The role of intuition in scientific knowledge. Innate Ideas The doctrine of innate ideas of intellectual intuition belongs to

Soul, spiritual substance, according to Descartes, has in itself ideas that are inherent in it initially, and not acquired in experience; these are innate ideas. In the doctrine of innate ideas, Plato's position on true knowledge as a recollection of what was imprinted in the soul when it was in the world of ideas was developed in a new way. It is the innate nature of the idea that explains the very effect of clarity and distinctness, the effectiveness of the intellectual intuition inherent in our mind.

Descartes attributed the idea of ​​God as an all-perfect being to innate ideas, then the ideas of numbers and figures, as well as some general concepts, such as the well-known axiom: “If equal values ​​are added to equal, then the results obtained will be equal to each other”, or “Nothing comes from nothing.” These ideas and truths are considered by Descartes as the embodiment of the natural light of reason.

Corporeal nature is consistently represented in Descartes by the concept of a mechanism. Nature is a purely material formation, its content will be exhausted exclusively by extension and movement. Its main laws are the principles of conservation of momentum, inertia and the originality of rectilinear motion. On the basis of these principles and the methodically controlled construction of mechanical models, all cognitive tasks addressed to nature can be solved. Animals and human bodies are subject to the action of the same mechanical principles and are “self-propelled automata”, there are no “living principles” in organic bodies (both plant and animal). God brings movement into nature; he also ensures the constancy of all its laws.

Thus, Descartes completely banished the concept of purpose from nature. It was in the 17th century that the mechanistic picture of the world was formed, which formed the basis of natural science and philosophy until the beginning of the 19th century.

The most difficult problem in Descartes' philosophy is relation between the soul and the body of man. If it was easy for Descartes to assume that animals have no soul, and they are soulless automatons, then in the case of man this was obviously not the case. A person is able to control his body with the help of some incorporeal substance - the soul. Descartes, who showed great interest in the successes of contemporary medicine, paid special attention to the pineal gland, located in the central part of the brain, and associated with it the place where the mental substance interacts with the bodily. Although the soul, as a beginning, is unextended and does not occupy a place, it “abides in the indicated gland, which is the“ seat of the soul ”. It is here that the material life spirits come into contact with the soul. Irritation from the outside world is transmitted through the nerves to the brain and excites the soul dwelling there. Accordingly, the self-stimulation of the soul sets the vital spirits in motion, and the nerve impulse ends with a muscular movement. The connection between the soul and the body as a whole fits into the schemes, in essence, of mechanical interaction.

Nevertheless, beginning with Descartes, new orientations of philosophical thought, in which thought and man himself occupy a central place, acquire a classically clear character.

Pantheistic monism of Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza in the views on matter, nature, knowledge, man, society.

Philosophy of the Dutch-Jewish thinker Benedict Spinoza (1632 - 1677) was considered by its author as a kind of completion of Cartesian philosophy. His teaching is an example of extreme realism (in its medieval sense), turning into pantheism, that is, teaching that dissolves God in nature, does not distinguish between God and the world.

Descartes' rationalism is based on what he tried to apply to all sciences features of the mathematical method of cognition. Bacon passed by such an effective and powerful way of comprehending experimental data as mathematics was becoming in his era. Descartes, being one of the great mathematicians of his time, put forward the idea of ​​universal mathematization of scientific knowledge. At the same time, the French philosopher interpreted mathematics not just as a science of quantities, but also as a science of order and measure that reigns in all nature. In mathematics, Descartes most of all appreciated the fact that with its help one can come to firm, precise, reliable conclusions. To such conclusions, in his opinion, experience cannot lead. The rationalistic method of Descartes is, first of all, a philosophical understanding and generalization of those methods of discovering truths that mathematics operated on.

The essence of Descartes' rationalistic method boils down to two main propositions. Firstly, in cognition, one should start from some intuitively clear, fundamental truths, or, in other words, cognition, according to Descartes, should be based on intellectual intuition. Intellectual intuition, according to Descartes, is a solid and distinct idea, born in a healthy mind through the mind's own view, so simple and clear that it does not cause any doubt. Secondly, the mind must deduce all the necessary consequences from these intuitive views on the basis of deduction. Deduction is such an action of the mind by means of which we draw some conclusions from certain premises, obtain certain consequences. Deduction, according to Descartes, is necessary because the conclusion cannot always be presented clearly and distinctly. It can be reached only through a gradual movement of thought with a clear and distinct awareness of each step. By deduction we make the unknown known.

