ABSTRACT
At the end of the Second Meditation Descartes will hold that the perception he has gained of his own mind, in recognizing himself as a thinking thing, is ‘clear and distinct,’ and independent of the conception of body. He will also hold that he has shown the mind to be ‘better known’ than the body, not only in the sense that knowledge of mind is prior to knowledge of body, but also in the sense that we have fuller knowledge of the one than of the other. The former claim completes the Second Meditation’s preparations for the argument for mind-body distinctness, finally presented in Meditation VI, which will be considered in due course. The latter claim, about the demonstrated superiority of our knowledge of mind, was vigorously disputed by Gassendi in the Fifth Objections. The highly interesting exchange between Descartes and Gassendi on this issue will be considered at the end of the present chapter. First, however, we must see how Descartes treats the problem of the knowledge of body.
