Excerpts from: Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), Rene Descartes
rest collapses of its own accord; so I will go straight for the
basic principles on which all my former beliefs rested.
MEDITATION I: On What Can Be Doubted
Whatever I have accepted until now as most true has come to
me through my senses. But occasionally I have found that they
have deceived me, and it is unwise to trust completely those
who have deceived us even once.
Some years ago I was struck by how many false things I had
believed, and by how doubtful was the structure of beliefs that
I had based on them. I realized that if I wanted to establish
anything in the sciences that was stable and likely to last, I
needed – just once in my life – to demolish everything
completely and start again from the foundations. It looked like
an enormous task, and I decided to wait until I was old enough
to be sure that there was nothing to be gained from putting it
off any longer. I have now delayed it for so long that I have no
excuse for going on planning to do it rather than getting to
work. So today I have set all my worries aside and arranged for
myself a clear stretch of free time. I am here quite alone, and at
last I will devote myself, sincerely and without holding back, to
demolishing my opinions.
Yet although the senses sometimes deceive us about objects
that are very small or distant, that doesn’t apply to my belief
that I am here, sitting by the fire, wearing a winter dressinggown, holding this piece of paper in my hands, and so on. It
seems to be quite impossible to doubt beliefs like these, which
come from the senses.
Another example: how can I doubt that these hands or this
whole body are mine? To doubt such things I would have to
liken myself to brain-damaged madmen who are convinced
they are kings when really they are paupers, or say they are
dressed in purple when they are naked, or that they are
pumpkins, or made of glass. Such people are insane, and I
would be thought equally mad if I modelled myself on them.
I can do this without showing that all my beliefs are false,
which is probably more than I could ever manage. My reason
tells me that as well as withholding assent from propositions
that are obviously false, I should also withhold it from ones
that are not completely certain and indubitable. So all I need,
for the purpose of rejecting all my opinions, is to find in each
of them at least some reason for doubt. I can do this without
going through them one by one, which would take forever:
once the foundations of a building have been undermined, the
What a brilliant piece of reasoning! As if I were not a man who
sleeps at night and often has all the same experiences while
asleep as madmen do when awake – indeed sometimes even
more improbable ones. Often in my dreams I am convinced of
just such familiar events – that I am sitting by the fire in my
dressing-gown – when in fact I am lying undressed in bed! Yet
right now my eyes are certainly wide open when I look at this
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Excerpts from: Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), Rene Descartes
piece of paper; I shake my head and it isn’t asleep; when I rub
one hand against the other, I do it deliberately and know what I
am doing. This wouldn’t all happen with such clarity to
someone asleep.
place, while making sure that all these things appear to me to
exist? Anyway, I sometimes think that others go wrong even
when they think they have the most perfect knowledge; so how
do I know that I myself don’t go wrong every time I add two
and three or count the sides of a square?...
Indeed! As if I didn’t remember other occasions when I have
been tricked by exactly similar thoughts while asleep! As I
think about this more carefully, I realize that there is never any
reliable way of distinguishing being awake from being asleep.
MEDITATION II: The Nature of the Human
Mind, and That It is Better Known Than the Body
…I suppose, accordingly, that all the things which I see are
false (fictitious); I believe that none of those objects which my
fallacious memory represents ever existed; I suppose that I
possess no senses; I believe that body, figure, extension,
motion, and place are merely fictions of my mind. What is
there, then, that can be esteemed true? Perhaps this only, that
there is absolutely nothing certain.
This discovery makes me feel dizzy, which itself reinforces the
notion that I may be asleep! Suppose then that I am dreaming –
it isn’t true that I, with my eyes open, am moving my head and
stretching out my hands. Suppose, indeed that I don’t
even have hands or any body at all…
…So it seems reasonable to conclude that physics, astronomy,
medicine, and all other sciences dealing with things that have
complex structures are doubtful; while arithmetic, geometry
and other studies of the simplest and most general things –
whether they really exist in nature or not – contain something
certain and indubitable. For whether I am awake or asleep, two
plus three makes five, and a square has only four sides. It
seems impossible to suspect that such obvious truths might be
false.
…Am I, then, at least not something? But I before denied that I
possessed senses or a body; I hesitate, however, for what
follows from that? Am I so dependent on the body and the
senses that without these I cannot exist? But I had the
persuasion that there was absolutely nothing in the world, that
there was no sky and no earth, neither minds nor bodies; was I
not, therefore, at the same time, persuaded that I did not exist?
