Two rival versions of the nature of deduction and its relation to intuition in Descartes' thought

Behniafar, Mahdi

doi:10.30465/lsj.2021.35984.1352

Two rival versions of the nature of deduction and its relation to intuition in Descartes' thought

Document Type : Research

Author

Mahdi Behniafar

Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Allameh Tabatabaei University

https://doi.org/10.30465/lsj.2021.35984.1352

Abstract

This paper examines two rival versions (normative-axiomatic and psychologistic) about the nature of deduction and its relation with intuition in Descartes' thought. The ideal of the first version is to reduce the role of the faculty of memory and, sometimes, the role of the faculty of imagination in long chains of deduction due to their fallibility in Descartes' view. Achieving this ideal also depends on the mental training and practicing to place longer inferential chains in a single Cartesian intuition. This version accepts the independence of a logical consequence, considers deduction to be definable on the basis of definiens such as rules of inference and the basic principles of logic, and does not contradict the axiomatic tree of Cartesian knowledge. But the second version essentially sees deduction as nothing more than an intuitive grasping: a simple mental act that is nothing more than a complex intuition of several intuitive things. Therefore, this version considers deduction to have no logical regulations and considers it indefinable based on definiens such as logical principles and rules, and instead places the grasp of a truth that manifests in a kind of psychological clarity experienced by the knowing subject.
These two versions try to seem compatible with cognitive objectivity and offer an innate and inadoptable reading of Cartesian logic; But since the second version contradicts both the more fundamental points of Descartes' thought and the independence of logic, this version cannot lead to the cognitive objectivity and innateness of logic in an acceptable way.

Keywords

Descartes

Intuition

Deduction

Axiomatic System

Psychologism

Adoption Problem in Logic

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