The Meditations may have moved epistemology to the center of modern philosophy. But Descartes conceived it as a work of metaphysics: "Meditations on First Philosophy" there is not much general metaphysics or ontology in the Meditations.
The Meditations may have moved epistemology to the center of modern philosophy. But Descartes conceived it as a work of metaphysics: "Meditations on First Philosophy" there is not much general metaphysics or ontology in the Meditations.
The Meditations may have moved epistemology to the center of modern philosophy. But Descartes conceived it as a work of metaphysics: "Meditations on First Philosophy" there is not much general metaphysics or ontology in the Meditations.
center of modern philosophy, but Descartes himself conceived it as a work of metaphysics: Meditations on First Philosophy was his title for it. Still, the meta- physics in the Meditations is mostly of the special variety: natural theology, cosmology, and rational psy- chology. There is not much general metaphysics or ontology in it. Descartes does sometimes make onto- logical remarks, as when he says in Meditation Three that the mode of being by which a thing exists objec- tively in the intellect by way of an idea, imperfect though it may be, is certainly not nothing (VII. 41). And he appeals to various ontological principles in arguing for the existence of God: for example, that there must be as much reality in the . . . cause as in the effect of that cause (VII. 40) and that existence is a perfection (VII. 67). But he undertakes no purposeful investigation of being qua being, no systematic survey of the modes and categories of being. This neglect of ontology is remedied somewhat in the Principles. Here, in the articles comprising the final third of Part I, Descartes does list and distinguish the basic kinds of things he supposes there to be. He also articulates a number of ontological doctrines which are at best only implicit in the Meditations. I say at best because it may be questioned whether Descartes actually held certain of these doctrines at the time he wrote the Meditations. In any case, some portions of the ontology presented in the Principles cover topics that receive no mention in the Meditations: the status of eternal truths, for one. And in at least one instance Descartes takes a position in the later work that seems directly to conflict with a doctrine stated in the earlier one. I refer to his account of universals in the Principles, within which category he includes the numbers and figures which are the objects of mathematical inquiry. By this account, these entities are merely ideas in the mind, mere modes of thinking which have no actual existence. But in the Fifth Meditation, mathematical objects are held to be things that have their own true and immutable natures [which are] not invented by [any human being] or dependent on [his] mind (VII. 64). Questions about the relation between the ontology laid out in the Principles and that, implicit if not expressly stated, of the Meditations, provide one reason for examining the text of the relevant Principles passage quite carefully. Another reason is that this text by itself is problematic. Descartess presentation in Articles 48 and following is rather sketchy and disorganized, and his meaning is often unclear and indistinct. It is sur- prising that scholars have paid so little attention to this passage, and that some have read it so superficially. There has, it is true, been some discussion of the apparent conflict between the Principles account of mathematical objects and that of the Meditations; but the parties thereto have reached no consensus. This paper has two parts. In the first I spell out and elucidate the ontology expressed in Principles I.4870, explicating the text of this passage and resolving the interpretive problems it presents as they arise. In the second I consider the relation between the Fifth Meditation account of mathematical objects and that of the Principles. I shall argue that there is really no conflict between these two accounts since the former can be assimilated to the latter. A question I am not going to deal with in this paper is that of the extent to which the ontology of the Principles is implicit in the Meditations, as opposed to being a later construction. And of course a full treatment of Descartess ontology would have to consider ontological doctrines expressed or presupposed in works other than the Meditations and the Principles. But that is a task for another paper. Before beginning my examination of Principles I.4870, I need to settle some terminological matters. Descartess Ontology Vere Chappell Topoi
16: 111127, 1997. 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. First, ontologists require some way of referring, pre- or extra-theoretically as it were, to all or any of the things that in some sense or other have being, to the items that are originally there to be divided up into onto- logical categories. In English the word thing can be used for this purpose; so can the common nouns being, entity, and item. But thing is not a good word to use in discussing Descartess ontology. The reason is that he tends to take its Latin equivalent, res, to mean substantia, and hence to restrict it to the members of one ontological category. Nor is there any noun other than thing that Descartes regularly uses as an extra- categorical general term. His standard way of making these pre-theoretical references is via pronouns and pronominal phrases omnia, alia, ea quae . . . , quae- cunque . . . , etc. a usage that is natural and perspicuous in Latin but awkward and often ambiguous in English. In this paper I follow the English custom of using common nouns in this connection, being, entity, and item, but not thing. Thing I reserve, as Descartes largely does, for substances. Second, Descartes sometimes uses the terms attribute, affection, mode, quality, and property interchangeably, as if they all stood indifferently for entities of one general category. But sometimes he distinguishes these terms by restricting some of them to certain subdivisions of this general class. In what follows I have opted for the latter practice. Thus I use attribute and affection as more general terms covering the whole class of entities in question, and restrict mode, quality, and property to the specific subclasses to which Descartes sometimes but only sometimes applies them. Finally, the word mode is particularly protean in Cartesian texts. Apart from the two uses just noted, (1) as a synonym for attribute and (2) for marking the members of a subclass of attributes, two others are commonly found. In one of these, (3) a mode is a specific variety or form, a species, of something more general; in the other, (4) it has the ordinary non-philo- sophical meaning of manner or way. In all of these senses the word mode often is followed by an of - clause, but the prepositional object is different in dif- ferent cases. When the mode mentioned is either an attribute in general or a special sort of attribute (as in the first and second of the senses just listed), the object to which it is attributed via of is a substance; thus mode of my mind and mode of an extended sub- stance. By contrast, when it is a species or form of something more general (third sense), the object is an attribute; thus mode of extension and mode of thinking (or thought). (There appear to be no restric- tions as to what modes in the fourth sense may be modes of.) The situation is complicated by the fact that Descartes uses the phrase mode of thinking itself in two different ways. In one the word mode occurs with the third sense and the thinking refers to an attribute, so that the whole phrase stands for a species of thinking: perceiving or willing, or doubting, imagining, judging, etc. In the other, the mode has the fourth meaning, and the phrase is equivalent to way of regarding, manner of conceiving, or some such. In my discussion I shall have occasion to use the word mode in all but the first of its four senses, and the phrase mode of thinking in both of its two. I will do my best to make clear on each such occasion which sense is being employed. I. Exposition of
Principles I.4870 My exposition is keyed to the accompanying charts. I distinguish three sections within this passage, com- prising Articles 48, 5156, and 5759, respectively. The remaining Articles, from 60 to 70, refine and illustrate but do not really extend the basic scheme that Descartes presents in 4859. In addition, there is a portion of Descartess ontology which, though not explicitly stated in the passage, can easily and naturally be extrapolated from it: this too is represented on my charts. The levels I refer to in my exposition correspond to the lines of text on each chart, counting from the top. 112 VERE CHAPPELL 1. Level one: whatever falls under our perception Descartes identifies his initial subject matter as whatever falls under our perception. By doing so he is not of course restricting it to the objects of sense per- ception. He gives the term perception its maximum scope, using it to cover every way in which a human knower may apprehend or be aware of something. We still might wonder whether the field of the perceivable, even in this extended sense, exhausts the whole field of being for Descartes. Does he hold that the subject matter of ontology extends beyond what can be humanly perceived, that there are entities apart from those that we can think or be aware of ? There is cer- tainly no indication in our passage that he does, and I know of no text in any other work that points to this position either. 