Rene Descartes 1596-1650 Rene Descartes 1596-1650

D. Rules of Method:Descartes’ method does not consistonly of intuition and deduction, butalso in the rules he formulated for theirguidance.Chief point of rules is to provide a clearand orderly procedure for the operationof the mind.It was his conviction that “methodconsists entirely in the order anddisposition of the objects toward whichour mental vision must be directed ifwe would find out any truth.”The mind must begin with a simple andabsolutely clear truth and must movestep by step without losing clarity andcertainty along the way.He offers 21 rules in Rules for theDirection of the Mind (rule, 3, 4, 5, and 8are most important and four precepts inDiscourse on Method which hebelieved to be perfectly sufficient.Rule III: When we propose to investigate asubject, “our inquiries should be directed, notto what others have thought, not to what weourselves conjecture, but to what we canclearly and perspicuously behold with certaintydeduce.”Rule IV: This is a rule requiring that other rulesbe adhered to strictly, for “if a man observethem accurately, he shall never assume what isfalse as true, and will never spend his mentalefforts to no purpose.”Rule V: We shall comply with the methodexactly if we “reduce involved and obscurepropositions step by step to those that aresimpler, and then starting with the intuitiveapprehension of all those that are absolutelysimple, attempt to ascend to the knowledge ofall others by precisely similar steps.”Rule VIII: “If in the matters to be examined wecome to a step in the series of which ourunderstanding is not sufficiently well able tohave an intuitive cognition, we must stop shortthere.”21