Due via e-mail (to your TA, with cc to me) Tues., Feb. 1.
Please choose one of the following arguments
from Descartes' First or Second Meditations and, in
approximately 2-3 pages (double spaced), do the following: (1)
briefly explain in your own words what the argument is supposed to
prove and how (focus only on the argument you have chosen; do not summarize the rest of the text); (2) bring up an apparently
serious objection to the argument; (3) explain how Descartes would
respond to the objection. (Needless to say this should be your own
original work.1)
Note that this is not a full scale paper--please do not write an introduction and conclusion, summarize other parts of the Meditations, etc. Just focus on doing (1)-(3) above.
Also note: to do this well you need to come up with an objection that is serious and think of a good way for Descartes to respond to it. The worse you can make things look for Descartes--as long as you can still get him out of it in the end!--the better your paper.
Objections based on modern technology (or imaginary future technology) are discouraged. If you think of such an objection, see if you can come up with a similar one that involves only things Descartes himself knew about or imagined. (In most cases that should be possible. For example, you could use a powerful evil demon.)
Please write the number of the argument you have chosen at the beginning of your paper (you don't need to quote it).
1. ``Some years ago I was struck by the large number
of falsehoods that I had accepted as true in my childhood, and by the
highly doubtful nature of the whole edifice that I had subsequently
based on them. I realized that it was necessary, once in the course of
my life, to demolish everything completely and start again right from
the foundations if I wanted to establish anything at all in the
sciences that was stable and likely to last.'' (AT 17, p. 76)
2. ``Reason leads me to think that I should hold
back my assent from opinions which are not completely certain and
indubitable just as carefully as I do from those which are patently
false. So, for the purpose of rejecting all my opinions, it will be
enough if I find in each of them at least some reason for doubt.'' (AT
18, p. 76)
3. ``But such people are insane, and I would be
thought equally mad if I took anything from them as a model for
myself. A brilliant piece of reasoning! As if I were not a man who
sleeps at night, and regularly has all the same experiences while
asleep as madmen do when awake--indeed sometimes even more improbable
ones.'' (AT 19, p. 77)
4. ``But perhaps God would not have wished me to be
deceived in this way, since he is said to be supremely good. But if it
were inconsistent with his goodness to have created me such that I am
deceived all the time, it would seem equally foreign to his goodness
to allow me to be deceived even occasionally; yet this last assertion
cannot be made [in the French version: ``yet I cannot doubt that he
does allow this'']'' (AT 21, p. 78)
5. ``I am, I exist--that is certain. But for how
long? For as long as I am thinking. For it could be that were I
totally to cease from thinking, I should totally cease to exist. At
present I am not admitting anything except what is necessarily true. I
am, then, in the strict sense only a thing that thinks.'' (AT 27,
p. 82)
6. ``But what then am I? A thing that thinks. What
is that? A thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, is
willing, is unwilling, and also imagines and has sensory
perceptions.'' (AT 28, p. 83)
7. ``For example, I am now seeing light, hearing a
noise, feeling heat. But I am asleep, so all this is false. Yet I
certainly seem to see, to hear, and to be warmed. This cannot
be false; what is called `having a sensory perception' is strictly
just this, and in this restricted sense of the term it is simply
thinking.'' (AT 29, p. 83)