| FA-51460-05 | Research Programs: Fellowships for University Teachers | John Peter Carriero | A Reading of Descartes's "Meditations" | 7/1/2005 - 6/30/2006 | $40,000.00 | John | Peter | Carriero | | | | UCLA; Regents of the University of California, Los Angeles | Los Angeles | CA | 90024-4201 | USA | 2004 | History of Philosophy | Fellowships for University Teachers | Research Programs | 40000 | 0 | 40000 | 0 |
I present a reading of the *Meditations* centered around the question of how cognitive beings like ourselves come to *understand* mind, God, and body. I suggest that the purpose of the skeptical argumentation presented in the First Meditation is not, as is usually thought, to raise questions concerning our certainty about the *existence* of the external world, but rather to begin a discussion of the role of the senses (or lack thereof) in how we *understand*, a discussion that concerns our grasp of the essences of things as opposed to our hold on the existence of things. For Descartes, issues about our understanding of *what* something is—mind, God, body—are more fundamental than our knowledge *that* something is. |