Descartes - Guiding Questions, and some Advices on Notetaking

You find the study questions below the general information of how you should take notes

Before we come to the guiding questions, you might want to question and develop your learning techniques. First, you should never make the mistake and misjudge your skills. It is not true that you are not a math person, or that you have bad memory. Instead you either haven't been provided with the opportunity to develop these skills during your life, or you haven't used your chances to develop these skills by yourself. In any case, you should make clear to yourself that you can still learn these skills, and I would like to help you with this as best as I can.



You might think that you are typing faster on a laptop, but writing longhand gives you a few advantages. So, for example, you have to be more selective. It is true that students who use a pen write less than students using a computer, but exactly this makes them more effective. If you have time please look up the following study on this issue: The pen is mightier than the keyboard, or the easier text from the Wallstreet Journal: http://www.wsj.com/articles/can-handwriting-make-you-smarter-1459784659

What might be the reason that you feel taking notes with a laptop is more effective?

"Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis in 2012 found that laptop note-takers tested immediately after a class could recall more of a lecture and performed slightly better than their pen-pushing classmates when tested on facts presented in class." http://www.wsj.com/articles/can-handwriting-make-you-smarter-1459784659

So it is true that in the first instance you remember better. But learning is not about writing it down, but to condense it to the essentials and you have to participate in this process, in order to learn.

It is also not necessarily better to take notes like this:


If you participate in my way of taking notes, you will be introduced to a more productive way of how to follow classes. Please use this opportunity.

Study Technique:

I highly recommend you to read a book that teaches you on how to become a straight A student, even if you don't intend to become such a student. The book, however, will suggest a lot of tricks that either save time, or that might make it easier to get a better grade with the same effort that you put into your work right now.



Study Questions might help us to get closer to the text. I selected some helpful questions:

General Questions: These questions are asked in order to sharpen your general idea of the text and to explain them together with the course content.

• A. In very general words, what is Meditation 1 about?
• B. What could Descartes' "methodological doubt" be? Compare it to our definition of critical/critique!
• C. Why would it be Descartes’ fault if he did not start the investigation?

Specific Questions:

1. Why might the author consider himself to be guilty if he did not start his investigation of basic truths?
2. Does Descartes doubt everything in particular? (Explain why not!)
3. Why can't we accept that the senses give us truths?
4. By which criterion could you differentiate between being awake and sleeping and what is the dream argument supposed to demonstrate?
5. What does Descartes demonstrate with his example of the artists?
6. How could simple truths like 2+2=4 be wrong according to Descartes?
7. Why can't it be God who deceives us?
8. What is the evil-demon-argument supposed to show?

After having read all the questions, you should answer again:

What is the goal of Descartes’ Meditations?


The main questions with regard to the senses, imagination and understanding (source, see below):

1. For Descartes, why can't knowledge gained through sense experience be trusted as the basis of knowledge?
2. How are the doubts raised by our experience of dreaming different from, and more profound than, doubts raised about errors in sense experience?
3. How is the evil genius argument intended to be broader in scope than either the arguments about doubting sense experience or dreaming?
philosophy.tamu.edu/~sdaniel/Reading%20Questions%2009.doc