Malebranche's Method: Knowledge and Evidence

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1Cf. Pyle's assessment that ‘Malebranche adopts from Descartes, first and foremost, the famous method’ (Citation2003, 5); and McCracken (Citation1983, 51n. 84). For an earlier account of just how infused the Search is by Cartesianism and the Cartesian method, cf. Alquié (Citation1974, 29ff.). 2Lennon develops ‘(a)’ in greater detail in ‘Malebranche and Method’, his contribution to the Cambridge Companion to Malebranche (Citation2000). However, that paper proceeds mainly from the separate consideration of Malebranche's treatments of free will and doubt rather than from Malebranche's strict account of ideas. 3MM 15–16. 4Nonetheless it seems to me that there are problems with the way Lennon employs the term in his characterization of the debate between Malebranche and Arnauld. He claims that the status of clarity and distinctness as ‘properties of mental states’‘was at the core of Malebranche's long debate with Arnauld’ (MM 19). As an account of psychologism in the Malebranche-Arnauld debate, this departs from the standard view that that debate was over the status of ideas, not clarity and distinctness. 5Cf. Meditations III (AT VII 40–3). 6For Malebranche's perception par simple vue, cf. e.g. LO 481 (OC II 371). For an authoritative history of the Scholastic origins of this doctrine, cf. Day (Citation1947). For an account of the moral and religious significance of this anti-psychologism, H. M. Bracken, ‘The Malebranche–Arnauld Debate; Philosophical or Theological?’ in Nicholas Malebranche: His Philosophical Critics and Successors, edited by Stuart Brown (Assen/Maastricht, The Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 1991) 35–48. 7For the purposes of this paper, I accept Lennon's general characterization of Descartes' method. For more detailed accounts, cf., e.g. Leslie J. Beck, The Method of Descartes: A Study of the Regulae (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952); Gerd Buchdahl, Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science: The Classical Origins, Descartes to Kant (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1969) 79–155; Stephen Gaukroger, Descartes: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995) 104–34. 8Lennon acknowledges a strong similarity between the methodological rules of Descartes and Malebranche ‘[V]ery early in the Search, and more emphatically even than Descartes, Malebranche proposes a general rule for avoiding error that sounds very much like Descartes' first rule’ (MM 17). 9Here again I allude to the fact that Malebranche's epistemological orientation is ultimately moral and religious, not scientific. As Alquié notes on a general level (1947, 58), Malebranche's religious orientation does not prevent him from finding Descartes's philosophy well-suited to his own agenda. 10In other important respects their theories of knowledge may not be so far apart. Malebranchean bare apprehension arguably involves some kind of (mind-nonmind) adequation, namely adequation between our perceptions on the one hand, and the non-mental ideas Malebranche associates with the divine substance on the other. As noted, the perceptions involved in bare apprehension are not just any old mental entities; they ‘pure’ perceptions and in this capacity they are differentiated from other kinds of perception as adequate as receptors of divine agency. This suggests that some kind of adequation is required on the Malebranchean account, since for him ideas are as extra-mental as Cartesian material things are in relation to clear and distinct modes of the mind. Obviously, this is not to say that Malebranchean ideas are the same kind of extra-mental thing as Cartesian (or Malebranchean) corporeal substance. 11Lennon's additional claim that Malebranche ‘identifies [this objective order of ideas] with the divine essence’ seems too strong, as it fails to account for Malebranche's repeated and strenuous efforts to qualify the sense in which ideas and God are identified. The following is typical of Malebranche's position: Thus, God, the infinitely perfect Being, including eminently in himself all that there is of reality or perfection in all beings, can represent them to us in touching us with his essence, not understood absolutely, but taken insofar as it is relative to those beings, because his infinite essence includes all there is of true reality in all finite beings. (DCCP 88, OC XV 23) On the interpretation of this passage, and of the many passages similar to it, depends Malebranche's attempt to reconcile divine simplicity with the doctrine that God possesses individual, discrete ideas of things. 12 The perception I have of intelligible extension belongs to me, it is a modification of my mind. It is I who perceive this extension. But the extension I perceive is not a modification of my mind. For I am well aware that it is not myself I see when I think of infinite spaces, of a circle, of a square, of a cube, when I look at this room or turn my eyes to the sky. (DM 16, OC XII 45) 13Robinet (Citation1965, 327). 