ABSTRACT
The Third and Fourth Meditations purportedly established “clear and distinct” intellectual perception as the method for discovering truth. It makes sense, then, for the meditator now to say, concerning material objects: “before I inquire whether any such things exist outside me, I must consider the ideas of these things, insofar as they exist in my thought, and see which of them are distinct, and which confused” (7:63). That is, the meditator will seek to “escape” the earlier doubts not by considering the existence of material objects, which might require using the senses, but merely by examining her ideas of such objects. And these ideas purportedly reveal the essence of material things.
