Midwest Studies in Philosophy, XXVI (2002) Presence and Likeness in Arnauld s Critique of Malebranche NANCY KENDRICK

Transcription

1 Midwest Studies in Philosophy, XXVI (2002) Presence and Likeness in Arnauld s Critique of Malebranche NANCY KENDRICK The debate between Malebranche and Arnauld concerning the nature of ideas rests on a disagreement about whether representative ideas are modifications of the mind, as they are for Arnauld, or entities distinct from the mind s modifications, as they are for Malebranche. As Malebranche explains in The Search after Truth, awareness of sensations, for example, does not require ideas, for these things are in the soul, or rather...they are but the soul itself existing in this or that way. 1 Sensations are, for Malebranche, non-representative modifications of the mind. When we feel pain, see color, or feel sad, these perceptions/sensations do not represent anything external to the mind. Rather, they are modes of the mind, just as the actual roundness and motion of a body are but that body shaped and moved in this or that way (ST, 218). Ideas, which are in God, and which are necessary for us to perceive external objects, represent the geometric properties of external objects. These representative ideas are not modifications of the mind, though they do stand in some relation to our minds. 2 They are, in Malebranche s words, intimately joined to it. In contrast, Arnauld holds that both sensations and representative ideas are modifications of the mind. 3 Indeed, ideas can have no other relation to a mind. In 1. Nicolas Malebranche, The Search after Truth, trans. by Thomas M. Lennon and Paul J. Olscamp (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1980), 218. (This work is abbreviated as ST hereafter.) 2. Nor are they modifications of God s mind. See ST, In Arnauld s Alleged Representationalism, Journal of the History of Philosophy 12 (1974), Monte Cook claims that Arnauld admits that some modifications of the soul, namely sensations, are non-representative (54). Steven Nadler disagrees, arguing in Arnauld and the Cartesian Philosophy of Ideas (Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1989) that Arnauld points out in the Fourth Set of Replies to Descartes Meditations that sensations are clearly 205

2 206 Nancy Kendrick short, ideas of external objects are, for Arnauld, essentially representative modalities, while for Malebranche ideas of external objects are representative, but they are not modalities. For this reason, Arnauld charges that Malebranche s ideas are entities distinct from perception. Arnauld claims that Malebranche is deceived into positing these ideas distinct from perception because he has blindly accept[ed]... two principles...: that the soul can perceive bodies only if they are present, and that bodies can only be present to it through certain representative beings, called ideas or species, which are similar to them and take their place, and which are intimately united in their stead with the soul. 4 These principles of presence and likeness are, respectively, the subject of Arnauld s attack. I discuss these in order to show why Arnauld believes that Malebranche s ideas distinct from perception present an answer to what is, in fact, a pseudo-problem. One of Malebranche s arguments for the necessity of an idea being present to the mind occurs in Book III of The Search after Truth: I think everyone agrees that we do not perceive objects external to us by themselves. We see the sun, the stars, and an infinity of objects external to us; and it is not likely that the soul should leave the body to stroll about the heavens, as it were, in order to behold all these objects. Thus, it does not see them by themselves, and our mind s immediate object when it sees the sun, for example, is not the sun, but something that is intimately joined to our soul, and this is what I call an idea. Thus, by the word idea, I mean here nothing other than the immediate object, or the object closest to the mind, when it perceives something...it should be carefully noted that for the mind to perceive an object, it is absolutely necessary for the idea of that object to be actually present to it and about this there can be no doubt. (ST, 217) One type of objection that Arnauld raises in On True and False Ideas to the presence doctrine focuses on the fact that the way in which ideas are thought to be present to the mind is based on an erroneous analogy with corporeal presence. Consequently, ideas are taken to be spatially or locally present to the mind. Arnauld objects that this analogy fails, because, in fact, the object must be absent from [the eye], since it must be at a distance, and if it were in the eye or too close to the eye, it could not be seen (TFI, 16). Arnauld s claim is true, but it does not go very far in undermining the view that present to the mind is to be understood as spatial or local presence. For if the spatial analogy is itself suspect, it is made no less so by claiming that things need to be at a distance from the eye. In a second consideration of Malebranche s strolling mind argument noted above, Arnauld focuses not on how ideas might be present to the mind, but rather capable of representing, or presenting or displaying a positive content to the mind (83). My point is simply that representative ideas are modifications of mind for Arnauld. Whether sensations are representative or not, they are also modifications of the mind. 4. Antoine Arnauld, On True and False Ideas, trans. by Elmar J. Kremer (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1990), 15. (This work is abbreviated as TFI hereafter.)

