Will and Teleological Doubt

Peirce conceives the relation between Doubt and Belief as teleological--the former is a condition of cognitive dissonance, the latter one of cognitive consonance, and the former seeks the latter. Now, Descartes seems likely to be suffering from a theological crisis, at least part of the root of which is the cognitive dissonance occasioned by the irreconcilability of dogmatic Medieval Cosmology and Copernican Heliocentrism. So, given that that dissonance motivates a procedure that eventuates in his affirmation that God exists, it can be classified as 'Teleological Doubt'. In contrast, his methodological Doubt can be classified as 'Material'. For, that method is implicated in a second procedure, one that is a descendant of Stoic Detachment and a forerunner of Husserlian Epoche--the process of self-dissociation from the world. That process, as has been previously discussed, is effected by Will, the principle of Diversification in Experience, and, hence, by a Material Principle, in a system in which 'Material' means 'becoming-diverse'. Accordingly, the arrival of the belief 'I am a thinking being', in the context of Descartes' exercise of Material Doubt, is not a teleological outcome, but is an intervention effected by a distinct principle, the Formal Principle of the system. In other words, the Meditations entails two projects--the resolution of theological confusion, and the search for an epistemological foundation--which do not coincide as well as Descartes presumes them to.