2. Level two: things or affections of things vs. eternal truths This is Descartess first division within the field of the perceivable, and here again the question arises: does this division exhaust the field? That is, does it exhaust even this field, never mind the (perhaps more extensive) field of being? Again, there is nothing in the Principles passage to suggest that it does not. Turning to the terms of the division, let us first consider eternal truths. Descartes says that these have no existence outside our thought, implying that they do exist within our thought. He must regard them, there- fore, as mere objects of thought, entia rationis, to use the Scholastic term, or objective beings, to use his own term from the Meditations. Note further that they have no existence outside our, that is, human thought. Descartes does not say that we human beings create these truths: they need not be the products of our minds. But it is in our minds and only there that they reside. One might well wonder how any mere object of human thought, any entity existing in and only in a human mind, could also be eternal. To be eternal is to be outside time, but human minds exist within time. Descartes sometimes used the word eternal to mean not timeless but everlasting; but even if what he means here is everlasting, it is hard to square a truths having that attribute with its having existence solely in human thought. Descartes held that all human souls, once created, never thenceforth cease to exist; but he did not hold that any human soul began to exist at the beginning of time. This is a problem I shall address in Part II of this paper. The other category that Descartes introduces at this second level is things or affections of things. This is not one single category but a compound of two, things on the one hand, affections of things on the other. Descartes eventually distinguishes these two, but not until he reaches level five of his initial classificatory scheme (in Section One), and then only implicitly; and it is not until Section Two of the passage that he gives them their proper names, substances and attributes respectively. In the meantime he treats them as one (and I shall henceforth refer to this compound via the hyphenated title things-and-affections-of-things), DESCARTES S ONTOLOGY 113
Eternal Truths Objects of Perception omni-generic uni-generic Things-and- Affections-of-Things intellectual material Substances = Bodies Attributes Substances = Minds ref to Minds ref to M-B Unions Emotions Attributes ref to Bodies Appetities Sensations A. Section One: Article 48 though some statements he makes at levels three and four apply to one of the two categories and not to the other. Descartes takes eternal truths to be objects of thought, that is, objective beings, in our passage. It might be supposed that he regards things-and-affections- of-things as entities existing outside human thought, that is, as actual beings (to use a Cartesian term found in the Meditations). The fact is that he does consider many things (i.e. substances) and many affections of things (i.e. attributes) to be actual beings, but not all of them. In Section Three (Article 57) of the passage, he intro- duces a distinction between attributes which are in the very things of which they are said to be attributes and those which are only in our thought. The same distinction may be made, I believe, among substances, though Descartes takes no notice of it here (this is the main point of the extrapolation I referred to earlier). But this is just the distinction between actual beings and objective beings, between those that exist outside and those that exist within our thought. I shall have more to say about this distinction later on. 3. Level three: the most general things vs. those confined to one genus Descartes does not say much about these most general things, in Article 48 or elsewhere in our passage, although he invokes examples of them on several occa- sions. The examples he gives here are substance, duration, order, and number; later he appears to add existence (Article 56) and perhaps time (Article 57) to the list. We see at once that none of these, save substance itself, is properly a thing; they are rather attributes, that is, affections of things. But there is no mislabeling here. The field that Descartes is dividing at this level is still the compound things-and-affections- of-things. Duration, number, order, existence we have no trouble conceiving these as attributes, and Descartes clearly does so conceive them. But we do encounter dif- ficulty in trying to think of substance as a thing, that is, as a substance. This difficulty can be resolved, as we shall see in due course. In the meantime I shall merely assume that Descartess category of most general things includes both substances and attributes. Descartes says that these most general entities extend to all genera of things; I call them, therefore, omni-generic entities. He then immediately informs us that there are only two genera of things (or at least two summa such genera); and he identifies them as the genus of intellectual things and that of material things. One question that arises here is whether Descartes is claiming that every being in both of these genera has or is each of these most general entities, that is, has existence, number, and duration and is a sub- stance. Or is his claim merely that at least one being in each genus has or is each of these general entities? The answer is obviously the latter. It may be that every being has existence (actual or objective) and number (at least the number one) for Descartes. But not every intellec- tual or material being is a substance, since some are attributes. And God, who Descartes later says is a thinking substance (Article 54), cannot have either duration (since He is eternal) or order (since He is simple). But then it follows that these most general entities cannot be identified with the transcendentals of Scholastic philosophy, as at least one recent commen- tator has suggested. 1 For the transcendentals are all supposed to be convertible with being. From what are Descartess omni-generic entities dis- tinguished? Since there are only two genera of things, the only alternatives (for a thing or an affection thereof ) to being found in all genera are (1) being found in exactly one of these two, and (2) being found in neither of them. But the latter is evidently not an option for Descartes. On the one hand, there is not only no genus of beings as such, but no genus of things-and-affections- of-things, or of substances, or of numbered or enduring things, given that the genera of intellectual and material entities are the highest genera there are; and on this point Descartes is in accord with Scholastic doctrine. On the other hand, there are no things or affections of things existing outside genera, no extra-generic such entities. The things-and-affections-of-things other than those that are omni-generic, therefore, must be uni-generic. 4. Level four: intellectual vs. materials things Descartes distinguishes his two summa genera of things at the same time that he says that there are two of them. He does not at this point cite any basis or prin- ciple for drawing the distinction: he merely names the two genera and gives examples of items included in each of them. It needs to be noted again that though he calls what he is distinguishing things, he means things-and affections of things; and in fact the items he cites as examples of intellectual things and material things are all of them attributes. For he 114 VERE CHAPPELL describes them as things . . . pertaining to substances, to mind or to thinking substance in the one case, and to extended substance [or] to body in the other. This is one of his standard ways (and one of the Scholastics ways too) of specifying attributes. 5. Level five: substances vs. attributes Although Descartes mentions substances in describing the items, that is, the attributes, that belong to the genera of intellectual and material things, he does not explic- itly say that these substances also belong to these genera. But there is no doubt that he holds that they do. Furthermore, although the distinction between sub- stance and attribute that I represent him as introducing at level five of my exposition is not in fact explicitly made by him, at that point or anywhere in Article 48, it surely is fair to claim that the distinction is implicit there. 6. Level six: certain other [things] that we experience in ourselves Having distinguished intellectual from material things, Descartes cites certain others [that] we experience in ourselves. But his text at this point is obscure, and commentators have had different opinions as to its import. The main point at issue is the status of these others, which, Descartes tells us, include appetites, emotions, and sensations. These, he says, are not to be referred either solely to the mind or solely to the body, but arise from the close and intimate union of our mind with the body. This could mean that these entities, which are in fact attributes, constitute a separate ontological category, a distinct kind of attribute, apart from and on a par with the intel- lectual and material attributes which are to be referred solely to the mind and solely to the body, respectively. On this reading, Descartes would not be a dualist but a trialist, as John Cottingham has put it, at least regarding attributes. 