacIntyre, “personal identity is just that identity presupposed by the unity of the character which the unity of a narrative requires” (1984, p. 218). On this view, undergoing a fundamental moral or religious conversion raises serious questions about whether such a coherent narrative can be told and so casts doubt on the unity of the person before and after such a conversion. For his full account, see MacIntyre (1984, pp. 204–225).
I am indebted to an anonymous reviewer for phrasing this line of questioning.
While I am aware that Williams would not be happy with a characterization of answers to Socrates’ question as “morality,” I nevertheless think that despite the terminological difference, Descartes’s provisional morality serves as a plausible answer to that question.
Indeed, I confess that I am inclined to think that the distinction between formal and substantive moral principles is, at best, vague.
For a fuller discussion of this kind of objection and the practice of insulating one’s practices from one’s philosophical beliefs, see Burnyeat (1983b).
Again in the preface to the French edition of the Principles, Descartes states that the Discourse “summarized the principal rules of logic and of an imperfect moral code which we may follow provisionally while we do not yet know a better one” (CSM I, 186–7/AT IXB, 15). This implication is that Descartes is holding out the possibility of eventually determining a better one. Cf. Marshall’s comments on this passage (1998, pp. 13ff and 57ff).
Marshall, for example, contends that “we will not find any radical shift in his conception of morality between, say, 1630 and 1650, nor any radical departure from the morale par provision” (1998, p. 58).
Indeed, the lack of argumentation may not even preclude these beliefs being instances of knowledge if, as some have argued, those beliefs are properly basic. On this question, see Plantinga (1983, pp. 47ff).
Or, as Lynne Rudder Baker suggests, in mediis rebus, the distinction being that in medias res is “the middle of things into which one jumps” while in mediis rebus is “the middle of things from which one starts” (2002, p. 378). While both she and I have the latter sense in mind, the more colloquial term is sufficient for my purposes here.
I am indebted to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this disanalogy.
What I have in mind here is something along the lines of what Charles Taylor advocates in chapter four of Sources of the Self (1989).
References
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Acknowledgements
I am greatly indebted to Antonia LoLordo and an anonymous referee at this Journal for their helpful comments on previous drafts of this paper. Whatever is of value in the final product owes much to their efforts. I am also grateful to the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture for their financial and collegial support throughout this project.
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Kadlac, A. Acceptance, Belief, and Descartes’s Provisional Morality. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 10, 35–52 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-006-9039-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-006-9039-1