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(1) Withdrawing the mind from the senses

Meditation 1: What can be called into Doubt Preparing for the first meditation what led him to the problem?

o (a) Childhood o (b) Foundations

What is Descartes method? o

Level 1: Sensory Doubto Summarize

Level 2: The Dream Argumento Summarize o Painters analogy summarize the painters analogy

Level 3: Powerful Deceiverso Can God deceive us about mathematics?

Summarize o Can an evil demon deceive us?

Summarize

(2) Discovering the nature of mind

Meditation 2: Discovering a new starting point the Cogito The Archimedean point

o Review of doubt summarize his review of what he has doubted up to this point o Cogito reasoning what is the cogito reasoning?

Limits of the Cogito Reasoning: What am I?o Rational Animal? What is he saying here summarize o A Bodied Soul? Summarize o A finite substance: mind?

(a) Principle attribute of mind: Thinking Summarize (b) Modes of thinking: doubting, understanding, affirming, denying, willing,

refusing, imagining, sensing Summarize Wax argume nt: set the radical doubt asidedoes the wax by the fire remain the same?

o (1) Sensing the wax: a flux of changing impressions Summarize o (2) Imagining the Wax Summarize o (3) Perceiving the wax by the mind alone - Summarize

Was Descartes wrong earlier to think that we can more easily know things than the mind?o Summarize

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Summary Paragraph #1:

(1) What is the author arguing for in this piece as a whole? (2) Based on what evidence or reason?

Summary Paragraph #2:

(1) Does the authors argument change how I look at and live in the world? Is it the same ordifferent?

(2) Why or why not?

I. Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubtit?

o How does philosophy approach questions? Everyone else? II. Daily life is the basis for our thought

o Problem: Immediate experience can be doubted?o Example of the Table

Color Texture Shape

Hardness Real Table?o Example of the Painter

III. Getting clearer with our terminologyo Our experiences are sensations that arise from sense-datao Problem: The Relation between sense- data and physical objects (or matter) o Bishop Berkeley said it is NOT absurd to deny that matter existso Berkeley denies grounds for belief in extended unconscious matter (which must be

mental in character)o For matter to exist (it is said) it must be experienced by God or by a universal mind

IV. Russells Responseo Russell denies such idealism, which claims that matter is ideas (Berkeley) or a colony

of souls (Leibniz) o Most philosophers, even idealists, agree that tables exist, but why is this?

V. The Point of the Exercise (or why was this helpful)?o Philosophy increases our sense of wonder by its questions (even when they are

unanswerable)

Summary Paragraph #1:

8/12/2019 Notes on Descartes Meditations

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(1) What is the author arguing for in this piece as a whole? (2) Based on what evidence or reason?

Summary Paragraph #2:

(1) Does the authors argument change how I look at and live in the world? Is it the same ordifferent?

(2) Why or why not?