Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Introduction: About the Meditations
- 1 The situation of the Meditator is described and his desire to demolish everything and begin again is explored, while the Reader is introduced to some basic philosophical concepts
- 2 Meditation One : The possibility of a malevolent Demon is raised and the Meditator resolves to doubt everything he can possibly doubt
- 3 Meditation Two : The Meditator discovers an indubitable proposition and continues with an investigation into her ideas of herself and her ideas of corporeal things
- 4 Meditation Three (I) : The Meditator discovers how to distinguish true from false propositions by reference to the clarity and distinctness of his ideas and considers whether God is merely a subjective idea
- 5 Meditation Three (II) : The Meditator finds that he can reach a perfect God in his thoughts and that this God cannot perpetrate fraud and deception and cannot be a Demon
- 6 Meditation Four (I) : The Meditator broods on her epistemological and moral errors and deficiencies and discovers the true power of her will and its spontaneous attraction to truth and goodness
- 7 Meditation Four (II) : The Meditator diagnoses the cause of her epistemological and moral errors, adds an error-prevention rule to her knowledge-set, and confirms that God is truly benevolent
- 8 Meditation Five : The Meditator reflects on his experiences of mathematical and abstract concepts and arrives at a proof of God's existence
- 9 Meditation Six (I) : The Meditator determines that he is apparently attached to a particular human body. His mind and this putative body are nevertheless distinct and separable, so that immortality is possible even if bodies in general are perishable
- 10 Meditation Six (II) : The Meditator establishes that extramental corporeal things definitely exist, confirms that she has a personal body to which she is united, and learns that neither her sensations nor her perceptions resemble their causes in the external world
- 11 Meditation Six (III) : The Meditator learns how her body is organized, and discovers why her illnesses, like her errors, suggest that God is benevolent, and determines that she can proceed confidently in all the sciences
- 12 Descartes in context
- Appendix: the Objectors
- Glossary
- Further reading
- Index
3 - Meditation Two : The Meditator discovers an indubitable proposition and continues with an investigation into her ideas of herself and her ideas of corporeal things
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Introduction: About the Meditations
- 1 The situation of the Meditator is described and his desire to demolish everything and begin again is explored, while the Reader is introduced to some basic philosophical concepts
- 2 Meditation One : The possibility of a malevolent Demon is raised and the Meditator resolves to doubt everything he can possibly doubt
- 3 Meditation Two : The Meditator discovers an indubitable proposition and continues with an investigation into her ideas of herself and her ideas of corporeal things
- 4 Meditation Three (I) : The Meditator discovers how to distinguish true from false propositions by reference to the clarity and distinctness of his ideas and considers whether God is merely a subjective idea
- 5 Meditation Three (II) : The Meditator finds that he can reach a perfect God in his thoughts and that this God cannot perpetrate fraud and deception and cannot be a Demon
- 6 Meditation Four (I) : The Meditator broods on her epistemological and moral errors and deficiencies and discovers the true power of her will and its spontaneous attraction to truth and goodness
- 7 Meditation Four (II) : The Meditator diagnoses the cause of her epistemological and moral errors, adds an error-prevention rule to her knowledge-set, and confirms that God is truly benevolent
- 8 Meditation Five : The Meditator reflects on his experiences of mathematical and abstract concepts and arrives at a proof of God's existence
- 9 Meditation Six (I) : The Meditator determines that he is apparently attached to a particular human body. His mind and this putative body are nevertheless distinct and separable, so that immortality is possible even if bodies in general are perishable
- 10 Meditation Six (II) : The Meditator establishes that extramental corporeal things definitely exist, confirms that she has a personal body to which she is united, and learns that neither her sensations nor her perceptions resemble their causes in the external world
- 11 Meditation Six (III) : The Meditator learns how her body is organized, and discovers why her illnesses, like her errors, suggest that God is benevolent, and determines that she can proceed confidently in all the sciences
- 12 Descartes in context
- Appendix: the Objectors
- Glossary
- Further reading
- Index
Summary
HYPERBOLIC DOUBT – AN ADDITION TO THE MEDITATOR'S BELIEF-SET – “COGITO, SUM” (AT VII:23–5)
So serious are the doubts into which I have been thrown as a result of yesterday's meditation that I can neither put them out of my mind nor see any way of resolving them. It feels as if I have fallen unexpectedly into a deep whirlpool which tumbles me around so that I can neither stand on the bottom nor swim up to the top. Nevertheless … I will proceed … until I recognize something certain, or, if nothing else, until I at least recognize for certain that there is no certainty. Archimedes used to demand just one firm and immovable point in order to shift the entire earth; so I too can hope for great things if I manage to find just one thing, however slight, that is certain and unshakeable.
(vii:24)The Meditator is in the grip of her supposition, experienced with the force of a vivid daydream, that she is deceived by a malevolent Demon. Whirled around in dizzy confusion, she is unable to set her feet on firm ground. As she cannot accept any proposition that she does not recognize as certain and impossible to doubt, she believes nothing: “I will suppose then, that everything I see is spurious … that my memory tells me lies, and that none of the things that it reports ever happened. I have no senses. Body, shape, extension, movement and place are chimeras.
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- Information
- Descartes's MeditationsAn Introduction, pp. 50 - 77Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003