Even in the Matrix, You Still Have to Pay Your Debts
What would happen to morality and politics if Descartes’s skeptical scenarios turned out to be true? Philosopher Jimmy Alfonso Licon argues that the answer depends: Some would unsettle our claims about property, legitimacy, and history, while others would leave much of ordinary life intact.
René Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy begins with a radical question: What, if anything, can survive doubt? First published in 1641, the work set out to rebuild knowledge on a foundation nothing could shake. Descartes' method was designed as a shortcut because it would be impossible to examine the truth of each and every individual belief that one could have. Descartes resolved to reject any belief for which he could find some reason for doubt. Many of our beliefs come from the senses, and the senses sometimes deceive us. Therefore, those beliefs can be doubted. Sometimes we dream so vividly that we realize only upon waking that it had all been a dream. This suggests we could be dreaming even now (while we believe we are awake) without knowing it.
Worse, perhaps an evil demon, "supremely powerful and cunning," has deceived us about the sky, the earth, and our own bodies. Descartes meant this exercise as a thought experiment to evaluate the quality of our knowledge. But these scenarios carry moral and political implications too, and those have been mostly ignored when scholars assess the writings and philosophy of Descartes. This oversight matters because if we discovered that one of these skeptical scenarios were true, it would matter a great deal for our moral and political claims.
Consider dream skepticism, from the beginning of the Meditations. In this scenario, the world I experience is taking place only within my mind, and my actions there are devoid of moral consequences in the real world. If I merely dream that I rob a bank or cheat on my taxes, there are no consequences in the external world; upon waking, the wrong has not actually taken place.
Timeless reading in a fleeting world.