14Whether ideas be in the mind or in God, in important ways these two doctrines of knowledge share strong affinities. First, for each philosopher the order ideas represent or to which they correspond is the order of the non-mental world. Were this not the case for Malebranche, then he would be committed to claiming that in apprehending non-mental ideas we would be apprehending God alone, not the world; we would be apprehending God's substance, not God's substance in so far as it is representative of or participable by creatures (to employ the stock Malebranchean phrase that distinguishes perception of ideas from perception of God). In general, Malebranche denies that the two perceptions (of God and things in the world) are the same, although this issue arises most acutely in connection with his doctrine of intelligible extension, a doctrine that in the eyes of many brings him close to Spinozism. Cf. Moreau (Citation1947). Second, the content of ideas in these disparate ontologies is, in effect, the same for each philosopher. With allowances for Malebranchean modifications of Cartesian physics and mathematics, and for Malebranche's attempts to reintroduce teleology, each philosopher possesses and seeks to advance the same mathematico-mechanical vision of the material world. 15‘Here is the first [general rule for avoiding error], which concerns the sciences. We should never give complete consent except to propositions which seem so evidently true that we cannot refuse it of them without feeling an inward pain and the secret reproaches of reason’ (LO 10, OC I 55). 16I agree with Lennon's implied view that how one takes evidence, i.e. psychologistically or non-psychologistically, determines whether one regards it as prior to perception, i.e. as ‘there to be uncovered’, or as instead constructed in perception itself. However, apart from the reasons I adduce in this body of this paper, I believe there is further reason to reject Lennon's secondary claim that evidence is pre-existing and ‘there to be uncovered’. Against the contention that ‘[t]he search after truth is less a matter of seeking out, or of constructing, something than of realizing fully what is always present to us’, can be juxtaposed Malebranche's claim that ‘there are two sorts of things that can produce and preserve this evidence’ (LO 409, OC II 246). This suggests that evidence is generated in us in our apprehension of ideas, not discovered in ideas themselves. 17Elsewhere, he says we yield to propositions which are evident; cf. OC I 5 (LO 9). 18Lennon repeatedly claims that Malebranche's talk of ‘pain’ in this connection is metaphorical only. This strikes me as a breach of the rule of interpretive charity, viz. that we always should assume, in the absence of modifying expressions like ‘so to speak’, ‘as it were’, etc., that a writer's literal meaning is the intended meaning. Consider how a metaphorical reading of the following passages leads Lennon flatly to contradict what the putative metaphor affirms. Malebranche writes: The Master who teaches us inwardly wills that we listen to Him rather than to the authority of the greatest philosophers. It pleases Him to instruct us, provided that we apply ourselves to what He tells us. By meditation and very close attention we consult Him: and by a certain inward conviction and those inward reproaches He makes to those who do not submit, He answers us. (LO 13, OC I 60) Lennon interprets: ‘This Master is not the kind who forces us slavishly to believe, but the kind who as a teacher shows us what we ought to believe. Once again, it is only metaphorically that we hear a voice at all’ (MM, 18–19). Aside from the fact that Lennon proffers no textual evidence for his metaphorical interpretation, to this author's ears Malebranche's terms ‘Master’ and ‘submission’ suggest a strong pathology on our part when it comes to our encounter with truth. This contrasts starkly with the Lennon's strictly normative or non-psychologistic reading, according to which ‘[t]his Master is not the kind who forces us slavishly to believe, but the kind who as a teacher shows us what we ought to believe’. On that non-psychologistic interpretation, there is no Cartesian psychological compulsion, but merely an evidentiary recommendation which we might or might not elect to follow. 19Malebranche's second main methodological injunction, ‘which concerns morals, is this. We should never absolutely love some good if we can without remorse refuse to love it’ (LO 10, OC I 55). 20In a passage vaguely reminiscent of Leibniz's distinction between inclining and necessitating reasons, Malebranche contrasts constraint of our belief ‘through evidence’ and constraint ‘through impression’. The former is much stronger: It is true that we have a strong propensity to believe that there are bodies surrounding us; I agree here with Descartes. But this propensity, as natural as it is, does not constrain our belief through evidence; it merely inclines us toward belief through impression. Now, our free judgments should follow only light and evidence; and if we let ourselves be led by sense impressions, we shall be mistaken almost always. (LO 573, OC III 62) For the Leibnizian distinction between inclining and necessitating reasons, cf. New Essays on Human Understanding 2.1.15, 2.21.8, 12, 49; and Theodicy§§43, 45, 53, 132, 280. A referee of this paper notes that Malebranche's position here seems to imply that the existence of extra-mental things (bodies) cannot be known with evidence. Malebranche's discussion of philosophical doubt seems to bear this out: existential propositions lack the evidentiary force of mathematical propositions, and assent to them is ultimately derivative, based on knowledge of God's non-deceptive nature. Cf. OC II 372–3, 377; OC III 59–60. An intimation of Malebranche's belief that matter's existence cannot be demonstrated by reason alone, but requires faith as well, is given in his assessment that ‘Descartes has given the strongest proofs that reason alone can muster for the existence of bodies’ (LO 572, OC III 60). 