Descartes formulated the following three basic rules of the deductive method:

1. Every question must contain the unknown.

2. This unknown must have some characteristic features in order for the research to be aimed at comprehending this particular unknown.

3. The question should also contain something known.

Thus, deduction is the definition of the unknown through the previously known and known.

After defining the main provisions of the method, Descartes faced the task of forming such an initial reliable principle, from which, guided by the rules of deduction, it would be possible to logically derive all the other concepts of the philosophical system, that is, Descartes had to implement intellectual intuition. Intellectual intuition in Descartes starts with doubt. Descartes questioned the truth of all the knowledge that mankind had. Having proclaimed doubt as the starting point of any research, Descartes set the goal of helping humanity get rid of all prejudices (or idols, which Bacon called), from all fantastic and false ideas taken for granted, and thus clear the way for genuine scientific knowledge, and at the same time, to find the desired, initial principle, a distinct, clear idea that can no longer be questioned. Having questioned the reliability of all our ideas about the world, we can easily assume, Descartes wrote, “that there is no God, no sky, no earth, and that even we ourselves do not have a body. But we still cannot assume that we do not exist, while doubting the truth of all these things. It is just as absurd to suppose as non-existent that which thinks, while it thinks, that, despite the most extreme assumptions, we cannot but believe that the conclusion "I think, therefore I am" is true and that it is therefore the first and the surest of all conclusions" (Descartes R. Selected works - M „1950.- S. 428). So, "I think, therefore I am" that is, the notion that thinking itself, regardless of its content and objects, demonstrates the reality of the thinking subject and is that primary original intellectual intuition, from which, according to Descartes, all knowledge about the world is derived.

It should be noted that the principle of doubt was applied in philosophy and before Descartes in ancient skepticism, in the teachings of Augustine, in the teachings of Ch. Consequently, in these matters Descartes is not original and is in line with the philosophical tradition. He is taken outside of this tradition by the extremely rationalistic position that only thinking has absolute and immediate certainty. The originality of Descartes lies in the fact that he ascribes an indubitable character to doubt itself, to thinking and being of the subject of thinking: turning to itself, doubt, according to Descartes, disappears. Doubt is opposed by the immediate clarity of the very fact of thinking, thinking that does not depend on its object, on the object of doubt. Thus, “I think” in Descartes is, as it were, that absolutely reliable axiom from which the whole edifice of science must grow, just as all the provisions of Euclidean geometry are derived from a small number of axioms and postulates.

The rationalistic postulate "I think" is the basis of a unified scientific method. This method, according to Descartes, should turn knowledge into an organizational activity, freeing it from chance, from such subjective factors as observation and a sharp mind, on the one hand, luck and a happy coincidence of circumstances, on the other. The method allows science not to focus on individual discoveries, but to develop systematically and purposefully, including ever wider areas of the unknown in its orbit, in other words, to turn science into the most important sphere of human life.

Descartes was a son of his time, and his philosophical system, like that of Bacon, was not without internal contradictions. Highlighting the problems of cognition, Bacon and Descartes laid the foundations for the construction of the philosophical systems of modern times. If in medieval philosophy the central place was given to the doctrine of being - ontology, then from the time of Bacon and Descartes to the fore in philosophical systems comes the doctrine of knowledge - epistemology.

Bacon and Descartes marked the beginning of the split of all reality into subject and object. The subject is the bearer of cognitive action, the object is what this action is aimed at. The subject in Descartes' system is the thinking substance - the thinking "I". However, Descartes was aware that the "I" as a special thinking substance must find a way out to the objective world. In other words, epistemology should be based on the doctrine of being - ontology. Descartes solves this problem by introducing the idea of ​​God into his metaphysics. God is the creator of the objective world. He is the creator of man. The truth of the original principle as clear and distinct knowledge is guaranteed by Descartes by the existence of God - perfect and omnipotent, who put the natural light of reason into man. Thus, the self-consciousness of the subject in Descartes is not closed on itself, but is open, open to God, who is the source of the objective significance of human thinking. With the recognition of God as the source and guarantor of human self-consciousness, reason, the teachings of Descartes are connected. about innate ideas. Descartes referred to them the idea of ​​God as an all-perfect being, the ideas of numbers and figures, as well as some of the most general concepts, such as, for example, "nothing comes from nothing." In the doctrine of innate ideas, Plato's position on true knowledge as a recollection of what was imprinted in the soul when it was in the world of ideas was developed in a new way.

