Descartes’s Second Meditation Worksheet

1. After the process of doubt, what is Descartes’s first certainty and how does he arrive at it?
   1. Cogito ergo sum
   2. “… of a surety I myself did exist since I persuaded myself of something.”
   3. If one is able to be persuaded or deceived by something, there must be something to deceive; one is able to think, one is a thinking thing, therefore one must exist.
2. Consider the self, whose exsitence is established: what is it, what is it not, what does the self do?
   1. The self is the thinking mind.
   2. It is not, however, the body, as the body is a material entity which can be divided but remaining the body, while the mind cannot be divided as such: it either is or is not.
   3. As such the self must be encapsulated within the mind or its quiddity be the mind.
   4. The self thinks.
3. According to Descartes’s, why can we not know the piece of wax with accuracy?
   1. Our senses cannot observe the wax as all it is now and can be in the future, meaning that our senses are not observing the wax in full; therefore, we cannot know the wax in full, as our knowledge of the wax is induced from our senses.
4. What is the point of the wax argument? What exactly does it show?
   1. The wax shows us that our perception rests not exclusively on our senses, but also on our mind’s intuition, it being derived from from reason.
   2. Due to this understanding of the wax, the wax’s actual being becomes entirely separate from its physical reality, and is instead a concept, just like dualism for us.
   3. Thus, the wax becomes analogous to dualism: as we have a malliable physical body, the wax has a malliable physical form; and our quiddity rests in our minds and the wax’s quiddity must rest in something similar: our mind’s intution and understanding of our wax.
5. What is the purpose of the second meditiation? By the end of the second meditation, what things has Descartes established?
   1. Err, nothing is provably real, except for our minds.