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We saw how in The World Descartes gives an argument for considering the claim that Sensory perceptions provide only very obscure information about the essential nature of bodies.
 
How does the argument go in The Meditations? [This is the task for next week’s seminars]
 
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So what can we conclude if we discover that we have reason to doubt something?
 
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What are these reasons?
 
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I think Descartes’ idea is that this first claim is true insofar as you rely only on the senses.
 
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How does this bear on our ultimate aim?
 
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Perhaps this is a key idea ...
 
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How close do you think this is to Descartes’ argument in Meditation 1? Can you do better
 
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In thinking about Descartes’ arguments in the first Meditation, it is important to remember what he is using doubt for. He does not want to establish that sensory perceptions actually deceive us. He only wants to show that they cannot be relied on to provide information about the essential nature of bodies.
 
Recall from our discussion of The World
 
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Compare Descartes’ strategy in The Meditations:
 
The usefulness of extensive doubt ‘lies in freeing us from our preconceived opinions, and providing the easiest route by which the mind may be led away from the senses.’
 
\subsection{Dreaming} ‘I see plainly that there are never any sure signs by means of which being awake can be distinguished from being asleep’ (Meditation I)
 
‘... the principal reason for doubt, namely my inability to distinguish between being asleep and being awake. For ... there is a vast difference between the two, in that dreams are never linked by memory with all the other actions of life’ (Meditation 6)
 
‘when I distinctly see where things come from and where and when they come to me, and when I can connect my perceptions of them with the whole of the rest of my life without a break, then I am quite certain that when I encounter these things I am not asleep but awake’ (Meditation 6).
 
Do any considerations about dreaming provide ‘reasons ... which give us possible grounds for doubt about all things, especially material things, so long as we have no foundation for the sciences other than those we have had up until now’?
 
\subsection{Cosmic deception} ‘How do I know that he has not brought it about that there is no earth, no sky, no extended thing, no shape, no size, no place, while at the same time ensuring that all these things appear to me to exist just as they do now? What is more, since I sometimes believe that others go astray in cases where they think they have the most perfect knowledge, may I not similarly go wrong every time I add two and three or count the sides of a square, or in some even simpler matter, if that is imaginable?’
 
Is this a reason to doubt all things?
 
The usefulness of extensive doubt ‘lies in freeing us from our preconceived opinions, and providing the easiest route by which the mind may be led away from the senses.’
 

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