Far from it; I assuredly existed, since I was persuaded. But
there is I know not what being, who is possessed at once of the
highest power and the deepest cunning, who is constantly
employing all his ingenuity in deceiving me. Doubtless, then, I
However, I have for many years been sure that there is an allpowerful God who made me to be the sort of creature that I am.
How do I know that he hasn’t brought it about that there is no
earth, no sky, nothing that takes up space, no shape, no size, no
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Excerpts from: Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), Rene Descartes
exist, since I am deceived; and, let him deceive me as he may,
he can never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I shall
be conscious that I am something. So that it must, in fine, be
maintained, all things being maturely and carefully considered,
that this proposition I am, I exist, is necessarily true each time
it is expressed by me, or conceived in my mind.
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Excerpts from: Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), Rene Descartes
of members that appears in a corpse, and which I called by the
name of body. It further occurred to me that I was nourished,
that I walked, perceived, and thought, and all those actions I
referred to the soul; but what the soul itself was I either did not
stay to consider, or, if I did, I imagined that it was something
extremely rare and subtle, like wind, or flame, or ether, spread
through my grosser parts. As regarded the body, I did not even
doubt of its nature, but thought I distinctly knew it, and if I had
wished to describe it according to the notions I then
entertained, I should have explained myself in this manner: By
body I understand all that can be terminated by a certain figure;
that can be comprised in a certain place, and so fill a certain
space as therefrom to exclude every other body; that can be
perceived either by touch, sight, hearing, taste, or smell; that
can be moved in different ways, not indeed of itself, but by
something foreign to it by which it is touched and from which
it receives the impression]; for the power of self-motion, as
likewise that of perceiving and thinking, I held as by no means
pertaining to the nature of body; on the contrary, I was
somewhat astonished to find such faculties existing in some
bodies.
MEDITATION II
But I do not yet know with sufficient clearness what I am,
though assured that I am; and hence, in the next place, I must
take care, lest perchance I inconsiderately substitute some other
object in room of what is properly myself, and thus wander
from truth, even in that knowledge (cognition) which I hold to
be of all others the most certain and evident. For this reason, I
will now consider anew what I formerly believed myself to be,
before I entered on the present train of thought; and of my
previous opinion I will retrench all that can in the least be
invalidated by the grounds of doubt I have adduced, in order
that there may at length remain nothing but what is certain and
indubitable.
What then did I formerly think I was? Undoubtedly I judged
that I was a man. But what is a man? Shall I say a rational
animal? Assuredly not; for it would be necessary forthwith to
inquire into what is meant by animal, and what by rational, and
thus, from a single question, I should insensibly glide into
others, and these more difficult than the first; nor do I now
possess enough of leisure to warrant me in wasting my time
amid subtleties of this sort. I prefer here to attend to the
thoughts that sprung up of themselves in my mind, and were
inspired by my own nature alone, when I applied myself to the
consideration of what I was. In the first place, then, I thought
that I possessed a countenance, hands, arms, and all the fabric
But as to myself, what can I now say that I am, since I suppose
there exists an extremely powerful, and, if I may so speak,
malignant being, whose whole endeavors are directed toward
deceiving me? Can I affirm that I possess any one of all those
attributes of which I have lately spoken as belonging to the
nature of body? After attentively considering them in my own
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Excerpts from: Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), Rene Descartes
mind, I find none of them that can properly be said to belong to
myself. To recount them were idle and tedious. Let us pass,
then, to the attributes of the soul. The first mentioned were the
powers of nutrition and walking; but, if it be true that I have no
body, it is true likewise that I am capable neither of walking
nor of being nourished. Perception is another attribute of the
soul; but perception too is impossible without the body;
besides, I have frequently, during sleep, believed that I
perceived objects which I afterward observed I did not in
reality perceive. Thinking is another attribute of the soul; and
here I discover what properly belongs to myself. This alone is
inseparable from me. I am--I exist: this is certain; but how
often? As often as I think; for perhaps it would even happen, if
I should wholly cease to think, that I should at the same time
altogether cease to be. I now admit nothing that is not
necessarily true. I am therefore, precisely speaking, only a
thinking thing, that is, a mind (mens sive animus),
understanding, or reason, terms whose signification was before
unknown to me. I am, however, a real thing, and really
existent; but what thing? The answer was, a thinking thing.
