I agree, totally different actions. — Moliere

How do you think they could study circulation and the working of muscles? And how do you keep the subject still while you're uncovering organs and muscles?

Although vivisection dates from antiquity, early modern experimenters expanded the range of practices and epistemic motivations associated with it, displaying considerable technical skills and methodological awareness about the problems associated with the animals being alive and the issue of generalizing results to humans.

I wouldn't be surprised if the people inspired by Descartes did something along those lines. (though that's not the same as demonstration, either -- something about knowledge. it's hard to obtain sometimes!) — Moliere

It was a university dissecting theater. The demonstrations were for doctors, students and the paying public. In the quest for knowledge. This is from later, but the method hasn't changed much since the the 1600's.
But maybe Descartes didn't, and people just think he did.

Many practitioners expressed great discomfort at the suffering of the animals; however, many remained convinced that their investigations were not only indispensable from an epistemic standpoint but also had potential medical applications.

Here is a passage from the web page that calls into question Descartes’ participation in the torture of dogs. It is by one Kevin R. D. Shepherd who seems a reputable source. I agree with the sentiment.

As a philosopher, Descartes surely ought to have been more resistant to fashionable cruelty of the leisured class of scientists active in his own time. His inclination to the contrary places him in the same category as reprehensible events of the 1660s, when thirty vivisections were conducted in the presence of assembled members of the Royal Society in London.

A well known early report of brutal Cartesian vivisectionists at the Port Royal School, in Paris, has aroused differences of interpretation. One commentary says the report “may not be trustworthy.” That account was written years after the events described. However, there are other reports of animal experiments in the late seventeenth century, along with implications that Cartesian mechanists made no attempt to minimise animal suffering, believing that this was an illusion (Boden 2006:72-3).

The Port Royal report describes dogs being nailed alive to boards for dissection. This was during the 1650s. The callous behaviour is very easy to credit, as the Jansenist milieu under discussion is known to have been influenced by Cartesian attitudes, via leading figures at the Port Royal School and related Abbey. Someone had taught the pupils a Cartesian approach to supposed automata. The report was included in the Memoires of Nicolas Fontaine (1625-1709), a contribution which is very difficult to ignore (on the Port Royal School, see Delforges 1985).

Vivisection increased substantially as a consequence of Cartesian doctrine, being avidly practised by the Royal Society. This organisation was founded by a group of scientists including Robert Boyle (1627-91) and Robert Hooke (1635-1703). Their crimes are on record, including the injection of poisons, ever since a favoured device of laboratory personnel. Dogs, sheep, and other animals were the victims. Hooke is known to have vivisected a dog in 1667, and in this respect was a virtual blood brother of Descartes.

Hooke’s prestigious colleague Robert Boyle was an ardent defender of vivisection, viewing critics as sentimentalists. How tough and supremely insensitive the empiricists were. The objectors were here viewed as “a discouraging impediment to the empire of man over the inferior creatures of God” (Boden 2006:73).

As a supplement to the OP: Vivisection.

From the article above it seems that at least in the medical profession there was an attempt to justify animal vivisection as a "better" alternative to human experimentation; unlike Cartesian vivisection which was based on the belief that animals were mere automatons, medical vivisection acknowledges that animals do feel pain, but that must be ignored for the greater good (humanity's well-being).

That said, opposition to vivisection came from the public and even from within the medical profession; in the case of the latter, some scientists were of the view that it (vivisection) was/is unnecessary. :up:

Here is a passage from the web page that calls into question Descartes’ participation in the torture of dogs. — Wayfarer

Right. So, all the anatomists were doing it; Descartes gave them philosophical absolution, but did not practice it himself, because A He was too nice a guy or B He was too busy doing math or C He didn't want to tarnish his reputation with future fans. Well, that's all right then.

