What Philosophy Is

Radical Doubt and the Cogito

As you read the material for the next class, keep the questions below in mind. To answer these questions you will have to reflect critically on what you have read and possibly re-read important passages. Keep in mind that there are two basic kinds of information that you need to look for in the readings.

  1. What are the main points or conclusions that an author accepts with respect to a particular issue?
  2. What are the reasons or important considerations that lead the author to accept that conclusion?

For our purposes, it is information of the latter sort (2) that will be our primary concern since our most basic task is to evaluate the reasons that are offered to support accepting one possible conclusion about an issue, rather than another.

Although I strongly suggest that you write out brief answers to these questions, you do not have to turn in written responses. You do, however, need to be prepared to speak intelligently to these issues in the next class meeting. Also, it is reasonable to assume that the final exam’s questions will be drawn from these questions—particularly those in bold.

Readings:

  • René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy from Stephen M. Cahn (ed.), Philosophy for the 21st Century, pp. 101-108. (Skip Meditation III)

Questions:

  1. Descartes presents (roughly) four skeptical arguments in Meditation I. What is his expressed purpose for taking this skeptical standpoint? What are the (roughly) four skeptical steps, in their precise order? At the end of Meditation I, of what is Descartes not skeptical?
  2. In Meditation II, Descartes arrives at his first indubitable proposition. What is it and how does he arrive at it?
  3. What sort of “thing” does Descartes deduce that he is in Meditation II? How does he justify this claim?
  4. What is Descartes’ wax example in Meditation II? What does he purport to show with this example?

 

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