very being who now doubts of almost everything; who, for all
that, understands and conceives certain things; who affirms one
alone as true, and denies the others; who desires to know more
of them, and does not wish to be deceived; who imagines many
things, sometimes even despite his will; and is likewise
percipient of many, as if through the medium of the senses. Is
there nothing of all this as true as that I am, even although I
should be always dreaming, and although he who gave me
being employed all his ingenuity to deceive me ? Is there also
any one of these attributes that can be properly distinguished
from my thought, or that can be said to be separate from myself
? For it is of itself so evident that it is I who doubt, I who
understand, and I who desire, that it is here unnecessary to add
anything by way of rendering it more clear. And I am as
certainly the same being who imagines; for although it may be
(as I before supposed) that nothing I imagine is true, still the
power of imagination does not cease really to exist in me and
to form part of my thought. In fine, I am the same being who
perceives, that is, who apprehends certain objects as by the
organs of sense, since, in truth, I see light, hear a noise, and
feel heat. But it will be said that these presentations are false,
and that I am dreaming. Let it be so. At all events it is certain
that I seem to see light, hear a noise, and feel heat; this cannot
be false, and this is what in me is properly called perceiving
(sentire), which is nothing else than thinking…
But what, then, am I ? A thinking thing, it has been said. But
what is a thinking thing? It is a thing that doubts, understands,
conceives], affirms, denies, wills, refuses; that imagines also,
and perceives.
Assuredly it is not little, if all these properties belong to my
nature. But why should they not belong to it? Am I not that
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Excerpts from: Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), Rene Descartes
pilot in a vessel, but that I am besides so intimately conjoined,
and as it were intermixed with it, that my mind and body
compose a certain unity. For if this were not the case, I should
not feel pain when my body is hurt, seeing I am merely a
thinking thing, but should perceive the wound by the
understanding alone, just as a pilot perceives by sight when any
part of his vessel is damaged; and when my body has need of
food or drink, I should have a clear knowledge of this, and not
be made aware of it by the confused sensations of hunger and
thirst: for, in truth, all these sensations of hunger, thirst, pain,
etc., are nothing more than certain confused modes of thinking,
arising from the union and apparent fusion of mind and body.
MEDITATION VI
…I remark, besides, that this power of imagination which I
possess, in as far as it differs from the power of conceiving, is
in no way necessary to my nature or essence, that is, to the
essence of my mind; for although I did not possess it, I should
still remain the same that I now am, from which it seems we
may conclude that it depends on something different from the
mind. And I easily understand that, if some body exists, with
which my mind is so conjoined and united as to be able, as it
were, to consider it when it chooses, it may thus imagine
corporeal objects; so that this mode of thinking differs from
pure intellection only in this respect, that the mind in
conceiving turns in some way upon itself, and considers some
one of the ideas it possesses within itself; but in imagining it
turns toward the body, and contemplates in it some object
conformed to the idea which it either of itself conceived or
apprehended by sense. I easily understand, I say, that
imagination may be thus formed, if it is true that there are
bodies; and because I find no other obvious mode of explaining
it, I thence, with probability, conjecture that they exist, but only
with probability; and although I carefully examine all things,
nevertheless I do not find that, from the distinct idea of
corporeal nature I have in my imagination, I can necessarily
infer the existence of any body…
13. Nature likewise teaches me by these sensations of pain,
hunger, thirst, etc., that I am not only lodged in my body as a
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Excerpts from: On the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785), Thomas Reid
that the definition of ‘person’ would completely settle the
question of what the nature of personal identity is, or what
personal identity consists in, though there might still remain a
question about how we come to know and be assured of our
personal identity. But Locke tells us:
Chapter 6: Locke’s account of our personal identity
In a chapter on identity and diversity, Locke makes has made
many ingenious and sound observations, and some that I think
can’t be defended. I shall confine my discussion to his account
of our own personal identity. His doctrine on this subject has
been criticized by Butler in a short essay appended to his The
Analogy of Religion, an essay with which I complete agree.
Personal identity, i.e. the sameness of a rational being,
consists in consciousness alone; and as far as this
consciousness can be extended backwards to any past
action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that
person. So that whatever has the consciousness of
present and past actions is the same person to whom
they belong. [Locke wrote ‘is the same self’ etc.]
As I remarked in chapter 4, identity presupposes the continued
existence of the being whose identity is affirmed, and therefore
it can be applied only to things that have a continuous existence.
