1

LEVELS OF SCEPTICISM IN THE FIRST MEDITATION

Marleen Rozemond's recent paper 'The First Meditation and the Senses' presents a bold and
interesting claim about the structure of the sceptical arguments in the First Meditation. In the
Synopsis to the Meditations Descartes states that the principal benefit of engaging with sceptical
doubts is to lead the mind away from the senses. Most commentators have held that this process
of withdrawing the mind from the senses is complete by the end of the Dream Argument. When
the Evil Demon enters the scene, on what Rozemond quite rightly describes as the standard view,
the common sense world of everyday sense perception has already been banished. Rozemond
takes issue with this, however. On her interpretation, the sceptical doubt associated with the Evil
Demon has a crucial role to play in withdrawing the mind from the senses, because "the Dream
Argument leaves intact the view that our ideas come from external objects that they resemble
with respect to the types of quality they have" (p.42). Bold and interesting though this claim is,
however, I find it unconvincing.
Her discussion of scepticism situates it in relation to two assumptions. The first is the
Resemblance Assumption:
RA There is no sharp qualitative difference between the cause and content of
our experiences.
The second is the Common Sense View:
CSV There is no sharp qualitative difference between the physical world and
the content of our experience.
According to Rozemond the conjunction of RA and CSV are fundamental to scholastic
Aristotelianism, as well as reflecting a more or less universal unreflective trust in the senses. Part
of the purpose of the Meditations is, accordingly, to undermine RA and CSV in favour of a
mechanistic view of the world, and Rozemond rightly sees the engagement with scepticism as a
vital element of this project. Her central claim is that RA and CSV are still in play at the end of
the Dream Argument, and are only dispatched with the Evil Demon Argument.
2
Her argument for this conclusion concentrates on the Painter Analogy with which Descartes
closes the dream argument:
For even when painters try to create sirens and satyrs with the most extraordinary
bodies, they cannot give them natures which are new in all respects; they simply
jumble up the limbs of different animals. Or if perhaps they manage to think up
something so new that nothing remotely similar has ever been seen before
something which is therefore completely fictitious and unreal at least the
colours used in the composition must be real. By similar reasoning, although these
general kinds of things eyes, head, hands and so on could be imaginary, it
must at least be admitted that certain other even simpler and more universal things
are real. These are as it were the real colours from which we form all the images
of things, whether true or false, that occur in our thoughts.
1

Descartes, of course, immediately goes on to say what those 'simpler and more universal things'
are:
This class appears to include corporeal nature in general, and its extension; the
shape of extended things; the quantity, or size and number of those things, the
place in which they may exist, the time through which they may endure, and so
on.
2

According to Rozemond, although Descartes does not explicitly mention sensible qualities (such
as colours and tastes) in this list, they should nonetheless be included. She explicitly rejects the
interpretation, pioneered by Gueroult, that the 'simpler and more universal' things (henceforth:
simples) should be identified with the simple natures of Cartesian science (and hence would not
include sensible qualities). She offers four principal arguments for the conclusion that Descartes'
list should be read as including sensible qualities:
A) The list is not a complete list, and if it were offered as a complete list it would
be unjustified.
B) The argumentation prior to the Painter Analogy does not support the excusion
of sensible qualities.
C) The list of simples is in fact motivated by an interest in mathematics,
Descartes' interest being to stress that the objects of mathematics remain
undoubted.
D) The Evil Demon Argument has two stages, the first of which uses the
omnipotence of God to cast doubt upon the view that simple ideas derive from the
world.

1
AT VII 20, CSM II 13-14.
2
AT VII 20, CSM II 14.
3
It seems to me, however, that each of these arguments either has serious defects or is irrelevant
to the conclusion she wishes to establish. In addition the way in which she formulates the issue in
terms of RA and CSV is significantly misconceived. Before going into details, however, let me
present a more general objection to Rozemond's position.
One of the key questions any interpretation must answer is why Descartes made scepticism
central to the Meditations in a way that he did not anywhere else in his writings. It is natural to
think that sceptical doubts have a positive function that they are not merely offered as targets to
be refuted. And it is even more natural to think that their positive function is given by Descartes
conviction that there are certain things which ought to be doubted. The reader is not intended to
close the Meditations with the same impressionistic views with which (Descartes thinks) he
opened them. He is in fact intended to be more sceptical. But, since the sceptical doubts and
supporting arguments come in increasing degrees of strength, this suggests that there must be a
cut-off point in the progression from the initial doubts about the reliability of the senses to the
global scepticism associated with the Evil Demon. There must be a point before which the
sceptical arguments are sound, and after which they are unsound. Now, Descartes' conviction
that there are certain things which ought to be doubted is an obvious corollary of his scientific
work, which replaced the common sense world of scholastic science with a universe of
colourless, tasteless particles swirling around in vortices. So it is natural to look for a cut-off
point that makes genuine doubt correspond to scientific truth. Identifying the 'simpler and more
universal' things with the simple natures (or at least with the basic notions of Cartesian physics)
provides just such a cut-off point at the close of the Dream Argument, also doing justice to the
strong intuition that the Evil Demon is the real villain of the First Meditation.
3
If the Dream
Argument leaves us doubting everything except the basic notions of Cartesian physics, then in a
very important sense it is actually well-founded. It introduces doubts about the common sense
view of the world which are more or less the doubts that a thoughtful Cartesian physicist would
have.
4


