insert yourself...

which of the following papers would you most want to read?

Meditations on First Philosophy
Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy (2)
Descartes’ View on Judgement
Descartes’ God
Descartes’ Doubts
Descartes’ Meditations
The Reasoning Behind Descartes
Descartes Defined Through the Mind
Descartes on Perfection
Descartes and God
Descartes and Reason
The Mechanism of God
The Entity of God
Existence, Descartes, and God
God’s Significance in Meditations on First Philosophy
God in Rene Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy
Perfection is Overrated
Living Free

titles: creative + : + substance

Interpretation

From class today:


God’s existence—“a more perfect being”
“Defect”


….
D. uses the idea that G. represents perfection to prove that he himself (or anything else) is not perfect or has defects.

[TS] G. represents perfection. [In Meditation Three] While trying to prove the existence of God, Descartes asks himself, “For how would I understand that I doubt and that I desire, that is, that I lack something and that I am not wholly perfect unless there were some idea in me of a more perfect being by comparison with which I might recognize my defects” (76). Here D. argues that there must be a perfect being or he would not understand his doubt and desire. This comprehension is the result of a comparison between himself and a perfect. The phrase “I am not wholly perfect” leads to the suggestion “unless” that he has the idea in him of “a more perfect being”. This passage starts to develop his idea of the more perfect being. This is the first he introduces the idea, but he also talks about or elaborates on it. For Descartes, the idea of perfection is relevant only to God. Defects/imperfection.


– “I lack something” – “For how would I understand…?” – “by comparison” – “in me” – “doubt” “desire” “defects”

Why is it important? Relevance to thesis/TS? Interpret from that things about D.

What are the defects? Imperfections that D. (or anything has)

Thinking with Descartes

picture: Cogito Ergo Sum 3, Susan Aldworth

Record one of your reading observations from The Meditations below--you can answer or meditate on a question or on several questions or ask some of your own. Please check back to this post in the following week. After you have commented, please respond to at least one other comment as well. I will be checking and commenting as well. We will discuss questions/answers that are posed here in class on Wednesday November 7. I will check and record your participation in these postings at the end of the Descartes section on Wednesday November 14.

1. What does Descartes mean when he says "clearly and distinctly"? What are "clear and distinct" perceptions?
2. (from class today) What is "perfection"? What does it mean for Descartes' God to be "perfect"? For us?
3. What is objective reality? How does it relate to formal reality and external reality? Reality?
4. If human intellect is perfect, how is it that humans error (according to Descartes)?
5. What is the "infirmity" that Descartes experiences, the reason why he says here he makes mistakes (M4 page 86)? How can he keep from making mistakes?
6. How does Descartes characterize the difference between the mind and the body (M6, page 96)?
7. Why is the faculty of sensing passive and the faculty of understanding active (M6, pages 96-97)? Descartes returns now to the importance of "sensing" (which he had pushed out from the beginning of the first meditation). How does he now understand sensing? What is the result of this understanding?
8. How does the relationship between the body and the mind (not merely that of the sailor to a ship) get confused? How is being "taught by nature" different from "the light of nature" (M6, page 98-99)?