For as long as any being continues to exist, it is the same being;
but two beings that have different beginnings or different
endings of their existence can’t possibly be the same. I think
Locke agrees with this. He is absolutely right in his thesis that to
know what is meant by ‘same person’ we must consider what
‘person’ stands for. He defines ‘person’ as a thinking being
endowed with reason and with consciousness—and he thinks
that consciousness is inseparable from thought.
This doctrine has some strange consequences that the author was
aware of. For example: if the same consciousness could be
transferred from one thinking being to another (which Locke
thinks we can’t show to be impossible), then two or twenty
thinking beings could be the same person. And if a thinking
being were to lose the consciousness of the actions he had done
(which surely is possible), then he is not the person who
performed those actions; so that one thinking being could be two
or twenty different persons if he lost the consciousness of his
former actions two or twenty times. Another consequence of this
doctrine (which follows just as necessarily, though Locke
probably didn’t see it) is this: A man may be and at the same
time not be the person that performed a particular action.
Suppose that a brave officer 1) was beaten when a boy at school,
From this definition it follows that while the thinking being
continues to exist, and continues thinking, it must be the same
person. To say that the thinking being is the person, and yet that
1) the person ceases to exist while the thinking being continues,
or that 2) the person continues while the thinking being ceases
to exist, strikes me as a manifest contradiction. One would think
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Excerpts from: On the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785), Thomas Reid
for robbing an orchard, 2) captures an enemy standard in his first
battle, and 3) is made a general in advanced life. Suppose also
(and you have to agree that this is possible) that when he took
the standard he was conscious of his having been beaten at
school, and that when he became a general he was conscious of
his taking the standard but had absolutely lost the consciousness
of his beating.
distinctly remembers that he did it. In ordinary everyday talk we
don’t need to fix precisely the borderline between consciousness
and memory. . . . But this ·imprecision· ought to be avoided in
philosophy—otherwise we run together different powers of the
mind, ascribing to one what really belongs to another. If a man
can be ·strictly and literally· conscious of what he did twenty
years or twenty minutes ago, then there is nothing for memory
to do, and we oughtn’t to allow that there is any such faculty.
The faculties of •consciousness and •memory are chiefly
distinguished by this: •consciousness is an immediate
knowledge of the present, •memory is an immediate knowledge
of the past. So Locke’s notion of personal identity, stated
properly, is that personal identity consists in clear
remembering…
Given these suppositions, it follows from Locke’s doctrine that
he who was beaten at school is the same person who captured
the standard, and that he who captured the standard is the same
person who was made a general. From which it follows—if there
is any truth in logic!—that •the general is the same person as him
who was beaten at school. But the general’s consciousness does
not reach so far back as his beating, and therefore according to
Locke’s doctrine •the general is not the person who was beaten.
So the general is and at the same time is not the person who was
beaten at school.
(2) In this doctrine, not only is ‘consciousness’ run together with
‘memory,’ but (even more strange) personal identity is run
together with the evidence we have of our personal identity. It is
very true that my remembering that I did such-and-such is the
evidence I have that I am the identical person who did it. And
I’m inclined to think that this what this is what Locke meant. But
to say that my remembering that I did such-and-such, or my
consciousness that I did it, makes me the person who did—that
strikes me as an absurdity too crude to be entertained by anyone
who attends to the meaning of it. For it credits memory or
consciousness with having a strange magical power to produce
its object, though that object must have existed before the
memory or consciousness that ·supposedly· produced it.