3
When I refer to the Evil Demon Argument I mean this as an abbreviation for the various different arguments that
follow the Dream Argument. As will emerge below, the expression is midleading as it stands.
4
I discuss this at much greater length in my 'Scepticism and Science in Descartes', forthcoming in Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research.
4
The interpretation just sketched out offers a satisfactory explanation of why Descartes
introduces sceptical worries. And it also explains why he should have wanted to rebut some of
the worries which he raised (those stronger than the Dream Argument). Comparing it with
Rozemond's interpretation is very telling, because her account of the structure of sceptical doubt
cannot perform the second task. If, as she says, it is part the purpose of the Meditations to use
sceptical doubts to overturn RA and CSV, and if RA and CSV are not despatched until the Evil
Demon Argument, then it is inexplicable why Descartes should want to rebut the Evil Demon
Argument. Something must be going wrong somewhere. Let us turn to the details of the
arguments to find out what.
Let me take arguments (A) and (B) together. According to argument (A) the list of 'simpler
and more universal things' which closes the Painter Analogy is not a complete list. That is
certainly true. Note, however, that this makes it irrelevant to speculate, as argument (A) does,
about whether not Descartes would be justified in offering it as a complete enumeration. The real
question is whether a suitably complete list ought to contain the sensible qualities, and this is
where argument (B) comes into play. Argument (B) maintains that Descartes has not provided
any argument for excluding the sensible qualities:
It is crucial to note that nothing in the argument of the Painter Analogy that
precedes the list justifies their absence. What about the analogy could possibly
explain the idea that the existence of sensible but not mechanistic qualities should
now be doubted? (p.38)
This is completely mistaken. The Painter Analogy provides excellent support for precisely the
thesis that Rozemond claims to be unjustified. The point of the Painter Analogy is to drive home
two different but significantly related distinctions. The first is a distinction between ideas and
their causes, while the second is a distinction between simple and complex objects. What
Descartes' imaginary interlocutor is pointing out is that, while the Dream Argument shows that it
is legitimate to doubt that anything exists corresponding to our ideas of composite objects, the
legitimacy of that doubt is dependent upon granting the real existence both of the things of which
those composite things are composed and of whatever those things are that we need to explain
how we come to have the ideas that we do have. Note what Descartes' interlocutor is not saying.
He is not making the proto-Lockean point that our complex ideas are built out of our simple
5
ideas (which would, of course, open the door to sensible qualities immediately). He is saying that
we cannot consistently accept that our perceptual ideas of complex objects might be illusory
without providing an account of what the world might contain that would provide us with
illusory ideas. This is why Descartes slips almost imperceptibly between talking about kinds of
things ('these simpler and more universal things') and ideas ('the real colours from which we
form all the images of things'). Now, this is what one might term a place-holder argument,
because it appeals beyond itself to an account of perception which it does not provide. Descartes'
own theory of perceptual experience fills both the gaps identified by the interlocutor. It explains
both what the simple things are of which complex things are composed, and how those simple
things act to produce ideas of complex objects.
5
And, of course, it denies the real existence of
sensible qualities. This seems to me to provide a plausible and principled reason for thinking that
the Painter Analogy does indeed give grounds for excluding the sensible qualities.
Let me turn now to argument (C). Here we are told that the list of 'simpler and more
universal things' is in fact intended to capture the Aristotelian conception of mathematics.
Rozemond is being slightly inconsistent in her argument here, because the only reason she
provides for this thesis is that Descartes' list excludes motion, which falls outside the scope of
Aristotelian mathematics. This is not something that should impress her, given her insistence that
the list is not intended to be complete. More significant, though, is that the only passage which
might support this textual claim this claim comes into direct conflict with argument (B).
Consider the paragraph where Descartes introduces the certainty of mathematics:
So a reasonable conclusion from this might be that physics, astronomy, medecine,
and all other disciplines which depend on the study of composite things, are
doubtful; while arithmetic, geometry and other subjects of this kind, which deal
only with the simplest and most general things, regardless of whether they exist in
nature or not, contain something certain and indubitable.
6