2 Alternatively, it could be Descartess view that these entities belong to one or the other of the two categories, and differ from its other members only at some sub-categorical level. My own position is that Descartes holds the latter of these two alternatives, as is shown on my chart. I take the others in question to belong ontologically to the category of intellectual attributes, and not to constitute a distinctive third kind of attribute. They differ from the other members of this category in that they require causes of both the mental and the material kinds in order to exist, whereas the other intellectual modes require none but mental causes. (Correspondingly, attributes in the material category require none but material causes.) But it is not the kind of cause an entity has that deter- mines the ontological category it belongs to, at least at the level of the categories of intellectual and material beings. For causes according to Descartes operate across these categorical boundaries. I know that this position needs defending, but I shant defend it here, since to do so would divert me from the task of surveying Descartess whole ontology. 3 DESCARTES S ONTOLOGY 115 B. Section Two: Articles 5156 uncreated uni-gen G omni-gen S M B uni-gen uncreated uni-gen d created uni-gen omni-gen nn uni-gen omni-gen nn ? uni-gen omni-gen nn uni-gen i m i m i m ? i m Modes created Qualities created ? principal created constant variable Attributes Substances Things-and-Affections-of-Things non-principal created 1. Level one: things-and-affections-of-things In Article 51, Descartes returns to the ground he has covered in Article 48 and begins tracing a different path through it. The new scheme he produces is not in conflict with the earlier one; rather, it interpolates new divisions within it and adds detail under existing divi- sions. The resulting structure can be mapped on to that Section One in different ways; the way I have chosen is shown by my charts. 2. Level two: substances vs. attributes This time through, Descartes draws the distinction between substance and attribute explicitly, and indicates the basis on which he does so. By a substance, he says, we understand a thing which so exists that it requires no other thing for its existence. Implicit in this formula is a definition of an attribute as a thing which does require another thing for its existence, and this is spelled out in a clause added to the French translation of the Principles (at Article 51): things [that] are of such a nature that they cannot exist without other things, we . . . call . . . attributes (IXB.47). There are well-known problems with these defini- tions. At the least it seems that, in order to understand them, we must already have some understanding of the terms being defined. We need to know what a substance and what an attribute is, and to grasp the specific (non- causal) kind of dependence the one has upon the other. As Descartes might have put it, we need to understand that special way of depending in which attributes are wont to depend on substances. 3. Level five: uncreated vs. created substances and attributes Immediately upon defining substance, Descartes pro- ceeds to distinguish one particular substance, God, from all other substances. The latter, he says, are the crea- tures of God, whereas God himself is uncreated. His point is that God is the only being that strictly satisfies his definition of substance. Instead of concluding, however, that it is false or inaccurate to call creatures substances, Descartes announces that the term sub- stance does not apply univocally to them and to God, meaning that God and created things are substances in different senses of the word. We should note that not only is God an uncreated for Descartes, but that His attributes must be uncreated too. And so are the attributes of created substances the creatures of God. 4. Level three: constant vs. variable attributes Descartes next moves to consider attributes, making a number of divisions among them and adding, along the way, details to his account of substances. From now on, however, my discussion will proceed in a somewhat dif- ferent order from that of his presentation. The division between (what I call) constant and variable attributes is merely implicit in Descartess text, but it is presupposed by two divisions that he does make explicitly. An attribute is constant iff it is never absent from the substance that possesses it, that is, in the case of an enduring substance, iff it inheres in or is exemplified by that substance at every moment of its existence. It is important to notice that this definition is satisfied by two different kinds of attribute for Descartes, those he calls principal attributes and those I am calling omni- generic ones. Thus not only extension in a corporeal substance and thinking in a mind, but existence and duration in an existing and enduring thing are constant attributes. A variable attribute, by contrast, is either one that an enduring substance has at certain times and lacks at others, an attribute that is gained or lost; or else it is one that, though never lost, undergoes change in the course of its existence. Thus if an apple turns from green to red, its greenness is a variable attribute according to the first clause of the formula just stated; its color is one according to the second. 5. Level four: principal vs. non-principal attributes In Article 53, Descartes lays down a fundamental prin- ciple of his ontology. A substance, he declares, has many attributes, but for each substance there is one principal property, which constitutes its nature and essence, and to which all the others are referred. By one principal property here Descartes means one exactly, not one at least; and for a property to be referred to another, he tells us two sentences later, is for it to presuppose it (Latin praesupponere). But when he says that all the other properties of a sub- stance are referred to its principal one, he does not mean all without qualification. He means all of its uni- generic properties, for the point does not hold, for example, for existence or duration. From the fact that 116 VERE CHAPPELL something exists, nothing whatsoever follows as to what its principal property is. The principal property of minds, of course, is thought; of bodies it is extension; and Descartes fre- quently, throughout his writings, identifies thought and extension as the essences of these substances, respec- tively. He has some trouble defining the term essence, however. One problem is to distinguish essences from omni-generic attributes, since these too are always present: a substance (that once has them) never lacks them. And not only does it never lack them in fact but it could not lack them and still exist. Indeed, Descartes goes so far as to say (in Article 62) that a substance and its duration are distinguished merely ratione, which means that the substance cannot be understood without that attribute. This is exactly what he holds about the distinction between a substance and its essence: a body or a mind cannot be understood as lacking extension or thought, respectively. So then what is the difference between an essence or nature and an omni-generic attribute for Descartes? For one thing, an essence or principal attribute deter- mines a genus of things, indeed a highest genus (there being only two such attributes), in the sense that the class containing all and only the substances that have it constitutes a genus, whereas an omni-generic attribute does not. Again, the essence of a substance is entailed by each of its uni-generic attributes or, to put it in a more Cartesian way, the concept of the one is contained in that of the other whereas its omni- generic attributes are not so entailed. These are not of course surprising points, since they are built into Descartess definitions of these terms genus and uni- generic. Distinguishing essences from omni-generic attributes is one problem we encounter in trying to define essence in the Cartesian sense. But it is not the only such problem. For omni-generic attributes are not the only non-principal constant attributes that Descartes recognizes. There are also those that fall under the tra- ditional Aristotelian heading of properties. Descartes does not mention these properties until he comes to discuss universals, in Article 59: they constitute one of the five types of universal that he says are commonly listed. Nor does he provide any characterization of them even then. But it is clear from the example he gives, viz. that the square on [the] hypotenuse [of a right-angled triangle] is equal to [the sum of ] the squares on its sides, and from what he says about it, viz. that it belongs to all and only right-angled trian- gles, that properties meet the same condition that essences do: they are attributes without which the sub- stances possessing them cannot exist. The Aristotelians of course have a similar problem of distinguishing essences from properties. But they also have more resources for dealing with this problem than Descartes has at his disposal: a richer conception of essence grounded in a theory of scientific explanation. Note that I say: resources for dealing with the problem, not for successfully solving it. 6. Level four: qualities vs. modes In Article 56 Descartes notes that he has been using the terms quality and mode as synonyms for attribute. But these terms, he announces, also have a narrower use, in which they apply only to a restricted subclass of attributes those I call variable attributes. Descartes then undertakes to distinguish modes and qualities from one another. Unfortunately, his attempt to explain the narrower use of these terms is unilluminating. When, he says, we consider a substance to be affected or modified [variari] by [its attributes], we call [these attributes] modes; when it can be designated as such and such [talem] by this modification we call them quali- ties. Cottingham