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Six metaphysical meditations / cover

Six metaphysical meditations /

Chapter 41: ANSWER.
By René Descartes
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Philosophy & Ethics

About This Book

A sequence of six reflections subjects customary opinions to radical, systematic doubt to discover indubitable truths. The thinker discards sensory and speculative certainties via skeptical scenarios, arriving at a foundational assertion of self-awareness as a thinking substance. From clear and distinct perceptions the argument moves to proofs for a benevolent deity as guarantor of truth, and to arguments distinguishing immaterial mind from extended body, illustrated by analytic examples such as the wax experiment and the hypothesis of a deceiving intellect. The work progresses from methodological skepticism to metaphysical claims about knowledge, God, and the real distinction between mind and body.

OBJECT. XV.
Against the Sixth Meditation. Of the Existence of Material Beings.

* And seeing God has given me no Faculty to know whether these Ideas proceed from Bodies or not, but rather a strong inclination to believe, that these Ideas are sent from Bodies, I see no reason, why God should not be counted a Deceiver, if these Ideas came from any where, but from Corporeal Beings, and therefore we must conclude that Corporeal Beings exist.

’Tis a received opinion, that Physicians who deceive their Patients for their Healths sake, and Fathers, who deceive their Children for their Good, are guilty thereby of no Crimes, for the fault of Deceit does not consist in the falsity of Words; but in the Injury done to the Person deceived.

Let D. Cartes therefore consider whether this Proposition, God can upon no account deceive us, Universally taken be true; For if it be not true so universally taken, that Conclusion, Therefore Corporeal Beings exist, will not follow.

ANSWER.

’Tis not requisite for the establishment of my Conclusion, That we cannot be deceived on any account (for I willingly granted, that we may be often deceived) but that we cannot be deceived, when that our Error argues that in God there is such a Will to Cheat us as would be contradictious to his Nature. And here again we have a wrong inference in this Objection.