What are the Meditations about? What is ÔFirst PhilosophyÕ and the ÔPrinciples of First PhilosophyÕ? What is a meditation? What is one supposed to gain from meditation? Why might the format of meditations be suited to a study of first philosophy? Who or what is this ÔIÕ? Does the synopsis summary map onto the Meditations?

What are the skeptical arguments of the First Meditation? What does each serve to call into doubt? How do they build on one another? How are they different from one another? Is there anything the meditator does not call into doubt? What is the Ômethod of doubtÕ? How does the method work? What is the relation between doubt and knowledge? Doubt and certainty?

What, precisely, does the meditator determine he cannot doubt? How does he make that determination? What do we learn about the nature of thought from the meditatorÕs discovery? What is the ÔcogitoÕ? How does the list a thinking thing does get generated? What is special about sensing and imagining? How can the meditator claim he senses and imagines if he is still doubting that he is embodied? What is the lesson of the consideration of the piece of wax? How does that discussion suggest we represent the world in thought? In what sense is the mind better known than body?

FIRST PAPER DUE SEPT 24 What do you make of the meditatorÕs take on what he has learned from the preceding meditations? What is the task of the Third Meditation ? How does it relate to the skeptical arguments of the First Meditation? Does it succeed in this task? What is a clear and distinct perception? Is it purely psychological? Is it an objective criteria? What are the different kinds of thoughts we can have? What is an idea, according to Descartes? What are the two arguments Descartes offers for the existence of God? What is this causal principle, and how does it figure in these arguments? How are the two arguments related to one another? Do the arguments succeed? Are they flawed?

What is a judgement, according to the view Descartes puts forward in this meditation? What is notion of will, and of the freedom of the will, in play in this account? How does this notion of judgement lead to a method of avoiding error? What else does this method depend upon? How does it address the concerns of the First Meditation? At the end of the Fourth Meditation, what sort of knowledge claims can our meditator make, if any? What is left to be determined?

How does Descartes try to prove the existence of God again? What is the standard problem with ontological arguments? Does this argument avoid this problem? If so, how? Why does he need to prove the existence of God again? What are these true and immutable natures? How do they relate to the nature of material things?

SECOND PAPER DUE OCT 15 How does Descartes distinguish mind from body? What is a real distinction? How is it different from other sorts of distinctions? How does Descartes establish the existence of the material world? Does this proof fully answer the skeptical arguments of the First Meditation? What according to this proof do our sensation tell us about the material world? What is the nature of a human being, according to Descartes? In what way are mind and body united? Do they form a third substance? In what way does the union inform the content of our sensations? What is the content of our sensations, if any? What is the nature of the causal interaction between mind and body?

What are ElisabethÕs concerns about the interaction of mind and body? How does DescartesÕ replies address her concerns? Is this reply satisfactory? Are DescartesÕ remarks in the later (1645) letters surprising? How so?

Does DescartesÕ view about the mind-body union develop in these later works? How so? Do these developments require him to rethink his substance dualism?

Malebranche (all pg numbers in Hackett edition)
Background:
Search After Truth, pp.3-22, Dialogues on Metaphysics: pp.147-158., 168-182. Foreground:
Search, pp. 24-26, 32-50, Dialogues, pp. 183-210.

What is the difference between occasional causation and ÔregularÕ causation? Does Malebranche think that bodies have the power to cause something to happen? What does he take to be inadequate with existing accounts of causation? What alternative does he propose? In what way is God the only cause? What does the doctrine of occasional causation tell us about how our sensations represent?

What is a substance for Spinoza? What is SpinozaÕs argument for there being only one substance? What, then, are mind and body, in SpinozaÕs view? How is SpinozaÕs ontology similar to and different from DescartesÕ

What is the justification for SpinozaÕs doctrine of parallelism (EIIP7)? What problems in Descartes account of the human being does this doctrine aim to solve? What sort of account of the content of our ideas does it afford? Does this account give us a sensible notion of the mental?