im doing an essay at the moment and im on 707 words.
any thoughts or comments?

isn't the first meditation all about doubt?

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they arrived dramatically at the space gun in an art deco-style autogyro

Are you using the big blue book for AQA or the book by Dan Cardinal, Gerald Jones and Jeremy Hayward?

yeah pretty much, he ends up doubting just about everything.
he doubts the whole of A Priori (knowledge via reason) and A Posteriori (knowledge via the senses) knowledge.

no, just the sheets sent by my tutor and my boyfriends stuff when he did philosophy.

i thought he allowed knowledge of self, and considered it a priori (i'd say it was knowledge of experiencing the self, so not, like Locke)

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they arrived dramatically at the space gun in an art deco-style autogyro

he doubted the a priori and a posteriori in meditation 1 in meditation 2 he was still trying to find something certain, and eventually says 'i myself, am i not lat east something?' then he thought even if there was a God putting ideas into his head, he must exist for this to happen, and then he considered he had a body which is a posteriori knowledge but then because of the dream hypothesis he has denied his senses and his body. then he asks whether that entails denying his existence and he knows he persuades himself of something so therefore he must exist but if the demon hypothesis is true the reasoning he has just given is put into doubt because a priori knowledge is unreliable, he responds then that if there really is a demon deceiving him of a priori knowledge then he must exist in order to be deceived.

unsure if i made much sense there

yes, gotcha. i'm woefully ignorant and a complete amateur at this

something exists, whether it's something being deceived, or dreaming, or not, something is going on

i was wondering if the difference between rationalism and empiricism is just whether one identifies the self with that something going on.


was looking up argument 1 in meditations III, and whether it's easier to attack the argument than the causal principle. i don't quite see how he disposes of the idea of fiction, a combination of the ideas of perfection, infinity and god

thanks for all this by the way. you wanted help but you seem to be teaching me. i've heard the best way to learn an idea is to attempt to teach it.

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they arrived dramatically at the space gun in an art deco-style autogyro

well i know bits and pieces - the course does cover quite a bit, im reading Plato and then it'll be Hume after that. but on Descartes the syllabus jumps from Meditation 2 to 6 so i only get a very brief description of meditation 3, 4 or 5 so might read up on the rest at some point.
no bother - happy to explain it, and while i was explaining it i did seem to think about it in a clearer way than i had before.

surely the difference between rationalism and empiricism is where you think you can gain evidence from?

this is my last years lecturers website from when i did descartes as part of an enlightenment philosophy course, hope it helps http://www.lancs.ac.uk/depts/philoso...11%20Notes.htm