Meditation 6 Study Q's Flashcards
What is Descartes’ point about the “chiliagon”? What does it say about the difference between the “imagination” and “pure understanding”?
His point about the Chiliagon is that you don’t have to imagine something is order to understand with the mind
Which, the “pure understanding” or the “imagination” is related to the body and perceptions?
The “imagination”
What is Descartes’ claim about personal identity and the body?
Absolutely nothing else belongs to my nature or Essence except that I’m a thinking thing. It is certain that I am really distinct from my body and can exist without it.
How does the meditator show that the “I”/mind is more closely connected to the body than a sailor is to a ship?
I and the body form a unit. If this were not so I would not feel pain when the body was hurt, but would perceive the damage purely by the intellect, just as a sailor perceives by sight if anything in his ship is broken.
What does the meditator now say that he knows about the SOURCE of his sense perceptions? Do perceptions necessarily RESEMBLE their sources?
He believes that various other bodies exist in the vicinity of his body and that some of these are to be sought out and others avoided. “I am correct in inferring that the bodies which are the source of these various sensory perceptions possess differences corresponding to them, though perhaps not resembling them.” These perceptions don’t resemble their sources.
What does Descartes say is (and is not) “in” the fire?
The feelings of heat or pain are not “in” the fire. But it has something in it that produces in us the feelings of heat or pain. Even though there is nothing in any given space that stimulates the senses, it does not follow that there is no body there.
How does the meditator differentiate between the mind and the body?
The body is by its very nature divisible while the mind is utterly indivisible.
What does the meditator say about the mind/ body relation?
The mind is not immediately affected by all parts of the body, but only by the brain, or perhaps by just one small part of the brain, namely the part which is said to contain the “common” sense.