21In his ‘Remarks on what was said concerning the necessity of evidence’, Malebranche writes that ‘probabilities need not be utterly despised, because several probabilities joined together generally can produce as much conviction as can very clear demonstrations. An infinity of examples of this are found in physics and morals …’ (LO 15, OC I 64). One of the referees of this paper rightly notes that Malebranche's acknowledgement in the Search that the subjective effects of both highly probable and demonstrably true propositions are easily confused, is echoed in his claim in the Traité de Morale that sometimes we can confuse a mere prejudice with the authentic voice of God. This general concession by Malebranche may spell trouble. It is hard to see what use the ‘inward-pain-and-secret-reproaches’ clause (and, with it, evidence) can have, given that ‘we even feel pain when we do not let ourselves be persuaded by [probably true propositions]’ (LO 15, OC 1 64). The problem is the general Cartesian one of disentangling clear and distinct perceptions from perceptions merely thought to be clear and distinct. 22Precisely because it is psychological and causal, the series of psychological events involved in acquiring truth or yielding consent to evidence has a specific temporal sequence. First ‘[t]he unknown aspects must be examined in order to enter fully into the nature of the thing … [in order]then to consent fully if the evidence obliges us to do so’. In this respect we ‘make good use of our freedom by always refraining from consenting to things and loving them until forced to do so by the powerful voice of the Author of Nature’. The culmination of this series of psychological events is that we are ‘obliged’ to consent by ‘evidence’, or consent is ‘forced’ from us ‘by the powerful voice of the Author of Nature’ (LO 11, OC I 57). 23Malebranche's claim here that ‘the powerful voice of the Author of Nature’ has so far been called ‘the reproaches of our reason and the remorse of our conscience’, need not be taken to imply that these reproaches and this remorse are not psychological items. Remorse and reproach are the voice of God in the sense that they are its inner, i.e. psychological manifestations. As Malebranche puts this a few paragraphs earlier, ‘to submit in good faith to these secret reproaches of our reason that accompany the refusal to yield to evidence is to obey the voice of eternal truth that speaks to us inwardly’ (LO 10, OC I 55). 24‘God is His own wisdom. Sovereign Reason is coeternal and consubstantial with Him’ (DM 168). Cf. DM 32, 124. 25I say this despite Malebranche's general disparagement of faculties, cf. DM 40–1 (OC XII 74). On occasion, it should be noted, Malebranche talks freely of mental faculties or capacities (of which, he argues nonetheless, we have no idea, cf. DM 34 [OC XII 67]). For the view that the doctrine of efficacious ideas vitiates Malebranche's usage of reason as an innate faculty, cf. Jolley (Citation1994), and a reply to that position, Peppers–Bates (2005). 26Cf., e.g. DM 32, 34, 35. 27Emphasis added. 28Indeed, Malebranche treats evidence here is as support for the fact that through the faculty of reason we come to learn ‘what God thinks and even what He wills’. 29Emphasis added. 30A reviewer of this paper points out that Lennon's claim that evidence is non-psychological might be defended on Robinet's ‘developmental’ interpretation of Malebranche's relation to Descartes – the interpretation that over time Malebranche comes to reject many of the Cartesian positions with which he begins. Although Robinet's view holds in respect of many Malebranchean positions, I find no evidence that it extends to the psychologism of Malebranche's method. Most of the relevant discussion occurs in the Search; and the standard edition (OC I, II), which records the historical changes in the text, reveals that neither the designation of evidence as ‘the clear and distinct perception of all the constituents and relations of the object necessary to support a well-founded judgment’ (LO 10, OC I 54–5), nor the prime methodological recommendation that to ‘preserve evidence in our perceptions, together with a complete certainty in our reasonings, we should first study arithmetic, algebra, analysis, and geometry, both simple and compound’ (LO 483, OC II 374–5), changes from the first edition to the last. 31Cf. Search, Book III; Elucidations of the Search, Elucidation XI. 32 Supra n. 2.

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