I think it’s possible to be critical without being totally cynical. I am disappointed to learn about this aspect of Descartes’ character, but that doesn’t mean I want him struck from the history books. Understanding something of Descartes’ philosophy is important for understanding modern culture. But I agree, there’s plenty to be critical of. As that passage says, at the very least, Descartes ought to have known better, and many purported devotees of his ‘mechanist’ philosophy used it to justify enormous suffering.

(By way of antidote to the above, see this tear-jerker:

https://wapo.st/3Y1hqOb

I am disappointed to learn about this aspect of Descartes’ character, but that doesn’t mean I want him struck from the history books. — Wayfarer

Nobody gets out of the history books. If they're influential, they're in there, for good or ill, whitewashed or besmirched, nailed to the past forever, subject to scrutiny and judgment by future generations.

Understanding something of Descartes’ philosophy is important for understanding modern culture. — Wayfarer

That's the reason I hate the bastard. For what he did to our culture. Not all by himself, obviously: Paul and Constantine did more and worse.

I think it’s possible to be critical without being totally cynical. I am disappointed to learn about this aspect of Descartes’ character, but that doesn’t mean I want him struck from the history books. Understanding something of Descartes’ philosophy is important for understanding modern culture. But I agree, there’s plenty to be critical of. As that passage says, at the very least, Descartes ought to have known better, and many purported devotees of his ‘mechanist’ philosophy used it to justify enormous suffering.

(By way of antidote to the above, see this tear-jerker:

https://wapo.st/3Y1hqOb — Wayfarer

Here's what to me is a point in favor of Descartes - at least he was being consistent. We, on the other hand, allegedly love dogs and cats, but meat is on the menu. Perhaps this is a transitional phase, we're moving towards a more enlightened ethics and part and parcel of that is the meat paradox (our love of animals while we farm them in what can only be described as cruel conditions for meat).

Here's what to me is a point in favor of Descartes - at least he was being consistent. — Agent Smith

Yes, we're certainly more hypocritical. We have anesthetics, but we're still experimenting on cats, dogs, rabbits, monkeys and countless rodents. We're still being entertained by spectacles of pain and degradation. We're still causing unimaginable, unimagined, completely invisible and inaudible suffering to whatever is trying to live in the lands and forests and waters we lay waste with our wasteful consumption. The harm we do hasn't changed since Assyria. We're just better isolated from it by technology. (That doesn't excuse Descartes' philosophy.)

You're bang on target mon ami!

From the magazine "Philosophy Now", within the article by Samuel Kaldas titled Descartes versus Cudworth On The Moral Worth of Animals is written: "Descartes undeniably did set up a strict dichotomy between the immaterial, experiencing, thinking life of man, and the material, mechanical, mindless existence of animals. That dichotomy certainly doesn’t encourage any sense of kinship between man and beast."

Is it true that Descartes set up a strict dichotomy between the thinking life of humans and the mindless existence of animals?

Not according to John Cottingham is his article "A Brute to the Brutes?": Descartes' Treatment of Animals". He writes "To be able to believe that a dog with a broken paw is not really in pain when it whimpers is a quite extraordinary achievement even for a philosopher." and "Now from none of all this does it follow that when Descartes calls some- thing a 'mechanism' or 'machine' he is automatically ruling out the presence of sensations or feelings". He concludes "At the end of the day, Descartes may not have been completely consistent, but at least he was not altogether beastly to the beasts"

Is it true that even if there was a strict dichotomy between animals and humans, as the author writes, there could be no sense of kinship?

From John Cottingham's measured argument, we can conclude that not only for Descartes but philosophers today, feeling and sensation is not part of any dichotomy between animals and humans.

Yet today many believe that only humans have the ability to reason, whilst animals are driven solely by instinct, though not an opinion I share. Even if this dichotomy between instinct and reason was true, it clearly doesn't in practice preclude any sense of kinship between humans and animals, in that even amongst those who believe in this dichotomy, there is still a sense of kinship with animals either as pets or in the natural world.

