Descartes' Temporal Dualism

by Lloyd Waller, Rebecca;

  17. Aquinas, Summa 1.10.6, 83.

  18. Quoted in Rory Fox, Time and Eternity in Mid-Thirteenth-Century Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 139.

  19. Commentary on the Physics 4.17: Quoted in Fox, Time and Eternity, 140.

  20. Augustine, The Confessions of Saint Augustine, trans. John K. Ryan (New York: Image Books, 1960): 295.

  21. In Jos. 10:12 it is recorded that Joshua prayed for God to halt the sun and moon so that he might achieve success in battle. As the Bible records that this prayer was granted, and that these celestial bodies stood still for the length of a day, Augustine infers that clearly time is something more than just the movement of celestial bodies. Augustine claims “that battle was waged and brought to an end during its own tract of time, which was sufficient for it” (Augustine, Confessions, 30).

  22. Sambursky, Physical World, 13.

  23. Fox, Time and Eternity, 135.

  24. Ariotti, Conception of Time, 529.

  25. Ariotti, Conception of Time, 530.

  26. Diogenes, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, trans. R. D. Hicks (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965): 599. Quoted in Ariotti, Conception of Time, 529.

  27. Ariotti, Conception of Time, 530. This sort of language is quite consistent with the role of time-in-thought that I will later identify and explain as found in Descartes.

  28. J.J.A. Mooji, Time and Mind: The History of a Philosophical Problem (Boston: Brill Academic Pub, 2005), 39. Likewise, Catherine Rau defines Epicurus’s account in mental terms. She claims, “[time] does not exist in itself, but is abstracted from events by the mind.” Catherine Rau, “Theories of Time in Ancient Philosophy,” The Philosophical Review 62 (1953): 518.

  29. Aristotle, Physics IV.14.223a23, 377.

  30. Sambursky, Physical World, 16.

  31. Quoted in Sambursky, Physical World, 163. Sorabji notes that Plotinus’s definition referred to the soul of the universe and not to an individual soul, however. See Richard Sorabji, Time Creation and the Continuum: Theories in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 94.

  32. Augustine, Confessions 11.26.33, 298.

  33. For a good discussion on this point see: Gareth Matthew, Thought’s Ego in Augustine and Descartes (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1992).

  34. Aristotle, Physics IV.10, 218a2, 370.

  35. Augustine, Confessions 11.30.40, 303. In such descriptions, one can see how Augustine’s mind-dependent account accords with the reductive approaches.

  36. Aristotle, Physics IV.10, 218a2, 370.

  37. Augustine, Confessions 11.14.17, 288.

  38. Augustine, Confessions 11.15.20, 289. In supposing that an extension of time admits division into time, Augustine suggests the sort of reasoning that led others to reject the ideas of temporal atomism. For some discussion on the Stoics’ rejection of these ideas see: Sambursky, Physics of the Stoics, 103ff.

  39. Augustine, Confessions 11.23.30: 296.

  40. Augustine, Confessions 11.21.27: 293.

  41. Augustine, Confessions 11.20.26: 293.

  42. Augustine, Confessions 11.26.33: 298.

  43. This terminology accords with Emmaline Bexley, “Quasi-Absolute Time in Francisco Suarez’s Metaphysical Disputation,” Intellectual History Review 22 (2012): 5–22.

  44. Sorabji, Time Creation and the Continuum, 44.

  45. Sorabji, Time Creation and the Continuum, 38. This sort of account might be conceived as roughly analogous to the McTaggart divide of the B-series from the A-series.

  46. Sorabji, Time Creation and the Continuum, 38.

  47. Quoted in Sorabji, Time Creation and the Continuum, 40.

  48. Sorabji, Time Creation and the Continuum, 42.

  49. Sorabji points to a discussion by John Dillon, where Dillon argues that this entity was not actually a type of Platonic form. As something lesser, it is difficult to classify.

  50. Stephen H. Daniel, “Seventeenth-Century Scholastic Treatments of Time,” Journal of the History of Ideas 42 (1981): 589. Though Suarez’s view will be considered in detail (because of its potential influence on Descartes), similar dualist accounts were offered by others. In Descartes and the Last Scholastics, Roger Ariew identifies Eustachius, De Ceriziers, and Marande as others proposing very similar views. See Roger Ariew, Descartes and the Last Scholastics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), 53ff.

  51. Fourth Set of Replies: AT VII 235; CSM II.164.

  52. My interpretations of Suarez owe much to the work done by Daniel, “Scholastic Treatments of Time,” and Emmaline Bexley, “Quasi-Absolute Time in Francisco Suarez’s Metaphysical Disputation,” Intellectual History Review 22 (2012): 5–22.