in his translation puts an Aristotelian spin on the last part of this statement by rendering talem a substance of such and such a kind, and if Descartes were invoking an Aristotelian theory of species and genera here, it would be appropriate to interpret his words in this way. But I see no justification for Cottinghams reading in the text itself, and no other reason to think that Descartes is alluding to Aristotle here. Descartes gives no example of qualities in the narrower sense and (I believe) never uses the term quality again in this sense, in the Principles or else- where. Hence I shall having nothing specific to say about these qualities. The situation is different, however, with respect to modes. Not only does Descartes often use the word mode, in the narrow way; he also gives several examples of modes in this sense; so we are able to get quite a firm grip on his conception of them. Thus in Article 61 he cites as examples of modes proprie dicta the square shape and the motion of a square moving stone. In Article 64 he says that thought and extension, which have been identified as the principal DESCARTES S ONTOLOGY 117 attributes of minds and bodies respectively, can also be taken as modes of substances, in that one and the same mind can have many different thoughts, and one and the same body can have, at different times, many different sizes and shapes. He then makes it clear that it is the different thoughts and the different sizes and shapes themselves that are the modes of the substances in which they inhere. Finally, in Article 65, he lists intellection, imagina- tion, recollection, volition, etc. on the one hand, and all shapes, the positions of parts, and the motions of parts on the other, as modes of the things in which they inhere that is, of thinking and extended sub- stances respectively. The text here is a little confusing, in that Descartes first describes the items on the first list as modes of thought and those on the second as modes of extension. This is a case in which he is using the word mode in two different senses, without any indication that he is doing so. The point he wants to make in the Article is that intellection and the other items he lists are modes in the sense of attributes (i.e. in the second of the four senses I distinguished earlier). But he identifies the items in question by referring them to the more general principal attributes of which they are species, calling them modes of the latter (in the third sense of mode). One further point about modes and qualities. In God there are attributes, Descartes observes, but no modes or qualities, because in God there is no variation. Hence, as is shown on my chart, the only modes and qualities there are, are created ones, that is, ones belonging to created substances. 7. Level six: omni-generic vs. uni-generic attributes and substances Descartess distinction between omni- and uni-generic attributes, first introduced in Section One of our passage, is invoked on several occasions in Section Two. We encounter problems, however, when we try to fit this distinction into the more elaborate system of dis- tinctions that Descartes constructs in Section Two. Some points are clear enough, but others are not. (a) It is clear that no principal attribute is omni-generic, since it is principal attributes that determine the genera there are. (b) It also is clear that an uncreated attribute must be uni-generic, since it is a principal attribute. But to what genus does it belong? One possibility is, to the genus of intellectual entities, since God is a thinking substance. On the other hand, the term thinking, pre- sumably, is not applied univocally to God and his crea- tures; and this could mean that God and they cant belong to the same genus after all. (c) It is clear that Descartess main examples of omni-generic entities, duration, number, order, and existence, fall into the category of constant non-principal attributes, although he has no common name for them (which is why I label them nn on my chart). But what are the uni- generic members of this category? One answer is, the Aristotelian properties that he includes among the five common universals in Article 59. This is plau- sible, given his example there, and on the assumption that such properties are to be found not only in geo- metrical entities but also in bodies and minds. (d) In the case of qualities, nothing is clear: whether they are all omni-generic, all uni-generic, or come in both varieties. (e) And it is clear, finally, that all of Descartess examples of modes, which we surveyed a moment ago, are uni-generic. But are there any other modes that are omni-generic, and if so, what are they? Here again is one possible answer: there are such modes, and they are modes of number or order in the way that a particular thought and a particular shape are modes of thinking and extension. (Note the shift in sense between the first modes and the other two in the foregoing sentence.) The latter, Descartes says, are modes of the substances to which they belong; and so, we might say, are the former. But what would such a mode of number or of order be? How about a particular number or order, for example, the number two and the order in a straight line? (I am not sure that this move would work for duration, much less for existence.) The most vexing question that arises at this level, however, concerns substances rather than attributes. There is no doubt that all the substances Descartes iden- tifies as such, created and uncreated, are uni-generic, though we have not yet determined which genus it is that the uncreated substance, along with its attributes, belongs to. What is uncertain is whether there are any substances that Descartes would recognize as omni- generic. In favor of an affirmative answer is the fact that Descartes includes substance, along with duration and number, on his list of most general things when he first introduces this category. Furthermore, it is obvious that the term substance applies to both minds and bodies (and that it does so univocally). On the other side, although duration and number are attributes, it 118 VERE CHAPPELL sounds gibberish to say that substance is a substance. Second, even if we can allow this substance to be a sub- stance, we are hard put to say which substance it is. It cannot be God, or any body or mind, since these are all uni-generic. And what other substances are there for Descartes? Finally, it appears that an omni-generic sub- stance would have no principal attribute. But this violates Descartess fundamental requirement that every substance have exactly one principal property. I think I know how to answer this question, but I need to lay out Descartess theory of universals before doing so. 8. Level seven: God, minds, and bodies and the attributes thereof We come now to the level at which individual sub- stances and fully specified attributes appear. Let us run through their various categories in the order in which they are represented, left to right, on my chart, begin- ning with God. God is of course the uncreated substance, the one and only such substance there is, and all the divine attrib- utes are uncreated too. Every divine attribute, moreover, is a principal attribute. This might seem surprising, for isnt existence a divine attribute, and yet doesnt it extend to all genera of things? The answer is, Yes and No. Gods existence is one of his attributes, but his exis- tence is special, as is his thinking and the substance he is: the term existence is not said univocally of God and of the created beings existing in genera. Descartes states explicitly of Gods existence (in the Fifth Meditation) that it pertains to [His] essence (VII.68), and the same is true of every one of his attributes. That is why every divine attribute is a principal attribute. We might even conclude, in view of Descartess insis- tence in the Third Meditation on the unity and sim- plicity of the divine attributes, that these all reduce somehow to one single attribute. In any case, it is clear that the divine attributes are not only uni-generic, as we have already noted they are, but unique to the single individual substance who is God. This suggests an answer to the question raised earlier, concerning the genus to which God belongs. It is that his genus too is unique to God, that he is its only member. If so, we cannot place God in the genus of thinking beings, despite Descartess characterization of him as a thinking substance. I come now to the created substances, first the mysterious, omni-generic substance, then individual minds and bodies, and finally the different varieties of created attributes. The first I pass over, pending my dis- cussion of universals. About minds and bodies I have only one point to add to what I have already said about them, viz. that each individual mind is, as Descartes affirms in Article 60, really distinct [both] from every other thinking substance and from every corporeal sub- stance. This last point is one that Descartes explicitly argues for in the Sixth Meditation. Here he seems to regard it as a straightforward consequence of the onto- logical doctrines he has been presenting. As for the created attributes, about them I have nothing to add to my earlier accounts of them. But there is a further point about the whole scheme I have been presenting. It is that this scheme could be continued; that is, the categories of substances and attributes at which we have arrived could be further subdivided. Or at least some of them could. We could introduce sub- genera of bodies and of modes, certainly, though the other cases arent so clear. But there is this interesting difference, from