Descates Meditations II
A starting point for reconstructing
the world.
The cogito’s consequences
• What is the argument?
– I think, therefore I am?
– I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is
put forward by me, or
• What does it show?
• What is this I that exists?
• The Demon, again: D. assumes he has no
body at all, so what’s left?
• I exist so long as I am thinking.
Could I still be a physical thing?
• I know that I exist.
• I also recognize that all corporeal images,
“and …in general, everything relating to
the nature of body could be mere dreams.”
(170)
• Could D’s knowledge of his own existence
be knowledge of the existence of a
physical thing?
The Unity of Consciousness
• All D’s thoughts (doubts, imaginings,
understandings, ‘denings’, willings and
unwillings, sensings etc) pertain to him,
this thinking thing.
• This unity (Kant: this ‘I, he or it, the thing
which thinks’) is a puzzle in its own right.
• Our thoughts, past, present and future, all
need some kind of connection in order to
be called ours.
The persistence of the physical
• We still tend to think we understand physical
things better (more distinctly) than we do our
minds.
• The wax argument: what is the point of this
examination of a single physical thing?
• Only the mind (reason) can grasp the full
potential of the wax to assume an infinity of
shapes; only judgment allows us to perceive
even physical things (the men in the street).
• But can we really ‘distinguish the wax from its
outward forms’ by our reason?
Self-knowledge first
• Every use of the mind to grasp, understand or
know anything involves awareness of the mind
itself– so it is more clearly (conclusively) known
to exist than anything else.
• But also, every ‘point of view’ I can use to
acquire more distinct (complete, detailed,
integrated) knowledge of anything involves more
complete, etc. knowledge of my mind, so it’s
more distinctly known to mesd than anything
else.
Ideas and the existence of God
• D now operates from behind the ‘veil of
ideas’.
• Here he is certain: he doubts, wills, has
sensory experiences (treated merely as
modes of thinking, they aren’t in question).
• But being certain provides an illustration of
what is required for certainty!
• “a clear and distinct perception of what I
am asserting.”
What’s clear and distinct?
• That I have certain thoughts, including
sensations.
• But not that there are external objects that
those sensations resemble.
• What about mathematics? Only the
thought of a deceiving God led D to worry
about arithmetic and geometry.
• So God’s existence and nature must be
settled for us to get much further.
Kinds of thoughts
• Some are ‘images of things’ (these are
‘ideas’ properly so-called).
• Some thoughts ‘have various additional
forms’: to will, to affirm, to deny… these
are volitions and judgements.
• Ideas in themselves aren’t true or false–
only judgements are.
• Thinking just of ideas, there’s no question
of error (transparency of mind again).
Nature
• ‘Nature’ teaches me to suppose that there
are outer things that resemble (some of)
my ideas.
• Further, these ideas don’t depend on my
will. I experience having them whether I
want to or not…
• But the impulse to believe in such outer
things is just a habit of mind, and not really
to be trusted.
Sensory ideas vs. what I judge
• The sun: the sensory idea and an astronomical
idea are in conflict, and in fact I’m more
persuaded by the astronomical idea.
• Ideas differ, not as modes of thought, but in
terms of their content, i.e. in terms of what they
are ideas of.
• An idea of a substance ‘amounts to something
more’ than ideas of modes or accidents…
• And an idea of God (the philosophers’ God) has
more ‘objective reality’ in it than ideas of finite
substances.
The clever argument
• How does having the idea of God show that
there is a God, according to Descartes?
• What is the difference between ‘formal’ and
‘objective’ reality, for Descartes?
• What is the idea of God, according to
Descartes?
• How does an idea come to have a certain
content? What limits the content that an idea
can have? Why must causes have formal
reality?