Rationalistic motives in the teachings of Descartes are intertwined with the theological doctrine of free will, granted to man by God by virtue of a special disposition - grace. According to Descartes, reason alone cannot be the source of delusion. Delusions are the product of man's abuse of his inherent free will. Delusions arise when the infinitely free will oversteps the boundaries of the finite human mind, makes judgments that are devoid of reasonable grounds. However, Descartes does not draw agnostic conclusions from these ideas. He believes in the unlimited possibilities of the human mind in the matter of knowing all the reality surrounding it.

Thus, F. Bacon and R. Descartes laid the foundations for a new methodology of scientific knowledge and gave this methodology a deep philosophical foundation.

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It is so clear that it cannot be doubted. It is revealed to us by intellectual intuition (innate ideas, according to Descartes, are precisely what is revealed to us by intellectual intuition). In my own thinking, I clearly contemplate this thinking and the Self that thinks. And it is clear and distinct (that is, it is distinguishable from everything else, unclear).

1. Further we are convinced that not only this truth possesses such two qualities. They are also possessed by geometric axioms, statements like “the whole is greater than the part”, etc. They, too, are seen clearly and distinctly.
2. But again, there may be a problem. Suppose we are so arranged that we cannot doubt some statements (for example, the whole is greater than the part). What if these are defects in our device (what if we are all psychos)? This is not yet a guarantee that these ideas are yavl. Truth. We must look for another guarantee of the truth of these ideas. And Descartes finds it. It is, of course, GOD. For rationalism, the figure of God as a guarantor of the truth of innate ideas is necessary. Because otherwise we are left with our thinking and with its inherent ideas. But we have no guarantee that our ideas are inherently true. If our ideas are false, then in principle we cannot know anything. But how could God put such false ideas into us? Descartes proceeds from the fact that God intended people for knowledge and gave us the proper abilities for this. God created human thinking in such a way that it must accept certain axioms (eg Logic and geometry), therefore they are true. For Descartes, innate ideas are not true because they are innate! They are implanted in us by God and God has ordained us to know, that's why these ideas are true! And this is a very strong premise of Descartes.

God ordained us to know

God puts true ideas in us.

God cannot deceive us, and we can rely on our ideas. After these steps, it is possible to restore the reality that is external to our consciousness.

We have clear and distinct ideas of form, size, movement. And what concerns, say, gravity, color, warmth, cold, do not belong to clear and distinct ideas. The data of the senses are not reliable sources of knowledge. And they cannot be the basis of knowledge about the world. What can? Purely geometric characteristics. Accordingly, the science of the world has a geometric character and is built on the model of Euclidean geometry.

But. Question. If God put a certain set of axioms into man, then why do people make mistakes? Descartes gives the answer. I'm to blame free will person. Gnoseological sin is will. The knowledge we have is limited, but the human will is not. Desires are limitless. Will pushes us forward. Pushes under the elbow before the ideas are checked by the mind for clarity and distinctness. That's when misconceptions arise. If a person controls his will and checks ideas for clarity and distinctness, it will be possible to build the building of our knowledge, starting from the truths given in intellectual intuition (which reveals the ideas embedded in us by God). And then knowledge will develop, build deductively. Is deduction a reliable foundation for the construction of knowledge? Yes. This is a conclusion from the general to the particular. From the truth of the premises follows the truth of the conclusion. How then can we discover something new, expand our knowledge?

For this, it is being developed doctrine of method.

It is necessary to break the problem into parts (for example, into cases), then consider each part separately, then make a list of everything that we have considered, and then carry out a generalization, which will be a complete induction and therefore will be the same unconditional knowledge. Thus, as Descartes hoped, it would be possible to build a description of the world, formulate the laws of motion and describe the structure of the universe. That is, the whole task is only to bring the world description out of the mind.

Treatise "Peace". Descartes describes the entire world description (while stipulating that we are talking about some kind of imaginary world). What place does Descartes assign to experience in the matter of cognition? By developing our knowledge on the deductive principle, we can get many possibilities. Building a system can start branching. Experience is needed in order to see which of the systems is implemented in this world (prevents us from excessive branching of knowledge). Note that Descartes himself was a great experimenter.

We make mistakes when we jump over steps of inference. If we rely on the mind, then the withdrawal procedure will become step-by-step and very accurate. There will be no errors.

Let's turn to Leibniz.

On some points he disagreed with Descartes. He was afraid that the criteria for the truth of Descartes' ideas (clarity and distinctness) are psychological (relative) x-ter. He formulates concept analytical truth. What Descartes calls innate ideas, Leibniz calls Truths of Reason. They are inherent in the mind itself, but they are analytical x-ter. Ie these are the truths, the opposite of which is impossible. Otherwise, it will violate the law of inadmissibility of opposition. The key such principle is the principle of identity a=a. The position opposite to this principle simply violates the laws of logic. Well, from this initial truth, all other analytic truths are obtained when we substitute their definitions instead of terms.

