Rae Langton
This is a guide to Descartes' Meditations, for Philosophy 2A, Spring Term Weeks 1-3. No previous familiarity with the Meditations is assumed. It should be read in conjunction with the text.
This Study Guide is in three
parts, to make access easier:
Part I is an Introduction and commentary
to the First Meditation.
Part
II is a guide to the Second and Third Meditations.
Part
III is a guide to the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Meditations.
The Study Guide is made
available on the assumption that fair use will be made of it. Unacknowledged
quotation or paraphrase does not constitute fair use of this, or any other,
secondary material and is severely penalized (see 'plagiarism'
in Philosophy 2A Study Guide Section IV and University policy at http://www.sec.ed.ac.uk/regulations/AsstRegs2001.htm#PLAGIARISM
AND CHEATING).
René Descartes
(1596-1650) is a philosopher widely regarded as the founder of modern
philosophy, and his philosophy is a dramatic expression of an intellectual
revolution that changed philosophy forever. He is among the rationalist
philosophers, who believe that reason is more important than experience in the
pursuit of knowledge, in contrast to the empiricist philosophers such as
Locke and Hume, who give priority to experience. Today Descartes is most famous
for his Meditations, especially for his sceptical arguments in the First
Meditation, and his dualistic philosophy of the mind and body. In epistemology,
the theory of knowledge, many philosophers still believe they need to answer
the challenge posed in the First Meditation. In philosophy of mind,
philosophers today tend to construct their theories of the mind in deliberate
opposition to the dualism of Descartes. In his own day, though, Descartes was
most famous as a philosopher of science, and as an author of a distinctive
theory about matter, which was a major competitor to the atomic theory that was
later associated with Isaac Newton. Descartes was one of a number of thinkers
responsible for the death of scholasticism, a philosophy which had reigned in
Europe in an almost unbroken line from the time of Aristotle in the 4th century
B.C. It was a philosophy with which Descartes was very familiar, from his
training at the Jesuit college of La Fleche. Scholastic philosophy was marked
by a reverence for authority: the authority of the Church, and the authority of
Aristotle. It assumed a harmonious and hierarchical vision of the world. The
earth is at the the centre of the universe, the sun rises and sets, circling
the earth every day; the planets and stars move around the earth in orbits that
describe the most beautiful and perfect shape of the circle; the movements of
material things are explained by their elements of earth, air, fire, water,
each of which has a motion natural to it. Fire has a natural tendency upward;
earth has a natural tendency downward, and that is why smoke rises, and a stone
falls. But the scientific revolution of Descartes' time was showing that many
of these long held scholastic assumptions were false. The sun, and not the
earth, is at the centre of the solar system. The planets move around the sun,
not the earth, and their orbits are elliptical. Things in general are very
different to how they had always seemed.
Imagine how it would feel
to be part of a community that had discovered that so much supposed 'knowledge'
was not knowledge at all: so much that had been accepted as true for thousands
of years was not true at all, but false. Discoveries like these are unsettling,
and they can provoke questions about the possibility of knowledge itself.
People have been wrong, for so long, about so much. But if we can be wrong
about so much, can we be sure we are ever right? Can we be certain of anything
at all? That is the question of Descartes' Meditations, published in
1641. In looking for an answer, an appeal to authority clearly will not do.
Scholasticism's appeal to authority had been useless. So the Meditations
argue that truths are not to be accepted on the basis of authority, and that
nothing can be taken for granted. Instead, each individual has the resources
within himself, or herself, to discover the answer to the question: what can I
know?
Descartes is not writing a scholarly or philosophical treatise in the usual sense. He is not, or not just, aiming to convince you of the truth of some theory. He is aiming to transform you, his reader; or rather, he is offering you the means to transform yourself. He says, 'I would not urge anyone to read this book except those who are able and willing to meditate seriously with me' ( 8). The literary form of the Meditations is very unusual, for a philosophical work. It follows the form of instructions for religious meditation. The author of the traditional religious genre guides the meditator through stages of reflection, of self-reform through self-examination, and Descartes is aiming at something similar, except his purpose is philosophical rather than religious. Each meditator must become aware of, and overcome, the defects and errors within their own soul, in order to reach the truth.
