The First Meditation

David Cunning

doi:10.1017/CCO9781139088220.004

One of the views that is defended prominently in the First Meditation is that there exists the possibility that we are deceived about matters that are utterly evident to us. The possibility takes three different forms: that God created us with minds that are highly defective; that our minds evolved by chance and so are not dependable devices for tracking truth; and that an evil demon is deceiving us every time we grasp a result as obvious. It is tempting to hope that the argumentation that Descartes offers in the First Meditation is problematic, and that Descartes sees it to be problematic himself. If it is true that it is possible that our minds are deceived about matters that are utterly evident to us, it is hard to see how we would ever arrive at a result that we could trust. Commentators raised the worry immediately. If there exists the possibility that our minds are deceived about matters that are utterly evident to us, Descartes would not be entitled to move beyond the First Meditation and offer any arguments, and there would seem to be no way that he could establish (in the Third and Fourth Meditations) that God exists and created us with minds that are reliable. The First Meditation is clear in positing the existence of the possibility that our minds are deceived about matters that are utterly evident to us. If we attempt to locate an argument in Descartes' corpus that attempts to confront that possibility head on, Descartes will always be subject to the objection that perhaps the argument is no good and we find it to be compelling for the sole reason that our minds are defective. I want to suggest that we approach the First Meditation possibilities by changing the subject a bit, and indeed, by pretending that we had never read the First Meditation at all. Strange as it sounds to say, that will give us the best sense of what the First Meditation is working to do.

The First Meditation

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