Descartes and the Doubting Mind

0427086 - FLÚ 2014 RIV GB eng B - Monography
Hill, James
Descartes and the Doubting Mind.
London: Continuum, 2012. 162 s. Continuum Studies in Philosophy. ISBN 978-1-4411-3203-1
R&D Projects: GA ČR(CZ) GAP401/10/1504
Institutional support: RVO:67985955
Keywords : empiricism * mind * skepticism * Descartes
Subject RIV: AA - Philosophy ; Religion

This book shows that the Cartesian mind has been widely misunderstood: typically treated as simply the subject of phenomenal consciousness, ignoring its deeply intellectual character. The author argues that this interpretation has gone hand in hand with a misreading of Descartes' method of doubt which treats it as all-inclusive and universal in scope. In fact, the sceptical arguments of the First Meditation aim to lead the mind away from the senses and towards the intellectual 'notions' that the mind has within it, and which are never the subject of doubt. The author also places Descartes' concept of mind into the wider setting of his science of nature, showing how he wished to reveal a mental subject that would able to comprehend the new physics necessitated by Copernicus' heliocentrism.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0232697