Assignment Task 1:
Question 1: What is the situation that Descartes finds himself in at the beginning of the Second Meditation as regards knowledge? That is, what does he think he is entitled to believe or not believe?
Question 2: Descartes considers the possibility that he does not exist. He believes he can rightly doubt that he has no body and no senses. (Why?) But he does not believe this means he does not exist. Why?
Question 3: Why could Descartes not be deceived by an all-powerful and cunning deceiver that he does not exist?
Question 4: Descartes concludes that the proposition "I am" or "I exist" "is necessarily true each time it is expressed by me, or conceived in my mind." Why is it true in those cases? Would it be true even if that thought was fed into his mind by an evil demon?
Question 5: Having established that he exists, Descartes must determine precisely what he is in accordance with the criteria he has laid down in Meditation 1. He therefore reviews what he formerly (i.e., before he began the Meditations) believed about himself. What does he claim to have believed he was before he began the examination of his beliefs in the Meditations?
Question 6: List the features which Descartes believes characterize bodies (material things).
Question 7: Which of the things that he formerly believed about himself does he think he is able to retain, given the criteria for true belief that he has adopted in the Meditations? Why does he think he can retain this and nothing else?
Question 8: What is a thinking thing, in Descartes' view? That is, what are its properties and/or activities?
Assignment Task 2:
Question 1: What is the reason Descartes takes up his examination of the piece of wax?
Question 2: Descartes is trying to find out what he understands about the piece of wax, and how he understands this. What does he claim he understands about it?
Question 3: What in Descartes' view enables him to understand this about the wax?
Question 4: What does he reject as the basis of his understanding of the wax? Explain in each case why he rejects it.
Question 5: In what way does Descartes claim language misleads him in thinking about his knowledge of the wax? How does his example of people in hats and coats serve to clarify his point?
Question 6: Why does Descartes claim that a human mind is required to understand the wax and that a "lower animal" could not? Despite the difference between us and lower animals, what would a "lower animal" have in common with us in its experience of the wax?
Question 7: Give other examples to which Descartes' analysis of the wax would apply? Explain why it would apply to these examples.
Question 8: Why does Descartes claim to know himself better than he knows the piece of wax? How is this related to the reason he takes up the examination of the piece of wax?