Descartes and Elisabeth

Question 1

Method of Doubt and the search for foundations

Answer 1

Consider all of your beliefs and find the ones that can be doubted, if they can be doubted -> they can’t be the foundation

Exclude them until you find the one that you cannot doubt

Question 2

The cogito–I think therefore I am

Answer 2

Cannot doubt that I am a thinking thing

Shows that the mind/self is better known than the body

Existence of the thinking self is absolutely certain

Question 3

Minds and bodies

Answer 3

The mind is non-physical and distinct from the body and exist separately

Substance dualism
1) Physical, extended, touchable
2) Thinking, non-physical

Question 4

How we differ from the animals and the “poverty argument”

Answer 4

The body isn’t enough - it is too poor to explain language and reason, there are many other beings that have bodies just like ours but doesn’t achieve these things

Lacking in animals but present in us

Question 5

The interaction problem and Elisabeth’s challenge

Answer 5

How can an immaterial mind interact with a material body?

Elisabeth: how can something non-physical cause physical motion

Descartes fails to resolve this mind-body interaction problem

Question 6

Freedom of the will and the cause of error

Answer 6

We have a faculty of free will to affirm or deny beliefs

If we are prone to error– why if the will is free?

Human error stems from the misuse of free will by judging without sufficient perception