This passage might, at first sight, appear to support Rozemond's interpretation, since it does have
the clear implication that mathematics is left undamaged at the end of the Dream Argument. The
problem, though, is that it seems equally clearly to imply that mathematics is the only thing left

5
Note, moreover, that an Aristotelian species theory of perception, which Rozemond assumes to be still in play at
this stage, cannot answer fill either of the gaps.
6
AT VII 20, CSM II 14.
6
standing at the end of the dream argument which is incompatible with the view that sensible
qualities are still in play at the end of the Dream Argument. And it is hopeless to think that the
sensible qualities might be incorporated by reference under "other subjects dealing with the
simplest and most general things", because there is no arithmetic-like subject that deals with the
sensible qualities.
The only to avoid the conclusion that mathematics is all that survives the Dream Argument is
to accept that Cartesian physics counts as one of the "other subjects of this kind" in the way I
suggested above. There is, admittedly, a prima facie difficulty with the fact that in that very
sentence Descartes describes physics as uncertain because it deals with composite things. But the
solution here, I take it, is that Descartes is referring to Aristotelian physics rather than his own.
Cartesian physics is corpuscularian. It tries to show how the behaviour of composite physical
objects can be predicted and explained in terms of the behaviour of their parts, which are
themselves understood in terms of simples. It can only be described as dealing with composite
objects in the very limited sense that it does not hold that composite objects are made up of
indivisible atoms. On the other hand, however, this does seem to be a fair description of
Aristotelian/scholastic physics, where explanation proceeds in terms of the potentialities and
formal principles pertaining to composite physical objects.
This takes us to argument (D). The argument here is that the first stage of the Evil Demon
Argument uses the omnipotence of God to doubt the view that simple ideas derive from the
world. Rozemond thinks that only with this further level of doubt are RA and CSV overturned.
Rozemond has some interesting things to say about the scholastic and contemporary background
to Descartes' use of divine omnipotence to argue that God might produce ideas of even the
simplest and most general things in our minds without those things existing. An initial problem,
though, is that this is all rather irrelevant, because when one looks closely at the crucial
paragraphs of the First Meditation it becomes apparent that neither the omnipotence of God nor
the Evil Demon hypothesis is actually essential to the genesis of hyperbolic doubt. It is worth
spending a little time on this, because it is often neglected.
7
Descartes does indeed start off by stating his belief that there is an omnipotent God and
posing the question "How do I know that he has not brought it about that there is no earth, no
sky, no extended thing, no shape, no size, no place, while at the same time ensuring that all these
things appear to me to exist just as they do now?"
7
The first scenario that he envisages is one in
which God has arranged matters so that he is completely deceived about everything, including
what he had earlier described as the transparent truths of mathematics:
What is more, since I sometimes believe that other go astray in cases where they
think they have the most perfect knowledge, may I not similarly go wrong every
time I add two and three or count the sides of a triangle, or in some other even
simpler matter, if that is imaginable?
8

But this is not Descartes' considered formulation of the sceptical problem. The fact that he has
placed the responsibility for possible deception on God immediately suggests to him two damage
limitation strategies. The first foreshadows what will eventually become his anti-sceptical line of
argument in the main part of the Meditations, namely that complete deception seems to be
incompatible with the divine goodness. At this stage in the argument, however, Descartes
immediately realises that this strategy is not available, because occasional deception seems just
as incompatible with the divine goodness as complete deception, and yet it obviously occurs. It is
not until he develops his theory of judgement and error in the Fourth Meditation that he finds an
answer to this problem.
The second damage limitation strategy is initially more promising. It too makes play on the
role that God plays in generating Descartes' first attempt at global scepticism. "Perhaps there are
some", he wonders, "who would prefer to deny the existence of so powerful a God rather than
believe that everything else is uncertain".
9
What is interesting, and not often noticed by
commentators on the First Meditation, is that Descartes does actually accept this strategy. For the
sake of argument, he accepts that there is no God. But his conclusion from this is that it makes
sceptical worries more rather than less threatening:
Let us not argue with them, but grant them that everything said about God is a
fiction. According to their supposition, then, I have arrived at my present state by

7
AT VII 21, CSM II 14.
8
AT VII 21, CSM II 14.
9
AT VII 21, CSM II 14.
8
fate or chance or a continuous chain of events, or by some other means; yet since
deception and error seem to be imperfections, the less powerful they make my
original cause, the more likely it is that I am so imperfect as to be deceived all the
time.
10