IE, the paragraph in "Philosophy Now" is according to John Cottingham's argument not only mistaken in its critique of Descartes but also in its conclusion that a sense of kinship cannot override any dichotomy (whether it exists or not) between animals and humans.

As you may or may not have noticed I dislike Descartes, and his legacy in the world. Whether Descartes actually tortured dogs as an expression of his moral ethic towards irrationality, or if it is analogical to the psychiatry he spawned, or did not is simply a matter that he raises in his cogito. The accusation of dog torturer, persecutor of irrational, or however it is interpreted is something that can be doubted. However, Descartes' philosophy has a kind of fake news Trumpist mechanism where anyone who likes him for whatever reason will have greater cause for doubt of any claim against him. It is a fact that the modern period featured an intensification of the persecution of the irrational, defined by a prevailing rational order. Laying the groundwork for modernity's foundational fake news ethos has created rationalists that are impervious to any claim that threatens their cartesian biases. I have anticartesian biases, so I accept mythos as a source of knowledge and understand that will draw the ire of rational modernists. I see the physic this relation of the modern rationalist being antagonized by the irrational, and the symbolic nature of a human bein violent towards a dog with the added layer of scientism, as an important message.

I see the physic this relation of the modern rationalist being antagonized by the irrational, and the symbolic nature of a human bein violent towards a dog with the added layer of scientism, as an important message. — introbert

Are you saying that, even though Descartes didn't, in fact, torture dogs, the myth that Descartes did torture dogs has a value as a symbol that sends an important message to society, and, as a myth, is something that only the rationalist would object to?

No your interpretation is biased towards descartes. You don't know Descartes didnt torture dogs, you have grounds to doubt it as it is an accusation and in contemporary legal rationality a person is innocent until proven guilty, unless you're in France. The question is not that they did or didn't, it can only be "if". Just because you have grounds to doubt, does not create certainty of the negation. If he did torture dogs that fits with my perception of the legacy of his philosophy and its psychiatry. If he didn't opponents lose a symbol people are more sensitive to than the acceptability of disciplinary and corrective measures towards the irrational.

From John Cottingham's measured argument, we can conclude that not only for Descartes but philosophers today, feeling and sensation is not part of any dichotomy between animals and humans. — RussellA

Sounds kind of like washing the clay feet of one's idol. At the time, vivisection was considered normal and necessary to the advancement of science, and Descartes explicitly declared it all right, and that had an influence on scientists of later generations, whose anatomical work is well documented. So, why nit-pick what he may have really meant or thought - unless you think he shouldn't have?
If it turns out he didn't actually participate (Though it would seem odd for someone so active in scientific endeavour to refrain from participation in cutting-edge science, writing have been p[resented here that cast doubt on my previous reading.), that wouldn't mitigate his philosophical influence on the modern age.

So, why nit-pick what he may have really meant or thought — Vera Mont

Because this thread was initiated asking the question whether Descartes was an "evil genius", which can only be about what he meant or thought.

Because this thread was initiated asking the question whether Descartes was an "evil genius", which can only be about what he meant or thought. — RussellA

Okay. He may not* have been an evil genius, but he was an evil influence.

(* I don't find the apologists very convincing; it's hard to imagine a thought or meaning so at variance with what he actually wrote... unless those were fake documents and letters... but if that were the case, his entire body of work is called into question.... and in that case, whether he was personally evil would be of secondary importance to the question of whether his work should really be attributed to John Locke... See the problem? )

Cogito Patior ergo sum — :cry:

I tried to verify the claim that:

He and his assistants would conduct public demonstrations in which they vivisected and tortured conscious animals -- often dogs. As the animal subjects writhed and cried out in apparent agony, Descartes would tell onlookers not to worry. The movements and sounds, he insisted, were no more than programmed responses. The animals were not really in any pain.

