Study Questions for Descartes, Meditations
on First Philosophy
The numbers in parentheses refer to the paragraphs of the Bennett version of the Meditations (available on line at http://www-hl.syr.edu/phil/Bennett/Bennett_Descartes.htm ) There are 12 paragraphs in his version of the first meditation and 21 in the second meditation.
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? (Paragraph 2)
3. What is the first reason he finds to doubt the evidence of his senses? (End of P. 2)
4. Why does he think that this reason is not enough to undermine all his sense-based beliefs? (P.3)
5. What further reason does he then propose for doubting his opinions? (P. 4-6)
6. What sorts of beliefs survive even this reason for doubting them? (P.7-8)
7. What hypothesis then leads him to doubt even these remaining beliefs? (P. 9)
8. What other hypothesis does he then consider, which leads him to the same conclusion (i.e., the conclusion that “doubts can properly be raised about any of my former beliefs ... on the basis of powerful and well thought-out reasons.”)? (P. 10)
9. For what purpose does Descartes suppose “an evil genius, supremely powerful and clever, who has directed his entire effort at deceiving me”? (P. 12)
10. Note how Descartes works his way towards his first indubitable conclusion: “I am, I exist.” (Para’s 2-9, presented by Bennett as a dialogue between Hopeful and Doubtful) How do you think he would respond if someone said: “How do you know you really exist? You might just be dreaming that you exist!”?
11. 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?
12. What did Descartes used to think he was before he set out on these meditations? (P. 11)
13. What do his current meditations lead him to conclude about himself? (P.12-13)
14. 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? (P. 16)
15. Why can he not know it through his imagination? (P. 17)
16. With what faculty (or power) of his mind does he know it? (P. 17-18)
17. Descartes has now established (to his satisfaction, at least) that he does know something for sure: he knows that he exists. Do you agree with him that he does know this for sure (and that you, therefore, know for sure that you exist)? Do you agree with him when he says that he has “powerful and well thought-out reasons” to conclude that he doesn’t know anything else for sure (and, therefore, that you don’t know anything else for sure either)? Why or why not? Does the possibility that you might be living in the Matrix (or some such virtual reality device) give you a good reason to doubt all your beliefs?