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Mental Conflict: Descartes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

André Gombay
André Gombay
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Extract

In a famous text Descartes has written this:

Whenever the thought of God's supreme power occurs to me, I cannot help feeling that he might easily, if he so wished, make me go wrong even in what I think I see most clearly with my mind's eye. On the other hand, whenever I turn to the matters themselves which I think I perceive very clearly, I am so convinced by them that I burst out: ‘let who will deceive me, he can never bring it about that I should be nothing at the time of thinking that I am something, nor that it be true that I never existed if it is true that I exist now; nor even that two and three together make more or less than five, or any such thing in which I see manifest contradiction’ (AT VII, 36; HR I, 158–159).

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 54 , Issue 210 , October 1979 , pp. 485 - 500
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1979

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References

1 References to Descartes' texts are as follows: (a) throughout: Descartes, , Oeuvres, Adam, C. and Tannery, P. (eds), 12 vols. (Paris: Vrin, 1897–1911)Google Scholar; referred to as AT, followed by volume-, and page-, numeral; (b) where applicable: (i) Descartes, , Philosophical Works, Haldane, E. S. and Ross, G. R. T. (eds), 2 vols. (London: Cambridge University Press, 1911)Google Scholar; referred to as HR; (ii) Descartes, , Philosophical Letters, Kenny, A. (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970)Google Scholar; referred to as K; (iii) Descartes, , Conversation with Burman, Cottingham, J. (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976); referred to as C.Google Scholar

2 Kenny, A., Descartes (New York: Random House, 1967), 187–189.Google Scholar

3 Frankfurt, H. G., Demons, Dreamers, and Madmen (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970), 160–162.Google Scholar

4 Bréhier, E., ‘The Creation of the Eternal Truths in Descartes's System’, Descartes, Doney, W. (ed.) (New York: Doubleday, 1967), 192–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Hacking, I., ‘Leibniz & Descartes: Proof & Eternal Truths’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 1973.Google Scholar