1. “But what then am I? A thing that thinks. What is that? A thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, is willing, is unwilling, and also imagines and has sensory perceptions.” Why does Descartes say this (in the Second Meditation)?
2. What does analyzing a piece of wax have to do with my knowledge of myself, which seems to be the point of Descartes’s Second Meditation?
3. Why, in the First Meditation, does Descartes say that “whether I am asleep or awake, two and three added together are five, and a square has no more than four sides”?
4. Describe one objection you have to Descartes’s proof of God’s existence in detail. Can you imagine with at least as much detail what Descartes’s response (based on things he says in what we read of the Meditations) to your objection will be?
5. What is the dream argument and what does it prove? Are questions about dreams and wakeful perception ever resolved?
6. What are innate ideas? Is God an innate idea for Descartes?
7. Descartes proves God’s existence in the third and the fifth Meditations. How are these proofs different? Which do you think is more effective?
8. What is true and what is false for Descartes?
9. What is the will and what is the intellect for Descartes?
10. How are understanding and imagination distinguished by Descartes? Does this distinction have any implications for a Cartesian ethics?
11. What is the essence of material bodies? What is their existence? Do we and how do know either with certainty, according to Descartes?
12. Descartes as a rationalist underplays sensory knowledge. But does he discount these altogether? What is his account of sensory knowledge in any case?