3 Arnauld s Critique of Malebranche 207 on Malebranche s reasoning that it is precisely because external objects themselves are spatially distant from us, and thus not present to the mind, that something else must stand in for them that is present to the mind. Arnauld mockingly describes Malebranche s view in the following way: In place of the sun, which would not seem to leave its place so often (that would be too great a difficulty) we have very cleverly discovered a certain representative being to take its place and to make up for its absence by being intimately united to our souls. We have given the name of idea or species to that being which is representative of the sun... (TFI, 36). Arnauld claims that the principle our soul cannot see or know or perceive... objects distant from the place where it is, insofar as they remain distant is of the utmost falsity (TFI, 36), and that it is quite evident that our soul can know countless things distant from the place where it is (TFI, 36). But when Arnauld gives his evidence for this, he shifts the ground of the debate. He directs us to Postulate 5 and Definition 9 of Chapter 5, both of which concern our knowledge of the existence of the external world. The explanation he gives there is not how we can see, know, or perceive objects at a distance, but how we can know that there are any objects at all. First, Arnauld claims that if the senses cannot assure us of the existence of the external world, reason can. And if reason fails, faith can succeed. (Malebranche agrees with the latter position.) He concludes [c]onsequently...[since I] have faith in addition to reason, it is very certain that when I see the earth, the sun, the stars, and men who converse with me, I do not see imaginary bodies or men, but works of God and true men whom God has created like me (TFI, 23). Second, he claims that although he has to reason to the idea of the sun, the stars, the earth, etc., as existing, rather than having this certainty in the first awareness of each of those ideas, the idea which represents to me the earth, the sun and the stars as truly existing outside my mind no less merits the name idea than if I had it without need of reasoning (TFI, 21). What Arnauld has presented here is not an argument that our soul can know countless things distant from the place where it is. Malebranche s (alleged) position that it is the spatial distance between objects and a mind that necessitates an idea to make good the absence of the object may be false, but it is not equivalent to denying that we can know (by reason or faith or in whatever way) that external objects exist. Either Arnauld has conflated the skeptical problem with the problems generated by ideas distinct from perception, or he thinks Malebranche has. In any case, it is not entirely clear that Malebranche means the strolling mind argument literally. In the Réponse, he says [i]s it not clear that what I said was more a kind of jest rather than a principle upon which I establish sentiments which undermine this same principle? 5 Even Arnauld presents the motivation for 5. Quoted in Steven Nadler, Réponse de l auteur De la Recherche de la Vérité au livre de M. Arnauld des vrayes et des fausses idées, in Malebranche and Ideas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 71. Nadler adds I see no reason for not taking Malebranche at his word here, when he denies that the kind of presence he intends as necessary for immediate perception...is local.

