True and immutable natures and epistemic progress in Descartes's meditations

British Journal for the History of Philosophy 11 (2):235 – 248 (2003)
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Abstract

In the _Fifth Meditation, Descartes introduces a being for which his system appears to leave no room. He clearly and distinctly perceives geometrical properties and concludes that, even though they may not actually exist, their _true and immutable natures exist nonetheless. Here I argue that the wedge that Descartes drives between an object and its true and immutable nature is only temporary and that, in the final analysis, a true and immutable nature of any X is just X itself. Given the analytic method of the _Meditations, it is to be expected that the 'meditator' would not notice any of this in the _Fifth Meditation. He must wait until his epistemic position is more enhanced

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10.1080/0960878032000104840

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David Cunning
University of Iowa

Citations of this work

The Young Spinoza on Scepticism, Truth, and Method.Valtteri Viljanen - 2020 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 50 (1):130-142.

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References found in this work

The Ontological Status of Cartesian Natures.Lawrence Nolan - 1997 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 78 (2):169–194.
The cartesian circle and the eternal truths.Anthony Kenny - 1970 - Journal of Philosophy 67 (19):685-700.
Modality and Cognition in Descartes.Alan Nelson & David Cunning - 1999 - Acta Philosophica Fennica 64:137.

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