the Cartesian perspective, between the two tasks of subdividing bodies and subdividing modes. The former Descartes would likely assign to the natural scientists, physicists and biologists as we should now call them; whereas the latter he might still regard as a proper pursuit for ontologists. There is certainly a basis in his works for distinguishing, within the category of modes, subcategories of standing as opposed to occurring properties, dispositions vs. states, activ- ities vs. events (my terminology, not Descartess), among others. And these are, I believe he would grant, ontological distinctions. C. Section Three: Articles 5759 The chart representing this third Section continues that of Section Two; its first six levels coincide with levels two through seven on the attribute side of the Section Two chart. DESCARTES S ONTOLOGY 119 1. Level seven: actual vs. objective attributes In Article 57 Descartes distinguishes those attributes which are in the very things of which they are the attributes from those which are only in our thought. This is the distinction between what I call actual and objective attributes, and as my chart shows it cuts across all the other distinctions among attributes. Thus, for each individual attribute that exists actually, there is or rather could be an objective attribute that matches or mirrors it; and for each attribute that exists objec- tively, there is or could be an actual attribute that matches or mirrors it. The qualification could be is necessary because the attributes that happen to exist in the world do not correspond one to one with those that human beings happen to think of. On each side there are some that have no counterparts on the other: attributes that people think of but are non-existent in actuality, and actually existing attributes that no one ever thinks of. But there is no attribute found in either the objective or the actual realm which could not have a counterpart in the other. I use the term objective being to stand for an entity that exists in someones mind when he or she thinks of something. Of course a thought is such an entity, but that is not what I mean. Another such entity is a Cartesian idea, but this term idea is ambiguous as Descartes uses it. In one sense he gives the word, an idea is an occurrence in a mind, a mental event or oper- ation of the intellect. This he calls the material sense of the word, and in this sense ideas are not objective beings either, though they are thoughts. But objective beings can be identified with ideas in the other sense in which Descartes uses the word, which he calls the objective sense. In this sense an idea is, as he puts it in the Preface to the Meditations, the thing that is represented by an idea in the first sense, insofar as this is not supposed to exist outside the intellect (VII.8). We might also say that an objective being is the object of an idea (in the first sense) or what the idea is an idea of, except that these expressions also are ambiguous, as is object of thought. For we can and often do think or have an idea of something that exists outside our thought, for example, the actual sun. In that case it is entirely proper to describe the actual sun as the object of our thought, or as that which our idea is an idea of. Thus when we describe an objective being, for example, the objective sun, as the object of an idea, we have to mean something different. Descartes appeals to this distinction in the First Reply to explain the meaning of idea in the second sense just noted, that in which an objective being is an idea. An idea of the sun, he says, is the sun itself existing in the intellect, not of course existing formally, as it does in the sky, but existing objectively, that is in the way in which objects are wont to be in the intellect (VII.102103). (Note that Descartes uses this term formally as a synonym for actually in the Third Meditation, e.g., at VII.41.) Perhaps it would be more illuminating to describe an objective being as the internal object of an idea or thought, or as its content, as philosophers nowadays sometimes do. Descartes does not use these expressions, but he does speak of ideas, in the sense of mental occur- rences, as containing entities which turn out to be objective beings. Internal objects of thought, contents of ideas, ideas themselves as objects existing in our minds these of 120 VERE CHAPPELL a p p o u uncreated uni-gen d a p p o u i a p p o u m created uni-gen a p p o u omni-gen nn a p p o u i a p p o u m uni-gen non-principal created a p p o u omni-gen nn a p p o u i a p p o u m uni-gen Qualities created a p p o u omni-gen nn a p p o u i a p p o u m uni-gen Modes created ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? principal constant variable Attributes course have been the subject of philosophical contention for many centuries. Some philosophers have argued that there simply are no such entities; some commentators have claimed that Descartes did not believe in them. For my part, I believe that Descartes did believe in them, and further that it is no philosophical sin to do so. I also believe and here am acting on the belief that Descartess theory of objective being can be used to illu- minate his doctrine of universals. Before proceeding to that, I need to note that although Descartes introduces the distinction between actual and objective beings in his discussion of attrib- utes, it is clear that the same distinction can be extended to substances. I shall provide details of this extrapola- tion, as I call it, just below. 2. Level eight: particular vs. universal attributes Descartes does not say a great deal about universals in the Principles, but it is past doubt from what he does say that he regards them, all of them, as mere objects of thought, that is, as ideas in the objective sense and hence as objective beings. True, he doesnt quite express this in so many words. What he says (in Article 58) is that when number, for example, is considered not in any created things but only in the abstract or in general, it is no more than a mode of thinking, and the same holds, he continues, for all [the entities] we call uni- versals. Here the term mode must be understood as having the fourth of the senses I distinguished earlier, and the phrase mode of thinking the second of its two senses. Even so, Descartess meaning is far from obvious. But then he goes on, in Article 59, to explain how these universals come about (fiunt). They do so, he says, from the fact that we use one and the same idea for thinking of all the individual [entities] which are similar to one another. We then apply one and the same name to all the things represented by this idea, which name, he says, is universal. It might appear from this last remark that it is only the name and not the idea that is universal. But this appearance is dis- pelled by Descartess description of an example of this process. When we see two stones and attend not to their nature but only to the fact that they are two, we form (formamus) the idea of their number, which we call two; and later when we see two birds or two trees and consider not their nature but only that they are two, we recall (repetimus) the same idea as before, which thus is universal. And so, he adds, we designate this number by the same universal name of two. Hence it is the idea that is the first or basic universal; and the name is called a universal name because it designates this idea. As for the mode of thinking which gives rise to the universal idea, Descartes must mean by that the abstract or general way of thinking, the key to which he evidently takes to be selective attention. Notice how much like Locke Descartes sounds in this passage. Of course the similarity between Descartess and Lockes view of universals is only partial. Locke holds that when we form an idea of two upon seeing two stones, we are in effect creating that idea: it first comes to be in our minds by the process of abstraction. Descartes, however, believed that ideas such as that of two are innate, having been installed in our souls by God at the time he created them. Hence the idea of two is already there when we see the two stones, and what the ensuing abstraction process effects is not the creation of that idea but merely its discovery or activa- tion: abstraction brings it not into being but into con- sciousness. (Descartes elaborates on this theme in his Reply to Gassendis Objections at VII.382.) Descartes does not mention his doctrine of innate ideas in his discussion of universals, or anywhere in this part of the Principles. But he does do so earlier in the same work (VIIIA.9, 13), and there is no reason to suppose that he is abandoning it here. We must therefore append this doctrine to his account of abstraction in order to reach a full understanding of the Cartesian theory of universals. Having laid out this theory in general terms, Descartes proceeds to apply it to the five common universals of the Aristotelian tradition: genus, species, differentia, property, and accident. Only the last three of these are universals in the category of attributes; for genus and species, as we shall see, are substance universals (another source for my impending extrapo- lation). But there is no reason to think that these three, together with the constant non-principal attributes exem- plified by number and duration, are the only universal attributes that Descartes recognizes. There must in fact be universal attributes in all the categories of attributes that have been distinguished, essences as well as modes, both uni- and omni-generic. To generate a universal principal attribute all we have to do is think of thought or extension in