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Descartes on the Dubitability of the Existence of Self
Author(s) -
CUNNING DAVID
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
philosophy and phenomenological research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.7
H-Index - 39
eISSN - 1933-1592
pISSN - 0031-8205
DOI - 10.1111/j.1933-1592.2007.00005.x
Subject(s) - philosophy , reflexive pronoun , reading (process) , interpretation (philosophy) , epistemology , perspective (graphical) , face (sociological concept) , linguistics , computer science , artificial intelligence
In a number a passages Descartes appears to insist that “I am, I exist” and its variants are wholly indubitable. These passages present an intractable problem of interpretation in the face of passages in which Descartes allows that any result is dubitable, “I am, I exist” included. Here I pull together a number of elements of Descartes’ system to show how all of these passages hang together. If my analysis is correct, it tells us something about the perspective that Descartes himself thinks we should take in reading the Meditations.