Companion To Descartes 7 The Cartesian Circle英文电子书.pdfVIP

LOUIS E. LOEB 7 The Cartesian circle THE TRUTH RULE AND THE PROBLEM OF THE CARTESIAN CIRCLE Descartes writes in the second paragraph of the Third Meditation : So I now seem to be able to lay it down as a general rule that whatever I perceive very clearly and distinctly is true (AT VII 35 : CSM II 24). * I call thi s principle the truth rule. In the third para- graph, Descartes decides that it is premature to take the truth rule to be established . He writes of very simple and straightforward propo- sitions in arithmetic and geometry : the . . . reason for my . . . judg- ment that they were open to doubt was that it occurred to me that perhaps some God could have given me a nature such that I was deceived even in matter s which seemed most evident (AT VII 36: CSM II 25). The matter s that seem most evident, in the context of paragraph two, are beliefs based on clear and distinct perception, so that these beliefs (together with any that seem less evident) are themselves open to doubt . Descartes writes : in order to remove . . . this . . . reason for doubt, . . . I must examine whether there is a God, and, if there is, whether he can be a deceiver (AT VII 36: CSM II25). In the Third Meditation, Descartes offers an argument for the exis- tence of a nondeceiving God. The truth rule is finally proved in the Fourth Meditation . Descartes concludes, on the ground that God is no deceiver, that if . . . I restrain my will so that it extends to what the intellect clearly and distinctly reveals, and no further, then it is quite impossible for m e to go wrong (AT VII 62 : CSM II 43). Descartes procedure has been thought to suffer from an obvious difficulty. The truth rule