*The sides of a square are equal - this is an analytical truth. There cannot be a square in which not all sides are equal, by virtue of the purely definition of a square.

Leibniz believed that all the truths of mathematics yavl. consequences of this principle of identity (both arithmetic and geometry). In modern logic and philosophy, the concept of analytical truth also appears. But it is defined a little differently. An analytically true sentence is a sentence that is true by virtue of the meaning of its terms. It is sometimes said that these are sentences that are true in all possible states of affairs. This is easily illustrated using truth tables. An idea of ​​this kind is formulated by Leibniz in the language of the logic of his time.

We are done with rationalism.

Now difficulties of rationalism. (times of the followers of Descartes)

The physics of Descartes soon begins to be criticized. Descartes did not accept the idea of ​​gravity and attraction. His physics lost the fight against Newtoian physics. This loss, in general, turned out to be essential for the overthrow of rationalism. Newton was very critical of Descartes' rationalism. It is impossible to resolve the dispute which ideas yavl. clear and distinct, and which are not. The big question arose about innate ideas. If they exist, then why are there such big discrepancies in questions of physics between Descartes, Leibniz, Newton?..

But the argument that not all our knowledge is the product of experience remains! And we'll be back to it!

Maybe we have a stock of innate knowledge, but it is not enough?

Now position of EMPIRISM!

Let's try to find reliable grounds for scientific knowledge there. Empiricism says that there is nothing in the intellect that did not exist before in the senses. All our knowledge takes its source in the senses. We can and must rely on this source. The constructions of our mind can be arbitrary, and therefore we must always be turned to the evidence of experience. Only experience can teach us something.

Founder - Francis Bacon!

Bacon: we rely on legitimate and necessary humiliations of our reason. Why? Yes, because if the mind is left to itself, it will drown in arbitrary constructions and positions. And how it really is can only be learned from experience.

What is experience anyway? And why is he actually reliable? Problems associated with the deception of sensory experience have been known since antiquity.

Empiricism begins to develop, its next branch is this is John Locke and his teachings of sensationalism. Sensationalism is no longer just talking about experience, but about the elementary building blocks that make up experience. All our knowledge is The result of combining the data of our senses. Feelings are immediate. Having a sensation, we are aware that we have sensations and cannot doubt that we have it. Feelings are the basis of knowledge. Now - how the whole building of human knowledge is obtained from it. All sensations can be classified in different ways. Locke has a term "idea". It denotes everything that we have in our mind (soul). The source of all ideas is Feelings. But we have different ideas, like doubt or grief. Where do these ideas come from? There is a need to distinguish between different types of experience.

1. "Ideas - reflections"; perception, thinking, desire, knowledge…..

2. "Ideas of external sense." Ideas of yellow, cold, soft, bitter….

Reflection is the ability to see, perceive your inner world

There are other ways to classify ideas:

Ideas are simple- obvious, clear, distinctly separated from one another (we clearly distinguish between coldness and hardness, for example). These ideas are simple because they do not break down into simple ideas. The peculiarity of ideas is that the soul itself cannot create them. If I touched a piece of ice, the idea of ​​cold came up. She wouldn't come from nowhere

Ideas are complex. - ideas that arise from several senses at once - form, space, movement, peace. What is space? What is this object? How do we perceive it? It doesn't feel like that :(

Where does the idea that all processes take place in space come from. This empiricism cannot clearly and distinctly explain.

Another classification of ideas (among the simple ones) Locke identifies ideas as primary qualities and secondary qualities:

Primary completely inseparable from the body (density, extent, form, movement or rest, number) every body has a form, density…. - those concepts that the physics of the time of Locke operates with.

Secondary: it is that which does not play a role in the things themselves, and the ideas evoked by secondary qualities have no resemblance to bodies (colour, smell, taste). Qualities that evoke in us an image similar to them. Primary qualities give us knowledge about the things themselves as they are in themselves, and secondary qualities are our way of responding to the impact of an external object, but they do not give us knowledge about the properties of the object itself.

What about examples of deception of the senses? For example, white seems yellow to a patient. Locke replies that color is not a primary quality, it has nothing to do with the subject.

Consider now complex ideas.

