Meditations – Rene Descartes

(1) Withdrawing the mind from the senses

 Meditation 1: What can be called into Doubt

 Preparing for the first meditation – what led him to the problem?
o (a) Childhood –
o (b) Foundations –
 What is Descartes’ method?
o
 Level 1: Sensory Doubt
o Summarize…
 Level 2: The Dream Argument
o Summarize…
o Painter’s analogy – summarize the painter’s analogy…
 Level 3: Powerful Deceivers
o Can God deceive us about mathematics?
 Summarize…
o Can an evil demon deceive us?
 Summarize…

(2) Discovering the nature of mind

 Meditation 2: Discovering a new starting point – the Cogito

 The Archimedean point
o Review of doubt – summarize his review of what he has doubted up to this point…
o Cogito reasoning – what is the cogito reasoning?
 Limits of the Cogito Reasoning: What am I?
o Rational Animal? What is he saying here… summarize
o A Bodied Soul? Summarize…
o A finite substance: mind?
 (a) Principle attribute of mind: Thinking Summarize…
 (b) Modes of thinking: doubting, understanding, affirming, denying, willing,
refusing, imagining, sensing Summarize…
 Wax argument: set the radical doubt aside…does the wax by the fire remain the same?
o (1) Sensing the wax: a flux of changing impressions – Summarize…
o (2) Imagining the Wax – Summarize…
o (3) Perceiving the wax by the mind alone - Summarize…
 Was Descartes wrong earlier to think that we can more easily know things than the mind?
o Summarize…
Summary Paragraph #1:

 (1) What is the author arguing for in this piece as a whole?

 (2) Based on what evidence or reason?

Summary Paragraph #2:

 (1) Does the author’s argument change how I look at and live in the world? Is it the same or
different?
 (2) Why or why not?

Appearance and Reality – Bertrand Russell

 I. “Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt
it?”
o How does philosophy approach questions? Everyone else?
 II. Daily life is the basis for our thought
o Problem: Immediate experience can be doubted?
o Example of the Table
 Color
 Texture
 Shape
 Hardness
 Real Table?
o Example of the Painter
 III. Getting clearer with our terminology
o Our experiences are sensations that arise from sense-data
o Problem: The Relation between sense-data and physical objects (or “matter”)
o Bishop Berkeley said it is NOT absurd to deny that matter exists
o Berkeley denies grounds for belief in extended unconscious matter (which must be
mental in character)
o For matter to exist (it is said) it must be experienced by God or by a universal mind
 IV. Russell’s Response
o Russell denies such ‘idealism’, which claims that matter is ideas (Berkeley) or “a colony
of souls” (Leibniz)
o Most philosophers, even idealists, agree that tables exist, but why is this?
 V. The Point of the Exercise (or why was this helpful)?
o Philosophy increases our sense of wonder by its questions (even when they are
unanswerable)
Summary Paragraph #1:

 (1) What is the author arguing for in this piece as a whole?

 (2) Based on what evidence or reason?

Summary Paragraph #2:

 (1) Does the author’s argument change how I look at and live in the world? Is it the same or
different?
 (2) Why or why not?