Descartes's Method of Doubt

0691117322......Page 1
Contents......Page 8
Preface......Page 10
Abbreviations......Page 16
Introduction......Page 19
The Method of Doubt and Other Cartesian Methods......Page 20
The Method of Doubt and Descartes’s Conception of Knowledge......Page 25
Descartes’s Reasons for Deploying the Method of Doubt......Page 28
PART ONE: Raising Doubt......Page 37
CHAPTER 1 Who Is Doubting?......Page 39
The Meditator as Anyone......Page 40
The Meditator as Scholastic Philosopher or Person of Common Sense......Page 44
The Meditator’s Problematic Persona......Page 46
CHAPTER 2 Ancient Skepticism......Page 51
Academic Skepticism as a Criticism of Stoic Epistemology......Page 52
Pyrrhonian Reflection......Page 55
CHAPTER 3 Reasons for Suspending Judgment......Page 60
The Maxim for Assent......Page 61
High Strategy......Page 67
Withholding Assent and Bracketing Beliefs......Page 72
CHAPTER 4 Reasons for Doubt......Page 80
Skeptical Scenarios as Explanations for False Beliefs......Page 82
Radical Grounds and the Method of Doubt......Page 85
CHAPTER 5 Common Sense and Skeptical Re.ection......Page 90
Michael Williams’s Reading......Page 92
Contrasts between Ancient Skeptics and Descartes’s Meditator......Page 96
Contrasts between Contemporary Philosophers and Descartes......Page 100
PART TWO: Using Doubt......Page 113
CHAPTER 6 Using Doubt......Page 115
Conditions of Using Doubt......Page 116
Suggestive Texts......Page 119
Three Types of Dependence Argument......Page 122
CHAPTER 7 Inner Conditions......Page 126
The Cogito First Reading......Page 127
My Existence as a Condition of My Doubt......Page 132
“I think”......Page 138
Careful Self-Attributions as Conditions of Doubt......Page 149
CHAPTER 8 Outer Conditions......Page 162
The Idea of God......Page 164
Causal Principles......Page 171
The Physical World......Page 188
The Cartesian Circle......Page 193
Transcendental Arguments......Page 204
The Fate of Common Sense......Page 214
References......Page 221
C......Page 229
D......Page 230
H......Page 231
M......Page 232
S......Page 233
U......Page 234
W......Page 235