These ideas are created by the mind itself. How? The mind can combine two ideas into one complex one, can compare ideas, isolate them (abstraction procedure - children first see the mother and nurse, then they see other people, then they notice something in common and deduce the idea - a person. At the same time, he does not come up with an idea , but extracts from several ideas (the idea of ​​Peter, Jacob) the general). How convincing is this statement? Children allegedly mentally highlight what is common to all. But why does the child not form the idea of ​​that common thing which forms common things with parents and domestic animals?

In general, the pathos of empiricism zakl. That experience itself leads us to the formation of knowledge. There is no arbitrariness in knowledge. Socrates proposed the idea that the soul is a wax tablet on which things leave imprints. Empiricism reproduces this metaphor.

A child perceives one person - an imprint remains in his soul, perceives another person - another imprint remains, a third - another imprint. Imprints are layered and general concepts are obtained.

How are the general STATEMENTS obtained now? The answer is Induction! More on this in the next lecture.

As we mentioned above, in Gassendi his natural philosophy, his physics coincided with what can be called his metaphysics. And Gassendi's contemporary Descartes separated his materialistic physics from his metaphysics, which was not materialistic. The metaphysics of Descartes is dualistic, built on the doctrine of two independent substances - the spirit and the body, of the non-extension of the spiritual substance and that this spiritual substance has the ability to know the essence of things, independent of sensations, based on the "natural light of the mind", "innate ideas" and intuition independent of sensory knowledge. Descartes argued that sensibility is the source of only indistinct, obscure knowledge, while clear and distinct knowledge is given by intellectual intuition. If Gassendi and his friend and like-minded person Thomas Hobbes defended the principles of empiricism and sensationalism, then Descartes opposed them to the rationalistic theory of knowledge.
Gassendi spoke together with Hobbes against the metaphysical teachings of Descartes, defending the materialistic position. Since his rationalistic theory was connected with the metaphysical teaching of Descartes, Gassendi opposed it, defending the principles of empiricism and sensationalism. The remarks made by Gassendi to Descartes are interesting in that Gassendi formulates his views in them without constant references to Epicurus, independently and avoiding theological reservations, speaks openly as an enemy of idealism and a supporter of materialism.
Gassendi's first objection is directed against Descartes' formula: "I think, therefore I am." Gassendi, without contesting this in itself correct position, reasonably remarks that the fact of my existence follows not only from my thinking, but also from any other of my actions. “After all, you could derive the same proposition,” Gassendi says to Descartes, “from any other of your actions, for natural reason tells us that everything that acts exists”
In addition, says Gassendi (just like Hobbes), the proposition “I think, therefore I am” does not at all imply the proposition that I am a spirit, a thinking substance independent of the body. To draw such a conclusion from the given proposition is the same as making the property of a thing the thing itself, or making activity the subject of activity, i.e., turning an object into a subject, which is illegal, because it contradicts the actual correlation of things and their properties in the objective material world. Descartes' conclusion is no different from the conclusion: "I walk, therefore I am a walk." This ironic example, originally put forward by Descartes himself as a counter-argument against his critics, was then cleverly used by Hobbes and Gassendi against Descartes.
From the proposition "I think, therefore I exist" it follows logically that I am a thinking being, to which, among other properties or kinds of activity, the property of thinking belongs.
Descartes, responding to Gassendi's objections, pointed out that no other human activity can give him grounds for concluding about existence, if at the same time thinking about his existence is not present, while thinking does not require any other activity in order to judge about existence. that I exist. In response to this, Gassendi rightly says that Descartes, in fact, did not show at all what advantage thinking has over other human activities, an advantage that would allow him alone to attribute the power of proof of the existence of man.
Gassendi argues that Descartes does not give any definition of thinking and does not literally bring anything new to the knowledge of its nature. Descartes' intention was no doubt to make the nature of the soul more distinctly recognizable than the nature of the body, but he failed to do so. To say of thought that it is a substance means to define one unknown through another. It is necessary to indicate the positive properties of the substance of thinking. For example, we know about corporeal substance that it has an extension, a figure, that it fills a certain part of space, and that it has a number of other properties. But what do we know about spiritual substance? That it is not a combination of bodily parts, nor something capable of sentience, nor anything else. Such definitions are purely negative and give nothing for understanding the essence of thinking. In order for us to know you, we need to know not what you are not, but what you are, we need positive definitions of your properties, Gassendi tells Descartes.
Descartes boasts that his intuition, independent of sensibility, gives a clear and distinct knowledge of substances, but when he defines thinking as something unextended, does he give a clear and distinct idea of ​​himself? Is it not possible to compare Descartes with a blind man who, feeling warmth and knowing that warmth comes from the Sun, imagines that he has a clear and distinct idea of ​​the Sun, because if he is asked what the Sun is, he can answer that it is something that gives warm? Is this a clear and distinct idea of ​​the Sun? After all, if Descartes were asked to give an exact and clear concept of wine, he would not limit himself to saying: “Wine is a white or red intoxicating liquid”, but would try to explore and explain to us the inner essence of wine, its substance, which consists of show observations from vodka, tartar, mucus and other substances mixed with each other in this or that quantity and in this or that proportion. In the same way, when we are required to give a definition of thinking, it is not enough to say that it is the ability to think, understand, etc., but it is necessary, by means of some kind of chemical operation, to investigate thinking in such a way that we can show its true basis, its real substance in the fullness of its properties.
Gassendi did not confine himself in his “Doubts” to negative objections to Descartes’ metaphysics, he made, in his words, a “chemical analysis of thinking”, established: 1) the material basis and, moreover, in accordance with his general mechanistic provisions - extension and atomistic structure thinking; 2) the empirical and sensationalistic basis of thinking. In his critique of Cartesian metaphysics, Gassendi gives a materialistic analysis of knowledge.