4 208 Nancy Kendrick Malebranche s representative ideas that stand in for objects spatially distant in something of a jestful way: But mockery aside, it is certain that our friend has assumed...that our soul cannot see...objects distant from the place where it is (TFI, 36). It would seem, then, that Malebranche does not mean for presence to be taken in this simple sense of locally or spatially present, and, moreover, that Arnauld is aware of that. Nonetheless, Arnauld does get the last word here. For if spatial distance is not the issue giving rise to the need for ideas distinct from perceptions, then the argument of the strolling passage comes to nothing: For, if he were now forced to agree that local presence or distance has nothing to do with a body s being able or not being able to be the object of our mind, what he says about the distance of the sun and about the fact that our soul does not leave our body to go look for it would be as unreasonable as if, speaking to a low Breton who had addressed me in his language, which I do not understand, I complained that I was not able to understand anything that he had said to me, because he always spoke too softly. That would be ridiculous since with regard to a language that I do not understand, it is all the same to me whether someone speaks it to me softly or loudly. (TFI, 39) There is, however, a more subtle interpretation that Arnauld offers of Malebranche s position that presence is to be thought of as local or spatial presence. It will help to clarify Arnauld s position here by looking to his discussion of a position advanced by Gassendi, whose aim is to show, against Descartes, that the soul is extended, and therefore material. Here is Gassendi s argument: Our soul has knowledge of bodies only through the ideas that represent them. But those ideas could not represent extended things unless they were material and extended themselves. Hence they are of that kind. But in order to enable the soul to know bodies, they must be present to the soul, i.e., be received in the soul. Therefore, the soul must be extended and consequently corporeal. (TFI, 15) Gassendi s position has an important implication that bears on the Arnauld- Malebranche debate. Arnauld and Malebranche agree with the first premise of Gassendi s argument, that is, we know bodies by means of ideas that represent them. And at least on the surface, they both disagree with the second premise. However, this premise presupposes that the relation between an idea and that which the idea represents is isomorphic. And Arnauld alleges both that Malebranche accepts this implication of the materialist premise, and that this acceptance leads him to advance presence as a criterion for knowledge of external bodies. Although Malebranche spiritualizes Gassendi s material ideas, he does accept the third premise of Gassendi s argument: Ideas must be present to the mind.

5 Arnauld s Critique of Malebranche 209 The point about isomorphism is made clearer in the following objection Arnauld raises against Malebranche: If the object of understanding had to meet the condition of being locally present to our soul in order to be known, it would have to be the case that, just as our will cannot love anything as bad, so our understanding could not conceive anything as locally absent from our soul. But we cannot doubt that our mind conceives countless things as absent from the place where our soul is. When for example, the mother of the young Tobias cried so bitterly because he had not yet returned, her mind certainly conceived of him as absent from her. Thus, local presence is not a necessary condition of an object s being able to be seen by our soul, and consequently, local absence contributes nothing to its not being able to be seen. (TFI, 39 40) Arnauld is not saying that we can conceive of or perceive objects that are spatially distant from the mind. That is, his concern here is not Malebranche s (alleged) view that the spatial distance of bodies from minds keeps us from perceiving them directly. 6 Rather, his point is that a conception can be present to the mind that represents the absence of the object conceived. In other words, Arnauld sees Malebranche as unable to account for the fact that we can conceive of something as absent. Arnauld s objection is this: if conceiving something as present requires the spatial presence of a representative entity, then it would be impos-sible to conceive something as absent, since that would require the spatial absence of a representative entity. Furthermore, Arnauld sees this position leading to the acceptance of the third premise of Gassendi s argument as well: if these representative entities, understood either as material or mental are to assist the mind, they must be present to it or received in it. And once they are present to the mind, they must be perceived by it. In yet another objection to Malebranche, Arnauld says: I assume that my soul is not thinking of any bodies, but that it is occupied with the thought of itself...the question is how it can pass from that thought to the thought of body A. You claim that it can see body A only through a certain being representative of it. But I ask you whether it will suffice that the representative being... be intimately united to my soul, unless a new modification is brought about in my soul, i.e., unless it receives 6. John Laird sees the passage above precisely as a response to Malebranche s (supposed) commitment to the view that the spatial distance of an object (in this case the young Tobias) prohibits our knowing it. He says: [i]f the mind, [Malebranche] says, saw the sun and the stars par eux-memes it would have to sally forth and take a walk among them. This is local contact with a vengeance and Arnauld, having to refute a dogma so fantastically put, twists the knife round and round from a variety of angles. His point is that the local absence of things has nothing to do with the possibility of knowing them.a mother may surely weep for her absent child... The Legend of Arnauld s Realism, Mind XXXIII (1924), 12. However, as I show, Arnauld is not objecting that, according to Malebranche, the mother s mind is not where young Tobias is.