Leaving the consequences of this doctrine to those who have
leisure to trace them, I shall offer four observations on the
doctrine itself. (1) Locke attributes to consciousness the
conviction we have of our past actions, as if a man could now be
conscious of what he did twenty years ago. It is impossible to
make sense of this unless ‘consciousness’ means memory, the
only faculty by which we have an immediate knowledge of our
past actions. Sometimes in informal conversation a man says he
is ‘conscious’ that he did such-and-such, meaning that he
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Excerpts from: On the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785), Thomas Reid
Consciousness is the testimony of one faculty; memory is the
testimony of another faculty. To say that the testimony is the
cause of the thing testified is surely absurd if anything is absurd,
and Locke couldn’t have said it if he hadn’t confused the
testimony with the thing testified…
(4) In his discussion of personal identity, Locke uses many
expressions that I find unintelligible unless he wasn’t
distinguishing the sameness or identity that we ascribe to an
individual from the identity which in everyday talk we ascribe
to many individuals of the same species. When we say that pain
and pleasure, consciousness and memory, are the same in all
men, this ‘same’ness can only mean similarity, i.e. sameness of
kind. ·If it meant individual identity, i.e. identity properly and
strictly so-called, it would be implying· that the pain of one man
could be the same individual pain that another man also felt, and
this is no more possible than that one man should be another
man; the pain I felt yesterday can no more be the pain I feel today than yesterday can be today; and the same thing holds for
every operation of the mind and every episode of the mind’s
undergoing something. The same kind or species of operation
may occur in different men or in the same man at different times,
but it is impossible for the same individual operation to occur in
different men or in the same man at different times. So when
Locke speaks of ‘the same consciousness being continued
through a succession of different substances’, of ‘repeating the
idea of a past action with the same consciousness we had of it at
the first’ and ‘the same consciousness extending to past and
future actions’, these expressions are unintelligible to me unless
he means not the same individual consciousness but a
consciousness that is of the same kind. If our personal identity
consists in consciousness, given that consciousness can’t be the
same individually for any two moments but only of the same
kind, it would follow that we are not for any two moments the
(3) Isn’t it strange that the sameness or identity of a person
should consist in something that is continually changing, and is
never the same for two minutes? Our consciousness, our
memory, and every operation of the mind are still flowing like
the water of a river, or like time itself. The consciousness I have
this moment can’t be the same consciousness that I had a
moment ago, any more than this moment can be that earlier
moment. Identity can only be affirmed of things that have a
continuous existence. Consciousness and every kind of thought
is passing and momentary, and has no continuous existence; so
if personal identity consisted in consciousness it would certainly
follow that no ‘man’ is the same ‘person’ any two moments of
his life; and as the right and justice of reward and punishment is
based on personal identity, no man would be responsible for his
actions! But though I take this to be the unavoidable
consequence of Locke’s theory of personal identity, and though
some people may have liked the doctrine the better on this
account, I am far from imputing anything of this kind to Locke
himself. He was too good a man not to have rejected in horror a
doctrine that he thought would bring this consequence with it.
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Excerpts from: On the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785), Thomas Reid
same individual persons but the same kind of persons. As our
consciousness sometimes ceases to exist—as in sound sleep—
our personal identity must cease with it, according to Locke’s
theory. He allows that a single thing can’t have two beginnings
of existence; so our identity would be irrecoverably lost every
time we stopped thinking, even if only for a moment.
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Module 10: Moral Responsibility and Immortality
1: Arguments against Compatibilism: Moral Responsibility
"Should Have" Implies "Could Have"
· There is a third criticism of compatibilism, this one about moral responsibility. This
criticism arises when we ask and answer "no" to the question, “Can soft determinism
(i.e. compatibilist determinism) make sense of moral responsibility?”
· Here is the idea: in ethics, there’s an important phrase that “ought implies can.” I
prefer to say it this way: “should have” implies “could have.”
· Any moral judgment must be reducible to the form “You should have/should have
not…”
· In other words, for my “Should have” judgment to make sense, “Could have” must
have also be true.
Compatibilist Free Will
- Libertarian: free will is the ability to do otherwise
- Compatibilism: free will is the ability to act from internal reasons
- Determinism: free will is an (continuously beneficial) illusion; you were determined
by factors you don’t know
- Compatibilist free will: when you act from beliefs and desires even when you were
determined to have those beliefs and desires
· Why is any of this important for compatibilism? Because, we want to know: does
compatibilist free will allow the possibility that my beliefs and desires are themselves
determined, even though they are mine?
· So, while the beliefs and desires are my own, I was determined to have the ones that
I do
· For example, maybe Ghandi is such a good person because he has a lot of the
chemical “compassionatonin” in his brain. Should I praise him for his selfless actions
if the explanation for his behavior is simply the presence of a brain chemical?
· And maybe Hitler is horrible person because he was born without any
‘compassionatonin’ in his brain. Should I blame him for his destructive actions if the
explanation for his behavior is simply the absence of a brain chemical?
· If so, does compatibilist free will really believe that I did not have the power to act
other than I did?
· And if so, does compatibilist free will deny that I could ever have moral
responsibility? Because remember, moral judgments presuppose that I could have
done that other thing.
· Doesn’t genuine freedom imply that I can make my future different? If there is no
different possible future, then what does it matter if the reasons for my action are
internal to me?
· If so, we will favor a libertarian definition of free will: “the power or capacity to do
otherwise than I actually did” (Sometimes this is called “counter-factual freedom”)
· Compatibilist response: this merely means “you would have done otherwise, if you
had desired to do otherwise”
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