Descartes, says Gassendi, did not prove that thinking is not a bodily and material principle. Moreover, Descartes himself is much more certain of the reality of material substance, i.e., of the body, than of the reality of the unextended substance of his thinking. The only thing he could prove was that the soul is not the gross material substance that we see in other bodies of nature surrounding us, but he did not deny that the soul can consist of a special kind of matter formed from small particles of matter, like substance of fire.
And in this question - about the nature of the soul - Gassendi uses the theory of ancient atomism. The soul is in its essence a bodily principle, consisting of atoms of a special structure, it is a kind of pure, transparent and subtle substance, something like a breath that penetrates the whole body, or at least the brain and its parts, inspires them and performs all the functions there. The soul does not sit at all, like a helmsman on a ship, as Descartes depicted, but, having an extended atomistic structure, it is scattered throughout the body. The soul is not concentrated in one pineal gland, but is connected with the entire nervous system and the entire brain.
It grows with the growth of the body of which it is a part, and grows old with it. It is healthy when the body is healthy, and sick when those material organs that are its basis are sick.
If, as Descartes says, the essence of the human I was reduced to thinking, then a person could not exist for a single moment without thinking, he would have to think while in the womb, being in a lethargic sleep or in a state of insanity. It is characteristic that Descartes, responding to these arguments of Gassendi, wrote that since thinking that is not we & merged is nonsense, the human soul always thinks, including in the womb! At the same time, it should be remembered that Descartes completely separated all other mental functions of a person, unconscious and subconscious, everything that Leibniz later called "small perceptions", as well as all sensory forms of cognition, as well as the affects of the soul (emotions) completely separated from mental activity, as such, relating them to physiological automatism, while Gassendi was inclined, as an empiricist and sensualist, to reduce the mental activity of man to sensory knowledge. Hence the difference between the positions of Descartes and Gassendi. The desire to emphasize the specifics of conceptual knowledge led Descartes to metaphysical idealism. The desire to materialistically explain the human psyche led Gassendi to the loss of the specifics of thinking, to the loss of the qualitative originality of the highest level of human mental activity, and to a vulgar interpretation of thinking as a special matter. Both Descartes and Gassendi limited their contemporary level of research into the activity of the central nervous system, the level of research into the human psyche, and the metaphysical one-sidedness of their methodology.
The main proof of the materiality of the soul, i.e., the mental activity of man, Gassendi considers the material nature of man as a whole. In doing so, he uses the corresponding theories of Epicurus. Sensations from the impact of external things arise in the human psyche in such a way that visual, auditory and other images consisting of a special kind of mobile atoms flow from things. They penetrate into the consciousness of a person through the corresponding sense organs: eyes, ears, etc. Thus, according to Gassendi, purely material components of cognition operate here. But this is the basis of all knowledge, including concepts and thinking as such. And because of this, it is material. If thoughts were not extended, how could they perceive an extended image of the perceived thing? The idea, says Gassendi, understanding by the idea the image of a thing, is obviously not completely devoid of extension. But if this is so, then how can a man who is not extended use it? When our soul makes an effort, it makes our bodily organs and even, with their help, external things move, but this is possible only through contact. And how can there be contact without bodies that are in contact?
In connection with the criticism of Descartes' idealistic concept on the subject of the substantiality of the soul, Gassendi refutes the distinction that Descartes introduced between a thinking person and animals as supposedly soulless automata, acting only by virtue of a certain arrangement of organs, like machines. Gassendi proves that there is no fundamental difference between man and animals in relation to the psyche, there is only a quantitative difference. “If the mind is something that feels and imagines, then it seems to have to be attributed to animals.” Of course, animals do not have human minds and lack the human gift of speech, but they are intelligent in their own way and have their own way of communicating.
Contrary to the opinion of Descartes, that sensory knowledge is not capable of revealing the essence of things, that it is a source of indistinct knowledge, Gassendi proves that sensation, sensibility, experience lie at the basis of any science, and that they are the basis of rational knowledge, and not thinking in itself. not "natural light of the mind" or "intellectual intuition" independent of sensations.
The act of sensation consists in the perception of external images of things. Since our sense organs mechanically perceive the material images of external things, the sensations are always infallible, just as the straight line that we draw with a straight ruler is infallible. The mistakes that we make in cognition, contrary to Descartes, do not stem from sensations, but from the conclusions of the mind, when these conclusions are made without sufficient grounds (drawn from sensations). Descartes, as an example of the fallacy of sensory knowledge, cites the example of a tower that is quadrangular, but from a distance it seems round. Gassendi uses this example with the inverse purpose: the sense perception of a distant tower, whatever it may be, is always true, and the opinion expressed in reasoning can be either true or false.
The human mind does not have any innate ideas - a person is born into the world without that dowry, which, according to Descartes, God endows a person at his birth. Even the idea of ​​God is not innate, because there are many atheists - people who do not believe in God. There is nothing in the intellect that was not originally in sensation!
Sensation is the basis of reason and its criterion. The truth or falsity of the concepts and judgments of the mind is checked by comparing them with evidence, fact, sensation. If the mind corresponds to the evidence of sensation, its conclusions are correct, but if it contradicts the evidence of sense, they are false.
Gassendi borrows from the Canon of Epicurus his doctrine of the preliminary concept, thus introducing into his empirical theory of knowledge the moment of rational knowledge, the moment of activity of the concept anticipating experience.

