Meditation Six: the world restored Material objects as probable, and the real distinction

By the end of the Sixth Meditation, virtually everything is as it was at the beginning of Meditation One. Among the exceptions masked by the “virtually” are heat and cold, colors (including black and white), and, presumably, flavors, aromas, sounds, and anything else that is not subject to geometric description. While these absences might suggest that the Descartes of Meditation Six was anti-empirical, we argue that he championed a cautious empiricism, what we called the Enhanced Principle of Acquaintance (EPA) in Chapter Four.