general or in the abstract; a universal mode results when we think in this same way of imag- ination or rectilinear motion; and so for the others. All universals are objective beings for Descartes; hence all actual beings are particular. This is not an DESCARTES S ONTOLOGY 121 unusual view when the beings in question are sub- stances. But Descartes introduces his theory of univer- sals as a theory about attributes; and since according to that theory only attributes in our thought are univer- sals, the contrasting attributes in things must be partic- ular. And this is an unusual view: not many philosophers have held it. It may not seem implausible that some Cartesian attributes, for example, modes such as indi- vidual occurrent thoughts and motions of bodies, should be regarded as particulars. But even the essence of a particular mind, the essence that Descartes says is in that mind, is a particular in his view; it is an attribute, but one that is unique to that one mind. By contrast, the essence that one mind shares with others, indeed with all minds, is found in our thought; it is there and only there that that universal attribute exists. All universals are objective beings, that is, ideas in the objective sense of the word. But it doesnt follow that all objective beings are universals, that is, that every idea we have is the idea of a thing or things considered abstractly or generally. We often do think of things indi- vidually and as particulars, and the ideas by means of which we do this must be particular too. This point holds not only for particular substances Descartess sun in the sky and its objective counterpart but also for attributes. Since actual attributes are particular for Descartes, and since we can think of them as such, there must be objective attributes that are particular as well. 3. Extrapolation: universal substances The account of universals that Descartes gives in the Principles is cast and illustrated in terms of attributes. But it is reasonable to extend this account to cover sub- stances as well, as I have mentioned several times now. Most of the details of this extrapolation can be gathered from my chart. As the chart shows, no actual substance is a uni- versal, neither God nor any mind nor any body. But we sometimes think of these particular substances, and when we do we have ideas of them, ideas in the objec- tive sense, so that for each actual substance we think of there is an objective substance existing in our mind. Hence there are objective as well as actual substances. Now we can think of substances individually, in which case the ideas we have of them are as particular as they are. Or we can think of substances generally and in the abstract, and when we do our ideas of them are uni- versal. We can think of the whole genus of minds or bodies, or of some species of them, in this way, in which case the idea we have, the universal that exists in our thought, just is that genus or species. Can we also apply this mode of thinking to God; that is, can we think of God in this abstract and general way? If so, then when we do so think of Him, we have a universal idea of God, an objective universal God existing in our intellect. It may be questioned whether we can have such an idea of God; for uniqueness is not only a necessary property of God, it is entailed by each of his other properties, hence by any property which is included in any idea we have of God. But what this means is not that we cannot think of God abstractly at all; only that we cannot so think of him clearly and dis- tinctly. So there is, or could be, a universal God existing in a human mind, as my chart shows. There is only one problem that remains to be solved, the problem we noted earlier concerning omni-generic substances. The problem is that there are reasons both for and against supposing that such entities are included in the Cartesian ontology. The main reason against sup- posing this is that every substance Descartes mentions God and every mind and body is uni-generic. Now, however, having considered Descartess account of uni- versals and the extension of that account to substances, we can see, first, that all the substances that Descartes mentions are particulars, and second, that there are, besides these, substances that are universal, for example, the genus mind or that of body. And we can also see that there is nothing to keep Descartes from recognizing a universal substance itself, that is, an idea of substance which applies to all particular (created) substances, both minds and bodies. This universal substance would indeed be omni-generic, since it would extend to all genera of substances. Hence our problem is solved if Descartes does recognize this universal substance. And I see no reason to believe that he does not. This concludes my exposition of the Principles passage. I turn now to the apparent discrepancy between 122 VERE CHAPPELL a p p u o uncreated uni-gen God omni-gen Substance o u a p p u o Minds a p p u o Bodies uni-gen created Substances Descartess account of universals, including numbers and figures, in this passage, and what he says about mathematical objects in the Fifth Meditation. II. The objects of mathematics According to the Principles, universals are merely modes of our thinking, which is to say, ideas in human minds. They are ideas in the objective sense of the word, and hence objective beings, though Descartes does not use this terminology here. Among the examples of uni- versals he cites are the number we call two and the figure . . . we call . . . triangle. To be sure, this number and this figure can turn up as modes of individual material substances. But in this case they are particu- lars, as much so as are the substances in which they inhere. The universal two or triangle is the number or figure considered, as Descartes says, simply in the abstract or in general, and not in any created things (Article 58). And it is this two and this triangle that belong to the subject matter of pure mathematics. In the Fifth Meditation, however, Descartes charac- terizes the objects of pure and abstract mathematics as things which even though they may not exist anywhere outside me still cannot be called nothing; for although in a sense they can be thought of at will, they are not my invention but have their own true and immutable natures. When, for example, I imagine a triangle, he goes on, even if perhaps no such figure exists, or has ever existed, anywhere outside my thought, there is still a determinate nature, or essence, or form of the triangle which is immutable and eternal, and not invented by me or dependent on my mind (VII.64). The implication of these remarks is that, though geometrical figures may exist in human minds, they must have some way of being in addition to and independent of such existence: otherwise they could not have essences which are eternal and immutable. This at any rate is how this passage has been inter- preted by certain commentators, most notably Anthony Kenny. In one article Kenny calls Descartess philos- ophy of mathematics thoroughly Platonic and declares Descartes to be the founder of modern Platonism (Kenny, 1970, pp. 692693). Elsewhere Kenny com- pares Descartess view of mathematical objects to that of Meinong (Kenny, 1967, p. 155; Kenny, 1969, p. 25). In both cases Kennys point is that for Descartes a triangle, for example, has a kind of being that [is] sufficient to distinguish it from nothing (Kenny, 1970, p. 699), but is different both from actual existence and from existence or being in thought. Kenny calls this third kind of being being given (dari) (Kenny, 1969, p. 21). Kenny bases his case for Descartess Platonism (or Meinongianism) almost entirely on the Fifth Meditation. He makes no mention of Descartess discussion of uni- versals in the Principles, so of course he takes no notice of the conflict between its view of mathematical objects and the one he attributes to Descartes. By contrast, Alan Gewirth finds both Platonism and Aristotelianism in Descartes, the one in the Fifth Meditation (and the First Reply to Objections), the other in Principles One (and the Fifth Reply) (Gewirth, 1970, p. 678). Gewirths Platonic Descartes, however, is not the extreme realist that Kennys is. Gewirth has Descartes holding that mathematical entities have their own determinate natures or essences regardless of whether any such entities exist (Gewirth, 1971, p. 299), but not that these entities enjoy some kind of being other than that of existence, nor that they are, as Kenny puts it, real thing[s] lacking only the perfection of actual existence (Kenny, 1970, p. 697). Nor is Gewirths Aristotelian Descartes the explicit, thoroughgoing conceptualist that the Principles passages show him to be. To his Descartes Gewirth attributes the Aristotelian doctrines that mathematical essences are quantitative abstrac- tions from natural substances and that mathematical essences in their ontological status are not indepen- dent of physical existents (Gewirth, 1970, p. 678), but not the doctrine that these entities are ideas existing in peoples minds. It is thus not surprising that Gewirth finds it not too difficult to reconcile [the] Aristotelian doctrines of Descartes with his Platonic [ones] (Gewirth, 1971, p. 299). For the doctrines that Gewirth has in mind are indeed logically compatible. But it is not on account of Descartess holding these doctrines that there is a conflict within his thought, at least not the conflict that I am concerned with. Besides which, Kenny claims that Descartes does not hold the Aristotelian doctrines that Gewirth attributes to him; and I agree with Kenny on that. On Gewirths view of Descartes, there