Since Gassendi speaks of the clarity and distinctness of the “preliminary concept”, one might think that we are talking about something similar to the innate ideas of Descartes, which are clearly and distinctly perceived by reason in itself and are applied in all knowledge as starting points. According to Gassendi, the "preliminary concept" serves as the principle of every judgment and every inference, acting in the latter as a big premise. However, its "preliminary concepts" are not innate, but are formed by the mind on the basis of sensory impressions previously received and verified by sensations. They are formed by superimposing similar perceptions on top of each other, discarding their differences, and retaining only what they all have in common. This is the germ of that doctrine of the nature of general concepts, which was subsequently developed by Locke.
Both sensation and rational knowledge, which is based on sensations and does not contradict the principle of evidence, are a reflection of nature. Our cognition perceives the phenomena of things as these phenomena actually exist, says Gassendi.
Gassendi ultimately stands for the knowability of nature, including the essence of things. We have seen that in his work against the Aristotelians he calls himself a skeptic and says that we know only appearances, but we do not achieve knowledge of the essence of things, i.e., truth. In a letter to Cherbury, he already says somewhat differently: “... although I will not assert, in the manner of academicians, that the truth of things is unknowable, however, I consider it possible to assert that it has not been known until now” To And further: “I will insist on the fact that the definition of truth as the correspondence of the knowing intellect with the thing known is not bad at all. In the Code of Philosophy of Epicurus and in the System of Philosophy, Gassendi gives various arguments against skepticism, in particular the well-known argument that skeptics, arguing that nothing is knowable, close their way to knowledge of this
1 See present edition, vol. I, p. 83.
knowledge: indeed, how do they know then that everything is unknowable? The skepticism of the young Gassendi is replaced by speeches against agnosticism, in defense of the materialist theory of reflection, of course, with all the shortcomings common to the materialism of the 17th-18th centuries.
We will not go into detail here about the counter-objections that Descartes made to Gassendi's objections.
We refer the reader to the book by V. F. Asmus "De & Cartes", which gives a detailed consideration of the entire controversy around the "Metaphysical Meditations" of De & Cartes, including the controversy of Descartes with Gassendi, with Hobbes, with the Jesuit Bourdain, with Antoine Arnault, with Pater Caterus K
Let us draw only some conclusions about the nature of the controversy between Gassendi and Descartes. On the one hand, Kuno Fischer's History of Modern Philosophy gives a very unimportant characterization of Gassendi's personality in connection with his relationship with Descartes. Gassendi, allegedly in a bad mood, without having thoroughly delved into Descartes' teaching, wrote his objections, in which there was no shortage of banal rhetorical praise of Descartes; but since Gassendi had a passion for being praised and quoted, was too vain to be an impartial critic, and, among other things, was opposed to Descartes because he did not quote his explanations in his essay on meteors parhelion, his criticism was both unfair and harsh. Kuno Fischer defends the idealistic moments of Descartes' philosophy, and in his remarks about Gassendi, like Hobbes, the irritation of the idealist against the materialistic criticism of idealism is evident.
We have a different approach to the personality of the materialist Gassendi and to his objections to Descartes in the book of the Soviet philosopher VF Asmus. “Gassend's objections were remarkable for their thoroughness and thoroughness of analysis. The kindest, most charming person, this material scientist in the cassock of a Catholic priest, began his criticism in the most delicate way, ”writes V. F. Asmus K. He points out that Descartes treated Gassendi’s criticism with great attention, preferring his arguments compared to the arguments of Hobbes, and that Descartes did not even give an answer to many weighty arguments of Hobbes and Gassendi.
