Meditation+Two

= **Discovering the nature of the** **mind** = Or - The nature of the human mind, and how it is better known than body.

The second meditation contains the famous **Cogito** reasoning. The main idea of the meditation is not the actual existence of the reader/Descartes but what the nature of our/his existence is.

At the beginning of Meditation 2 Descartes reviews his method of doubt. Through the rejection of empirical information from the senses, Descartes is at the stage of even discounting the very existence of his mind: “there is absolutely nothing in the world, no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies”

However Descartes then considers whether it follows, from the fact that he has thoughts, that he must exist. If he has thoughts then, “...am not I, at least, something?”

Descartes concludes that even if the (hypothetical) evil genius is deceiving his mind about the truths of mathematics and the reality of objects he, Descartes, must exist for this to happen.

**Descartes must exist... independently**!

The conclusion of the cogito is simply “ **I exist**”. The “I” remains controversial, what does the “I” in “I exist” actually mean?

A thinking thing? With no body? Is that like digesting with no stomach? So the **Cogito could be**:
 * 1) A stream of thoughts.
 * 2) A thinking substance but with no body.
 * 3) Thinking substance distinct from the body.

Descartes has much to establish because the Cogito is really only a foundational base to build upon. Descartes will argue by the end of Meditation V1 (6) that the mind is a distinct immaterial (having no physical property) substance from the body. Through thinking about his own existence, Descartes eventually regards himself as a thing whose nature is to think.

**The Cogito is a foundational piece of knowledge which provides a single first principle, from which additional knowledge can be derived...**

**...even more!**

**...the Cogito is also the piece of knowledge through which a process is discovered to find certainty, a method of knowing**.