Justin E. H. Smith

Commentaire sur André Gombay, "Descartes et son chien"

Université du Québec à Montréal
29 avril, 2009

Pour faire un jugement dans le sens cartésien, explique André Gombay, il faut que tous les sens soient joints à une idée de soi, ce que les animaux n’ont évidemment pas.  Descartes parle toutefois des ‘peurs, espoirs et joies’ des chiens, des chevaux, des singes, sans admettre qu’en parlant ainsi on est obligé d'attribuer des esprits ou des intellects à ces bêtes mêmes.  Est-ce que Descartes se contredit ici? Pas forcément, d’après M. Gombay. 

Le chien ne peut pas se tromper quand il se lance sur un leurre qui ressemble à un canard, parce qu’il n’était pas capable avant de former le jugement que ce soit un canard, ni d’avoir l’idée de soi qui est présumément implicite dans n’importe quel verbe conjugué dans la première personne.  Ce n’est pas pour Descartes avec nos yeux que nous percevons le canard, c’est avec nos esprits ou, ce qui est le même, nos intellects.

Même sans les concepts nécessaires pour former des jugements, Gombay croit que le chien pourrait avoir des perceptions, qu’il qualifie comme ‘non-attribuées’. Le chien ne peut pas former le jugement ‘J’ai mal à la patte’, car il n’a pas le concept de ‘je’ ni de ‘patte’. Mais prenons un jugement, ou proto-jugement, comme ‘il fait mal’. Est-ce que ça c’est une pensée qui pourrait faire partie de ce que Gombay appelle l’‘expérience atmosphérique’ d’un animal? Pour un être qui n’a que des expériences atmosphériques, toute proposition commence par ‘il’, ce pronom designant la source d’un vaste donné non-structuré et tout-encompassant. Parfois il pleut, parfois il fait mal, parfois il fait plaisir, etc.

Si Gombay a raison, il faudra peut-être repenser si que nous avons longtemps considéré comme la nouveauté de la théorie de ‘petites perceptions’ de Leibniz. Car qu’est-ce que c’est qu’une expérience atmosphérique si non une perception sans apperception, c’est à dire une perception plus ou moins confuse qui n’est pas accompagnée par la conscience de soi.

Mais est-ce que Descartes aurait pu vraiment croire une chose semblable?

Il faut reconnaitre que les textes eux-mêmes ne nous donnent pas une reponse univoque. Gombay nous fournit une liste de toute les reférences aux animaux dans les travaux publiés et dans les correspondances. A ces reférences on pourrait probablement en ajoute encore une, quoique indirecte, qui se trouve parmi les notes que Leibniz a pris à Paris, probablement juste après que Claude Clerselier, l’éxecuteur du Nachlass de Descartes, lui a fourni accès à des manuscrits embryologiques et physiologiques de Descartes. Les notes que Leibniz a prises constituent la seule trace que nous avons de ces textes, et elles sont très révélatrices. Dans une note, appellée De animalibus, Leibniz écrit: “Cartesii vera mens fuisse videtur animalia etiam cogitare”: la vraie opinion de Descartes était que les animaux pensent.

De Animalibus

1672-6; LH 037, 02. 123v.

(To see a scan of the original manuscript, please go here. To read the original Latin, please click 'continue reading' below.)

The true opinion of Descartes appears to have been that animals think. Also in the book on the Method of contraries he appears to say this, indeed so that he should be more satisfying to the theologians, whose judgment he feared.  In his final letter to Henry More he did not show himself to be in doubt, but in the book on the passions, which is among the last, he said of the brutes that perhaps they do indeed think. This Malebranche did not notice. Lord Tschirnhaus believed himself to be able to show that there are no animals that do not arise from other animals.  Fleas and lice of various sorts are produced in various animals; various animals are able to produce themselves, where no animals were before. Redi performed experiments, [and] if he had followed them through, he would have arrived at this. There are at length certain black spots in men’s nostrils, and if they are pressed a sort of worm can be squeezed out of them, a larva, and this is confirmed by the example of pediculosis, but these perhaps demonstrate as much.  Visible animals often arise from invisible ones that make the air full, from indetectible spiders [come] these webs that fly through the air, which are called vulgarly Mariengarn ['Mary's thread'].  Fevers from the matter that has passed from the veins into the tissue.  Of course the supply of nutriment brings about extravasation, as other causes do constantly.  From here, blood is either expelled, or it stagnates.  If this arrives at the heart, and there brings about a fright because of its unaccustomed nature, the consumed matter returns in due time, and from here arise intermittent fevers. Artificial fever, if you poke yourself with a needle in the thumb, where on account of the hardness of the skin matter is not expelled well, and thus is carried by the blood to the heart, and brings about a little fever.  (Thus the doubt, for what is outside the vessels does not return to the heart.)  In dysentery there arises from a certain irritating matter a motion that is contrary to the peristaltic motion of the intestines, and from here, if nature should become accustomed [to this], the man dies.  Nor indeed can the one motion be made to harmonize with the other, and an untimely expulsion follows, and one that is opposed to nutrition.  A simple cure, if a man should not depart from his chair, and if he is turned every two hours, remaining until something is expelled.  Thereagter, a little concealed, he will sweat, and finally he will accept a hot broth.  These [things] suffice[:] the elements expel the irritant, opium diminishes the irritation. You will cure fever without a febrifuge if you sweat thoroughly, bringing down the fever; a certain person (though unfortunately) sweat only a little prior to paroxysm.  By a violent paroxysm the fright ceases, [and] the sweating ceases, and a slight cold is felt.  Thereupon, in turn, heat and sweat [followed], and thus the fever ceased.  (Fevers arising from wounds are artificial.)  It is noteworthy how tuberculosis comes about.

Kant on Jokes

[Draft of a paper presented to the Montreal 'Reflection on Art and Aesthetics' Workshop, 9 April, 2009. To vote for a version of this essay in the 3QD Philosophy Prize Competition, go here.]

Justin E. H. Smith

 We may as well start with a joke:

Primatologist to chimpanzee: “Bongo, bring me some food.”
(Bongo brings a pile of stones instead of food, and shows a wide, teeth-bearing grin.)

Alright, perhaps not a joke, really. More a primate proto-joke. However we classify it, though, I believe this report (based on a true story), gives us everything we need to generate a theory of humour. To get there, we will have first to do some propaedeutic work, in order to determine exactly what such a theory ought to explain, as also some metatheoretical work to explain where exactly such a theory fits in relation to other, similar projects. 

1. The Funny and the Beautiful

Arthur Danto has noted that every systematic philosopher, whether a refined aesthete or a complete philistine, has at some point taken on the topic of art.  One might add that nearly every one of these has included an account of wit, humour, jokes, comedy, or laughter, or some combination of these, within his theory of art and beauty.  Why is this? Is gelastics –to borrow a neologism coined by Mary Beard from the Greek ‘gelan’: ‘to laugh’-- a subdomain of aesthetics? Let us consider some of the reasons for holding such a view.

There seems to be a great similarity between the way people talk about the ‘aesthetic stance’ and the way they conceive the ‘sense of humour’. The perception of something as a joke or as a work of art requires a certain stance or perspective. Even if it is hard to say what this will be, it seems that the explanations for the one often serve just as well as accounts for the other. For example, Edward Bullough’s criterion of psychical distance, which would account for the reluctance theatre-goers feel at the thought of getting up to save Desdemona from Othello, seems to function in the same way to provide the moral distancing that enables one to laugh at a cruel joke (and most, perhaps all, jokes are cruel, a point to which we might return later).