Study Questions for Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy

Note: numbers in parentheses refer to the numbers in the margins of your text, which are the page numbers of the standard Adam and Tannery (AT) edition of Descartes’ collected works and are included in most translations.

 

Meditation One

 

1.      What task does Descartes set for himself at the beginning of this meditation?

2.      How does he propose to accomplish his task? (AT 18)

3.      What is the first reason he finds to doubt the evidence of his senses?

4.      Why does he think that this reason is not enough to undermine all his sense-based beliefs?

5.      What further reason does he then propose for doubting his opinions? (AT 19) 

6.      What sorts of beliefs survive even this reason for doubting them? (AT 20)

7.      What hypothesis then leads him to doubt even these remaining beliefs? (AT 21)

8.      What other hypothesis does he then consider, which leads him to the same conclusion (i.e., the conclusion that “there is nothing among the things I once believed to be true which it is not permissible to doubt ... for valid and considered reasons.”)? (AT 21-2)

9.      For what purpose does Descartes suppose “an evil genius, supremely powerful and clever, who has directed his entire effort at deceiving me”? (AT 22-3)

 

 

Meditation Two

 

1.      Note how Descartes works his way towards his first indubitable conclusion: “I am, I exist.” (AT 24-5)  How do you think he would answer the question: Could “I think, therefore I am” be a dream?

2.      Why can’t he imagine he doesn’t exist? (That doesn’t seem so hard to imagine.)  How do you think Descartes would answer this question if it came up at this point in his meditations?

3.      What did Descartes used to think he was before he set out on these meditations? (AT 26)

4.      What do his current meditations lead him to conclude about himself?  (AT 27-9)

5.      The passage about the wax is difficult.  Descartes is using this example to arrive at a very general and (to his mind) very important conclusion about how we can acquire true knowledge.  Why does Descartes think he cannot know the wax through perception?

6.      Why can he not know it through his imagination?

7.      With what faculty (or power) of his mind does he know it?