6 210 Nancy Kendrick a new perception. Obviously not, for that representative being can be of no use unless the soul perceives it. (TFI, 45) Here, Arnauld is pointing out the trouble he has with Malebranche s view that representative ideas are not modifications of the mind. Malebranche s representative entities cannot do any work unless the mind perceives them. The treatment of present to the mind as spatial or local presence may show that Malebranche s position is muddled, but it does not show that his ideas distinct from perception are irrelevant, unnecessary, or superfluous. Yet Arnauld claims they are. It is this line of Arnauld s argument to which I now turn. A second way of understanding Malebranche s claim that bodies cannot be present to or intimately joined to the mind points to the ontological distinction between the material and the mental. Malebranche clearly regards the fact that body is extended and mind unextended as what prohibits bodies from being present to the mind, and it is precisely this ontological gulf that makes it impossible for bodies to be known by the mind directly that is, without ideas distinct from perception. But as for things outside the soul, we can perceive them only by means of ideas, given that these things cannot be intimately joined to the soul... [H]ere I am speaking mainly about material things, which certainly cannot be joined to our soul in the way necessary for us to perceive them, because with them extended and the soul unextended, there is no relation between them. (ST, 218 9) Material things, in virtue of their materiality, cannot be intimately joined to the soul. Thus, if they are to be known, something else must both stand in for them and be of the proper ontological sort. Ideas, it would seem, fit the profile. 7 Now, Arnauld does not reject Malebranche s dualism: the extended and material is ontologically distinct from the unextended and mental. But he does reject Malebranche s view that the ontological gulf between mind and body entails an epistemological gulf. As Arnauld says, [I]t is the most badly founded fantasy in the world to propose that a body qua body is not an object proportioned to the soul in the way it must be to be known by it (TFI, 46). It is one thing to say that mind and body are too different to causally interact. 8 But it is quite another, at least as Arnauld sees it, to say that mind and body are too different for the latter to be known by the former. Arnauld sees quite clearly that what prevents Malebranche from holding that the soul can know external bodies in precisely the way it knows itself i.e., 7. Nadler notes that Malebranche has some trouble here; it is not clear what sort of relation these ideas can have to a mind, since they are not modifications of it. If ideas are not mental, if they are neither minds nor modifications of mind, then in what sense are they the right ontological type for intimate union with the mind? Malebranche and Ideas, This is a standard Cartesian view, though Descartes casts some doubt on it when he claims that it is a false supposition...that if the soul and the body are two substances whose nature is different, this prevents them from being able to act on each other (CSM II, 275).