On the whole, one must agree with Gassendi's assessment by V.F. Asmus: this is an objective assessment. But at the same time, reading Gassendi's criticism, one cannot fail to notice its mockingly ironic tone, and reading Descartes' answers, one becomes convinced of his extreme irritation. Both of them lavish pleasantries on each other, but here Descartes concludes his answers with the words: “I was pleased that such a famous person in such a detailed and carefully crafted reasoning did not present a single argument that would overturn my arguments, and did not even put forward a single argument against my conclusions. nothing that would not be very easy for me to answer. Even more arrogant is Descartes' response to Gassendi's second objection: in a letter addressed to his publisher Clercellier, Descartes says that he considers it superfluous to continue the argument with Gassendi.
The fact is that to defend the idealistic metaphysics of Descartes, his doctrine of three independent substances, of innate ideas, of intuition independent of sensible knowledge, etc., from the attacks of empiricist philosophers with their simple arguments and appeals to common sense, sensible knowledge was impossible. In defending his idealistic theses from the attacks of the materialists, Descartes was at a disadvantage not only because of the idealism of his metaphysics. After all, he himself defended materialistic positions in physics, and in his teaching on the passions of the soul he developed an essentially materialistic interpretation of human mental activity, approaching the views of Gassendi. True, Descartes considers all the activity of sensibility, which he speaks of in the above-mentioned work, as automatism of a neuro-physiological order, while Gassendi considers it cognitive, mental activity. But after all, Gassendi interprets mental activity as purely material (in the sense of the physicality of the mental), approaching Descartes in this respect.
However, in the metaphysics of Descartes there was one extremely strong side in comparison with his opponents, which is correctly noted by VF Asmus. The misfortune of all empiricists, beginning with Gassendi and Hobbes and ending with Locke and the French materialists of the eighteenth century. (True, Gassendi, with his doctrine of the "preliminary concept," probably touched this less than others), was that they underestimated the role of concepts in cognition. Hence the path to agnostic assertions about the impossibility of knowing essences and substances. Quite differently the question of truth and knowledge of essences was interpreted by Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz. They fall into idealism, but affirm the greatest, boundless power of the mind, capable of knowing all the secrets of the spiritual and physical world, all the hidden essences of the Universe and giving a person clear and distinct, universal and necessary knowledge about them. This was both the strength and the weakness of the rationalists of the seventeenth century, whose teaching was metaphysically one-sided, like that of their empirical opponents.

Innate ideas are concepts and provisions that, according to the ideas of idealism, are inherent in human thinking from the very beginning and do not depend on experience. To V. and. attributed the axioms of mathematics and logic, the original philosophical principles. The ancestor of the doctrine about V. and. was Plato. According to some philosophers, V. and. given from God (Descartes); others considered them inclinations or inclinations of the mind, the development of which is facilitated by sensory experience (Leibniz). In rationalistic theories of intellectual intuition (Direct knowledge) it was recognized that certain positions are not inherent in our mind, but are comprehended in the mental act of discerning truths. Despite the difference between these theories, all of them are characterized by elements of apriorism, i.e., the existence of such knowledge is recognized, which precede experience and do not depend on it. Kant, having rejected the theories of V. and., nevertheless did not overcome them, as evidenced by his teaching about a priori forms of sensibility and reason, which streamline the content of our experience. Theories of V. and. had as their epistemological basis a non-historical, non-dialectical approach to the question of the origin of general concepts and principles, to the correlation of direct and indirect, sensory and rational elements in cognition, individual and socio-historical experience.