Instructor: James Woodbridge
email address: j.woodbridge@yale.edu
Course Webpage: http://pantheon.yale.edu/~jw556/yale/DS4.htm
Office Hours: TTh 4pm-5:30pm, and by appointment
Office: 406B Connecticut Hall
Office Phone: 432-1683
Dept. Phone: 432-1686

FIRST PAPER ASSIGNMENT

Pick one of the following topics, and write a 5 page paper completing the tasks assigned.

Your paper is due in my mailbox in 108 CT Hall by 11am on Friday, Jan. 27th.

Topics:

1. At the end of Meditation I, Descartes worries that the possibility of an evil deceiver prevents him from being certain of anything. Shortly thereafter in Meditation II, however, he announces that there is a belief about which he can be completely certain, namely his belief that he exists. Examine and critique Descartes' reasoning here. In particular:
(i) Explain the significance of this supposed development for the epistemological project of the Meditations.
(ii) Explain why he holds that the belief he expresses with the claim "I am, I exist" has the special status he attributes to it.
(iii) Discuss whether Descartes is entitled to conclude what he does about the existence of the "I". If there are any objections here, are there any replies he could make to them?


2. In his objection on p. 106, the eminent theologian and philosopher Antoine Arnauld (the author of the Fourth Objections) worries "how the author [Descartes] avoids reasoning in a circle when he says that we are sure that what we clearly and distinctly perceive is true only because God exists." Explain Descartes' argument that clear and distinct perceptions are true, and explain why that argument seems to be circular (the Cartesian Circle). Do you think there is any way for Descartes to avoid Arnauld's objection?



3. In both Meditation III and Meditation VI, Descartes relies on distinguishing the "objective reality" possessed by an idea or sensation from its "formal reality", first in his attempt to prove the existence of God and then in his attempt to prove the existence of physical objects. What is this distinction? What is it about ideas/sensations that makes drawing this distinction as he does crucial for his arguments? Explain specifically the role that the distinction plays in Descartes' reasoning in both of these places. Given Descartes' overall epistemological aims, what sort of problems might follow from his reliance on this distinction? Do you think the particular way he explains it and his use of it stand up to scrutiny? Explain.