Cassidy Keenan

Dr. Wood

PHIL 222: Souls and Brains

7 February 2021

Outline of Descartes’ Meditations

In Descartes’ Meditations I and II, Descartes is examining every belief he holds as

though it were false. He is trying to determine what he is, if he is simply the body or something

beyond the body or some combination of the two, and in fact how to determine how he can

determine what anything is. He examines the nature of existence and how we perceive it.

He begins by determining that everything is subject to doubt. Our senses are fallible;

even when we dream, we’re convinced we’re awake. However, we wouldn’t be able to dream

about it if it didn’t exist in some reality, so we must admit that general objects (including bodies)

have some reality. He then looks at the idea of an omnipotent deity, and argues that it’s possible

that nothing exists and God, through a series of deceptions, only makes us ​think​ we’re perceiving

reality. Descartes re-emphasizes the fact that none of his beliefs are beyond doubt.

He finishes the first meditation by expressing the importance of remembering this.

Everything around him could be an illusion. Descartes acknowledges it’s easier and more restful

to slip into ordinary life without thinking about doubting everything.

He begins Meditation II by hoping to find one thing that’s certain, even if it’s that

nothing is certain. He writes that even when he imagines a bodiless existence, he is still

convinced he would exist. Though he knows that he is, he doesn’t know what he is. He describes

the attributes of a body that he believes he has, but since everything could be an illusion, it isn’t
certain he has a body. He turns to the mind, and decides thinking alone is the only thing

inseparable from him. He is a thinking being.

He determines that since he is a thinking being, he is also a perceiving being. He then

starts to think about other things most distinctly known. He uses the example of wax that

melts—all the things we use to identify wax with our senses are gone, but the wax remains,

without those things but more flexible and moveable. There is no way to identify it for certain

except with understanding of the mind. We know other things not just through senses, but

through mental intuition. (He qualifies that we use our senses, too, but that senses are fallible and

can trick us into perceiving something that isn’t real.)

He finishes by saying his conclusions about the wax’s existence apply to both himself

and to other external things. If he can know the wax so well, he can know himself with even

greater distinctness. However, he reiterates that we can only say with certainty that we are

mental beings. Bodies are perceived rightly because they are understood by the intellect, not just

because we can imagine, touch, or acknowledge them through our senses.

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