is no real conflict between the Principles and the Fifth Meditation concerning the status of mathematical objects. But Gewirth fails to grasp the full import of Descartess position, at least that of the Principles. On Kennys view the conflict is real, but Kenny himself fails to address DESCARTES S ONTOLOGY 123 it: he doesnt consider the Principles position. Another recent scholar who has tackled these issues is Tad Schmaltz. Unlike Kenny, Schmaltz does consider the Principles position; and unlike Gewirth, he does under- stand its conceptualist message, a message he rightly associates not with Aristotle but with Gassendi and Locke. For Schmaltz the problem is to find a reading of Descartes that avoids the Scylla of Kennys Platonic interpretation without thereby falling into the Charybdis of the abstractionist interpretation (Schmaltz, 1991, pp. 162163). By abstractionist here Schmaltz means conceptualist, and he attributes this interpretation mistakenly, as I believe to Gewirth, as well as to Martial Gueroult. According to Schmaltz, mathe- matical entities are neither independent real beings nor merely ideas in human minds but something else: viz., immutable essences belonging to the essence of God. Indeed, Schmaltz goes so far as to claim that Descartes identifies [these] immutable essences with God himself (Schmaltz, 1991, p. 135). One might object to Schmaltzs interpretation on the ground that it is not the immutable essences of numbers and figures that Descartes takes to be the objects of the mathematicians inquiry, but numbers and figures them- selves, the immutable entities that have these essences. Kenny makes the same point against Gewirth (Kenny, 1970, p. 692); and it is true that the texts of both Meditation Five and Principles I.5759 specify trian- gles and not their essences as the targets of mathemat- ical concern. (Note that by treating figures and numbers as entities that have essences Descartes must be regarding them as substances abstract and universal ones but substances nonetheless.) But this point is hardly damaging to Schmaltzs position. For as we have seen, Descartes holds that an entity and its essence are neither really nor modally distinct, and that it is only ratione that they can even be distinguished. So the dif- ference between saying that the mathematician studies figures and numbers and saying that he studies the essences of figures and numbers is inconsequential. A more significant difficulty with Schmaltzs inter- pretation concerns the relationship of the mathemati- cians objects to God. Schmaltz agrees with Kenny in maintaining that such objects are, in Descartess view, the creatures of God. But for Kenny Descartes takes them, once created, to be distinct from their creator, whereas Schmaltzs Descartes conceives them to be identical therewith. On this point Schmaltz cannot be right: as Kenny points out, Descartess mathematical entities [must be] distinct from God, since they stand in a causal relationship to him (Kenny, 1970, p. 696). And of course Schmaltzs Descartes is at odds with the author of the Principles regarding the ontological locus of numbers and figures. According to the former, such things are in God; for the latter, they are in human minds. Schmaltzs interpretation does have some virtues. For one thing, it provides an easy explanation of the eternality of mathematical objects, a feature Descartes explicitly and repeatedly attributes to them. Offsetting such advantages, however, is the fact that Schmaltz is unable to cite a single Cartesian text in direct support of his position. And his efforts to show that various texts and historical precedents support his reading indirectly are at best unconvincing, and in some cases are seri- ously flawed. Is there then no way of reconciling Descartess account of universals in Principles I.5759 with what he says about the objects of mathematics in the Fifth Meditation? Must we suppose that he held and pub- lished two contradictory doctrines within a three-year period or else that he radically changed his view some time between 1641 and 1644? My own belief is that the doctrines in question are perfectly consistent, and that, despite appearances, they can be reconciled, without either violating or ignoring the plain meaning of Descartess texts. I shall now proceed to show how such reconciliation is to be accomplished. My reconciliation project is in fact quite simple: it can be completed in two steps. The first is to note the close affinity that Descartes posits between the objects of mathematics and eternal truths. In the ontological scheme of the Principles, entities of both these kinds are assigned to the general category of objective beings; but the affinity I have in mind is more intimate than that. Descartes discusses eternal truths at several places in his writings. Outside the Principles, his most striking claim about them is that they are created by God, and that they would not have the content they do, or even exist, had not God indifferently chosen to establish them. They are, Descartes sometimes says, the product of Gods free decrees, and they depend absolutely on God for their being and nature. Now in a number of passages Descartes explicitly links eternal truths to mathematical objects. Some such truths, he is wont to say, are truths about (Latin de) numbers and figures, or about the essences thereof. More to our purpose, he indi- cates that these objects, no less than the truths about 124 VERE CHAPPELL them, are the creatures of God. Thus in responding to Gassendis Objections, he says that both the essences of things and the mathematical truths which we can know about them were originally established (condita) by God and hence that neither is independent of him (VII.380). Again, in an early letter to Mersenne he states that God is no less the author of creatures essence than he is of their existence, and goes on to characterize this essence as nothing other than the eternal truths (I.151). Both Kenny and Schmaltz, as we have seen, interpret Descartes as definitely holding what these passages suggest: that God has created not only truths about triangles, for example, but triangles (or their essences) themselves. On this point I think we must agree with them. The second and final step is to recall the connection I noted earlier between Descartess account of univer- sals and his doctrine of innate ideas. The former entails that mathematical objects are objective beings, which is to say, ideas in human minds. The latter explains how these ideas came to be in the minds that have them, viz. by being placed there originally by God. What I now wish to claim is that, for Descartes, Gods creation of numbers and figures consists in his creation of minds containing the ideas of numbers and figures. Mathematical objects just are ideas, according to the ontology of the Principles; and God creates them, according to the doctrine of innate ideas, by including them within the minds that are the direct products of his creative action. These ideas need not be consciously present to the minds in which they are housed, either from the beginning or at every moment thereafter. They may exist originally or intermittently as uncon- scious dispositions, as Descartes acknowledges in his Comments on Regiuss Programma (VIIIB.357f., 361). But doesnt this position destroy the objectivity of math- ematics by making its objects differ from mind to mind? And doesnt it render these objects mutable, since minds grow and wither and the ideas within them change? No, for Descartes holds that God installs the same ideas in every mind that he creates; and no again, since the ideas that God makes to be innate in us are constant and never change. So the position I am attributing to Descartes secures both the objectivity and the immutability of mathematical objects. If I am right about Descartess conception of the objects of mathematics, then given the affinity between them and eternal truths, what holds for the one must hold also for the other. Hence Gods creation of the eternal truths must also consist in his creation of human minds containing such truths. We should have no trouble extending the doctrine of innate ideas to cover eternal truths, considering that Descartes often applies the term idea to propositions as well as to simple concepts (cf. III.395, 417). And in any case he frequently cites truths sometimes calling them axioms or common notions as examples of items that we are born with or that have been placed in us by God: on one occasion he explicitly says that mathematical truths . . . are all inborn in our minds (I.145). So the same considerations that account for the immutability and objectivity of the objects of mathematics account also for the immutability and objectivity of the truths that hold of them, and indeed of the eternal truths in general. This view of eternal truths bears some resemblance to a thesis defended in a recent article by Jonathan Bennett. Bennetts topic is not the ontology of Descartess eternal truths but their modality. His problem is to understand how such truths can be the free creations of God and yet be true of necessity. To solve this problem, Bennett argues, we must attribute to Descartes a conceptualist or subjectivist analysis of modality. On this analysis the necessity of a truth is taken to consist in our being unable to conceive its being false, so that modal facts are reduced to facts about our mental capacities. Hence God is responsible for these modal facts because he is responsible for our minds having the capacities they do: God created modal truths by making us unable to conceive of impossibilities (Bennett, 1994, p. 646). Bennetts view of