In the Preface to the Principles
of Philosophy, published later in 1644, Descartes uses a metaphor that
helps to explain what he means by 'first philosophy'. He says 'the whole of
philosophy is like a tree of which the roots are metaphysics, the trunk is
physics, and the branches emerging from the trunk are all the other sciences'.
You will notice that Descartes is using the word 'philosophy' in this passage
to describe the whole of knowledge, including physics and all the other
sciences. This reflects the usage of his time, when physics itself was
described as a kind of philosophy, 'natural philosophy'. He says that knowledge
is like a tree, whose branches depend on the strength of the trunk, and whose
trunk depends on the strength of the roots. You cannot hope to secure knowledge
as a whole, until you have shown that the roots are secure. For example, if you
want to show that physics is secure, as a science, you must show that its roots
in metaphysics are secure. If you want to have a theory of the material world,
you must first settle some questions about metaphysics, that it, some general
questions about existence. Does a material world exist? What is the general
nature of matter? Descartes considered these to be among the questions of
'first philosophy', and they are considered in the Meditations. The idea
of 'first philosophy' is the idea of roots, or foundations, on which but all
other forms of knowledge depend. The aim of the Meditations is to show
that those roots, or those foundations, are secure.
The work is divided into
six meditations, which are designed to correspond to six days of contemplation.
If you can approximate this in your reading of the Meditations, so much
the better! They are not to be rushed. It is a good idea to pause at the end of
each Meditation, and continue in the self-interrogatory manner of the
meditator. Ask yourself what you have discovered; ask yourself what
implications the argument has for what you have always believed, and whether
the argument is convincing.
FIRST MEDITATION
What can be called into doubt
Descartes begins the
First Meditation by saying that many of the beliefs he had long cherished were
false, and that this made him think that the 'whole edifice' of his beliefs was
'highly doubtful'. The realization that he has been mistaken leads him to think
that the whole edifice of his beliefs may be threatened. What is his response
to the threat of scepticism? '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' (17). Descartes' response to the problem looks
paradoxical: it is not to turn his back on scepticism, but to embrace it. It is
not to stop doubting, but instead to try to doubt everything: to refuse to accept
anything that it is possible to doubt. Why? Because Descartes thinks that is
the only way to discover whether there is something that cannot be doubted.
If one has a house with rotten timber and shaky foundations, the solution is to
demolish it, and find the foundations, and then rebuild from scratch. A
different metaphor is given in his Reply to the seventh set of Objections:
Suppose [someone] had a
basket full of apples and, being worried that some of the apples were rotten,
wanted to take out the rotten ones to prevent the rot spreading. How would he
proceed? Would he not begin by tipping the whole lot out of the basket? And
would not the next step be to cast his eye over each apple in turn, and pick up
and put back in the basket only those he saw to be sound, leaving the others?
(481)
If one has a basket full of apples, some of which are known to be rotten, the
solution is to empty the whole basket out, and put back only the good ones.
This method, as applied to beliefs, is to doubt everything it is possible to
doubt, in the hope of finding something that it is impossible to doubt. The
goal is to take the sceptical challenge seriously, not by believing the sceptic
outright, but rather by withholding assent to any belief that is vulnerable to
the sceptical attack. 'It will not be necessary for me to show that all my
opinions are false'; instead 'I should hold back my assent from opinions
which are not completely certain and indubitable' (18). One does not have to
literally inspect each belief, one at a time, as one would inspect each apple!
Descartes says 'I will not need to run through them all individually, which
would be an endless task....I will go straight for the basic principles on
which all my former beliefs rested' (18).
Having shown the need for
the method of doubt, the meditator then raises a number of sceptical arguments,
as a way of implementing the method. The thinker of the First Meditation
follows through a complex train of thought in an internal dialogue, raising
arguments against the 'basic principles' that ground his beliefs, replying to
the arguments, and raising more arguments. The thinker presents himself as a
naive believer in common sense who must force himself to take seriously the
sceptical hypthotheses that undermine his naive beliefs. So the Meditation has
a certain rhythm, as the thinker plays first one role, and then the other:
first the sceptic, then the naof, and then the sceptic again. The Meditation
also has a certain crescendo: the sceptical hypotheses considered at the outset
are relatively mild, but the hypotheses becomes more extreme, and the doubt
more hyperbolic, as the Meditation progresses.