7 Arnauld s Critique of Malebranche 211 directly, without the need for representative entities distinct from the mind s modifications or perceptions is that bodies are too coarse and too disproportionate to the spirituality of the soul to be able to be seen immediately (TFI, 46). The disproportionate distance between minds and bodies here is ontological, not spatial. But Arnauld denies that the ontological distance entails that the material cannot be known by the mind. His view is that to be knowable is an inseparable property of being, just as much as being one, being true, and being good, or rather it is the same as being true, since whatever is true is the object of the understanding... (TFI, 46). Intelligible being is, for Arnauld, a certain manner of being. This is made quite explicit in his use of Descartes concept of objective existence. What is called being objectively in the mind, is not only being the object, at which my thought terminates, but it is being in my mind intelligibly, in the specific way in which objects are in the mind. The idea of the sun is the sun, insofar as it is in my mind, not formally as it is in the sky, but objectively, i.e., in the way that objects are in our thought, which is a way of being much more imperfect than that by which the sun is really existent, but which nevertheless we cannot say is nothing...(tfi, 21) Thus, like Descartes, Arnauld contends that the same thing can exist in two ways; formally insofar as it is a real (mind-independent) existent; and objectively insofar as it is thought of. 9 The sun existing objectively is a way of being, and it is a distinct way of being from the sun existing formally. That is, the sun s objective existence is is distinct manner of being from the sun s formal existence. Arnauld agrees with Malebranche, then, that the mental and the material are ontologically distinct, but he denies that the result of this is that the latter cannot be known directly that is, without ideas distinct from perception by the former. For Arnauld, Malebranche s insistence that the material cannot be known directly by the mental is equivalent to saying that material being cannot be known by mental being. And as Arnauld sees it, this is to make intelligibility, or being known, another, in fact, a superfluous relation between the mental and the material, requiring a superfluous entity, viz., ideas. When Arnauld considers Malebranche s second principle that the likeness or similarity representations bear to objects permits them to stand in for the objects and be present to the mind he argues that likeness can be understood only as likeness between ontological types: When it is said that our ideas and our perceptions...represent to us the things that we conceive, and are the images of them, it is in an entirely different sense than when we say that pictures represent their originals and are images of them, or that words...are images of our thoughts. With regard to ideas, it means that the things that we conceive are objectively in our mind and in our thought. But this way of being objectively in the mind, is so 9. Thomas M. Lennon, Philosophical Commentary, in The Search after Truth, 799.

8 212 Nancy Kendrick peculiar to mind and to thought, being what...constitutes their nature, that we would look in vain for anything similar in the realm of what is not mind and thought. As I have already remarked, what confuses this entire matter of ideas is that people want to use comparisons with corporeal things to explain the way in which objects are represented by our ideas, even though there can be no true relation here between bodies and minds. (TFI, 20) Arnauld is again insisting that the same thing can exist in two ways: formally or mind-independently, 10 and objectively, or mind-dependently. The sun existing objectively is a manner of being, and it is a distinct manner of being from the sun existing formally. Furthermore, the sun existing objectively is a kind of existence specific to the mind, so that one could not find anything similar to this outside the mind. Something else may be found outside the mind, viz., the sun existing formally, but that s not like the way the sun exists objectively. 11 Similarly, the way the sun exists formally (i.e., as a material object) is a kind of existence specific to material objects, so that one could not find anything similar to this inside the mind. Arnauld is denying that ideas can bear a likeness to extended objects on the grounds that ideas and extended objects are ontologically distinct. Malebranche also subscribes to this view, but he takes it to entail that minds cannot know bodies directly, that is, without ideas distinct from perception. It is in drawing this erroneous conclusion that Arnauld thinks Malebranche has created a problem where there is none. For if ontological dualism commits one at least to the view that some being is mental and some being is material, then the question, How does the intelligible kind of being know the material kind of being? is senseless. On Arnauld s interpretation, this question (Malebranche s question) cannot arise. The problem it alleges is, in short, a pseudo-problem. Thus, any answer Malebranche gives to it, that is, any entities he might propose as necessary to explain the additional being known by relation, would be irrelevant. For Arnauld, ideas taken in the sense of representative beings, distinct from perceptions, are not needed by our soul in order to see bodies (TFI, 18). And this is because there is no further knowledge relation to be explained Formal existence is mind-independent existence, but it is not merely mind-independent existence. The sun existing formally is not the sun existing merely mind-independently, but existing mind-independently in the specific way in which extended objects exist, viz., materially. 11. Berkeley would later object to this double existence theory, but he would approve of the claim that one seeks in vain to find a likeness of ideas external to the mind. This is, indeed, Berkeley s likeness principle, and it becomes the basis for his attack on materialism. See Berkeley s Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, especially sections 8 and I thank Tim Griffin for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.