I found this:

Descartes had a sophisticated understanding of animal training or animal conditioning (classical or Pavlovian conditioning). For example, he opines that by beating a dog half-a-dozen times while a violin is being played, one will have trained or conditioned the dog to whine and run away at the sound of a violin (Descartes a Mersenne. 18 mars 1630 (Letter to Mersenne) (AT I: 134)) — Descartes' Tests for (Animal) Mind

Which seems like he is not speaking literally, but it raises some eyebrows. He is talking about building habits rather than vivisections.

According to Descartes's analysis of this example, the shock of finding on a single occasion something loathsome in meat that a person has been eating with relish can somehow establish a firm association between this type of meat and the feeling of disgust or aversion occasioned by the revolting item. That is, a single disagreeable episode can create a new habit in the diner that displaces or overrides his former disposition to savor meat of the given sort.

The thing about dogs in the village seem to come from father Gabriel Daniel's Voyage du monde de Descartes (1690) which makes a parody of a Cartesianist:

Avant que d’être Cartésien, j’étais si tendre, que je ne pouvais pas seulement voir tuer un poulet: mais depuis que je fus une fois persuadé que les bêtes n’avaient ni connaissance, ni sentiment, je pensai dépeupler de chiens la ville où j’étais, pour faire des dissections anatomiques, où je travaillais moi-même, sans avoir le moindre sentiment de compassion.

"Before becoming a Cartesian, I was so soft that I could not even see a chicken being killed: but once I was convinced that animals had neither knowledge nor feeling, I thought of depopulating the dogs from the city where I was, to do anatomical dissections, where I worked myself, without having the slightest feeling of compassion."

Though there was this:

Descartes ne nous a laissé aucun traité sur l'animal, mais cétait un fervent des dissections et des vivisections, qui s'est vu accusé, un jour, «d'aller par les villages pour voir tuer des pourceaux.»
Comme si c'était un crime, a-t-il répondu, d'être « curieux de l'anatomie». (À Mersenne, 13 nov. 1639, AT, II, p. 621) — La place de l’animal dans l’œuvre de Descartes

"Descartes left us no treatise on the animal, but he was an enthusiast for dissections and vivisections, who was accused, one day, of 'going through the villages to see pigs killed'. As if it were a crime, he replied, to be 'curious about anatomy'"

Apparently the claim about Descartes and his apprentices doing vivisections is taken from Gary Francione's "Introduction to Animal Rights – Your Child or the Dog?" — an idiotic title I want to add. I took a look into the book and unsurprisingly there is no reference for it. Here is the sensationalist piece from Francione's book:

Descartes and his followers performed experiments in which they nailed animals by their paws onto boards and cut them open to reveal their beating hearts. They burned, scalded, and mutilated animals in every conceivable manner. When the animals reacted as though they were suffering pain, Descartes dismissed the reaction as no different from the sound of a machine that was functioning improperly. A crying dog, Descartes maintained, is no different from a whining gear that needs oil.

The closest to anything like that is that Descartes admits in a letter to Plempius in 15/02/1638 to cutting open a live rabbit and possibly a fish:

Well, I once made a rather careful observation of this phenomenon in fish, whose hearts after removal from the body go on beating for much longer than the heart of any terrestrial animal.

For this is disproved by a decisive experiment that I have seen done several times and did again today in the course of writing this letter. [Descartes describes at considerable length a protracted vivisection—cutting open a live rabbit in order to see how it heart responds to various changes. We can spare ourselves the details of this. Descartes concludes:] This experiment is fatal to Harvey’s view about the movement of the heart,

Though vivisections were very common in the Early Modern Period it seems:

The striking usage of vivisection in the early modern period and its interaction with other techniques. — https://hpsc.indiana.edu/documents/faculty-articles/meli/dbmPaper_EarlyModernExperimentation.pdf

All in all, Descartes opened up live animals himself at least once, but he wasn't doing anything that is too different from the other scientists of his time, and his motivation seemed to be purely scientific. The outrageous claim that him and his followers (what followers?) boiled animals alive is yet to be proven. Descartes' philosophy recognised the concern of inflicting pain upon living beings and dismissed it as animals "don't have a soul", while other scientists might not have recognised the concern at all. Even at the time, many were troubled by the fact of the animals' pain. Maybe Descartes used his philosophy to cope with that discomfort.
In a letter to the Cambridge philosopher Henry More, Descartes said “The view is not so much cruel to beasts but respectful to human beings… whom it absolves from any suspicion of crime whenever they kill or eat animals”.

