PHIL1090 Lecture Notes - Circular Reasoning, Cogito Ergo Sum, Evil Demon
22 Jan 2014
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Document Summary
Meditations on first philosophy begins with two introductions. The first is addressed to the theology faculty at the sorbonne (a university in paris), the second to his lay readers. He outlines some of the objections to the. Discourse and asserts that his critics generally ignored his chains of logic and only attacked his conclusions. He pledges to return to the two criticisms he finds worth considering. He asks his readers to approach the rest of the book with an unbiased mind. The first meditation reiterates material from the discourse. Responding to an objection to his critique of the senses, descartes agrees that he would seem a madman if he argued he was not sure that he possessed a body. But he also points out that in his dreams he experiences a reality as convincing as his waking reality. He can find no sure way to distinguish between waking life and sleep.