One of the 'basic
principles' on which our beliefs about the world in general rest, is the belief
that our senses can be trusted. Consider some of the beliefs you have right
now. Perhaps you believe there is a cup of coffee on the table, perhaps you
believe that there is a tree just outside. Perhaps you believe that birds are
singing, or that a bus is going by, or that someone is mowing their lawn.
Perhaps you believe that you are sitting in a chair, perhaps you believe that
you are wearing a dressing gown, sitting by a fire, with a piece of paper in
your hands... You have these ordinary beliefs because you trust your senses.
Descartes's first sceptical argument aims to undermine this confidence we have
in our senses. How does the argument work? The following reconstruction draws
on Harry Frankfurt's interpretation, in Demons, Dreamers and Madmen (Indianapolis:
Bobbs Merrill, 1970). Ordinarily, we naively follow a 'basic principle' that
looks something like this.
A. Whatever is sensed is
as it appears to the senses.
Pause for a moment, and
ask yourself whether the principle is correct or not: whether there are obvious
counter-examples to the principle.
Descartes points out that
our senses deceive us with respect to objects 'which are very small or in the
distance' (18). This shows that at least sometimes, what is sensed is not as it
appears to the senses. Principle A is therefore incorrect. If you look at a
circular tower that is a long distance away, it may look square. If you look at
a straight stick half submerged in water, it will look bent, because of the
refractive properties of the water. This example is discussed in the Sixth
Objections and Replies (418, 439). The conclusion of the thinker is that we
have reason for caution. 'From time to time I have found that the senses
deceive, and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us
even once' (18).
Does this argument
provide grounds for doubting all of those ordinary beliefs based on the senses,
at the beginning of this section? In the illusions discussed by Descartes there
is a kind of external interference in our perceptual processes, and one
might think this is a kind of external interference that is often absent. If it
were not for the great distance, or the water, our senses would not have
deceived us. We might want to say that the circumstances in which our senses
deceive us are especially unfavourable circumstances. We know that when things
are far away, or half-submerged, our senses can be unreliable. We know that
there are favourable circumstances too, and that in these circumstances our
senses are reliable. This is how the thinker of the Meditation responds to the
sceptical argument he had just thought of. He says,
...although the senses
occasionally deceive us with respect to objects which are very small or in the
distance, there are many other beliefs about which doubt is quite impossible,
even though they are derived from the sensesfor example that I am here, sitting
by the fire, wearing a winter dressing-gown, holding this piece of paper in my
hands, and so on. Again how could it be denied that these hands or this whole
body are mine? (18)
The suggestion here is
that there are some perceptual circumstances, for example when the things you
see are close by, in good light, and so forth, when our senses deliver the
truth. When it comes to distant towers, we get it wrong. But when it comes to a
nearby fire, we get it right. If we want to defend the senses, we might want to
fix up the naive principle A, in a way that captures this suggestion.
B. If the circumstances are favourable, then whatever is sensed is as it
appears to the senses.
Perhaps this conditional
principle is good enough to capture the thought in the passage quoted above.
Ask yourself again whether it will work. Suppose the principle B were true, but
you could never tell whether circumstances were favourable or unfavourable.
Suppose you could not tell whether things were close by, or distant. Would the
principle be any use? Surely not. You need to be in a position to know that the
circumstances are favourable, before you can draw the conclusion that things
are as they appear. The next question is: can we know whether circumstances are
favourable or not? The answer implied by the thinker in the above passage is,
yes. We can know when circumstances are favourable, and they are favourable in
the cases of these apparently undeniable beliefs: that I am sitting by the
fire, wearing a winter dressing gown, and so forth. We should then amend our
principle to yield a better one.
C. We can distinguish favourable from unfavourable circumstances; and if
the circumstances are favourable, then whatever is sensed is as it appears to
the senses.
This principle is better
than A, because it allows for the possibility of sensory illusions. It is
better than B, because it includes the vital claim that we can in fact distinguish
favourable from unfavourable circumstances. Does it adequately support the
trustworthiness of the senses? Can you think of any example that would show
this principle to be wrong? Try to test the principle, again, by seeing if you
can find a counter-example to it.