While some anatomists found the suffering of animals in artificial and cruel settings unbearable, many defended vivisection on the ground that it is permissible to treat animals the way we wish; paradoxically, Danish anatomist Nicolaus Steno did both.

They say that in movies, you can kill as many people as you'd like, but to murder an animal is unbearable for the viewer.

It seems easier to talk about massive slaughters of humans over the years, but 500 year old accounts of animal torture don't sit well.

If I posted a picture of a man on a rack having his limbs pulled from his torso I'd likely get fewer objections than if I posted a dog yelping in pain as he was dismembered.

Just an observation. My recommendation is that neither be tortured, just for the record.

They say that in movies, you can kill as many people as you'd like, but to murder an animal is unbearable for the viewer. — Hanover

Aye, and perhaps the hero in Man of Steel was not Superman but rather his father, Jonathan Kent, who sacrificed his life for the family dog. 's "idiotic title" is presumably addressing those people who refer to their dog as their child. The world is changing in "interesting" ways.

They say that in movies, you can kill as many people as you'd like, but to murder an animal is unbearable for the viewer.

But you can castrate pigs without anesthesia and leave them to wallow in pain, or pack chickens so closely together that you need saw their beaks off (also without anesthesia) to prevent them from pecking each other to death for lack of space, and people will consume them with every meal.

Surgical procedures on live animals is still the norm for most animals raised today.

Richard M. Weaver defined obscenity as the exposure of that which should remain private. The routine exposure of intense human suffering, or gratuitous depictions of it, would be the paradigmatic example in that it is both something that should remain private, while also being seemingly everywhere in modern media.

Descartes reduction of animals to machines has something deeply wrong with it, but the if anything the modern trend to be more shocked by animal suffering seems to suggest an even greater deficit.

Animals are machines.
Humans are animals.
Therefore, humans are machines.

...is a correct syllogism at any rate. I am reminded of Alan Moore's depiction of "Jack the Ripper," in from Hell. A man caught up in high flying esoteric ideas about history and the destiny of man nonetheless sees his victims as machines to be taken apart and examined, a total displacement of wonder and respect to the merely mechanical.

Agree with your analysis. Note: I too had corrected the record in this thread by doing some further reading culminating in a post a page or so back:

A little further reading reveals the suggestion that the previously-mentioned acts of 'hammering dogs to boards' was actually carried out not by Descartes but by pupils at a college influenced by Cartesian ideas. However the same source also notes that Descartes was interested in vivisection and anatomical examination of animals alive and dead. Another source says that the report about maltreatment of dogs was written long after the events and may not be trustworthy.

It seems to me that on further reading, the story about Descartes appalling treatment of dogs is apocryphal at best, but that he certainly was interested in vivisection, not least because of his theory that the mind and the body interacted via the pituitary gland.

But, as far as the story that opened this thread is concerned, unless someone has better information, I'm somewhat relieved to report that it probably is not true. — Wayfarer

And also the blog entry reproduced in this post.

Animals are machines.
Humans are animals.
Therefore, humans are machines. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think the problematic legacy of Descartes is the depiction of res cogitans as a 'thinking substance', which is an oxymoronic conception. By objectifying the mind, he renders it susceptible to the image of 'the ghost in the machine' which, of course, was a popular criticism. Descartes' dualism in some ways like an economic model or an allegory which has tended to be misinterpreted as an actual hypothesis, leading to the absurd notion of 'thinking things'. Deeply problematical idea in my view, and has become one of the deep foundational problems of modern culture.

