PHL100Y1 Lecture Notes - Mind, Innatism, Causality
Document Summary
The broad outlines of the argumentative strategy for this meditation and the next is laid out here. The meditator now seeks a criterion to go on with: a rule that will allow him to decide what is certainly true. (i"ll gloss text by referring to each paragraph numbered sequentially from the start of the third meditation. ) The problem of the criterion is introduced in 3. 02. Since the meditator is certain he is a thinking thing, he asks whether he also knows what is required to be certain of something. The only thing he has to go on is a clear and distinct perception that he is a thinking thing, but that seems good enough; he concludes at the end of 3. 02: So i seem now to be able to lay it down as a general rule that whatever i perceive very clearly and distinctly is true.