Descartes raises an
example, a new sceptical hypothesis, which undermines this kind of defence of
the senses (19). Consider the situation of 'madmen, whose brains are...damaged
by the persistent vapours of melancholia'. The sensory beliefs of such people
are often false, even when the circumstances in their environment are
favourable. Such people believe, so Descartes claims, 'that they are dressed in
purple when they are naked, or that their heads are made of earthenware, or
that they are pumpkins' (19). Whatever the details of the story, it seems clear
that in some cases of mad hallucination there is no external
interference in ones perceptual processes, but there are internal
interferences in ones perceptual processes. In such cases the external
circumstances are favourable, and (we can suppose) the mad person knows that
the external circumstances are favourable: the light is good, and so forth. And
yet it is not true, in such cases, that things are as they appear to the
senses. So the case of the mad hallucination seems to be a counter-example to
principle C. We have not yet found a principle that will permit us to trust our
senses.
Notice that the thinker
in the Meditation seems to laugh off the sceptical hypothesis of madness. 'Such
people are insane, and I would be thought equally mad if I took anything from
them as a model for myself' (19). The suggestion is that mad people are
incompetent perceivers, who suffer from internal interferences; and that we can
tell competent from incompetent perceivers; and in particular the thinker of
the Meditations can tell that he is not one of the incompetent ones.
Perhaps we can take this suggestion into account, and find a principle that
will improve on C.
D. We can distinguish
favourable from unfavourable circumstances, and competent from incompetent
perceivers; and if circumstances are favourable, and the perceiver is
competent then, whatever is sensed is as it appears to the senses.
See what has become of
our naive principle that things are as they appear! It has become hedged about
with all kinds of qualifications, burdened with all kinds of conditions: when
the circumstances are right, and the perceiver is competent, then at least,
things are as they appear. Will this more complex and qualified principle
successfully defend the senses?
Consider its assumption
that we can distinguish competent from incompetent perceivers: that we can
distinguish, for example, sane perceivers from the mad ones. Ask yourself: who
are the 'we'? The pronoun is supposed to apply to everyone. So it is supposed
to apply to people, whether they are sane or mad. Suppose I am mad. The
principle says that I must be able to tell that I am mad. The principle says
that we can distinguish competent from incompetent perceivers, therefore I must
be able to tell that I am an incompetent perceiver. The problem though is that
if I am mad, I suffer not only from sensory hallucinations, but defects of
judgement . And if I suffer defects of judgement, then I may well not know that
I am mad. The assumption of principle D that we can distinguish competent from
incompetent perceivers is false. We have not, it seems, been able to find a
principle that will adequately defend the senses.
How often, asleep at
night, am I convinced of just such familiar eventsthat I am here in my
dressing-gown, sitting by the firewhen in fact I am lying undressed in bed! ...
I see plainly that there are never any sure signs by means of which being awake
can be distinguished from being asleep' (19).
This is one of the most
famous sceptical arguments in philosophy. I have had dreams which were
qualitatively indistinguishable from waking experiences. So the qualitative
character of my experience does not guarantee that I am not now dreaming. So I
cannot know that I am not now dreaming. There seems to be an implicit
continuation of the argument: So I cannot know that I am not always dreaming.
So I cannot know to be true any belief based on my sensory experience.
What do you think is the
conclusion of the dreaming argument. Perhaps it is, for all I know, I may be
dreaming now. Perhaps it is, for all I know, I may be dreaming always. Will
either of these do equally well, for Descartes' purposes?
This sceptical argument
is still aimed at the kinds of beliefs that are based on sensory experience.
The dream argument threatens our beliefs about bodies outside us, but Descartes
does not think it threatens our beliefs about mathematics (20). Even in a dream
one may know that 2 plus 3 make 5, and that a square has only four sides. The
dreaming argument threatens all knowledge based on experience, but it does not
threaten knowledge of a priori truths, i.e. truths known independently
of experience. In responding to the dreaming hypothesis, the thinker of the
First Meditation concludes that it undermines all empirical beliefs, that is,
all beliefs based on experience. The sceptical force of the argument is
devastating. Nevertheless, there are, he thinks, some beliefs that escape the
sceptical net.
[W]hether I am awake or
asleep, two and three added together are five, and a square has no more than
four sides. It seems impossible that such transparent truths should incur any
suspicion of being false. (20)
He concludes,
provisionally, that beliefs in arithmetic and geometry contain 'something
certain and indubitable'. Notice Descartes' assumption here, that the
probability of our being wrong about our sensory beliefs is greater than the
probability of our being wrong about our arithmetical beliefs. This assumption
that the intellect is more reliable than are the senses is a sign of Descartes'
rationalism, and we will be seeing more of it throughout the Meditations.
