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say, in the sense of gaining a standpoint (the absolute standpoint)
from which it can be understood in relation to reality, and
comprehensibly related to other conceivable representations.
This motivation, which makes Pure Enquiry into a way of gain-
ing the absolute conception, and hence showing that knowledge is
possible, makes clearer something which was already present in
Pure Enquiry as it has been treated up to now, namely that the pure
search for truth seeks certainty against any conceivable doubt. It
was already present, because it was involved in carrying to the
utmost the objective of a method which should be errorproof. But
we can now see a deeper significance in that objective and what it
involves, for, from the point of view of seeking the absolute concep-
tion, the distinction between a source of error or distortion which is
merely conceivable, and one which we take to be empirically effect-
ive, loses its importance. What we judge to be empirically effective
is itself a function of what we believe, of our representation of the
world, and must be undercut in the critical search for the absolute
conception. (But may not even what is conceivable to us be a func-
tion of our peculiar representation of reality? This will in fact be a
problem for Descartes, as we shall see in Chapter 7.)
It is often made a reproach to Cartesian scepticism that it deals in
merely conceivable sources of error or distortion, not only in ones
that we may have reason to think obtain. But this is absolutely
central to its motivation, a motivation which (I have suggested) has
its roots in the concept of knowledge itself. It is not a serious objec-
tion to the Cartesian programme to point out that philosophical
doubt is not ordinary doubt, nor even that doubt, as an effective
psychological attitude, is out of place in the philosophical context;
Descartes willingly agreed to both these points. Nor is it enough
just to claim that comprehensible criticism or suspension of belief
must always rest on other undoubted assumptions (the point that
we met before: see above, p. 42). This may be true, but without some
larger theoretical backing it can be supported only by following
52 the project
the route of Pure Enquiry and showing what goes wrong with it.
A serious level of criticism lies rather in argument for the con-
tention that the deeper motivation for Pure Enquiry falls away,
because there can be no absolute conception, and the search for the
Archimedean point is based on an illusion.
This may be true though in discussing it we must be prepared
to distinguish two different questions, whether an absolute concep-
tion is possible, and whether that conception has to be grounded in
certainty. Descartes, as I am interpreting him, implicitly assumed
the connection of those two ideas, as have many others, but it may
be that the search for certainly is only one approach to acquiring
such a conception. There may be other approaches: that is a point
we shall touch on again. But if there is no possible approach at all,
and the whole notion of an absolute conception is an illusion, then
it will be better if we can banish another illusion, that knowledge
requires the absolute conception. If it does require it, and that con-
ception is impossible, then knowledge is impossible, and we shall
have to do with less. Many would claim that we are now familiar
with the situation of doing with less than an absolute conception,
and can, as modern persons and unlike the ambitious or complacent
thinkers of earlier centuries, operate with a picture of the world
which at the reflexive level we can recognize to be thoroughly
relative to our language, our conceptual scheme most generally,
to our situation. But it is doubtful to what extent we really can
operate with such a picture, and doubtful whether such views do
not implicitly rely, in their self-understanding, on some presumed
absolute conception, a framework within which our situation can
be comprehensibly related to other possible situations. If we do
have to make do with less, it is far from clear that anyone has a
satisfactory idea of how much less, or of how to make do with it.
One last point should be made about Descartes s project: that it is
radically first-personal. Some philosophers have supposed or pre-
supposed that the most basic question of the theory of knowledge
must take the form what can I know? , and Descartes is among
them, perhaps first among them. It is an interesting and delicate
question, however, at what point the first-personal bias, in any
methodologically significant way, takes hold of Descartes s
the project 53
enquiry. He introduces the search for truth in first-personal style
in both the Discourse and the Meditations (the I of the Discourse
is more determinately the historical Descartes than is the solilo-
quizer of the Meditations), but this is not yet very heavily commit-
tal: the questions asked in the enquiry might, for all that, be of the
form what is true? or even what is known? . On the other hand,
Descartes certainly ends the Doubt in what he takes to be a radic-
ally first-personal situation, within the world of his own ideas,
seeking a route to a world outside that. Is there anything in his
process of enquiry itself which determines that transition?
We have already noticed, in considering the doubts about percep-
tion, a strong assumption which Descartes makes, to the effect that
all one s knowledge of anything is mediated by ideas, states of one s
mind, and that assumption of course strongly contributes to, if it
does not already constitute, his eventual egocentric predicament .
The mere undertaking of a search for truth cannot by itself commit
him to that assumption.13 However, when the search for truth takes
the special form of Pure Enquiry, the nature of the enquiry does
seem to import a distinctively first-personal element (although it
may still not come to anything as strong as Descartes s assump-
tion). Since Pure Enquiry seeks to maximize the truth-ratio among
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