Philosophy 5: Critical Thinking and Composition

Pierce College

Department of History, Philosophy, & Sociology

Lecture Notes for Descartes' Sixth Meditation

Rene Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy

Sixth Meditation: "Of the Existence of Material Things, and of the Real Distinction Between the Mind and Body of Man"

Quotations harvested from the John Veitch translation, found in the "Trilingual HTML Edition" of Descartes' Meditations, edited by D. B. Manley and C. S. Taylor

Passively Present

Descartes notes that some sensations are passively present:

Anstoß

"And because the ideas I perceived by the senses were much more lively and clear, and even, in their own way, more distinct than any of those I could of myself frame by meditation, or which I found impressed on my memory, it seemed that they could not have proceeded from myself, and must therefore have been caused in me by some other objects;"

Distinctness of the Body: The body is experienced as being distinct from the mind

Mind, the thinking thing, un-extended

Body, the non-thinking thing, extended

Mind Body "Unity"

Unlike the captain of a ship that sees a sea-monster chewing on his ship's hull, the mind has a "certain unity" with the body "Nature likewise teaches me by these sensations of pain, hunger, thirst, etc., that I am not only lodged in my body as a pilot in a vessel, but that I am besides so intimately conjoined, and as it were intermixed with it, that my mind and body compose a certain unity."

Safe Conclusions

The existence of other things are frequently safe conclusions

"Besides this, nature teaches me that my own body is surrounded by many other bodies, some of which I have to seek after, and others to shun. And indeed, as I perceive different sorts of colors, sounds, odors, tastes, heat, hardness, etc., I safely conclude that there are in the bodies from which the diverse perceptions of the senses proceed, certain varieties corresponding to them, although, perhaps, not in reality like them; and since, among these diverse perceptions of the senses, some are agreeable, and others disagreeable, there can be no doubt that my body, or rather my entire self, in as far as I am composed of body and mind, may be variously affected, both beneficially and hurtfully, by surrounding bodies."

Despite "Unity," Distinct

Note that mind is un-extended and the body is extended

You can cut a part of the body off, and it changes, but you cannot cut a part of the mind off

On Dreaming

"in respect that our memory can never connect our dreams with each other and with the course of life, in the way it is in the habit of doing with events that occur when we are awake."

"if some one, when I am awake, appeared to me all of a sudden and as suddenly disappeared, as do the images I see in sleep, so that I could not observe either whence he came or whither he went, I should not without reason esteem it either a specter or phantom formed in my brain, rather than a real man."

On Knowing Wakefulness

"But when I perceive objects with regard to which I can distinctly determine both the place whence they come, and that in which they are, and the time at which they appear to me, and when, without interruption, I can connect the perception I have of them with the whole of the other parts of my life, I am perfectly sure that what I thus perceive occurs while I am awake and not during sleep."