DESCARTES' RULES

We can remind ourselves of Descartes' four rules in the Discourse on Method before we explore them in more detail. They are as follows using my headings for each rule:

The rule of indubitability.

The rule of simplification.

The rule of gradation of knowledge

The rule of enumeration

Make sure you understand the basic ideas involved in epistemology before you explore how Descartes made a major contribution to the study of knowledge. The major point here is that Descartes claimed that you had to understand how to generate tre knowledge before you could undertake any inquiry in the world. Consequently he was seeking to place philosophy and science (he would not have seen a great distinction between them) on a new basis whereby we would have clear means of establishing whether knowledge claims were true.

The rule of indubitability

The first was never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgment than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt.

This rule is discussed extensively elesewhere. The key feature to note is that propositions and arguments can only be accepted if there is no reason to doubt them. They have to be established as certainties. The active knower seeks to establish beyond doubt the rightness of an argument.

The rule of simplification

The second, to divide each of the difficulties under examination into as many parts as possible, and as might be necessary for its adequate solution.

With this rule Descartes asks us to seek for underlying structures, means of reducing complexity to manageable forms. Something that is overly complex can be rendered clear if it is reduced to relatively simple forms. Planning a project or journey often requires us to take this sort of step. We can illustrate how Descartes thought about this rule. If you look at the following picture you can see an apple but you can also see a mathematical shape. Call it a circle or a sphere, it is a round shape. For Descartes this is a 'simple' and from this more complex shapes can be built up. His argument is exemplified in the way he would describe the following shape. Here the rose is a complex shape but it is built up from an arrangement of simple shapes and can be reduced to this. An artist can reduce a flower to a number of simple shapes and build it up from there. Descartes' argument was to prove particularly important for later philosophers such as Russell. But for our purposes it makes a claim for the ability to reduce many aspects of our experience to simple shapes. But it also indicates that complex ideas can be built out of 'simples'. We shall see later that this argument goes to the heart of how some theorists have approached concepts and their usage can be used although as we shall see in the pages on Nietzsche this is an argument that can be contested. You can probably think of how policy processes are often see in terms of complexes built out of 'simples'.

The rule of gradation of knowledge

The third, to conduct my thoughts in such order that, by commencing with objects the simplest and easiest to know, I might ascend by little and little, and, as it were, step by step, to the knowledge of the more complex; assigning in thought a certain order even to those objects which in their own nature do not stand in a relation of antecedence and sequence.

With this rule Descartes amplifies the rule of simplification. By moving from 'simples' to 'complexes' we can move upwards so that we eventually understand large abstract systems which do not readily show causal relations. It is like climbing a mountain. From the ground the route to the top often looks easy. It seems to go up in easy stages. For Descartes our pursuit of knowledge should be like this. Thus to understand an emotion such as pleasure or surprise Descartes would start from 'observables', i.e. experiences where he would look for common ground and only accept those facts which were not open to doubt. In this particular case we could move from examining all expressions of pleasure to see what they had in common. While research investigations are more complex than this and require us to see how we would measure emotions the general point is clear. By moving from particular incidents to general states we move up to a more abstract level of reasoning where it is difficult to identify causal relations with any degree of certainty. Descartes was one of the first to argue for this 'scientific' approach.

The rule of enumeration

And the last, in every case to make enumerations so complete, and reviews so general, that I might be assured that nothing was omitted.

Descartes here requires us to leave no stone unturned. We cannot reject evidence or fail to work things out because we do not like the conclusions they offer. We have to consider all facts and their implications in order to arrive at a true picture.

Descartes claims that if these four rules are followed wecan arrive at true knowledge, i.e. a thoroughgoing epistemology. If you return now to the Rules you can explore these ideas more fully and then use them in your study of Foucault and Habermas Rules of Method.
Alternatively you can take these ideas further at Exploration of Descartes project
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Descartes opening page or to
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