This excerpt for me comes off as strangely confusing. I am not sure what his point is, but trying to vilify Descartes ("blood brother of Descartes") even though most of the text is about English characters (Descartes never went to England) that were active after René's death and mentions of nameless supposed "Cartesians" (in England!???) leaves a bad taste in my mouth for whatever authority it is that the writer holds — an authority in lying as we will see.

But something from the webpage caught my attention:

He even arranged [in 1646] for the slaughter of a pregnant cow so that he could examine the foetus at an early stage of its development. (Clarke 2006:332)

This piece of text in the website is a quote, so I am not sure who he is quoting, if at all, but the quote references Clarke 2006, a book, not a primary source obviously. I was not planning to do any more source hunting, but Clarke 2006 is "Descartes: A Biography", I went to page 332 for the quote and the webpage is unsurprisingly dishonest, cutting out the book to make things seem other than they are. I will preface this by saying that the book does not give any source to the statement that follows, simply "iv. 555", which I will not bother to find out what it is:

He even arranged for the slaughter of a pregnant cow so that he could examine the foetus at an early stage of its development. When he noticed that Dutch butchers often slaughtered pregnant cows, he took advantage of their carelessness to further his investigations: ‘I arranged for them to bring me more than a dozen wombs in which there were small calves, some as big as mice, others as big as rats, and others again like small dogs, in which I could observe many more things than was possible in the case of chickens because their organs are larger and more visible’ (iv. 555).

The animal was already dead, Descartes simply took the remains for investigation. Clarke quotes what seems to be a letter or note by Descartes, but I don't know what iv. 555 refers to.
What a shock, English guy writes a webpage about a French intellectual, spends most of the text talking about England, and manipulates information to claim that Napoleon was 10cm shorter than he really was— while he was too busy introducing the metric system to the world.

I have seen many texts that mention supposed followers, apprentices, pupils of Descartes. Descartes was not a university professor, sometimes a private tutor, he avoided publishing some of his works and his ideas were instutionally banned a few times. I wonder if those "followers" of Descartes were truly students of his work from around his time, like the Hegelians of Hegel, or complete strangers who watched a lecture about animals having no soul and went "Hey, that is pretty useful".

This excerpt for me comes off as strangely confusing. — Lionino

May well be! After opening the thread, based on the quote in the OP, I then went searching for further sources, confirmations and disconfirmations, and that is one that I found. The broader point, of the frequency of inhumane treatment of animals by scientists, I'm sure remains intact.

I've just learned the René Descartes used to conduct horrific public vivisection of dogs, literally flaying them alive and nailing them to boards, to 'demonstrate' his conviction that animals are incapable of suffering, due to not being rational. — Wayfarer

Either he was extremely stupid or extremely cruel. Either way, for some reason, it doesn't surprise me about Descartes.

Please notice that further research revealed that this was not true. I'll put a note on the OP.

Read 4th and 5th page especially.

As any student in linear algebra can readily attest, Descartes' infliction of cruelty was not limited to animals...

Vivisection was a very common form of experimentation and demonstration in medical colleges of the time - and in various forms, up to the present. Whether Descates himself conducted any such lectures using dogs has been the subject of debate, but he was a practicing physician, so he must have at least attended those lectures. He certainly didn't invent or initiate them, but he was famous, and his apologetics did help to legitimize vivisection as sound scientific practice.

Descartes famously thought that animals were merely ‘mechanisms’ or ‘automata’ – basically, complex physical machines without experiences – and that as a result, they were the same type of thing as less complex machines like cuckoo clocks or watches. He believed this because he thought that thoughts and minds are properties of an immaterial soul; thus, humans have subjective experience only because they have immaterial souls inhering in their physical bodies. However animals, reasoned Descartes, show no signs of being inhabited by rational souls: they don’t speak or philosophise, and so (as far as we can tell) they lack souls, and minds.

He bent some little way to accord animals sensation and emotion, but still considered it legitimate for humans to use them like objects.