However, even this confidence in the beliefs about mathematics will be called
into question by the next, and final, sceptical hypothesis.
Descartes first considers
the possibility that God could be causing him to be deceived, both with respect
to empirical beliefs about the earth, the sky, the material worldand also with
respect to the truths of mathematics that are believed independently of
experience.
How do I know that he has
not brought it about that there is no earth, no ksy, 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...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? (21)
This hypothesis does not
fit well with the concept of God, 'who is supremely good and the source of
truth', so he adjusts the hypothesis, so that the being who controls my beliefs
is not God, but some powerful and deceiving demon.
I will suppose...some
malicious demon of the utmost power and cunning has employed all his energies in
order to deceive me. I shall think that the sky, the air, the earth, colours,
shapes, sounds and all external things are merely ...delusions. (22)
My experience would be
exactly as it is if it were produced in me not by the workings of the physical
world but by a malicious demon. Moreover, my beliefs about the truths of
mathematics would also be the same if my arithmetical inferences were under the
same control (21). Notice that the scope of this sceptical argument is the
broadest of all, undermining confidence not only in the veridicality of the
senses, but in judgments of reason. But does it threaten all judgements of
reason? What would be the consequences for Descartes' own argument if it did?
This question was raised in connection with the madness hypothesis, and it is
equally relevant here.
(1) We saw that Descartes
does not take seriously the possibility that he himself is mad. If he is taking
the sceptic seriously, why does he not pursue this possibility? Why does he
dismiss the madness hypothesis, if he is really refusing to take nothing for
granted? Part of the reason is because he considers instead a related
hypothesis that describes a kind of 'madness' of the sane, the dreaming
hypothesis.
As if I were not a man
who sleeps at night, and regularly has all the same experiences while asleep as
madmen do when awakeindeed sometimes even more improbable ones. How often,
asleep at night, am I convinced of just such familiar eventsthat I am here in
my dressing gown, sitting by the firewhen in fact I am lying undressed in bed!
(19)
If dreams are a kind of
madness for the sane, then there is less reason to consider more seriously the
sceptical hypothesis of madness. But while it seems plausible that dreams and
madness are indeed similar in so far as they involve defects in sensory
beliefs, it is not obvious that they are similar when it comes to defects of
judgement. In Descartes' opinion, a dreamer has defective sensory beliefs, but
he does not have defective reasoning powers. The mad person can have both. What
would happen, if he were to take the madness hypothesis seriously? If madness
can involve not only the defects of perception that Descartes considers, but
defects of judgement, then think about the implications this sceptical
hypothesis would have for the project of the Meditations: the project of using
reason to show by argument that we can have knowledge.
(2) Descartes says that
there are 'never any sure signs by means of which being awake can be
distinguished from being asleep'. Is this true? Can you think of anything that
might be a candidate 'sure sign'? J. L. Austin suggested that there are indeed
qualitative signs that help us to distinguish waking from dreaming. The signs
are hard to describe, but the fact that we are able to recognise them is shown
by the phrase we have in ordinary language to describe it, namely a 'dream-like
quality' (Austin, Sense and Sensibilia (Oxford University Press, 1962)
p. 49). Some peculiar waking experiences have 'a dream-like quality'. We know
what a dream-like quality is, and that typically dreams have it and waking
experience doesn't. In support of Austin's point there is also the phenomenon
of lucid dreams. When someone has a lucid dream, they become aware that they
are dreaming, while they are dreaming, and they are able to affect and control
the narrative in the dream. If this is so, then they will presumably be aware
of the dream's dream-like quality. Moreover, lucid dreamers provide a
counter-example to Descartes' apparent suggestion that one never knows that one
is dreaming, when one is dreaming. Is this sufficient to answer Descartes'
sceptical argument?