What is particularly interesting is that Descartes clearly thinks that these apparently rather
tenuous thoughts suffice to render all his beliefs dubitable. He continues:
I have no answer to these arguments, but am finally compelled to admit that there
is not one of my former beliefs about which a doubt may not properly be raised;
and this is not a flippant or ill-considered conclusion, but is based on powerful
and well thought-out reasons. So in future I must withold my assent from these
former beliefs just as carefully as I would from obvious falsehoods, if I want to
discover any certainty.
11

Descartes has now reached the ultimate degree of scepticism, and claims that he has good
grounds for thinking that he has no non-dubitable beliefs at all. It is rather striking, however, that
he reaches this conclusion without relying on the omnipotence of God and two paragraphs
before there is any mention of the Evil Demon hypothesis, which is usually taken to provide
Descartes' considered reason for withdrawing assent from all of his previous beliefs.
When we look at the Evil Demon hypothesis itself as it appears in the final paragraph of the
Meditation, it becomes even clearer that the hypothesis is not actually doing any work in
generating the sceptical conclusion that no beliefs are stable. In the penultimate paragraph of the
First Meditation Descartes emphasises that the sceptical conclusion has already been established
to his satisfaction. He refers to "the fact that they [ie all his opinions] are in a sense doubtful, as
has just been shown" and goes on to say: "But it is not enough merely to have noticed this; I
must make an effort to remember it".
12
The Evil Demon hypothesis is part of the 'effort to
remember'. It is a device he introduces to stop himself wavering, rather than an argument in
support of the conclusion that all his beliefs are unstable.
Closer attention to the details of the arguments than Rozemond provides shows, therefore,
that much of what she says about God's omnipotence is interesting but not strictly relevant.
Nonetheless, it is incontestable that what is commonly referred to as the Evil Demon argument

10
AT VII 21, CSM II 14.
11
AT VII 21-22, CSM II 14-15.
12
AT VII 22, CSM II 15.
9
does provide reasons for doubting that the simples have real existence. And Rozemond is quite
correct to think that this is a new level of doubt. Does this then concede her main point that the
'withdrawal from the senses' is not complete before the Evil Demon Argument (so called)? I
think not, for the simple reason that no plausible 'withdrawal from the senses' could require
doubting the real existence of the simples. That would be overkill of the first order. Let me spell
this out in more detail.
Rozemond quite rightly thinks that one of Descartes' targets in the First Meditation is
common sense Aristotelian epistemology. Her central claim is that the epistemology of common
sense is still in play at the end of the Dream Argument:
In the First Meditation Descartes is gradually undermining the common sense and
Aristotelian epistemology, and the Painter Analogy contains a response from that
perspective to the Dream Argument (p. 32)
There appears to be some confusion here, however. The conjunction of CSV and RA is really too
weak to capture anything that might interestingly be described as common sense Aristotelian
epistemology. Common sense Aristotelian epistemology is what Descartes has in mind in the
following passage from the first paragraph of The World (which Rozemond quotes):
. . . although we all persuade ourselves commonly that the ideas that we have in
our thought are entirely similar to the objects from which they proceed,
nevertheless I see no reason that assures us that this is true. On the contrary, I note
many observations which make us doubt it.
13

Coming to doubt this assumption (which we all, according to Descartes, acquire in childhood) is
the process which Descartes describes as withdrawing the mind from the senses. Although it
would be natural to term this the Resemblance Assumption that term is already in play. Let me
call it the Similarity Assumption. The important point is that it bears little relation to Rozemond's
RA. Rozemond's RA is the principle that there is no sharp qualitative difference between the
cause and content of our experiences and, as she interprets it (and counterfactually assuming the
soundness of her arguments), RA remains in play at the end of the Dream Argument. But the
Similarity Assumption is surely despatched by the Dream Argument, as Descartes clearly
recognises. Let me return to the Painter Analogy. The crucial sentences are:

13
AT XI 3-4, CSM I 81.
10
. . . although these general kinds of things eyes, head, hands and so on could
be imaginary, it must at least be admitted that certain other even simpler and more
universal things are real. These are as it were the real colours from which we form
all the images of things, whether true or false, that occur in our thoughts.
14

Descartes admits that 'these general kinds of things' could be imaginary. The dubitability of our
ideas of ordinary medium-sized dry goods is what he accepts the Dream Argument has shown.
The point of the Painter Analogy is not to dispute this, but to show what can be salvaged from
this. And no position that accepts the dubitability of the existence of medium-sized dry goods
can be described as the position of common sense.
So, if the Similarity Assumption is Descartes' real target, then even if RA and CSV as
Rozemond defines them were still standing at the end of the Dream Argument and only attacked
in the first stage of the Evil Demon Argument this would be irrelevant to the question of where
in the Meditations the 'withdrawal of the mind from the senses' is completed. Since this is the
question which Rozemond describes herself as tackling I can only conclude that she fails to
answer it.





14
AT VII 20, CSM II 13-14.