1.
Descartes
finds that he can’t quite doubt away the existence of everything – because in the very act of doubting, it seems that he must exist, in some sense of `he’.
What is this sense?
2.
What
has he taken himself to be before beginning the present exercise? Answer: a
soul and body.
3.
The
only attribute he has which he can’t doubt
away is his thought.
4.
Note:
he can only conclude that he’s thinking now
– not that he’s been persisting as a thinking thing for some time.
5.
Here’s
a key move, which will serve as an essential premise for all that’s to come:
“Now, it is very certain that this notion, and knowledge of my being, thus
precisely understood, does not depend on things whose existence is not yet
known to me.” Note the implied, more general, premise lurking behind this: the
order in which ideas are constructed
or derived must directly reflect something about the order of dependence in the world. Is this premise justified?
How could Descartes, in his attitude of radical doubt, know this?
6.
Does
the thinking thing clearly do anything?
Yes: it imagines and perceives (whether anything
it imagines and perceives really exists or not).
7.
Does it make sense to suppose that he has a clearer idea of something abstract (his thinking) than he has of
something concrete and present to him, like his piece of wax? (This is what he
means in comparing something he can’t `imagine’ (something abstract) with
something he can (something concrete that seems to produce a distinct sensory
profile).
8.
But
if he now melts the wax, everything that was part of its initial sensory
profile changes. Yet it is still the same piece of wax. (How does he know
this?) Therefore, none of these qualities registered by the imagination could
have been essential to its being what
it is.
9.
Judgment
does not depend on perception (even
if we often or usually judge on the basis of perceived information).
10.
Thus
he can know of himself at least as clearly and surely as he can know about
objects of perception.