Philosophy

7 Pages 1657 Words

efinitions of what it is to think can be separated into “wide and “narrow” definitions. In the second meditation, he appears to define thinking in terms of all conscious acts when he describes a thing that thinks as “a thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, is willing, is unwilling and also imagines and has sensory perceptions”. Williams makes the point that the translation of the Latin verb ‘cogitare’ and the French verb ‘penser’ have wider meaning than the English ‘to think’. They relate to any conscious state or activity. However, if Descartes’ definition of thought was really this broad it would need to be possible to assert that having sensory perceptions was indubitable as the ability to think. However, as he asserts in the first meditation, it is not the case to believe that “I have sensory perceptions” necessarily makes it a true belief. Despite this difficulty, Descartes’ inclusion of, among others, imagination in the above definition of thinking demonstrates that he clearly does ...