A MODEL PRECIS FOR HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

Bob Corbett
Fall 2000

Note that in this html form of the paper it is not a perfect 2 page model since the formatting changes that some. However, please note that at the end of the model paper below, I have copied a photo of the paper as exactly 2 pages, single spaced with 1 inch margins all round.

Rene Descartes: MEDITATION II.

Bob Corbett
Fall 2000

Part I:

THESIS: I exist at least as a thinking thing, not necessarily with a body.

REASONS AND CONSIDERATIONS FOR WHY DESCARTES BELIEVES THE THESIS:

[In Meditation I Descartes had already established that he was subject to error, from his own experience of it. He wants to see if there is any way to get absolutely certain and indubitable knowledge. Not even the senses are reliable because of at least three things:

1. The experience of the candle near the fire shows him that the object he senses cannot be the origin of his ideas since it isn't solid over time.
2. That in dreaming he believes things real which in waking he denies.
3. It is at least thinkable that some all-powerful evil deceiver confuses him about the world and leads to his errors.

Thus, he has this time away from the world of action and he can allow himself to PRETEND to doubts beyond what he really has. The aim is to prove the existence of absolutely certain knowledge.]

1. However, consider again the evil deceiver I have imagined. Even if the deceiver confuses me about what is, or leads me to believe my dreams are real, the deceiver cannot do away with the fact that I PERCEIVE these thoughts.
2. Thus SOMETHING exists, a thinking something, which I call me. This is absolutely clear and distinct (indubitable) since to even say the deceiver deceives is to acknowledge that I am deceived. To be deceived is to think.
3. But, when I think of ME, I think of a thinking inside a body. However, this is not certain and must be doubted, since I can at least conceived of being deceived in all sense experience, even the experience of having a body.
4. Thus I am left for now with the absolute certainty of a thinking something (me), but I don't yet know what it is like.

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Part II: Elaborations on the argument and pieces not in the above.

I believe it is important to emphasize that Descartes isn't really doubting that the candle exists in the room or that he has a body. He even suggests that he isn't capable of doubting this. This is a pretended doubt in order to see if he can get some absolutely certain proof of anything.

The image that is conjured up in what this argument suggests is this: I cannot reasonably doubt that I have images, ideas, even doubts about things in the world. All those images, ideas and doubts are in my mind. But, it is possible to have at least theoretical doubts as to whether those ideas are ideas of things as they really are in the world, or, for that matter, if there is even a world outside of mind.

Even by "mind" Descartes does not mean the brain. Rather, there is at this point in the argument and description of mind, no space for it. It is not an embodied mind, it is just mind. It is thinking stuff, or thinking.

This second meditation is not the end of the matter. He started out with puzzle about the possibility of certain knowledge and now, already, he has given an argument that he exists at least as a disembodied thinking stuff. He believes this argument is simply beyond all doubt. It would still exist even if he were dreaming or being deceived by the evil and powerful deceiver.

He comes back often to the theme that these reflections are contrary to all common sense. At the same time he has given reasons to show that common sense is quite fuzzy and not reliable. As soon as he begins to carefully interrogate common sense it seems time and again to simply go up in smoke. Doing this work of careful interrogation in the mode of doubt is very hard work. It is so easy to become lazy and slip back into common sense.

It doesn't matter to Descartes that common sense "works" in that if he thinks he sees a wall and moves to the door and opens it, then he passes through. That could all be a dream or a deception. What cannot be a deception is that he thinks about the wall and door.

However, it is important to note why he feels free to follow this seemingly mad experiment. He emphasizes in a short argument which may be flushed out, that he is in an unusually free situation of where he doesn't need to ACT, just THINK. Part of what is behind this notion is that if he were to be acting, then to follow these thoughts of pretended doubt could get one in grave trouble. One could get hurt or hurt someone else and so on, since one would be denying the seemingly sure evidence of one's senses that a truck is coming down the street (not many trucks on Descartes' streets!)

Photo copy of the paper as printed out

Page 1

Page 2

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