Assignment task:
Reading: Meditation VI
Q1. In the last third of the sixth meditation Descartes tells us that a human being is a composite entity, one consisting of two radically different finite substances, one mental, one material, that exist "very closely joined and, as it were, intermingled". Given the radical difference between these two substances, and the states of each at any given time, how does Descartes account for the obvious fact that states of one can produces effects in the other (the mind can affect the body, as when I choose to lift my right index finger, and the body can affect the mind, as when I open my eyes and see my cat Chloe eagerly awaiting her morning meal)?
Q2. At the very end of this meditation Descartes reconsiders the dream problem and decides that there is, after all, a way to eliminate the concern that my reasons for believing what my waking perceptions incline me to believe are no better than my reasons for believing what my vivid dream perceptions incline me to believe. What is the basis for his solution to this problem?