Descartes’ Meditations IV-VI

Meditation V 1. State the three objections that Descartes’s anticipates, together with his replies. 2. Is existence a necessary property of the idea of God? List two criticisms. Meditation VI 1. What two features distinguish the imagination from the understanding? 2. What are the Latin terms for mental substance and physical substance, what do they mean, and what qualities does each substance possess? 3. What is the main problem for this theory of mind and body (dualism)? 4. Descartes states that the mind is not present in the body like “a pilot in a ship”, but is closer than that, as it were “intermixed with it” (sometimes called the intermingling thesis). In other writings, he also proposes the idea that mind and body interact by the pineal gland in the brain. Could either of these suggestions solve the problem of interaction? 5. What ultimate reason does Descartes give for trusting that the physical world exists?