Descartes Meditations

We will be reading Descartes Meditations over the next few days in class.  This assignment has two main elements.  The first is note-taking.  The second is questions.

Note Taking

• Periodically, Mr. M will be briefly looking over your copy of Descartes' Meditations looking to see that you read actively by taking notes.
• He expects to see notes in two forms.
• First, you should highlight (or underline) key passages that are interesting or represent important ideas in the reading.  Not all parts of the text are equally important.
• You should have a "reasonable amount" of highlighting.  This may vary by page, but I'd say about 5-10% of the text is a good ballpark figure.
• What matters most is whether it makes sense or not.
• Second, you should summarize each paragraph in the right margin.
• It's okay if you just cover the main or most interesting idea.  It doesn't need to include everything!   
• You can also write questions or criticism here.  Use this as notes for a discussion; will help you be clever in class.

Questions

• At the end of each meditation, list one to three discussion questions to share with the class.
• Take some time and think of something meaningful.  Your questions should:
• Be open ended and not factual.  There should be a variety of interesting replies to this quest.
• They need to relate section of the text.  Unless it's a broad question about the whole section, reference a line or section in your question to show where it relates to Descartes thinking.
•  Be at least somewhat interesting or deep.  Ask yourself: is this something we could actually talk about?
• Relating the current reading to ideas other philosophers we have studied (so far, mostly just Plato...) is worth extra awesome points.
•  Your assignment grade will be partly based on the quality of your questions.