Descartes intends for ‘attribute’ the fundamental characteristics of the infinite substances. The only ones that we can actually get to know are: thinking and extension (res cogitans and res extensa). Material things derive from the attribute of extension and all non material things by the attribute of thought, or rather - as Spinoza says - things and ideas are respectively the ways of being of the attribute: extension and the ways of being of the attribute: thought.
In the text of the philosopher Vladimir Solov’ëv 'The Crisis of Western Philosophy' as a deepening of the thought of Descartes we have his admission of a real plurality of things or individual substances that have in ‘thought’ and in ‘extension’ their essential attributes; Descartes recognizes the authentic existence of a plurality of bodies and a plurality of spirits. But from what does this plurality come from? What is the difference of the various substances between them?
As for Descartes, all the content of an extended substance condenses in the extension, an extended substance can be distinguished from another only because of particular forms or modes. In fact, a material object stands out and is separated from another by a) its position in space, b) its size, c) its configuration, and d) for the coordination of its parts. Now, all this is nothing more than a series of particular ways of extension and has absolutely nothing to do with the substance itself as such.
The same must be said about the relationships that are established between two thinking substances, because the thought and its particular forms are to the thinking substance as the extension and its particular forms are to the extended substance. But, in this way, if all that determines the difference and the separation is condensed in the attributes and in their ways and has nothing to do with the substances themselves, and if the substances themselves, as substances, do not differ at all from each other but are absolutely identical, it is evident that several substances do not exist, and there is, instead, only one that has as its attributes and at the same title, both thought and extension.
But to what are reduced in this case the things and the single individual beings? In their uniqueness they can not be substances because the substance is only one; they may not even be its attributes because the attribute, by definition, is the common content of all things of the same nature. It only remains to consider individual things as particular ways of the attributes: a single material object will be a way of extension, a thinking individual, a spirit, will be a way of thought.
The Encyclopedia Sapere.it shows that in its broadest logical- grammarian meaning, attribute is each determination of a subject that is affirmed or denied. In this sense the term attribute coincides with the term ‘predicate’, the significance of which is now used almost exclusively. Strictly, attribute is opposed to accident and to the way, as a quality inherent and constitutive of substance.
In this sense the term is used by Descartes who intends for attributes the permanent qualities of the substance, finite. Is then used by Spinoza for whom - since there are no finite substances - the attributes are of God alone, the only infinite substance, and, infinite in the number, they shall express the eternal essence. However, of these infinite attributes of substance we can know only two: thought and extension. The term is involved in the discussions of English empiricism, which, through the analyses of Locke, Berkeley and Hume, leads to the denial of the reality of substance.
The English empiricism, first with John Locke and then more decisively with David Hume, reacts to the conception of the subject as substance, criticizing both his notion (Locke), then the same "subject" (Hume). But thus empiricism comes to skepticism, to the inability to place the correlation between subject and predicate on solid foundations having an impact on the possibility of scientific knowledge. Like Descartes, although starting from an opposite perspective, the empiricists come to a dualism, to a split between the subjective dimension of experience, and the objective one of external reality. This gap between reality and its subjective representations coming from experience will be radicalized by Kant as an opposition between phenomenon and ‘thing’ in itself.
In contrast to the old one, now it is the subject to prevail on the external object, until becoming a metaphysical independent entity (Descartes), generating as a reaction the denial of the substance (empiricism).
The continental philosophers are rationalists (like Descartes) in contrast to the philosophers from England, which are empiricists. I think that rationalism and empiricism are different ways of perceiving the same reality.
Descartes started with an epistemological elimination of all that is nor certain and end up to keep only its own activity as a thinker to certainly exist. All thinking contents which is about extended things is uncertain. Descartes most important contribution to science was his analytical geometry. The extended is what its analytical geometry can expressed. He see other animals and plants are purely automata, or machine or as purely mechanism that can be understood through its geometrical method. He excludes the rational thinking part of the human from being mathematically expressible because not extended from its own experience and this cannot be doubted.