Descartess understanding of the modal status of eternal truths thus parallels my view of his conception of their ontolog- ical status; and it was in fact while reading Bennetts article that my view first occurred to me. 4 It should be clear that the reconciliation I am proposing is not one of compromise. I am not claiming that Descartess true doctrine of mathematical objects either combines or lies between the conceptualism of the Principles and the Platonism of the Fifth Meditation. Rather, I am denying that the view expressed in Meditation Five is Platonic: I am in effect assimilating that view to the position of the later work. And I think a close reading of the text of Meditation Five bears me out. Nothing in that text amounts to an explicit state- ment that triangles have any being apart from human minds. What is said is that a triangle may not exist anywhere outside me or outside my thought, and that its nature or essence is not invented by me. Descartes DESCARTES S ONTOLOGY 125 does add that the triangles essence is not dependent on my mind; but what he means is merely that it is not my own creation, or indeed the creation of any human being. He does not in this passage make the positive claim that this essence (and its possessor) is the creation of God, or that it is, in that sense, dependent on God a claim he does make, in exactly those terms, in other texts, as we have seen. But he does not deny, here or anywhere, that triangles and their essences depend in another sense on the minds in which, as ideas, they have been created, and to which, as attributes, they belong. Depend in this other sense stands for the relation that any attribute bears to the substance that houses it; and in that sense, according to the Principles, mathemat- ical objects do depend upon human minds. My position is that Descartes believes that mathe- matical objects, that is, the universal numbers and figures that constitute the subject matter of the mathe- matical sciences, are objective beings residing in minds, and that they have come to be where and as they are by the creative action of God. But I am not claiming that there are for Descartes no real numbers and figures in the material world, and that mathematics is merely a mental construction that is imposed arbitrarily on an indifferent reality. On the contrary, I am sure that Descartes believed that God creates not only minds having mathematical ideas residing in them but also bodies having numbers and shapes inhering in them, bodies possessing mathematical properties and standing in mathematical relationships. The difference is that the products of this latter creation are particulars; and although the mathematicians results apply to these entities, the true objects of his study are the universals which are the fruits of the former creation. I have argued that the immutability of mathematical objects, and of eternal truths too, is provided for on the view that I am taking of them. But Descartes maintains that these entities are eternal as well as immutable, and I have not yet said anything about their eternality. Indeed, it may be objected that these entities cannot be eternal if they really are merely ideas in human minds, even if ideas are taken to include (the contents of ) long- term unactualized dispositions as well as (of ) occur- rent events. This is obvious if eternal means timeless, for no human mind exists outside of time. But the objec- tion has force even if eternal is taken, as it frequently is by Descartes, to mean sempiternal or everlasting. For Descartes certainly held that no human mind has existed from the beginning of time, even if he did believe that every mind that is created exists forever after its creation. This means that he would have had to grant that there was a time at which no universal numbers and no truths about such numbers existed, because there were no minds for them to exist in. Bennett avoids this objection (or its analogue) by claiming that the term eternal in the phrase eternal truths means no more than unchanging and thus picks out the same property that immutable does (Bennett, 1994, pp. 663665). I think that Bennett may be right about this. But Descartes also speaks of Gods having created such truths from all eternity (I.152). This might suggest that these truths have been around, so to speak, either from the beginning or as long as God himself has; and if so the objection is applicable after all. Strictly, however, what God does from all eternity is will or decree that the truths in question obtain, and it is his acts of will or decrees that are contemporaneous with him: indeed, Descartes says, these decrees are not really distinct from God himself (V.166). But the crea- tures that come to exist by Gods decrees, whether truths or human minds or the whole universe, are distinct both from God and from the pertinent decrees. (Schmaltzs failure to appreciate this point is one of those flaws in his argumentation that I alluded to earlier.) And though the decree may be issued at (or before) the beginning of time, the creature does not begin to exist until the decree is, as Descartes says, enacted (V.166). Descartes has, as far as I can see, no way of meeting this objection without admitting that by calling them eternal he did not mean that either the truths or the objects of mathematics themselves exist from all eternity. He cannot claim that these entities exist implic- itly or potentially in Gods decrees, which are eternal in whatever sense Descartes takes that term to have. For these decrees are in, or rather are, God himself, and Descartes is clear that nothing belonging to God is implicit or potential. Nor does the Cartesian ontology provide any place for potential or merely possible beings as such: for Descartes, any entity that is not actual is an objective being, and hence requires the exis- tence of at least one human mind. I see no way, there- fore, of allowing entities (other than God) that are strictly and literally eternal within the confines of Descartess ontology. The objection stands; but the con- clusion I draw from it is not that either Descartess ontology or my rendition of it must be rejected, but 126 VERE CHAPPELL rather that the objects and the truths of mathematics are not, for Descartes, strictly and literally eternal. 5 Notes 1 See Schiffer, 1976, p. 22 et passim. 2 Cottingham attributes such trialism to Descartes in Cottingham, 1985, although he does so on the basis of texts other than this one in the Principles. Other scholars have taken the stronger position that Descartes is a trialist regarding, not (or not merely) attributes, but substances, i.e. that he recognized three distinct kinds of substances, at least in some texts; see Broughton and Mattern, 1978, Hoffman, 1986, and Schmaltz, 1992. 3 In another paper, however, I have defended the view that Descartes is a dualist regarding substances against the claims of Hoffman et al. that he espouses substance trialism: see Chappell, 1994. 4 Bennett has since informed me that he is much in agreement with my ontological extension of his position, and that he strongly agrees with my dissolution of the worry about the Fifth Meditation. 5 Shorter versions of this paper were read at (1) the Early Modern Philosophy Conference, in honor of Willis Doney, at Dartmouth College, July 1995; (2) the Sixth Annual Philosophy Conference at the University of California, Riverside, January 1996; and (3) the University of Western Ontario, April 1996. I am grateful to my auditors on those occasions for helpful suggestions and criticisms. At the Riverside Conference I was delighted to learn that views very like mine on the status of Descartess mathematical objects had been arrived at quite independently by Larry Nolan, who was then com- pleting his dissertation at Irvine. Nolan gives an elegant statement and a persuasive defense of these views, not only in his dissertation (Nolan, 1997a) but in a paper (Nolan, 1997b) he had read the previous May at a conference at Stanford, and which is now in the course of being published. References Bennett, Jonathan: 1994, Descartess Theory of Modality, Philosophical Review 103, 639667. Broughton, Janet and Mattern, Ruth: 1978, Reinterpreting Descartes on the Notion of the Union of Mind and Body, Journal of the History of Philosophy 16, 2332. Chappell, Vere: 1994, Lhomme cartsien, in Jean-Marie Beyssade and Jean-Luc Marion (Ed.), Descartes. Objecter et rpondre, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, pp. 403426. Gewirth, Alan: 1970, The Cartesian Circle Reconsidered, Journal of Philosophy 67, 668685. Gewirth, Alan: 1971, Descartes: Two Disputed Questions, Journal of Philosophy 68, 288296. Hoffman, Paul: 1986, The Unity of Descartess Man, Philosophical Review 95, 339370. Kenny, Anthony: 1968, Descartes: A Study of his Philosophy, New York: Random House. Kenny, Anthony: 1969, Descartess Ontological Argument, in Joseph Margolis (Ed.), Fact and Existence, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 1836. Kenny, Anthony: 1970, The Cartesian Circle and the Eternal Truths, Journal of Philosophy 57, 685700. Nolan, Lawrence: 1997a, Descartess Theory of Essences. PhD Dissertation, University of California at Irvine. Nolan, Lawrence: 1997b, The Ontological Status of Cartesian Natures, Forthcoming. Schiffer, Stephen: 1976, Descartes on his Essence, Philosophical Review 85, 2143. Schmaltz, Tad M.: 1991, Platonism and Descartess View of Immutable Essences, Archiv fr die Geschichte der Philosophie 73, 129170. Schmaltz, Tad M.: 1992, Descartes and Malebranche on Mind and Mind-Body Union, Philosophical Review 101, 281325. University of Massachusetts, Amherst DESCARTES S ONTOLOGY 127