However, whereas Suber is a professional academic, I am not. Before reading any further, read my disclaimer and warning on my My Writings page.
Glenn
Mason-Riseborough (31/7/2000)
Revision on knowledge and scepticism:
1. What is the overall task that Descartes sets himself in the Meditations?
2. What does Descartes mean when he supposes that something is false?
3. What are the three main sceptical arguments that Descartes uses in the First Meditation? Descartes rejects the first, but accepts the other two. What types of knowledge are the second two arguments respectively aimed at?
4. Is Descartes right to set such strong requirements for knowledge? Is this really what we mean by ‘knowledge’? Does he set the standard for knowledge too high, and as a consequence does he set himself an impossible task to recover knowledge?
And: Look at ‘Responses to the Sceptical Regress’ in the course book. Where do you place yourself on the table? Why?
5. What is Descartes’ ‘Cogito’? What does it attempt to show?
6. Should the Cogito be seen as an argument, or as an ‘immediate intuition’? If it is seen as an argument, what is its structure?
7. Is the Cogito argument sound?
(a) Is the argument valid?
(b) Is the first premise true?
(c) Is the second premise true?
8. What is Bertrand Russell’s and Friedrich Nietzsche’s criticism of the Cogito argument? Is Descartes correct to conclude that he knows he is a ‘thing that thinks’? If not, is this a problem for his attempt to resurrect knowledge?
Consequences:
9. What does it mean to talk about an ‘essence’? Is thinking part (or all) of our essence? What is the ‘Masked Man Fallacy,’ and how does this relate?
10. Is Descartes correct to conclude that, following on from his Cogito argument, the mind is separate from the body?
11. What is solipsism? Is this a problem for Descartes?
Further study: Read the rest of Descartes’ Meditations (not part of this course). Think about how Descartes gives us back knowledge, with the help of his proof for God’s existence. Do you think that this works?