Although many naturalist philosophers later rejected that the human mind was not reducible to some mechanisms, so far science, what can be conceptually representated has not been able to explain how Mind , or how experience could exist in the natural world. We have made tremendous progress in understanding the natural worlds and the physiology and the mechanisms involved in the human body and its brain. We have shown the necessity and the effect of some of these mechanisms on our experience but so far the fact of experience, consciousness is a total mystery. If we take sight.
''
Science can only repeat the long familiar story involving the physics of
electromagnetic radiation and its interaction with matter, the optics of the
eye, the neurophysiology of the brain, and so forth. Such stories allow you
to understand causal connections between the scene in front of you, and electrochemical
events inside you skull. This is by no means a minor feat, it took
centuries of intellectual labor. So far so good. But beyond that anything else
that might be said is mere mumbo jumbo to the honest scientist. The visual
awareness of the scene in front of you is literally magick, in the sense of being
beyond any (including future!) scientific understanding.'' jan koenderink
http://www.gestaltrevision.be/pdfs/koenderink/Awareness.pdf
The non reduction of awareness, mind to what can be understood by the scientific method is as complete today than it was at the time of Descartes. The reason is the method of science itself and I think Descartes deeply understood this.
Chalmer's hard problem of consciousness is a popular way to see the problem. It is also a wrong way to see it. It is not a problem of science, it is beyond the method of science explain, it is not extension and thus no conceptual model will reduce it. It is not a hard problem, it is not a problem.
Why did trigger the rationalism vs empiricism divided after Descartes? It only emerged after primitive mind mechanisms started to be conceived and that we started to understand how the senses and the mind could possibly work. The empiricist posited that all the mind is a sense analysis machine and this idea reflected the way the empiricists understood the scientific method based on experiments. The empiricists assume that through learning the babies gradually get to discover the order in the sense data of their experience like the scientists had been doing using the scientific experimental method. The rationalists emphasized that a priori insight outside of experience or observations , ideas of the geometer mind which are projected onto reality in the form of hypothesis which can after be tested. Two different conception of science and two different conception of mind. The discovery that all life evolved has settle this battle: all came from living experience but through million of year of life evolution, not only individual human life learning. So the received ideas of the rationalist, or the a priori insight exist and are empirical but at the vast time scale. Kant's solution to the empiricism vs rationalism conflict was to explain the insight of the scientist by the structure of its mind projecting itself on reality. All of the rationalization of reality was already in the structure of the mind and body and all that can be experience is what is formatted through it. So mathematic or the objectifying tools has been empiricized and put in the very structure of the observer. It is very consistent with biological evolution. But its drastic separation of experience and reality as it is is not totally justified. It is true that we experience reality throught the formatting of our body. It is true that our science evolved from this a priori fact but reality and experience alhough formatted is not conceptual but lived experience.
Dear Louis,
as always it is an enrichment for me to go through your contributions. Suddenly came to my mind some general considerations somehow related, I believe, to your thought.
I intend to carry forward my conviction that In a cultural context such as today's, in which only some are willing to pursue truth and to devote a lifetime to its research, the scientists who work selflessly should be held up as an example to follow, moving towards moral content that attraction that the general public already experimented towards them, because of the admirable results of which they are protagonists. In my opinion, these aspects are linked to the issues and problems of rationality and reasonableness, namely 1) the broader expression, meaningful and significant of the person and of human intelligence; 2) a manifestation of ‘attenuated’ rationality (alas, only mentioned here). In that context, it will be examined the possibility of a dialogue which can overcome the dilemmas between truth and cultural pluralism, raised by some crucial questions, such as: 1) without prejudice to the idea of truth, how to recognize equal dignity to the positions different from our own? 2) being understood the existence of cultural pluralism, how to save the idea of truth and of basic statements?
As subsystem of the global cultural organization of all nations and all societies, science interprets reality. In this way it changes the criteria of judgment, sets of values, points of interest, lines of thought, beliefs, ways of life. To obtain these effects, it makes use of those operational tools made especially powerful by conceptual and symbolic sets with which interprets reality; "expression systems", or figures which affects meanings and norms; systems of rules, or values which determines the concrete choices; action systems, or technological mediations with which directs the work and acting.