  53. Disp. Meta., 50.9; Quote and trans. from Bexley, “Quasi-Absolute Time,” 8.

  54. Disp. Meta., 50.12.9; Quoted in Daniel, “Scholastic Treatments of Time,” 592.

  55. For a discussion on the reductive nature of Suarez’s account, see Ariotti, “Towards Absolute Time,” 35ff.

  56. Disp. Meta., 50.8.6; Quote and trans. from Bexley, “Quasi-Absolute Time,” 9.

  57. Daniel, “Scholastic Treatments of Time,” 594.

  58. What Suarez implied by calling this succession “imaginary” is somewhat controversial. Whereas Daniel would claim that this extrinsic time is imaginary in virtue of being an idea that one fabricates, in her more recent article, Emmaline Bexley argues that “imaginary” is merely Suarez’s way of indicating that an extrinsic time (i.e., a time not inherent to an enduring substance) is a thing that can only be conceived in minds because succession without a thing enduring successively is fundamentally a privation. This external time is thus a type of thing in the same way a vacuum is a type of thing. Says Bexley, it is a thing that exists in some sense, since it has a nature that can be truly predicated of, and yet it is a thing that can only be found in minds. Bexley’s analysis intends to show that Suarez’s extrinsic time suggests an important precursor for the later absolutist accounts of Gassendi or Newton. Though her analysis is quite interesting and somewhat compelling, I tend to favor Daniel’s view which interprets Suarez’s “imaginary” time with the minimal, ontological standing available for a fabricated idea. My grounds for favoring this view are drawn from the later passages I will be presenting. It is, however, worth looking at Bexley’s article to see this alternative interpretation.

  59. Daniel, “Scholastic Treatments of Time,” 595.

  60. Disp. Meta. 40.9.10; Quoted in Daniel, “Scholastic Treatments of Time,” 594.

  61. Disp. Meta. 50.9.15; Quoted in Daniel, “Scholastic Treatments of Time,” 595.

  62. Disp. Meta. 50.10.11; Quoted in Daniel “Scholastic Treatments of Time,” 596.

  63. Daniel, “Scholastic Treatments of Time,” 597.

  64. Constantino Esposito, “The Concept of Time in the Metaphysics of Suarez,” in The Medieval Concept of Time: Studies on the Scholastic Debate and its Reception in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Pasquale Porro (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 394.

  Chapter 2

  Time is Not (and Could Not Be) a Cartesian Substance

  In this chapter, I argue that time is not—and indeed could not be—a Cartesian substance. That is to say, I argue that it is an historical fact about Descartes that he didn’t think time was a substance, while also identifying the deep metaphysical reasons that prevented him from maintaining such a view. In so doing, I clarify Descartes’ account of time by showing how the account is necessitated by his metaphysics, and thus why it is not an ad hoc addition. I will do this by (i) clarifying the categories of Descartes’ ontology, then (ii) examining the primary texts that appear to suggest the interpretation that time could be a substance, before finally (iii) offering four arguments (both historical and philosophical) against the possibility of time’s being a Cartesian substance.

  The work in this chapter builds on the historical context sketched in the previous chapter. In particular, this chapter relates to the ancient debate over whether or not time c
ould exist as an independent entity. In chapter 1, I identified the absolutists as answering in the affirmative, and the reductivists in the negative. That is to say, the reductive accounts of time maintained that time is dependent on “more fundamental” features of the world (e.g., the motion or relations obtaining among corporeal objects, minds, etc.) whereas the absolutists argued that time is so radically independent that it requires nothing else—not even the existence of particular objects existing in time—for its existence.

  The historical debate between absolutist and reductive accounts of time manifests itself within the Cartesian context as a debate over whether or not time could be a substance. This shift follows from Descartes’ definition of substance in Principles I.51 as being “a thing which exists in such a way as to depend on no other thing for its existence.”[1] Descartes takes the capacity for independent existence to be the criterion that establishes something to be a substance; those things incapable of this sort of independence are thereby established to be mere attributes of substance. Thus, within the Cartesian metaphysical framework, the historical debate between the absolutists and reductivists translates into a debate over whether time might exist as a Cartesian substance or instead as an attribute possessed by substances. Since Descartes’ predecessors and contemporaries were actively debating over absolutist vs. reductive conceptions of time, this approach considers Descartes’ account time as it might have been considered by Descartes’ own contemporaries.

  Ontological Categories in Descartes

  Though Descartes defines substance as being “a thing which exists in such a way as to depend on no other thing for its existence,”[2] it is important to note that Descartes also claims that only God achieves this true degree of independence. Though God is the only fully independent substance, Descartes asserts that the term “substance” can be applied to things that only need “the ordinary concurrence of God to exist.” Such entities are appropriately called ‘substances’ since they are distinguished from those things that “cannot exist without other things” (i.e., qualities, attributes, or modes).[3] Thus, in wondering if time might exist as an independent entity/substance, I do not wonder if time might be on an ontological par with God. Rather, following Descartes’ own usage, I wonder if time has the sort of independent existence enjoyed by other created substances. That is to say, I am questioning whether time has the status of being a thing that depends on nothing beyond God’s concurrence for its existence.

