PHLB35H3 Lecture : Rationalism, Decartes Med Six
Document Summary
The meditator has already discovered he can learn something about the essence of extended things, even if there are no such things. But he wants more than that; he also wants to establish knowledge of the material world. Consequently, he now considers an argument to establish that material objects exist (51): P1) something exists that serves as the immediate cause of my sense perceptions. P2) the immediate cause of my sense perceptions is either me, god, some being less perfect than. P3) the immediate cause of my sense perceptions can"t be me. P4) the immediate cause of my sense perceptions can"t be either god or some being less perfect than god: the immediate cause of my sense perceptions is material bodies. Descartes is famous for defending a view known as substance dualism. There are two fundamentally different types of substance in the universe: mental (thinking) and material (extended).