These questions are vital if we do not want to reduce dialogue to an endless exchange of opinions and points of view, without calling. In this perspective it will be interesting to examine the function of the paradox towards logical schemes. The paradox, in fact, exerts all its power and originality when the human condition comes into play, by weighing its own provocation.
Such incitement deletes all logical patterns, making it emerge closures and contradictions that make them instruments of denial or loss of sense. From this clash questions emerge: 1) there is a supreme paradox, able to attract such schemes authenticity human, spiritual and cultural and open to the unexpected? 2) can the paradox help them to recover authenticity and sense?
Best wishes, Gianrocco
Dear Gianrocco Tucci,
Thanks for your thoughts. On the search of truth,
''- Take, Socrates, that it is not we who are afraid of death, but that in each of us there is a little child who is afraid of it. Tell us how to free him
from this terrible fear. - You must tell stories to him every day, until you have charmed all his fears away.'' - Plato
The philosopher in each of us is this terrified child telling himself charming stories still possible in this terrible world.
Dear Louis,
I’d like to tell you a story.
A beautiful and famous Buddhist parable. "A man came upon a tiger. He ran always shadowed by the beast. Now in front of a precipice, he let himself dangle clinging to a wild vine located on the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man saw that two mice began to chew slowly the wild vine. At that moment, however, he saw before him a beautiful strawberry.
Grasping the vine with one hand, with the other he took off the strawberry: how sweet! ". Even in the direst danger and desperate grief, there's always a piece of pure joy; even in the darkest nightmare, a spark of light can light. It is important to grasp: the fear and suffering will change, without disappearing.
Good evening, Gianrocco
Dear Gianrocco,
Beautifull story. Here a old persian story about truth
A Persian Fable
There is an old fable which tells that Truth and Falsehood went for
A swim together, leaving their clothes on shore. Falsehood
Coming out of the water first, puts on Truth’s clothes.
Truth, being what it is, absolutely refused to wear
Falsehood’s clothes, thus remained naked.
Ever since then, Falsehood appearing
As Truth, has been accepted as
Truth, while Truth still
Awaits to be seen.
I appreciate Gianrocco's meditations on Descartes' enchantments as a solicitous dialogue about the relative merit economy of mendicants and amelioratives.
But the translation/interpretation of the Persian Fable's final line seems to shift the key word in the Original to a matter of Time, rather than habitus. I suspect that the Persian term must have wider nuance than "Await." For the surrounding context weighs on nakedness as the principle cause of absence and evasion, which to my reading implies the resistance of Truth to appear to human eyes. This may be natural as a childhood inhibition, shame or shyness. Is anyone aware if the "target" language has other connotations besides perseverance, patience and persistence?
Dear Josef,
I only know the English translation and thus limit myself to this translation. I have another interpretation of the last line. The tale said that Falsehood took the clothe of Truth and Truth being shy, it will never shows itself naked. I see a little bit of the Kantian"s thesis that we will never know the things in themself (naked Truth). I see also the Heraclitus extract that: , a theme that Pierre Hadot explored in . Established science is truth, but limited contextual truth , not absolute/naked Truth.
But the word is a bit too strong. Maybe the original tale was more nuance with something more like appearance instead of falsehood. Maybe the original tale is an opposition between appearances and reality.
Thanks Louis.
Yes, I agree with the Kantian & Heraclitean implications you note. I did not intend 'falsehood' to be featured in my commentary/interpretation. Pseudos may be partial due to veils that hide direct revelations and denotations; and indeed can be instructive and useful as fiction (Plato; Hume). Manifest appearance as real 'presence' can be overlooked Apperception, understood by Leibniz as delayed or potential perception to consciousness, right? That's the interpretative direction I intended with the notion of 'resistance'.
I'll cast about for the original tale and bring any findings back here.
Descartes understood that each substance consists of many different substances. You can literally say that Descartes anticipated the existence of the Higgs boson.
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