  As Descartes proceeds in his discussion between Principles I.51 and I.52, he emphasizes the importance of determining a thing’s level of dependence in order to establish its ontological status. After defining substance (in both its primary and secondary sense), Descartes proceeds to discuss attributes. Just as he identifies substances by their independence, he identifies attributes by their dependence. Descartes explains, “if we perceive the presence of some attribute, we can infer that there must be present an existing thing or substance to which it may be attributed.”[4] Whenever an attribute is perceived, a substance can be inferred, because attributes depend on the existence of the substance of which they are an attribute. In other words, Descartes makes it clear that his metaphysics prohibits “free-floating” attributes.

  It is worth noting that Descartes does make a further distinction within the realm of dependent things. Among dependent things, Descartes distinguishes (1) principal attributes which “constitute [a substance’s] nature and essence” and (2) ‘modes.’ He identifies extension as the principal attribute of corporeal substance, and thought as the principal attribute of thinking substance. Though modes are also attributable to a substance, they differ from thought and extension insofar as modes are nonessential ways that a substance can be. In noting Descartes’ distinction between principal attributes and modes it is important to emphasize that this distinction does not hinder Descartes’ ontology from offering a clean break between those things that depend on other created things, and those that do not. What the distinction between principal attributes and modes indicates is merely that Descartes offers two different ways for this dependence to be manifested.

  Whereas neither principal attributes nor modes can exist without a substance, one can think of modes as being additionally “dependent” on a principal attribute since modes are ways for a substance to be either extended or thinking. As Garber explains, “the term ‘mode,’ modus in Latin, means quite simply “way”; it is a perfect term to choose to express the fact that all accidents are ways of something being extended or being a thinking thing, ways of expressing the essence of a thing.”[5] Thus, modes and principal attributes are both dependent on substances, but whereas attributes are ways that substances are in general, modes are ways that either extended or thinking substances are in particular. Though there are important differences in how modes and principal attributes are manifested, these differences will not be further explored in this context. Such an exploration is not required, since Descartes’ ontology cleanly distinguishes between things that depend for their existence on other created things, and those that do not. For my purposes, I will call the former “attributes” and the latter “substances.”

  Why Think That Time Could Be a Substance For Descartes?

  Though scholars seem sometimes to discuss Cartesian time as though it is a thing that can be studied as an isolated entity, such an approach does not focus on the question of whether such independence would entail the substantiality of time. To understand why one might think that Cartesian time is the sort of thing that can be considered in isolation of other things, one need only look to the primary texts that have inspired most discussions among Cartesian commentators. Among Descartes’ discussions on time, one of the most significant, and certainly most discussed, passages is the discussion that he offers in the second causal argument of the third Meditation—an argument that also appears in Principles I.21. In I.21, Descartes claims that “the nature of time is such that its parts are not mutually dependent, and never coexist.”[6] Given this fact about time, Descartes argues that the duration of one’s existence offers sufficient grounds for proving God’s existence. In brief, Descartes argues that since the parts of time are independent from each other (and thereby causally separated)[7] something’s existence at one moment cannot be the cause of its existence at the next moment. Since beings endure through multiple moments, and since this continued enduring cannot be credited to the thing’s existence at a prior moment, Descartes argues that this enduring must be caused by the immediate concurrence of God. Thus, Descartes bases a proof for God’s existence on the “parts” of time and on the fact of one’s continuing duration, since these two facts together necessitate the existence of God as the immediate cause for this continuing duration.

  Descartes’ proof of God’s existence based on the nature of time appears in Principles I.21, in Med III, and in his Replies related to Med III. Many commentators have focused on the account of time suggested by these passages because it seems surprisingly atomistic. That is to say, many have looked at these passages and wondered if Descartes’ parts of time doctrine suggests the existence of discrete moments of time that are either continuously or discontinuously linked. Despite the broad interest in the atomism question, this is not the topic of interest for this chapter.[8] Rather, the parts of time doctrine is here important because it explains why some might be tempted to read Cartesian time as being a type of independent entity—and so, as a type of Cartesian substance.

  In Principles I.21’s claim that “time is such that its parts are not mutually dependent,”[9] the description suggests that time is a composite entity made up of distinct parts. Given that Descartes’ ontology divides between substances and attributes, and that attributes are a way that a substance is, by Descartes describing time as a composite of parts, it is difficult to see how such a thing might be a way that something is.[10] If Descartes had simply described time to be orderly divisions, then such an account would be consistent with its being an attribute of substanc
e. To the question, “In what way is the enduring of my lifespan?” the reply would be “orderly divided.” Since Descartes does not identify time with orderly divisions, however, but instead as being a whole composed of independent parts, it doesn’t make sense to claim that this whole is some kind of way that something can be. Are ways that things are made up of discrete parts? It is hard to understand what a composite way of being might be like. By reflecting on the strangeness of this idea, one might suppose that time is not some kind of attribute, but rather a kind of independent entity (i.e., a substance).