Descartes’ Cogito: Understanding Innate, Adventitious, and Factitious Ideas
Thoughts and Ideas
Thoughts and ideas, as the cogito deduces, suggest that we always think. Because if you stop thinking, there would stop what we think. Ideas should be the object of our knowledge. There are thousands of different types of ideas. First, there are innate ideas, born with me and coming from the faculty of thinking itself (the lumen naturale rationis). These are known by intellectual intuition, are evident, and therefore true (like mathematical truths). Then there are ideas that seem to come from outside, adventitious ideas, which are characterized by an inclination to know me, the materiality of the causes, the similarity with the objects, and involuntariness. It appears that all ideas are equal, as are data of consciousness, but differ in what each represents. The ideas of substances appear to be more real than the ideas of modes, and ideas of countless substances, more real than finite substance. As things less perfect cannot be the cause of those which are more perfect, nothing cannot be the cause of the existence of more perfect things, which come from outside. Representing the cause of what perfection should have its effect, which, if coming from outside, things are the cause of ideas. Lastly, there are ideas that neither come from the thinking faculty itself nor from abroad. These are factitious ideas, or fictitious, made up in my mind from adventitious ideas (for example, the idea of a siren, created from the ideas of woman and fish).
The Cogito and the Criterion of Truth
The cogito is taken by Descartes as the first principle of his philosophy. Being able to conceive this proposition so clearly and distinctly, without having in it any indication of doubt, we take as true all that we see with such clarity and distinction. This clarity and distinction are achieved by intellectual intuition, a look of the soul (inspectio mentis), which, based on the first rule of the Rules for the Direction of the Mind (Regulae ad directionem ingenii), states that anything that we view clearly and distinctly is evident. And from the first rule, which says not to accept as true anything that is not truly known as such, we extract that what is obvious is true. At this moment, we arrive at a key point of Cartesian philosophy and the establishment of the rule of evidence as the criterion of truth. On the other hand, Abbagnano said that the cogito is not an application of the rule of evidence, but it is existential self-evidence: what we can see so clearly and distinctly (which is so obvious) is that to think, there is a real need to exist. This evidence, which comes from inspectio mentis, intellectual intuition, already appeared in the third rule of the Regulae as an example of intuition: a triangle has three sides, a sphere has a single surface, I think, I exist. Cogito is not a deduction; it is the first certainty that engendered doubt and destroys certainties (critical question), and obviously, this is clearly and distinctly conceived. Therefore, it is true.
The Foundation of Descartes’ Philosophy
The cogito is, as stated before, the foundation of Descartes’ philosophy because, from it, we can rebuild the building of knowledge, which had been thrown down by doubt in order to subject all their knowledge to criticism. In the certainty that I have to exist to be deceived, the existence of God (which is an innate idea) is suggested through the perfect being and positive infinity. And leaning on Verax Deus, we found that mathematical truths are indeed true and that bodies are the cause of the so-called adventitious ideas. As I said before, the cogito is not an application of the rule of evidence nor the principle of non-contradiction (for that would be a second philosophical principle). Nor is the cogito a deduction, nor a logical inference, because it would deny the simultaneity that exists in it. It does not mean I think, and therefore, I realize that I exist, but I think, and at that time I discover that I exist, and it cannot be otherwise, as to think it is necessary to exist. Going to the Meditations, we discover that we are a thinking thing, and a thing that thinks, knows, certainly feels, remembers… setting the modi cogitandi. The thinking being is not consistent with previous interpretations of it. In addition, Descartes rejects the classical conceptions of the soul. For Cartesian philosophy, the soul, the res cogitans, thinking would be a finite substance. We know it is thinking because when we think, we exist, and if we happen to fail to think, we would also cease to exist. And we are finite because when we compare ourselves with the idea of God (a perfect being), we find it an infinite and thinking substance, and comparing ourselves with Him, we realize our finitude. Despite the “ergo” form (of course), one might think that this is a logical deduction, but it is not, because it is a certainty of existence in which thought and existence are given simultaneously. The res cogitans communicates with the res extensa from the pineal gland.