The Material World

The material world, in the sense of the place where cars, countries, or trees reside, is renounced in the First Meditation. While it is easy to think we have a pretty firm grip on the external world, Descartes thinks this is false. He portrays the world of material things initially as a world of deceit and illusory appearances which we do not have direct access to but only experience corrupted by our senses. As such, he retreats from it into the mental world. One can see the material world as a type of destination; the goal of the Meditations is to find a way back into the world that will allow us to perceive it with certainty.

The Mental World

One can think of the mental world - the world of ideas, imagination, and thought - as the primary setting for the book. After dismissing...