Remember that Descartes
claimed there are never any sure signs to distinguish waking from
dreaming. Even if some dreams are lucid, are there some dreams that seem very
similar to waking life? Does one sometimes have the experience Descartes
describes, of believing that one is awake and doing all kinds of things, when
really one is asleep in bed? If this is ever the case, then it seems that
Descartes is right to say that there are no sure signs that will tell you that
you are asleep, when you are asleep. Perhaps dreams can have a 'dream-like
quality'. But that quality would be of no use against Descartes' argument, if
(i) dreams do always have the dream-like quality, but the quality is noticed
only when you wake up, and remember what the dream was like, or (ii) dreams do
not always have the dream-like quality. What is needed is a 'dream-like
quality' that will be a 'sure sign': that is, it will always be there to tell
you that you are dreaming when you are dreaming.
Perhaps Descartes'
thinking on this is guided by the following general principle (see Williams, Descartes:
the Project of Pure Enquiry (London: Penguin, 1978), 309-313):
I can only tell that S,
when S, if I can tell that not-S when not-S.
Applied to dreaming, this
principle would imply that I can only tell that I am awake, when I am awake, if
I can tell that I am not awake, when I am not awake. (Ask yourself whether the
principle is implicit too in Descartes' sceptical hypothesis about the senses.)
How plausible is the
principle? Apply the principle to the cases of being alive, conscious, sober.
Substitute for S in the above principle 'I am alive'; 'I am conscious'; 'I am
sober'. An application of this principle seems to tell me that I cannot know
that I am alive, when I am alive, since I would not know that I was dead, if I
were dead. I cannot know that I am conscious, when I am conscious, since I
would not know that I was unconscious, if I were unconscious. And so forth.
Notice that we have not shown what exactly is wrong with the principle. But we
have shown that it has some apparently absurd consequences. Of course I can
tell that I am alive, when I am alive!
This argumentative
strategy is called a reductio ad absurdum. It is a useful strategy in
philosophical argument, especially when something looks suspicious, but you
can't quite see what is wrong with it. Ask yourself: what is the principle
here? Would we get ridiculous consequences, if we applied the principle
somewhere else? If so, then the principle should be questioned. Of course,
one's opponent is always free to bite the bullet and respond, 'I don't see what's
so ridiculous about that consequence!', a manoeuvre colloquially known amongst
some philosophers as 'outsmarting one's opponent', named after
Australian philosopher Jack Smart, who is thought to be fond of it. It does
seem hard to imagine anyone 'outsmarting' this particular reductio
argument, accepting that I cannot tell I am alive, when I'm alive, because I
couldn't know I was dead if I were dead. But there may be more to the
principle: if you want to pursue this, read the Williams passage cited above.
(4) Suppose Descartes has established that any given experience may be a dream.
Is he entitled to infer that therefore all experiences may be a dream? Consider
this analogous inference, about a lottery. It is a fair lottery. Any number has
the same chance of winning as any other number. So it is true that anyone can
win the lottery. Is it therefore true that everyone can win the lottery? Is it
possible that every ticket holder wins? Of course not. Similarly, 'For all x,
possibly x is a dream' does not imply 'Possibly for all x, x is a dream'. This
objection is related to an argument made by Gilbert Ryle, who used an analogy
of counterfeit money.
A country which had no coinage would offer no scope to counterfeiters. There
would be nothing for them to manufacture or pass counterfeits of. They could,
if they wished, manufacture and give away decorated discs of brass or lead,
which the public might be pleased to get. But these would not be false coins.
There can be false coins only where there are coins made of the proper
materials by the proper authorities. In a country where there is a coinage,
false coins can be manufactured and passed; and the counterfeiting might be so
efficient that an ordinary citizen, unable to tell which were false and which
were genuine coins, might become suspicious of the genuineness of any
particular coin that he received. But however general his suspicions might be
there remains one proposition which he cannot entertain, the proposition,
namely, that it is possible that all coins are counterfeits. For there must be
an answer to the question: 'Counterfeits of what?' (Gilbert Ryle, Dilemmas
(Cambridge University Press, 1960) 94-5).
Ryle argued that the same
applies to the sceptical hypotheses of the Meditations, if they claim
that for all we know, our senses are always deceiving us; or, that for all we
know, we are always dreaming. Just as there can be no counterfeit money, unless
there is also the real thing, so there can be no dreaming experiences, unless
there is also waking experience. How convincing do you find this response to
Descartes?
[The end of Study Guide to Descartes' Meditations: Part I]
[Study
Guide to Descartes' Meditations: Part II]
[Study
Guide to Descartes' Meditations: Part III]
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